From the April 12, 1912 NYT:

Citizens of this town [Washington, DC] who carry any deadly weapon hereafter will be liable to penitentiary sentence or fine, or both, by terms of a bill passed in the House to-day. Any Washingtonian who has a pocketknife with a blade more than three inches long comes within the provisions.

Representative Madden of Illinois proposed an amendment to cause all capital policemen to hold up visitors to Washington and search them for weapons. It was quickly passed, but later withdrawn.

I have a long-standing relationship with the Cato Institute. They have been partners on the publication of the EFW index since 1996. I have published a couple articles in the Cato Journal, and students of mine have interned there. On a personal level, I am pleased to call many current and former Cato staffers my friends.

I have also developed a relationship with the Charles Koch Foundation in the last few years, which helped fund my research at Auburn and now SMU. I have lectured for the Koch Associates program. Students of mine have worked for the Foundation. I recently shot two short videos with their assistance. On a personal level, I am pleased to call many current and former Koch staffers my friends.

So I am saddened by this whole thing on many levels. Like a lot of people, I wish this wasn't happening. But it is. I don't understand the animosity between the Kochs and Ed Crane, though I certainly understand the loyalty of the Cato folks to Ed Crane, who has championed liberty for so many decades. Personally, I don't care who "wins" this battle though.

I am however worried about the damage being done to the libertarian movement, especially by the rhetoric on the part of the Cato supporters. They claim the "independence" of the Cato Institute is threatened by the Kochs. Do they not realize that each time they make this claim, they (a) INSULT friends at GMU, Mercatus, IHS, and hundreds of scholars elsewhere (like me) who have benefited from Koch Foundation assistance but who do not feel any loss of independence in their own research agendas?, and (b) provide fodder for the Left's tired (and untrue) claim that we are all just corporate stooges?

Go ahead and defend your boss and your jobs if you must, but in doing so, don't call into question my independence.

Walter Russell Mead on the demise of the "blue model": "It took me a while to see it, but since the 1980s I’ve come to understand that the shift away from blue is not all loss. The blue model was a very comfy couch, but there is much more to do in this world than watch Simpsons reruns while eating chips."

Paul Gregory's inconvenient arithmetic:

"Millionaire tax filers earn $221 billion – almost a quarter of a trillion — from business and professions, partnerships, and S-corporations. This is puzzling: If Harry Reid’s figure is correct (2,361 millionaire businesses), then the average millionaire-owned business earns almost a hundred million dollars, and [they] do this without hiring anyone. These super heroes do their own typing, selling, drafting. public relations, building, and manufacturing. They do not need employees. Remarkable!"

From an article by Manhattan Institute's Lawrence Mone:

[M]ost dictionaries define a millionaire as someone with wealth (i.e., assets) of $1 million. By that definition, many New York teachers and the vast majority of police and firefighters are millionaires, because the “net present value” of their retirement benefits is well in excess of $1 million.

That is, if they had to fund their retirements from their own savings, they’d have to set aside seven figures today.

According to this post, the Michigan SEIU recieves about $6 million per year from caregivers who receive Medicaid. "For the SEIU, this makes them public employees and thus members of the union, which receives $30 out of the family's monthly Medicaid subsidy. The Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3) deducts union dues on behalf of SEIU."

If one theme emerged from Tuesday's off-year mid-terms, it is that there is no obvious theme or narrative.

Let us start with ballot issues. Apparently voters have had enough of Republican efforts to make it harder to vote: Maine voters by a 60-40% margin overturned a law passed earlier this year that would have ended same day voter registration. Or apparently voters remain quite concerned about voter fraud and willing to impose modest restrictions on the ease of voting to address the issue despite protests from Democratic officials: Mississippians voted 62-38% in favor of a law requiring voter ID at the polls.

Also in Mississippi, the right to a thrashing when a pro-life amendment defining personhood as beginning at conception was crushed, 58 percent to 42 percent. But the state's voters also passed a law vastly restricting the use of eminant domain by a ridiculously lopsided 73 percent to 27 percent margin.

Meanwhile, Ohio voters swung back to the Democrats, delivering a crushing 61-39% defeat to a law, passed earlier this year by the Republican dominated legislature, trimming government employees collective bargaining rights. Or maybe they didn't -

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In a column today in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer excoriates President Obama's new style of more aggressively "scapegoating" Republicans and "the rich," and giving succor to the OWS crowd. But while Krauthammer calls it "dangerous," he concludes, "it's working."

Is it? In it's August monthly poll, Gallup showed the President leading a generic Republican by 45-39%. On September 8, the President kicked off his re-election campaign with his call for the "American Jobs Act," (the AJA) and spent the next several days pushing for it. Gallup conducted its September monthly from September 8 through the 11th. The result: Generic Republican led the President by 46% to 38%. In late September, Occupy Wall Street began to garner attention - it crowded the Brooklyn Bridge on the last weekend of the month and has been almost non-stop in the news since. But Gallup's October poll, released today, shows a generic Republican leading the President by 46-38% - exactly the same as a month before.

Amongst Independent voters, the generic Republican edge has grown from 40-35% in August to 43-30% in October (though down slightly from September).

When he gave his AJA speech in September, Obama's average approval was 43.8, per Real Clear Politics. Today it stands at 43.6, though with a slight uptick in the last week - almost entirely the result of a surprisingly strong (for the President) poll from Rasmussen, the pollster liberals love to hate. The most recent polls from other pollsters in the field since OWS briefly seized the Brooklyn Bridge, compared to their prior poll, show him down in Gallup, flat in Ipsos/Reuters, down in ABC/Washington Post, and down in Fox New.

Meanwhile, the old "right track/wrong track" numbers have reached a ridiculously (and historically) bad 17-76%. That's slightly worse than the 19-74% split at the time of his AJA speech, and down from 21-72% when OWS seized the Bridge. These small declines are probably just statistical noise, but they certainly don't show OWS or the President moving the needle.

The President's numbers against his specific possible Republican opponents, however, remain stable. In September, as in August, he was competitive, with slight leads or slightly behind, depending on the particular match-up. The latest round of such polling (by Gallup) should be out soon, and we'll see how he looks then. He'll also have a huge cash advantage over his GOP opposition, and by February if not sooner we should expect to see that money being deployed to bash Republicans.

So the President remains a formidable opponent. But that's because of his cash advantage, and the weakness of the GOP field. There's no sign - yet anyway - that his new style is moving things in his direction.

George Will provides this summation of the "message" (he dignifies it by calling it the meta-theory) of the Occupy Wall Street bunch: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.

Changing layouts, sharing private information, meh. Didn't get my dander up. But I'm seriously considering typing a snarky status update to register my displeasure about the following:

Facebook to start a PAC

Facebook filed paperwork Monday to form a political action committee called "FB PAC," CNN has learned.

"FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected," said Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications at Facebook.

The move comes on the same day the social networking giant sponsored an hourlong "Facebook Live" discussion with three top Republican House members: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Event participants asked questions through Facebook, while the congressmen discussed the struggling economy and the role of technology in government.

Don't bother clicking the link; I copied the whole story.

If you or someone you know has been personally affected by the high prices due to influence peddling among special interest lobbyists, post this to your status for one hour.

I've been saying for some time that Barack Obama is the most economically ignorant president since Zachary Taylor, but I increasingly fear I've been doing the general a disservice. It's not just erroneous economics, but sheer ignorance of markets and economics.

You see it in periodic comments of the President. Perhaps the most famous came when he said that ATMs and airport ticket kiosks lead to unemployment: “When you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” (An interesting tidbit - do a Google search for this - you'll see the comment was more or less uncommented upon in the "mainstream media.") He's used this a couple times, here also blaming internet travel sites.

But there have been numerous others, as when he explained that auto companies had to make more electric cars in order to satisfy the market. This showed a titanic ignorance of how markets work, the President apparently of the belief that "the market" was what a central planner decided was needed, not what consumers actually wanted. He shows know concept of consumer preference, the subjective value of goods and services, or even the role of prices in providing information to firms.

Now comes this quote from Ron Suskind's book, Confidence Men:

"Both [Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Christina Roemer and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers] were concerned by something the President had said in a morning briefing: that he thought the high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. Summers and Romer were startled.

“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,” Romer said. “We wondered where this could be coming from. We both tried to convince him otherwise. He wouldn’t budge.”

So our President really does think productivity is bad for the economy. As economist Scott Sumner says, "So for 200 years rapid productivity growth didn’t cause any serious unemployment problems in America, but now, right after NGDP collapses, we are to believe it is producing mass unemployment, even though recent productivity gains have been rather low. I’m at a loss for words. We elected a Luddite as President of the United States."

For a long time, I've noted that conservatives and libertarians live happier, more active lives than liberals, and are generally more tolerant. (Yes, that anonymous friend is me). I have also long noted that in my experience, conservatives are, on the whole, more tolerant than liberals.

These observations cut heavily against the typical liberal's sense of self, but it really makes sense, if you think about it. The core of conservatism, no less than Ronald Reagan used to say, is libertarianism - the live and let live philosophy. And equally at the core of libertarianism is a tolerance for lifestyle choices. Liberals and hippies and free love types and survivialists and all kinds of crazies can move to Vermont or New Hampshire or Idaho, and the flinty natives just accept them (with the immigrants gradually changing the political culture of the two former states to match their intolerant liberalism). Modern liberalism, by definition, seeks to impose its will on individuals, largely in the belief that it can perfect society through politics. This doesn't mean that they are bad people. And perhaps we should be more intolerant. (In fact, that's the argument that my liberal friends routinely give me when I point these things out, although they don't put it in those terms - instead the argue, for example, about the evils of smoking, or paying people less than the minimum wage, or making racist comments, or the dangers of owning a gun, etc. etc.). It's modern liberalism that imposes smoking bans, and mandates speech codes, and so on. I say "and so on" because I am off on a digression.

My point was simply to note that evidence continually trickles out for the proposition that I routinely observe - liberals are less tolerant of differing beliefs than conservatives.

The latest comes from Match.com, which has been running algorithms on their members in order to better match people. One result: says Amarnath Thombre, Match.com's lead researcher, "the politics one is quite interesting. Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is."

I leave it to the more highly trained economists here to explain the dynamics of dating and mate choice.

In 2008, John McCain won 173 electoral college votes. It is very difficult to imagine any state that voted for McCain in 2008 not supporting the GOP candidate in 2012. So that means the GOP nominee has to swipe 97 votes from the Obama column to win in 2012. Where might they come from?

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The irony is just too good: The Davis-Bacon Act, designed to anti-Black (see here), turns out to be anti-Green (see here).

It's hard to imagine a dumber event in American politics than the Iowa Straw Poll. Or more precisely, it's hard to imagine anything dumber in American politics than the attention paid to the Iowa Straw Poll.

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Lopez: "A professional clown sneaks in and throws a pie in Rupert Murdoch's face. He'll go to jail and have a record. And he'll be immortalized among that wacky society known as comedians. Surprised no one's done it before. I abhor it, of course."

Lawson: "I just don't understand our world. Our government, complete with guns, electric chairs, and prisons, can snoop, hack, bug, and pry with impunity and NO ONE CARES. A few reporters, armed with mere pens, do it and it's apparently the moral crisis of our age?"

Lopez: "I'm reminded of George W. Bush's insistence, to unseemly lengths, in 2004 that he had the right to listen to anyone's conversations. And he got re-elected for it. Below is a paste of a Glen Greenwald piece in Salon from last month. It's got to be one of the most vivid examples of lawyers upholding the rule of law, and shows where the line is drawn for giving impunity to people acting in their official capacity. It's just drawn way too far out. The Murdoch situation shows us that.

These lawyers, evidently despite political loyalties, were keeping the President from abusing his powers. “Comey explained that, in 2004, shortly after he became Deputy AG, he reviewed the NSA eavesdropping program Bush had ordered back in 2001 and concluded it was illegal. Other top administration lawyers -- including Attorney General John Ashcroft and OLC Chief Jack Goldsmith -- agreed with Comey, and told the White House they would no longer certify the program's legality. It was then that Bush dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to Ashcroft's hospital room to try to extract an approval from the very sick Attorney General, but, from his sickbed, Ashcroft refused to overrule Comey. Bush decided to reject the legal conclusions of his top lawyers and ordered the NSA eavesdropping program to continue anyway, even though he had been told it was illegal (like Obama now, Bush pointed to the fact that his own White House counsel (Gonzales), along with Dick Cheney's top lawyer, David Addington, agreed the NSA program was legal). In response, Ashcroft, Comey, Goldsmith, and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign en masse if Bush continued with this illegal spying, and Bush -- wanting to avoid that kind of scandal in an election year -- agreed to "re-fashion" the program into something those DOJ lawyers could approve (the "re-fashioned" program was the still-illegal NSA program revealed in 2005 by The New York Times; to date, we still do not know what Bush was doing before that that was so illegal as to prompt resignation threats from these right-wing lawyers).”

Well, another muckraking journalist attacks the Charles G. Koch (CGK) Foundation, this time for its support of FSU's economics department.**

Here are the facts of the matter stripped down to the basics:

(1) FSU wants to hire new faculty in an area in which they have built up a 20+ year international reputation with Gwartney, Benson, and Holcombe et al., but resources do not exist to do this.
(2) FSU says to CGK, "Hey if we find people we want to hire in this area, will you fund them?"
(3) CGK says to FSU, "Sure, if you find people you like who we also like, we will fund them."

Oooooooo. Yeah, sure "smells" to me. It smells about as much as when I was at Capital University and some donor gave us money for "service learning" and all of a sudden we were told we had to hire faculty in that area and approve new courses and curricular changes to accommodate this donation. Funny, I don't remember the outcry about academic freedom there.

Pay attention the next time a foundation offers a university money for (say) lung cancer research. I guarantee you won't see a story about how THAT violates academic freedom. Why not though? How dare the donor "dictate" that we study lung cancer instead of breast cancer! Nope, you won't see that story.

The ONLY reason this is a story is because the left doesn't like the ideas that Koch supports (and much of the FSU econ department supports). It is increasingly obvious to me that these tiresome stories are part of a well-planned effort on the part of the left. I guess it is easier to yell corruption than it is to actually engage the ideas.

The only test for whether a university should accept a donation is (1) if the faculty in the area support the idea and (2) if the donation supports the teaching/research mission. The CGK gift to FSU passes both tests. If some people don't like it, then that's just tough. Telling the economics department that they can't raise funds to support programs that they want? Now that would violate academic freedom!

* Title reference here.

**Full disclosure: I have been a direct and indirect recipient of CGK Foundation funding, and am a graduate of FSU's economics program.

Listen to this lecture by Alan Charles Kors, titled "Can There Be an 'After-Socialism'?"

Update: Professor Kors gave substantially the same lecture at Clemson this semester, which can be viewed here. (Thanks to Eric Daniels, of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, for pointing this out.)

I second Frank's offering of kudos to Dan Alban and IJ. This article from The Economist reports other IJ work: "All states regulate professional lobbyists: ie, paid agents who communicate directly with politicians in the hope of swaying them. Fair enough. But a new report from the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group, reveals that 36 states also impose restrictions on "grassroots lobbying' ...."

Also from this article:

The first sentence of the Massachusetts guidelines for grassroots lobbyists is but a whisker shorter than the Gettysburg address and comprehensible only to a lawyer. Small groups cannot afford lawyers. Yet a few states even threaten criminal penalties for breaking the rules. In Alabama, the maximum sentence is 20 years in jail.

The most severe punishments are seldom, if ever, applied. But they still have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech. The constitution says people have a right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Politicians hate that.

See Richard Epstein on the implictions of passing laws that are not consistently applied.

Law is not just an idealized system of rules: It also involves the public administration of those rules by a wide range of elected and appointed officials in an endless array of particular circumstances. For those who would defend a just legal order, the basic challenge is to strike a proper balance — between limiting the discretion of these officials so that they do not undermine the rule of law, while also allowing them enough leeway to perform their essential roles.

Lately in America, we have done a poor job of preserving this balance. In practice — and, increasingly, in legal theory — government officials have been given unprecedented ability to make exceptions to the law, both in enforcing it and in respecting the rights granted under it. Indeed, the past year has seen two of the most enormous pieces of legislation in U.S. history — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — make the imbalance far worse. Both laws seek to dramatically transform vast swaths of the American economy; both give enormous power to the government to bring about these transformations. And yet both laws are stunningly silent on exactly how these overhauls are to take place. The vague language of these statutes delegates much blanket authority to government officials who will, effectively, make the rules up as they go along.

The early evidence continues to support the wisdom of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and other recent court decisions striking down campaign finance regulations on First Amendment grounds, most notably SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission. I discuss the latest bits of data here.

Consider these headlines from a story in the March 8, 1911 NYT:

20,000 TROOPS AND TWO NAVAL DIVISIONS TO MOBILIZE NEAR MEXICAN BORDER

Fourth of United States Army Ordered to Concentrate in Texas and Southern California.

Cruiser Division of Atlantic Fleet to Proceed to Gulf - Pacific Fleet Held Ready.

2,000 Marines Assembling

Washington Explains it as Mobilization Test and Joint Army and Navy War Game

Here are the opening paragraphs:

The United States is making a move as to Mexico that looks like a potential interference in the affairs of that country, though it wears the official aspect of a military mobilization test. Nearly 20,000 troops, or practically one-fourth of the entire United States Army, including the forces in the insular possessions, were last night and to-day ordered to entrain for points near the Mexican boundary.

Simultaneously the Fifth Division of the Atlantic fleet, including the powerful armored cruisers Tennessee, Montana, North Carolina, and Washington, has been ordered from New York to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, while a force of 2,000 marines has been directed to assemble at Guantanamo.

Wow.

This is just from memory, but a story on the local radio news program this morning talked about how the Louisiana Federation of Teachers is against business tax cuts in the current budget. They played a clip of the head of the AFT saying that, since the tax cuts "cost the state" some tax revenue, schools "may have to lay off employees" (emphasis mine). This seems odd to me since the BLS shows the number of mass layoffs in Louisiana in 2008, 09, and 10 as greater than zero each year.

So even though many businesses in Louisiana (and the rest of the country) are struggling, laying off workers, or closing entirely, that is less significant than the possibility of schools laying off workers.

Today my heart bleeds for the dispossed refugees fleeing a brutal dictator.

At least that's what some liberals are calling Wisconsin's elected governor, Scott Walker.

Fleeing this brutal dictator (their words) are Wisconsin's 14 Democratic state senators. As is now well known, all 14 have fled the state, depriving the legislature of a quorum needed to conduct budget business.

But it's not easy being a legislator on the lamb. Check out the sad reports in this unintentionally humorous article from the Los Angeles Times.

"It's sort of like being a refugee," said runaway Senator Spencer Coggs. Indeed, and we know how hard it is to be a "refugee." "'Each day brings its own challenges,' Sen. Spencer Coggs said by telephone. 'Somebody will need an electric shaver or somebody will need provisions.'"

Oh the horrors! The Times reports that Coggs has had to purchase more underwear, socks and T-shirts. Thank heavens there are so many non-union Walmarts around. We'd hate to see Senator Coggs unshaven, let alone in day old underwear.

As so often happens in crowded refugee camps, medical care is hard to come by. Reports the Times, "Sen. Julie Lassa needed more contact lens solution."

"The senators have gone into survival mode in Illinois, doing small loads of laundry and eating 'whatever we can get our hands on,' said one senator." One can envision the senators, scrounging from garbage cans, slaughtering their dogs and horses, leaving them to pull their carts by hand. Fortunately, they are aided by "relatives and staff who trek across the border." Trek mind you. You know, that arduous jaunt down I-94 and I-39 (hey, don't laugh - ever drive I-94 at rush hour?).

Oh, the humanity!

Damn! Munger v. Google has such a nice ring to it. But it was rejected by the NC Supreme Court.

Sure, it was actually "Munger, et al. v. State of North Carolina." But it was Google that took all that cash and built a "server farm." (That's basically an insulated warehouse with some extra HVAC, btw)

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I would have thought the oppressive apparatus of the state could no longer surprise me with its never-ending creativity. But...I am surprised, by this.

The NC DOT did an engineering study of a local road widening project, and concluded that no new signals were required at two intersections. A citizen, David Cox, had the gall to disagree. He did some research, and put the research in the form of an organized argument.

The state could have responded by ignoring the request. Or the state could have pointed out the errors in the study. (I myself have no position on the merits; haven't studied it, don't know the issues).

But the state engineer instead threatened the citizen with legal action... for... being smart! They investigated charging him with "practicing engineering without a license." Yes, really. The state DOT head engineer, Kevin Lacy, did not dispute the facts, the analysis, or the conclusions of the report. All he did was try to get the report dismissed because it was "engineering quality work." Read that again: the citizen made a petition to government for redress of a grievance, and the state wants to prosecute the citizen because the quality of the analysis is too high. (If the petition, redress, etc. thing sounds familiar that's because it is a right guaranteed in the 1st Amendment).

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There were two hat-pin stories in the Feb. 1, 1911 NYT. The first from Boston:

"If I should carry a fish knife as long as this I would be arrested as a dangerous character," said Representative Newton to-day, holding up an eighteen-inch hatpin to the Legislative Committee on Legal Affairs, before which he appeared in support of a bill to limit the length of hatpins.

Mr. Newton, who is a fish peddler, advocated a fine of $20 for any person wearing a hatpin, the point of which projects more than half an inch beyond the hat, and cited an instance of a car conductor whose ear was pierced by a hatpin of a passenger.

"It does not seem to make a difference whether a girl wears a cart wheel or a little ding-dong affair on her head," said Mr. Newton,"the pins are just as long as she can get them. It is time something was done to put an end to this murderous practice.

I am not sure the "fish peddler" was intended to make people feel that Mr. Newton had more or less authority to speak about fish knives, hatpins, or anything in general. It seems a bit odd - but maybe representatives in 1911 still called themselves something other than a politician?

The second story pertains to New York:

The Aldermen voted down yesterday, by 37 to 29, the proposed city ordinance to restrict the length of women's hatpins. Alderman Alexander S. Drescher of Brownsville, who introduced the measure, made a hard fight for it, and was supported by Republican members of the board, but the Tammany opposition was too strong. The ordinance fixed a penalty of $50 for wearing a pin protruding more than half an inch from the crown of a hat.

{snip}

Alderman Dowling, the Tammany leader, led the opposition. "I would be for this ordinance," he said," if I believed that it would stop the wearing of long hatpins, but it would be a physical impossibility to enforce it. The whole police force and the National Guard and all the battleships of the country could not do it. If you want to put any ridiculous ordinance on the books this is the way to do it.

I guess the machine was good for at least one thing. Mr. Dowling continues:

"The way to get at this matter is to have the Legislature pass a bill prohibiting the sale of long hatpins. The next thing you will want to do will be to pass an ordinance to make a man wear mufflers over his ears so that he cannot hear any one asking him to have a drink. It is the most ridiculous ordinance I ever heard of.

Drat!! Here, but not here,I sarcastically suggested that going after hatpin manufacturers was exactly where this was headed. Perhaps it still will sometime in the future, but I don't peak ahead so as not to ruin the surprises of opening up last century's paper to the day.

But I digress a bit. Mr. Dowling brings it home:

"How can we regulate the dress of women? I don't believe in passing a law to prohibit a woman from keeping her hat on."

Drescher pointed to the fact that no one appeared before the Law Committee against the ordinance.

Alderman Nicoll, whose engagement was announced only a few days ago, raised a laugh by saying: "I have received most explicit instructions on this matter, and, under protest, mind you, I am compelled to vote against this ordinance.

And women never influenced politics before given the ballot - yeah, right.

I wonder why the state is involved with auto licensing. It would seem that many of the things the state wants - tax revenue, ability to track automobiles (on behalf of both the state and individuals), and so forth - could be privatized. If it could be (and perhaps it has been and I am just not aware of it) then why not? I haven't had a lot of time to think this through, but the thought was brought back to the front of my mind while reading this op-ed piece from the Jan. 31, 1911 NYT:

Under the operation of the Callan automobile law the manufacturers of motor cars are obliged to lend to purchasers for a period of fifteen days duplicate license tags bearing their numbers. The purchaser is supposed to obtain within the fortnight his own license number by a tedious process of application to the Secretary of State. Through delay, neglect, or loss, the manufacturer tags are frequently not returned. Chauffeurs, particularly, are fond of keeping and using them for "joy rides." If they come to grief, the civil and criminal liability to damages to persons and property is avoided. The "joy riders" escape, and suits are brought against the dealers who license tags were used.

The lending of tags to purchasers should be done away with. In the first place, they should have the privilege of obtaining their own numbers without [unreadable] and upon the filing of their applications, with the amount of license fee. When the Callan law went into effect the owners of motor cars were subjected to needless inconvenience through the cumbrous process of registration. Secondly, dealers ought not to be placed in a position where they would incur, even for a day, a liability that should attach to the owners and drivers of motor cars. We understand that the manufacturers have signed a petition to Secretary Lazansky, asking him to empower a deputy to issue licenses direct to purchasers at the time of purchase, upon evidence that the purchaser has complied with the requirements of the law. That is a sensible appeal. The manufacturers are confident that the things it asks for are practicable, and that they would afford relief to all concerned.

Yet another addition to the "things never change" drawer.

Mi amiga linda Carolina gives me a chance to talk about the SOTU in El Mercurio.

And she quoted me accurately, because I did say "Fue un discurso 'de postre': dulce cuando lo estás comiendo, pero después te sientes con sueño y algo lento y te preguntas qué había en él", añadió.

That is, "It was a dessert speech: sweet while you were listening, but afterwards you felt all sleepy and sluggish, and wondered what was in it."

A friend on facebook linked me to this:

"There's times when we don't break for lunch, and we don't break for dinner, we don't have bathroom breaks..." It would seem an obvious solution, rather than vote fraud, would be to stop passing so much legislation.

I'm sure there's a dissertation here. Public choice scores again.

The former Congressman talks to Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie on Austrian Economics, tax cuts, TARP, and Ronald Reagan.

Courtesy of Richard Winger's Ballot Access News, we now have the final national vote totals for the U.S. House of Representatives in the fall election. Here we go:

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From the Dec. 21, 1910 NYT:

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. - After many years in the license column, this city, at the annual election to-day, swung over into the no-license ranks by a majority of 1 vote. The result was a general surprise for the city has so long had a "yes" majority that it was looked upon as "safe," and there had been little work done to get out the voters on either side.

The vote to-day was "yes" 1,478, "no" 1479. Last year there was a majority of 258 for license, the vote being yes 1,654 and no 1,396. Charles L. Frink, Republican, was elected Mayor. The City Government remains Republican.

Just to clarify, the city voted to go "dry," I am sure to the utter shock and amazement to the good folks who were in the bar while the polls were open.

And 90 years later the Simpsons will parody this:

Kent Brockman: "The controversial bill passed by only a single vote."

Marge: "You really should have voted, Homer."

Homer: "Oh, it wouldn't have made a difference."

More on Votes Decided by One

More on rational ignorance and non-voting

Reading the paper from 100 years ago often makes me feel like I have run down a rabbit hole where sixes are sevens and some things are backwards but almost everything is sadly familiar. Take this op-ed from the Dec. 13, 1910 NYT:

As is well known, the Republicans think that the happiness and prosperity of the Nation are due to high tariff taxes, and the expenditure of an enormous surplus thus produced. The election gave signs that others than Republicans, and even many Republicans, have had enough of that kind of happiness, but the information has not yet extended to all those still exercising authority. The President's message appreciated the situation, and he sounded a note of warning against extravagance. When commenting upon this counsel of perfection we remarked that it would do well to await the action of Congress before taking it for granted that the President's counsel would be heeded. The clerks off the appropriation committees have completed their tabulations, and the figures indicate such an excess over last year's expenditures that there is talk of raising more money by new taxes.

Really? This is how far we have come in 100 years?

A report in the Dec. 9, 1910 NYT provides an interesting contrast to today's campaign financing:

That the race is not always to the rich nor the battle to the well-heeled appears in the statements filed to-day with the clerk of the House of Representatives by the Republican and Democratic Congressional Committees, showing the expenses of each during the recent campaign. It cost the Democratic committee $27,771 to gain the next House, and the Republicans $74,373 to lose it. As Camp Clark observes, the Republicans seem, comparatively speaking, not to have "got their seed back."

The Democratic Committee started out in the campaign with $13,258 on hand; the Republicans had $47,030. Under the law the committees are allowed to show contributions of sums over $100 separately from those of lesser amount. The Republicans had fifty-two contributors who gave sums larger than $100, and Congressman McKinley, Chairman of the committee, himself gave $5,000. The Democrats had thirteen contributors who gave more than $100.

The folks over at eh.net provide the following conversions to 2009 dollars:

$27,771 = $647,000
$74,373 = $1,730,000
$13,258 = $309,000
$47,030 = $1,100,000
$100 = $2,330
$5,000 = $116,000

David Nolan, a founder (arguably the founder) of the Libertarian Party passed away yesterday at age 66. The Libertarian Party was founded in Nolan's Colorado home in December, 1971. Although the Party has never made a breakthrough in American politics - it's high point probably came in 1980, when presidential candidate Ed Clark received 1.1 percent of the national vote and two Libertarians were elected to the Alaska state legislature - most libertarians have, at some point, had contact with the Party, and many have voted for or more actively supported its candidates.

Nolan's other claim to fame may be his invention of the "Nolan Chart," now, in somewhat revised form, frequently referred to as the "World's Smallest Political Quiz." Nolan developed the chart to better capture electoral/political philosophies than the traditional "left/right" paradigm used by most commentators.

One can read more on Nolan here. R.I.P.

Louisiana film tax credits aren't paying their way, researchers find

From USA Today (via the Atlantic Wire and Instapundit):

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The news story brings to mind this recent cartoon from the Rome News-Tribune's Mike Lester:

[Note: federal results are reviewed here].

*[This post was updated on November 6.]

In addition to a very good night in federal races, including the best Republican showing in the U.S. House since the election of 1946, Republicans did very well in the states on Tuesday, picking up hundreds of state legislative seats and gaining control in numerous state legislative chambers. This will not only influence policy, but also will strengthen Republicans in redistricting, and provide a larger "farm team" of candidates down the road. The run down - including such important but under reported races such as Attorney General and Secretary of State, is below the fold. We'll have one more long post, on state ballot initiatives, later in the week.

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Well, it was a big night for political junkies. Soon enough we should worry about what it means for policy, but first, let's find out who, and what, won. In this post we'll review the federal races. A later post will cover what's happened in the states, which may be more interesting because it's harder to find! Go below the fold for more.

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On this election day, here's something to...

1. Read. My paper with Mike Hammock in which we apply some of the insights of Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter to environmental issues.

2. Watch. The Public Choice Society Symposium in Caplan's book from 2008.

3. Listen to. An EconTalk podcast with Caplan in which he discusses the book.

Glenn Reynolds's comment "that to the credentialed-instead-of-educated, the Constitution is a wish-fulfillment device rather than, you know, an authoritative text" reminded me of this recent Mike Lester cartoon in the RNT (though I think it would be more accurate to say that the left and right view different parts of the Constitution as rocks and lava lamps).

Jonathan Cohn's column in today's New Republic leads off with an assertion that I hear frequently these days, and one that I think provides a good bit of insight into the soul of modern, mainstream liberalism. Cohn writes that a Republican controlled Congress would "obviously not good news for liberals or for liberalism. The Republicans will try to slash taxes for the wealthy, shrink the federal government, and repeal major legislation starting with health care reform."

Now, I can understand why one might think that "shrink[ing] the federal government" is an obviously bad thing, though I wouldn't agree. One might feel that we need a strong, active, federal government. One might openly favor a move toward a more social-democratic state. And so on. Similarly, if one favored Obamacare, one would see its repeal as inherently bad. But why is there such a widespread view on the left that "slash[ing] taxes for the wealthy" is self-evidently bad? The idea is that high taxes on "the wealthy" (whoever they are) is an inherently good thing. I would think have thought that everybody would have agreed that in the dream world, low taxes on everybody would be a good thing.

Of course, the reality is that the world is full of tradeoffs. But the assertion that higher taxes on "the wealthy" is rarely tied to any tradeoff. Perhaps liberals view it as self-evident, and therefore implicit in the statement, that higher taxes on "the wealthy" bring in more government revenue and that revenue can be spent on valuable things. But that's not really what they say. Do they view it as self evident that higher taxes on "the wealthy" will always bring in more revenue? The evidence doesn't support that as a universal proposition, although certainly it often can lead to greater government revenue. Do they see it as a given that higher taxes on "the wealthy" will lead to a healthier economy? Sometimes that might be true, but there's certainly no evidence of that as a general proposition - if anything, the evidence seems to suggest that in most cases lower taxes on "the wealthy" will lead to greater economic growth. And it strikes me, again, that the default position for normal people of good will would be that it is always better, all other things equal, to leave people in possession of the fruits of their labor. This is not a "no taxes" position. I am merely suggesting that higher taxes, among people of good will, must always be justified.

The only way that one can really see higher taxes on "the wealthy" as an acheivement in and of itself, independent of its actual effects, is by an appeal to envy. "The wealthy" have more, and we want to take it from them. Leaving them with less is ipso facto a good thing.

It strikes me as strange - and as a very bad thing - that this view can be stated so openly and cavalierly, and with so little push back.

The President says that his critics "talk about me like a dog." I just want to be clear that I never talk about the President like I talk about my dog.

In 2008 I wrote this piece on Transantiago, in Chile.

Just did this update.

English version of update.

(Oh, and I'm afraid I have to recognize: Cards suck, Reds rule. It's killin' me, Bob)

Story here. So how is the California Senate spending its time? Debating (and ultimately rejecting) a ban on plastic bags. Of course the CA Senate might be more likely to make matters worse than better.

Last night President Obama took to the tube to congratulate himself for keeping his campaign promise to end combat in Iraq (never mind that 50,000 troops remain there and that they still carry firearms and wear body armor).

The president's crowing about keeping this promise is akin to a baseball player bragging about getting his batting average above the Mendoza line. There are lots of Obama campaign promises that have not been kept--closing Gitmo, not hiking taxes on people earning below $250k, posting bills on the internet for a few days before signing them--but I suppose he hopes we won't remember those.

Multiple ironies, sad threats.

Now, I have been to the LSS before, myself. It is way out in the country. It is held on the grounds of a very large (40 acre) plot of land. The main structures on the plot are some outbuildings, and a legally zoned bed-and-breakfast.

No one parks on the street, and nothing is visible from the street.

Now, it is true that they have amplified speeches, and amplified music on Saturday night.

But the local gubmint thugs are after them for:

1. Health concerns. So they had the food professionally catered, instead of cooking it on bbq grills as in the past.

2. Sanitation concerns. So they had port-o-potties brought in, in the proper ratio for such an activity, with that many people.

3. Ex post giant d*ckhead concerns about this being a permanent commercial activity. Hard to predict the ex post part, to the tune of a $50k fine. This is already a commercially zoned property, by the way, because of the b-n-b. And the Institute for Liberal Studies is a registered non-profit. The LSS breaks even, every year. What makes it commercial? If five of us split the cost of some chicken, and cook it, would that be commercial? This was less than 75 people, one event per year, for two nights. Sure, if it was every weekend, that might be commercial.

But this is just thuggery. The local government is doing this because they can.

The headline: Report: Too Much Money Going To State Court Races

The punchline: Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler was the first incumbent in the state in more than 40 years to lose his court seat.

Repeat after me: Campaign finance restrictions are all about, and only about, incumbent protection.

[Link]

I am always working my way through several books simultaneously - I trust I am not alone in this. One of my current reads is "Paris in the Terror" by Stanley Loomis.

I read this passage earlier tonight:

The Law of Suspects was passed during the first week of September [1793]. This bit of legislation defined in vague and allusive terms those who were to be considered suspect and therefore liable to arrest - "persons who, by their conduct or language either written or spoken, have shown themselves to be partisans of tyranny or Federalism [a knife thrust at the Girondins] and enemies of Liberty." The number of fish that might be scooped up in this net left nothing to be desired by the Revolutionary Tribunal or its energetic prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville. Also suspect were those citizens "who could not give a satisfactory account of their means of support or their discharge of civic obligations since the preceding March 21."

The Girondins had been in "charge" for about a year before they started to lose power - eventually 21 of them would be sent to the guillotine in one day (I note that the bracketed term referring to the Girondins is Loomis, not me). The Law of Suspects was crafted by one Robespierre and seems very similar to the laws of other authoritarian systems. The "means of support" clause seems to be aimed at Danton (Robespierre's main rival for control) who, it was suspected, had been taking a little extra from the government till.

However bad the preceding "law" seems to be, it gets worse:

The third article in this list was particularly odious. It stated that persons who had not received "good citizenship certificates" from their local Section leader were also to be considered suspect.

Now, students of public choice should be able to fill in what comes next. The remainder is below the fold:

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From the politics section of the WSJ.

Senate VIP Loans Mount. Countrywide Dealt With More Lawmakers and Staffers Than Previously Known July 15, 2010

U.S. senators or Senate employees received 30 loans—far more than had previously been known—under a controversial lending program at Countrywide Financial Corp. that provided cut-rate terms to favored borrowers.

The information is contained in a letter sent to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who has been spearheading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation into Countrywide's so-called VIP mortgage program.

No specific loan recipients were named in the letter. But Mr. Issa's letter said borrowers on a dozen loans listed their place of employment as the office of "Senator Robert Bennett." Available public records don't indicate that Sen. Bennett, a Utah Republican and member of the Senate Banking Committee, received a Countrywide home loan.

Full story (ungated). Stay tuned...

My new Forbes piece considers the question I raised in a letter to the Birmingham News last week.

From Ronald Bailey in Reason:

The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity reported in March that an “analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms shows that more than 1,750 companies and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists—eight for each member of Congress—to influence health reform bills in 2009.” Lobbyists for unions opposed taxes on gold-plated health insurance plans; lobbyists for doctors opposed cuts in Medicare reimbursements; a lobbyist for Dunkin Donuts opposed a soda tax to pay for health care reform; and a Cigar Association lobbyist fought a tobacco tax.

Hope and change!!

My mother-in-law directed me to this story a few days ago: an Alabama politician has been looking into what it would take for Greene County (and the seventh Congressional district) to secede from Alabama and form its own state. The 7th district covers the University of Alabama and parts of Birmingham. I doubt those areas would go, but if the seventh district seceded, it would create a state roughly the size of New Jersey with a population larger than Wyoming's. If only the Black Belt counties seceded, they would still have a higher population than Wyoming (it would split the rest of Alabama into non-contiguous chunks, though). I sent the following letter to the Birmingham News:

"The push for the 7th Congressional District to secede from Alabama isn't as crazy as it sounds at first. To put things in perspective, there are about 4.7 million people in Alabama. In 1790, there were about four million people in the entire United States. A quick search suggests that the 7th Congressional District had about 635,000 people as of the 2000 Census, which would have made it one of the largest states in the union just a few years after the Constitution was adopted. A lot of commentators have suggested that the political order has become too large and too unwieldy to be responsive to the citizenry; see in particular the "Secession Week" entries at www.athousandnations.com that led up to Independence Day, particularly the entry about what we can learn from the formation of the Swiss Cantons. The idea that governments would function better if the states were smaller has merit and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Would secession be a wise move for the 7th District? According to the US Constitution, that's for the district itself, Congress, and the State Legislature to decide. It's certainly an idea that deserves serious consideration rather than mockery."

The Alabama Education Association is the 800-pound guerilla of Alabama politics. Long a (perhaps "the") dominant player in the state Democratic Party, the AEA is branching into this year's GOP gubernatorial race in a major way. Its objective is to try to ensure that Bradley Byrne is not the GOP nominee. Byrne's claim to fame is a fairly short tenure as head of the state's community college system, whose employees are members of AEA. Byrne was effective enough as a reformer of the community colleges that he earned the AEA's undying enmity. Now that we're in the runoff campaign, the AEA is supporting Byrne's opponent, Robert Bentley. At least, that's what appears to be happening. A series of slickly produced anti-Byrne radio ads are currently running sponsored by an outfit that calls itself the "Christian Coalition for Alabama." Their overall message is that Byrne is not conservative enough for Alabama -- which is rich, coming from the de facto teachers union. This morning I heard one that pointed out that Alabama will need to squeeze BP for big bucks, but Byrne would not be up to the job since he has been "a trial lawyer for Big Oil."

What a phrase.

Hearing the ad brought to mind one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes: "[T]he true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the spectator. That spectator, it seems to me, is favoured with a show of the first cut and calibre. Try to imagine anything more heroically absurd! What grotesque false pretenses! What a parade of obvious imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! But is fraud unamusing?"

For Elena Kagan:

Can you name a human endeavor that Congress cannot regulate on the pretense that the endeavor affects interstate commerce? If courts reflexively defer to that congressional pretense, in what sense do we have limited government?

More here (HT: Don Boudreaux). We have a couple of tomato plants. Of course, the court has already established that this is interstate commerce.

The Portland, Oregon, masseuse who attended to Al Gore in 2006 and now claims he sexually assaulted her spoke to police about the incident in January 2009. The Smoking Gun has published excerpts from the 87-page transcript. This statement struck me as especially poignant, and applicable to many, many American voters in a somewhat more elevated way:
“I was further deeply shocked and repulsed as my realization of what was happening sunk in and especially as my mind was now reeling from this absolute betrayal by someone I had inherently trusted as a good guy who cares about people including me because of his public persona.”

Don Boudreaux clears the bases with this letter to the editor on Robert Byrd's association with the KKK. Just because something is politically expedient doesn't excuse it.

I'm trying to understand the following empirical regularity: voters accept that politicians will lie, cheat, steal, and do other horrible things to get elected. Then voters are shocked--shocked!!--when politicians continue to lie, cheat, steal, and do other horrible things once in office. Why?

*--This was Mike Hammock's apt characterization. Was it rude to stick a camera in the Congressman's face? Yes, it was. Did it justify assault and battery (and yes, this was assault and battery)? I'm going to guess "no."

Republicans finally picked up a U.S. House seat Saturday in the special election in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District. Ed Djou defeats Colleen Hanabusa 40% to 31%. Djou benefitted from a split Democratic Party (Democrat Ed Case received 27%), and will have a very difficult time holding the seat in November, when presumably only one Democrat will be on the ballot.

Still, Republicans have to be happy - despite the apparent wave building for Republicans in November, Democrats had won all 6 special elections for the House since Obama took office, so this win stops that streak. Moreover, there is a bit of symbolism in that this is the seat where the President was born. Substantively, both President Obama and former Congressman Neil Abercrombie carried the district with over 70% of the vote in 2008, so the combined Hanabusa/Case vote was still down about 13 points from the Democratic percentage in 2008.

The last Republican to win this seat was Pat Saiki, in 1988. Until yesterday, Saiki, who served two terms, was the only Republican ever to win a House election in Hawaii.

Great opening and closing paragraphs from an op-ed piece in the May 19, 1910 NYT:

It is hopeless to expect unanimity regarding the merits of the income tax amendment, but there should be no disagreement upon the proposition that the action taken regarding it ought to be in accord with the opinions of those who will pay it. Taxation without representation is bad enough, but taxation contrary to representation is an indictment of representative institutions, and an issue superior to the income tax itself, whatever views are taken of its importance.

The op-ed goes on to decry the passage of a Democratic income-tax proposal in a Republican controlled state house. The piece ends with a brilliant indictment of the system (as it stood then, and perhaps even now):

Thus our voters are being taught that it is of little consequence what are the issues of the election, or what the decision upon them may be. After election the party managers decide what political strategy requires, and that is what is done. It is of no consequence what was the mandate of the electorate. Platforms are intended for campaigns, not for administrations. The representatives of the people are chosen not to execute a declared policy, but to take a line which shall keep the party in power. Who knows what were the issues of the last campaign? Who cares what may be the issues of the next campaign, since they may be dodged after election like the issues of past campaigns?

Should "Third Parties" Be Included in Debates?

I say yes, in this little op-ed.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings Wednesday on the "Potty Parity Act," a bill that seeks to address the unequal number of restroom facilities for women in federal buildings.

This is a much better way for the honorables to spend their time rather than mucking around in health care or passing cap and tax. Source.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the infamous shootings at Kent State University.

Here's a commercial from the Pennsylvania Tax Amnesty (HT: Lew Rockwell). This raises a question for privacy advocates: taxation requires that people basically have no financial privacy. How are government invasions of financial privacy different from other kinds of privacy? Has the ACLU ever sued the IRS or state taxing authorities for inserting themselves into every financial transaction? Comments are open.

Jim Otteson asks about rights and duties with respect to health care. A choice line:

"What is not the test for having a right to something is that one really, really wants it."

From the perspective of economics, there's a subsidiary question: if I have a duty to provide others' health care, what, then, do I have a duty to forgo in order to provide it? How are these obligatory costs identified, and by whom? Right now, I'm blogging about rights and duties, watching Sesame Street clips with Jacob, and intermittently talking to the plumber who is fixing some of our faucets. Is this OK? What should I be doing instead? Whose blessing do I require?

The comments on Jim's post are interesting. Common apologetics for universal health coverage ("Europe does it," "we have Social Security," etc.) are canards because these are all financially unsustainable. Welfare state public finance is an exercise in (presumably well-intentioned) institutional prodigality. We could probably throw a heck of a party if we cashed in all of our assets and spent everything on booze, but the money and the liquor would run out eventually.

For more, here's Bryan Caplan's resource page from a recent debate in which he participated.

Cross-posted at the Mises Blog.

Via Mark Brady, here the IEA Blog on the late British philosopher Antony Flew (1923-2010):

Several newspapers (e.g. the Guardian and the Telegraph) have recently carried obituaries of the English philosopher Antony Flew. These obituaries have emphasized the remarkable change of mind by which Flew, for most of his life an internationally renowned atheist, became convinced at the age of 81 of deism. What this emphasis has overshadowed - and what some readers of this blog may not know - is that Flew was for several decades a heroic defender of classically liberal political philosophy and indeed by far the best known professional philosopher in Britain over that period to champion classical liberalism. His heroism lay in the fact that, in challenging the spirit of the age as sharply and as unapologetically as he did, he was, and must have known that he was, irreparably damaging his reputation among his overwhelmingly left-leaning professional peers. That reputation – sufficient for his appointment to a chair at the University of Keele at the age of 31 - rested on a prolific output of books and of papers in the most prestigious philosophical journals. His work ranged widely, and especially in the philosophy of religion and the interpretation of David Hume had a major international impact.

To me this says: Do excellent work in order to advance good ideas.

I guess pollsters have lots of empty time on their hands, because to recent polls are out that make one wonder, "who paid for that?"

Rasmussen Reports has polled on a hypothetical presidential matchup of Ron Paul vs. President Obama. Obama wins 42-41. Which probably means that if the election really were held today, Ron Paul wins - you know how undecideds break agains the incumbent!

Meanwhile, Public Policy Polling, another reputable outfit, polls Obama vs. George W. Bush, with Obama again eeking out a victory with less than 50% - in this case, 48-46% over the man whose unpopularity as President has so much to do with the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008.

How can it be the unpopular ex-president and Ron Paul, a guy who got about 0 percent of the vote in the 2008 Republican primaries, should be neck and neck in hypothetical matchups with the sitting President? What does it mean?

First, it means that Obama has totally lost GOP moderates and dissenters (except, perhaps, for David Brooks and Christopher Buckley). In the PPP poll, 87 percent of Republicans favored Bush, quite a bit higher than his ratings with the party at the end of his term. From mid-2008 through the end of his term, Bush's approval rating among Republicans stood at roughly 60 percent; it was 18 percent among independents and 10 percent among Democrats at the end of his term,according to Pew. While a plurality of Independents still favor Obama over Bush, the margin is just 49-37, down from the 52 percent Obama won over McCain, who was much more popular with Independents than Bush.

Rasmussen's poll similarly shows that Obama has simply lost Republicans. Republicans scarcely gave Ron Paul the time of day in last year's primary. That he polls even with Obama is substantially a sign that Republicans will support any Republican over Obama - 66 percent support Paul in this poll, better than the much more traditional Republican Bush was doing a year ago. (Indeed, if you look at the Rasmussen link above, you'll see that Paul is actually quite unpopular in the GOP. That he draws more party support against Obama than Bush did a year ago suggests the degree of GOP disillusionment with the President. And in a Paul-Obama match up, independents break decisively for Ron Paul, 47 to 28 percent.

While many Democrats have been trying to convince themselves that you just can't deal with Republicans and to convince the nation that Republicans are "the party of 'no,'" the reality is that the President has squandered a remarkable opportunity to create a true realignment favoring the Democrats. A year into his presidency, Republicans have regained basically all the ground they lost from 2005 to 2008. That George Bush and Ron Paul can poll even with the President (as one with some real affection for Ron Paul - I have even represented him in my legal practice - I can still say that it would be hard to imagine two weaker Republican candidates, if the election were really held today, than Congressman Paul and President Bush) is indicative of the opportunity that Obama has lost. He hoped to create "Obama Republicans," as Reagan created "Reagan Democrats." He has failed. And he has sent independents flocking back to Republicans as well.

Obama's numbers could recover some. While he is doing great long term damage to the economy, he could look pretty good for a while. The huge influx of money from the Fed and the stimulus should have some effect, and the economy has a natural resiliency. There are some signs that recovery may be underway and that it could be strong, but also signs that it could be truly "jobless." But whatever happens with the economy, I think it unlikely that the President will have any chance to truly set off a major realignment. Republicans and Independents are returning to their pre-2006/2008 voting patterns, and indeed if any major realignment is on the horizon, it could be one that would benefit a new, can-do Republican Party epitomized by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Allan Handleman talks to John Stossel and me about "What is a Libertarian?"

Link to show.

Link to WZTK web site.

Can the states win their law suits, on Obamacare?

I have a guest op-ed in today's Durham Herald Sun, with my answer.

To summarize: No, the states cannot win.

Re: Intrusive government. See this pre-Patriot Act article by Charlotte Twight, "Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans."

On the presumptuousness of, and the presumption of, increasingly intrusive government.

On presumptuousness: From a scary article in The Weekly Standard:

The American Community Survey wasn't around when Ronald Reagan declared that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." If it was, he'd probably agree that having a government representative knock on your door, try to threaten their way into your home, and demand that you give them very personal information is far more terrifying.
[...]
The ACS [American Community Survey} is an extension of the U.S. Census that all households receive. While the U.S. Census form contains 10 questions and is sent out every 10 years, the ACS form contains 48 questions and is sent to 250,000 households each month on a rolling basis.
[...]
What's especially problematic about the ACS are the answers it demands from citizens. The least threatening of them are just strange -- such as asking whether your home has a flush toilet and whether "there is a business (such as a store or barber shop) or a medical practice" on your property. Then there are the financial questions. The ACS asks everything from your sources of income (in dollar amounts) to how much you spend on gas, electricity, and water. The IRS just asks what you earn; the Commerce Department wants to know how you spend your money as well.

Even more invasive are the personal questions. The questionnaire asks how many people live with you and their relationship to you, along with their names, ages, gender, and race. Most creepy of all are the questions about your daily routine. The ACS wants to know where you work, what time you leave for work, how you get to work, how long it takes you to get to work, and how many people travel with you
[...]
[T]oday's government and its workers have forgotten is that government is accountable to the people, not the reverse. It is "government of the people, by the people, for the people," in Abraham Lincoln's immortal words.

On presumption: About those "immortal words," Alfred J. Nock says this:

Spencer does not discuss what he calls "the perennial faith of mankind" in State action, but contents himself with elaborating the sententious observation of Guizot, that "a belief in the sovereign power of political machinery" is nothing less than "a gross delusion." This faith is chiefly an effect of the immense prestige which the State has diligently built up for itself in the century or more since the doctrine of jure divino rulership gave way. We need not consider the various instruments that the State employs in building up its prestige; most of them are well known, and their uses well understood. There is one, however, which is in a sense peculiar to the republican State. Republicanism permits the individual to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that State action is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and when it is glorified he is glorified. The republican State encourages this persuasion with all its power, aware that it is the most efficient instrument for enhancing its own prestige. Lincoln's phrase, "of the people, by the people, for the people" was probably the most effective single stroke of propaganda ever made in behalf of republican State prestige.

Thus the individual's sense of his own importance inclines him strongly to resent the suggestion that the State is by nature anti-social. He looks on its failures and misfeasances with somewhat the eye of a parent, giving it the benefit of a special code of ethics. Moreover, he has always the expectation that the State will learn by its mistakes, and do better. Granting that its technique with social purposes is blundering, wasteful and vicious - even admitting, with the public official whom Spencer cites, that wherever the State is, there is villainy - he sees no reason why, with an increase of experience and responsibility, the State should not improve.

Source.

This Yahoo News piece caught my eye: President Barack Obama's sweeping health care legislation won precious support from a longtime liberal holdout in the House on Wednesday and from a retired Catholic bishop and nuns representing dozens of religious orders...

Shortly after Kucinich's announcement, a letter was released from 60 leaders of women's religious orders urging lawmakers to vote for the legislation...a letter released by Network, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby.

So I did some snooping and found Network's Voting Record of the 111th Congress, First Session. Here are some summary stats of the score received by legislators voting with Network:

House Dems
Mean 0.947
Stan Err 0.007
Median 1.000
Mode 1.000
Stan Dev 0.113
Sampl Var 0.013
Range 0.670
Minimum 0.330
Maximum 1.000

House Repub
Mean 0.169
Stan Err 0.011
Median 0.160
Mode 0.160
Stan Dev 0.143
Sampl Var 0.020
Range 0.660
Minimum 0.000
Maximum 0.660

Senate Dems
Mean 0.961
Stan Err 0.008
Median 1.000
Mode 1.000
Stan Dev 0.061
Sampl Var 0.004
Range 0.230
Minimum 0.770
Maximum 1.000

Senate Repub
Mean 0.334
Stan Err 0.022
Median 0.330
Mode 0.330
Stan Dev 0.139
Sampl Var 0.019
Range 0.550
Minimum 0.110
Maximum 0.660

It's hard to argue, as the article does, that "The endorsements reflected a division within the church," as if a group that is so partisan in its rankings of legislators could be called a legitimate unbiased voice of Catholic opinion. The words "peace and justice" are splashed all over the site, which won't help shake the image of such groups being more concerned with economic issues than life issues or fidelity to the Church. Instead of quoting one retired Bishop who supports this bill (even with the inclusion of abortion funding), the article downplays the opposition to the bill (here & here) of the US Conference of (nonretired) Catholic Bishops.

Yesterday I was back in Washington to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As these things go, it was a pretty lively event, as Jeff Patch of the Center for Competitive Politics describes below the fold.

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You've gotta love the LA Times, which has a big banner headline today, "Justices signal they're ready to make gun ownership a national right." Well, there is that Second Amendment thing...

Steve Chapman weighs in on Congress and Toyota:

When it comes to defects, the company is hardly unique. Over the past five years, The Wall Street Journal reports, the federal government got more complaints from owners of Fords than owners of Toyotas. Out of 20 carmakers, says Edmunds.com, Toyota is fourth best in the number of complaints per vehicle sold. But none of the others is being used as a piñata.

A more expansive government role is one of those answers that is neat, simple and wrong. "There are 250 million vehicles with 3,000 parts apiece," says Hurley. It's safe to assume the government couldn't police them all, even if it chose to do nothing else.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to do that in order for consumers to be protected. A carmaker's need to attract buyers is a far more powerful force for safety. As Yoshimi Inaba, head of North American operations, told Congress, "Nothing costs Toyota more than the loss of customer trust in our vehicles." Another reliable motivator is the urgent desire not to pay millions of dollars in damages, as Toyota is likely to do once the courts have had their say.

Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest has the best analysis I've seen about the death of global warming as a polticial issue. He writes from the viewpoint of one who considers climate change to be a real danger and, as such, he shows special disregard for and anger toward those who led to this political reversal. From his most recent post:

Anyway, as the [Washington] Post now belatedly acknowledges, the movement to stop climate change through a Really Big and Comprehensive Grand Global Treaty is dead because there is no political consensus in the US to go forward. It’s dead because the UN process is toppling over from its own excessive ambition and complexity. It’s dead because China and India are having second thoughts about even the smallish steps they put on the table back in Copenhagen. [. . .] A year ago [the global greens] were the last, best hope of the world, a shining band of brothers (and sisters) who were saving the planet and taming the excesses of self-destructive capitalist greed. The Force was with them and the world lay at their feet. They were going to be greeted as liberators by a grateful world desperate to be saved.

Now they are just another piece of roadkill on the heartless historical highway–an unforgiving place for people who seek to change the behavior of the world through comprehensive treaties, like the nuclear freeze proponents before them and like the advocates of the Grand Global Treaty Against War in the 1920s. (And at least the 1920s peace movement got its Grand Global Treaty: the 1929 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war forever, sparing all future generations from this terrible scourge.)
[. . .]
Failure to deal sternly and coldly with those who made these errors will leave the same incompetents in charge for the next stage of the movement. This will probably happen; social promotion is something liberals do very well and the blame for this mess is so widespread that few of the movement’s leaders will want any uncomfortable questions to be asked.

Frankly, I blame Al Gore. Unlike naive scientists who know little about life beyond the lab, or eco-activists whose concepts of the international political system come from writing direct-mail solicitations to true believers in rich countries, the former vice-president had decades of experience with high politics.
[. . .]
The greens claim to understand the dynamics of complex ecosystems better than the rest of humanity; the simplistic assumptions and unrealistic strategies with which they’ve approached the complex ecosystem of international politics don’t provide the dispassionate observer with much evidence in support of this claim.

The President is promoting a special, bipartisan commission to deal with deficit reduction. It is supposed to produce proposed tax hikes and spending cuts to bring the deficit down. I thought we already had such a commission: it's called Congress.

Today's offering from the Rome News-Tribune's Mike Lester:

Is this story another data point for Mancur Olson's thesis in The Rise and Decline of Nations?

I confess that I did not watch the State of the Union address, but I have seen the clip where the President calls out the Supreme Court over its 5-4 campaign finance/First Amendment decision last week -- and I have to say that that's the creepiest thing he's done to date, IMO. The standing O he got from Congressional Democrats added immeasurably to the creepiness factor. Legal Insurrection makes some very good points and links to an Instapundit post. (If Legal Insurrection is not already part of your web routine, you really should think about adding it.)

Anyone taking a gulp anytime Obama said "I" in this speech likely ended up more hungover than Keynes in the rap video.

It's getting hard to maintain the illusion that fiscal policy is done in a rational way when the solution to a recession one year is to spend $787 billion and the solution a year later is to freeze spending.

On CNN.com's homepage, there are links to "Stimulus doesn't help middle class" and "Stimulus helps real people," so I guess you can use your W2s to figure out whether you and your family earn enough income to be considered real.

Cato Unbound has an interesting discussion this month under the title "What's Living & Dead in Ayn Rand's Political and Moral Philosophy?" Of course, it's of special interest in MY household, because my wife is one of the discussants ...

A friend writes:

Politics is getting so weird.

Last month I was blessing the commies in China for killing the Copenhagen conference.

Now I’m blessing the most liberal state in the union for burying Ted Kennedy and Obama’s agenda.

Wow. “'All the cars and trucks and plants that have been in existence since the Industrial Revolution, spewing out carbon day-in and day-out, you’ll never convince me that’s a good thing for your children and the future of the planet,' [Graham] told a crowd in South Carolina,... ."

Graham thinks it would be a good thing if we had no cars and trucks, no electricity in amounts that could serve any purpose (and no serious means to construct hydroelectric plants in any case)? He thinks it would be better for us and our children if we lived as in 1800, when the average life expectancy was about 40 - if you survived childhood?

Wow.

From "Long history of vote-trading on Capitol Hill" in today's Washington Times --

Mr. Reid . . . said the trading is no different than what happens with the thousands of earmarks in the dozen annual spending bills.

He said senators should be embarrassed if they weren't able to carve out exemptions.

"There's 100 senators here, and I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said. "And if they don't have something in it important to them then, it doesn't speak well of them."

-End quote-

And on that note I'd like to wish the faithful readers of DoL a Merry Christmas!

Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows

From the NYTimes:

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region

At least one Kennedy (as in NIMBY, Massachusetts) takes exception:

“This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm that invested in a solar developer called BrightSource Energy. In September, BrightSource canceled a large project in the monument area.

From the NYTimes:

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.

At least one Kennedy (as in NIMBY, Massachusetts) takes exception:

“This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm that invested in a solar developer called BrightSource Energy. In September, BrightSource canceled a large project in the monument area.

Rent-seekers in action:

American catfish farmers have demanded that tougher safety rules be imposed on certain fish from Vietnam -- which are hurting their business, the industry says. But U.S. catfish farmers must first get the U.S. Department of Agriculture to say the Vietnamese fish is a catfish. That is a little awkward since just seven years ago the farmers successfully urged Congress to ban the Vietnamese fish from ever being labeled a catfish.

In Washington and elsewhere, trade, sometimes as much as science, has a way of defining a species. Something might look, taste and feed off the bottom like a catfish, but until an agency calls it a catfish, it might as well be a duck.

American catfish farmers aren't alone in trying to manipulate food names. Three years ago, the Maine lobster industry fought restaurants that offered "langostino lobster," saying that the Chilean crustacean isn't a lobster at all. They called it a crab.

When he earmarked $100,000 in taxpayer spending to go to Jamestown's library, Rep. James E. Clyburn meant for it to go to the library in Jamestown, S.C., which is in his district.

But in the bustle to write and pass the $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill, Congress ended up designating the money for Jamestown, Calif. - 2,700 miles away and a town that doesn't even have a library.

"That figures for government, doesn't it," said Chris Pipkin, who runs the one-room library in Jamestown, S.C., and earlier this year requested $50,000, not the $100,000 that Congress designated, to buy new computers and build shelves to hold the books strewn across the room.

Spend twice as much as necessary and still screw it up--that sums up the U.S. Congress pretty nicely.

Source (HT: Betsy's Page).

Oh no, I've been published in a neo-con journal!

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The public perception of conservatives (and I have to lump libertarians into this category, which I think is accurate here, and there's not really separate polling data for libertarians - see below), fostered by Hollywood and TV, many major media publications, and of course liberals, is that conservatives are uptight, unhappy, nasty people.

I have noted in this space that these perceptions are not true - polling data has consistently shown that conservatives are more likely to say they are happy with their lives; they are more active, both in terms of hobbies and sports and in terms of volunteer activities; they are more likely to be satisfied with their sex lives (and to have sex more often), than are liberals.

The latest part of the mantra from the cultural elites is that conservatives are also anti-science. Remember how Barack Obama even promised to restore science "to its rightful place."

Well, now comes an interesting survey from Pew that debunks the idea that liberals are more science oriented, too. In fact, it turns out that liberals are nearly twice as likely as conservatives to believe in astrology (30% to 16%), "spiritual energy" (35% to 18%), or reincarnation (33% to 18%). It's interesting to note that while conservatives and liberals are equally likely to believe in the "evil eye" (17% each), Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in the evil eye by 19% to 12%.

Maybe all those "Reagan Democrats" of a generation ago were just fans of Nancy, who was said to have an interest in astrology. But clearly the rejection of science for superstition knows no ideological boundaries.

From an interesting report by the House of Commons on the use and abuse of language in government:

Q2 Chairman: In a sense, we know all this stuff that is floating around us, and we know what Orwell told us back in 1946, that "prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house." We have that all around us in official language, and what I really want to ask you is: Does this drivel matter or does it just irritate us?

Interesting (and sometimes painful) reading.

Okay, I couldn't come up with a clever title for this blog entry but a story in the Dec. 3, 1909 NYT drew my attention for some reason:

Orders abolishing the standing guard of one company of regular army troops about the tomb of the late President William McKinely have been received here [Canton, Ohio]. Secretary Hartzell of the McKinley National Memorial Association was notified yesterday by Lieut. Householder of the Second Infantry that Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson had decided to reduce the guard to two non-commissioned officers. It is believed that this guard will be ample.

I wonder what this is all about. A company of regular army troops is around 100 soldiers. Why would such a force be required to guard the tomb of the late president? Granted McKinley was assassinated and it is plausible that there might have been concern that his grave would be desecrated for some reason, but the cynic in me wonders if the company was in place as some form of "pork spending."

The not so subtle sarcasm of the last sentence is also somewhat interesting.

The situation: My 14 year old daughter and I at Moe's last night for dinner. Me casually watching President Obama on a (muted) television screen behind her. She causaully watching PTI on ESPN on a television screen behind me.

Me [grimacing]: Grrrrr.

She: What?

Me [pointing to the tv behind her]: The president.

She: What's he talking about?

Me: Oh, he's decided to kill a lot more people.

[Long pause.]

She: My tv is pretty good.

It saddens me that we both can be so accepting.

I watched the President's speech on Afghanistan last night, and I keep seeing clips of it replayed, and one question keeps gnawing at me: where the heck is this place "Pockeestan" that the President kept referencing? Is it near Pakistan? Will our allies from Scotland and France - or are they now to be called "Scootlund" and "Frhawnse?" - know where to find it?

Would the President have referred to our southern neighbor as "Mejico" in a speech? If mentioning India, would have done his best impersonation of Apu?

Me thinks his effort to show off his world knowledge sounded a bit dumb.

The two term governor of New Mexico (1995-2002) appears to be taking the early steps in a long-shot presidential bid.

As governor, Johnson set a record for most bills vetoed, and earned a reputation as the most libertarian governor in the country. A Johnson campaign would focus on runaway government spending and taxes. Could Johnson win the GOP nomination, or even become a player in the primaries?

Pluses:
- Compelling life story (started as a handyman, eventually built New Mexico's largest construction business, which he sold in 1999; has climbed Mt. Everest, completing the hike with a broken leg)
- Never part of Washington scene; executive experience; out of politics since 2002 means no Bush taint, and no controversial votes over last decade.
- Twice won landslide victories in New Mexico, a state with a Democratic tilt. Beat the incumbent Democrat by 10 points the first time out.
- My theory - after the stress of impeachment, the 2000 election, and a pair of crusading presidencies (Bush abroad, Obama at home), people will want a common sense, libertarian approach to government - effective government, no great new initiatives, getting the fiscal house back in order.

Minuses:
- No name recognition
- Unproven as a fundraiser. Johnson self-funded his first run for office and much of his second. But he's not a Mitt Romney, capable of dropping $100 million into a presidential race.
- The big killer - during his second term, Johnson came out against the war on drugs and in favor of legalization and decriminalization.

Johnson offers libertarian voters a new, improved version of Ron Paul. He's got executive experience with proven accomplishments, not a bunch of protest votes; though an "aw shucks" type of speaker, he is better spoken than Dr. Paul; he is better focused, not as likely to drift off into obscure theory or second tier issues; the political climate will be better for an anti-war Republican.

There is already a grassroots rumbling starting to build for Johnson, coming from many of the same folks who had such enthusiasm for Paul. The question is whether Johnson can do what Congressman Paul could not - build on that enthusiastic base to appeal to a broader section of the GOP electorate. That will require not scaring the middle class on the drug issue.

A few links - all of these sites are unofficial, as Johnson has not announced his candidacy:

Johnson for America
Gary Johnson 2012
Johnson for President Facebook Group
"America's Most Dangerous Politician" - a Reason Magazine profile from 2001.

A short list of the headlines on CNN.com that appear (11:24pm central time, 11/20/09) before stories about the Senate's health care reform bill being voted on tomorrow:

1) Fans mourn end of 'Oprah' show

2) Arrests in human fat ring in Peru

3) Bishops slam Obama bill

Here's betting there is more mourning for the loss of Oprah's show than for the loss of liberty if the health "reform" passes. In what other private industry can you be arrested for refusing to engage in activities you consider immoral?

Finally the bishops come out swinging, but where were they for the House bill? Only a few have expressed their disapproval on the grounds of subsidiarity subsidiarity: "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

And why did Butterbean get arrested in Peru?

"These are my sons. They don't belong to the state."

Libertarian moments in the movies:

"Why would they fight so hard against us?"

"We meddle."

"River?"

"People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don't run. Don't walk. We're in their homes, and in their heads, and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

My friend and colleague Dr. J writes what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs, Readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore. She recently posted two interesting notes on lazy relativism and strong relativism. Here's my comment on the latter:

And have you ever wondered if, like, what I see as "red" is what you see as "red?" And are you saying that "like, whatever" isn't a defensible position?

Seriously, thanks for the detailed explanation. The man or woman on the street--someone like me--probably thinks that all relativism is of the lazy variety.

Perhaps there's another idea for a SEGA panel: what are the biggest misconceptions non-specialists have about your field? The analogue to lazy relativism in economics is the mistaken view that "economics" means "money" or that "costs and benefits" are necessarily or exclusively financial. I think of "cost" very generally as whatever we give up when we make a choice and "benefit" very generally as whatever we gain when we make a choice. Every action is an attempt to change the world and to make it a better place (however we choose to define "better," and this is the point at which I refer students to the philosophy department) than the world we leave behind. The cost of an action is the action we didn't take.

The cost of reading this blog post and writing a comment is whatever else I could have done (nap, for example, or grade homework). The benefit was that I now have a better understanding of the difference between lazy relativism and strong relativism. If we really wanted to we could evaluate these in monetary terms. By investing my time in reading the blog post I gave up the opportunity to earn income now by going around the neighborhood offering to rake leaves (like a couple of kids on the sidewalk appear to be doing now) but I gained knowledge that might increase my income in the future. This is one way to think about action, but I think it actually limits our knowledge by throwing out non-pecuniary reasons for action.

The more one digs into Tuesday’s election results, the worse they look for Democrats. This is almost certainly a good thing - the battleground this fall was generally over taxes and spending, and GOP gains indicate voter skepticism of the Democrats efforts to nationalize health care, pass cap & trade, and try to spend us out of economic difficulties. Thus the GOP gains should slow the statist Democratic Agenda in Washington. Let's start by reviewing the high-profile gubernatorial and congressional races, and then talk about down ballot races around the country that emphasize the Republican success.

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From the Hill:

Lobbyists are quitting the business at a record pace, according to a study released Monday.

Over 1,400 lobbyists "deregistered" with Congress in the second quarter of 2009, according to a study conducted jointly by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and OMB Watch.

Typically, only a few hundred lobbyists quit each quarter.

The giant spike in resignations came just after the Obama administration instituted strict new rules on lobbyist activity.

“While we can’t draw a direct link between the president’s executive order and the increased pace of terminations during the second quarter of 2009, we can say that they came at a most controversial time,” said Lee Mason, director of Nonprofit Speech Rights for OMB Watch.

But the study's authors warn that not all of the deregistered lobbyists may actually be out of business.

"At the federal level, many people working in the lobbying industry are not registered lobbyists, instead adopting titles such as 'senior adviser' or other executive monikers, thereby avoiding federal disclosure requirements under the Lobbying Disclosure Act," CRP and OMB Watch said in a statement.

With federal govt spending on an upsurge, I'll bet on the latter effect--lobbyists disguising themselves as advisers--rather than a reduction in lobbying activity.

We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move ...

Source and context.

HT: Tom Woods.

Update: Steve Horwitz reminds me that he is guest-blogging for PBS's Nightly Business Report. So what does PBS stand for now? Praxeology Broadcasting Station? I'm expecting Ashton Kutcher to fling my office door open and explain that I've been punk'd.

Check out Dwight Lee's column in today's Investors Business Daily, for a double shot of public choice and wry humor.

I don't think anyone can dismiss this assertion by Sawhill and Aaron.

Anyone who thinks that health-care reform alone is going to close the massive current -- and even larger projected -- U.S. budget deficit is deluded. President Obama has pledged that health-care reform will not make matters worse. But that isn't good enough. There is no way to restore this nation to fiscal health without higher taxes -- for the middle class as well as for the rich. The only question is when. Those increases should be enacted now, phased in gradually after the recovery is well established, and tied to the increased spending that health-care reform will generate. [Emphasis added.]

My only question regards timing. Why didn't this column appear last year, when Obama's platform made the conclusion inescapable?

Maybe Italy has it right, if the conclusion of this WaPo article is correct.

Besides, with Berlusconi as your prime minister, you don't have to take yourself too seriously. You don't have to trouble yourself with geopolitics or the state of the planet, or poverty and failed states. You can stay at home, remain unserious and argue about the latest legal scandal. And maybe that, too, is part of the Italian prime minister's appeal.

I disagree with one point. I would write the first two sentences this way: "Besides, with Berlusconi as your prime minister, you don't have to ... trouble yourself with geopolitics or ...." You can take yourself and things that really matter quite seriously, while marginalizing the goings-on of the state, treating it as the absurdist theater that it often is.

Given Bastiat's provisional definition of the state, "the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else," having it generate a bit of humor is probably not a bad thing.

You may insert your latest Nobel Peace Prize joke here.

To quote the fine theologian, M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahy: Jocularity, jocularity, jocularity.

The October 13, 1909 NYT has a headline you won't see today:

SENATOR FLINT WILL RETIRE.

MUST LEAVE THE SENATE, HE SAYS, TO EARN MONEY FOR HIS FAMILY.

Turns out the good Senator from California felt that there wasn't enough money in being a Senator and that he had to go out in the real world to earn some scratch:

Senator Frank P. Flint announced yesterday that when his present term expires, on March 4, 1911, he would not be a candidate for re-election.

"If I were a rich man," said Senator Flint," I would like nothing better than to remain in the Senate all my life. But I feel that I owe it to my family to get out of politics and gain a competency while I am able.

"My associations in the Senate are very congenial, indeed. I have practically no opposition for a renomination, and the sole reason for contemplated retirement is the urgent necessity of providing for my family.

It is quaint that a U.S. Senator would suggest that there wasn't enough money in national politics to make it worth his while. Perhaps there was a time when this was true. Perhaps Mr. Flint was "clean" and didn't partake of the largess his position would seem to attract.

On the other hand, perhaps this is a thinly veiled jab at the lobbyists of the day. In essence, Flint throws down the gauntlet saying "pay up or I'm outta here and I'm taking my political capital with me."

Do you wonder, as I, whether Flint really retires from public service in 1911? Oh wait, I can look that up (see below the fold for the spoiler)....

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On October 15, Memphians will choose a new mayor in a special election. I'm deep in the same moral and intellectual crisis that faces me every election: should I vote? I decided that (once again) I will farm this out to Division of Labour readers. I'll offer a prize of some kind for the best 250-500 word essay explaining why I should or should not vote, and the winning entry will be published on DOL. Entries will be accepted via email, and I'm looking for something that addresses the opportunity cost of voting.

Update: Here's Per Bylund on voting.

... a.k.a. "The Pianists".

HT: Mario Pagliero

Ht: Instapundit

From an op-ed piece in the Sept. 22, 1909 NYT:

It is true that our new President [President Taft] during the first six months of his term had the extraordinary session of Congress on his hands, called expressly to redeem the pledges of the party - pledges made on his personal initiative and strong recommendation. It was natural, and, in a sense, unavoidable, that for this important task he should hold himself peculiarly accountable, and that he should hasten to render his account to the people as soon as practicable.

So, another president, this one a Republican, also brought an active agenda to the first few months of his administration? Haven't heard anyone bring that up lately.

The op-ed continues:

But that chapter is but one of many which he plainly intends to present to the attention, we may say to the anxious and somewhat weary attention, of his fellow-citizens. Even while the tariff job was still unfinished, and at a point where the honest and decent fulfillment of the pledges of his party and himself was trembling in the balance, Mr. Taft sprung upon the country the twin projects of a tax on corporations, avowedly intended as the first step toward minute and comprehensive Federal inquisition and of corporation business, and an income tax, requiring a Constitutional amendment.

Ambitious projects indeed. Would we characterize today's uncertainty regarding public policy as drawing "anxious and weary attention?"

We continue:

Here in the very dawning of his Administration, before he had had an opportunity to address a formal regular message to Congress, we have thrown upon the country a scheme of change more far reaching, more intimately affecting the affairs of all classes of the people than any accomplished, or even proposed during the seven crowded years of Mr. Roosevelt's incumbency.

Change the names to reflect their modern analogues and the statement might apply equally (more so?) today.

But then comes the coup de grace:

It is true that the Constitutional amendment authorizing the income tax and the tax on corporate business were, in effect, if not in intent, a diversion which saved Mr. Aldrich and "his men" from a damaging defeat. It is not exactly reassuring, however, that measures of such scope and portent can be made a mere incident in the campaign of the protracted interests for control of the taxing power of the Government in the pursuit of their selfish interests.

Amen.

The Gray Lady has an excellent interactive archive of the history of health reform in the U.S. Clicking on Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 campaign platform, we see early glimpses of the eventual breadth and depth of central government control. "[O]ur aim should be," said Roosevelt, "to use the Government as an efficient agency for the practical betterment of social and economic conditions throughout this land." Praising the social plans of Bismarck, Roosevelt blames America's woes on the Republican Party (and no, notwithstanding spastic claims to the contrary, I am not an "ethics-free GOP hack") en route to declaring, "In the National Government one department should be intrusted with all the agencies relating to the public health... This department, through its special health service, would co-operate intelligently with the various State and municipal bodies established for the same end.... [T]he aim would be merely to secure under one administrative body efficient sanitary regulation in the interest of the people as a whole."

Notice the implicit assumptions of benevolence and omniscience that support the claim of government achieving an efficient outcome. There is also, but more subtly, a tension between two conceptions of liberty: the liberty of individuals that informed the American Founding versus the liberty of people as members of a noble collective that was successfully advanced by the Progressives.

Today, the faces have changed. The tag lines are new. The delivery is honed on both all sides to tip-toe around these basic tensions. But the politics and the principles are ancient. I wonder: what have we learned?

Rasmussen Reports has a poll out on political labels, and it seems that people want politicians who are "like Reagan."

Results below the fold.

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My 14 yr old daughter sent me this txt msg on Wednesday, "had to watch the effin obama speech, soooooooo stupid. very mad. please complain," which I posted on Facebook because I thought it was pretty funny. Several friends chimed in with less than flattering things to say about the Great Leader's speech.

An old and dear, and left-of-center, friend wrote me:

Are your friends ACTUALLY advocating that their chidlren NOT listen to a speech by the leader of the free world? Seriously, this is not a statement in the form of a question.

I was just wondering with a colleague why anyone would keep kids from listening to the POTUS - even if it was only to build your case for debate.

(Though why anyone would debate - work hard, keep trying, etc. is a bit...well way...beyond me.)

My reply:

As Thomas Sowell would say it's a conflict of visions. You see him as the leader of the free world. I see him as a power-hungry man who managed to win some kind of beauty contest. I owe him no fealty for this per se. In my book I owe my plumber more respect than my president. He at least provides me with something I want on an honest basis.

I felt the same about Bush and Clinton too (Reagan not so much then but my views have changed a lot since then). Most of my fb friends would have felt the same I bet. Though I have to be honest that some of them wouldn't have minded one bit if Bush had done this. Be honest, what you you have thought if Bush wanted to do this?

Btw, I could have gotten her out of it. But didn't because I figured she should hear him out. But she was genuinely unhappy with the message: "Work hard and stay in school so you can serve the almighty State?!"

Oddly we really don't talk politics much at all. Obviously, my kid has picked this attitude up from me/us, but I really don't push it on her. She's her own person.

My daughter and I had a nice conversation (thank you, Prez Obama for that much at least) this morning. I told her about Aron Ralston who quit his big fancy corporate job to become a full-time mountain climber bum (and had an unfortunate accident if you remember his story).

In Obama's view I guess Ralston is a bad person for "dropping out" and not contributing to the economy and government as much as he should. What a waste of a great college education Obama would say. But in my world view, he's following his own dream on his own terms and not those of the state or society (whatever that is) and is worthy of respect.

Best line of the night.

[Obama] said,

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

And if we don't pass this plan, does he intend to keep the waste and inefficiency, out of spite?

HT: Elliott

Camille Paglia in Salon (emphasis added):

An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

I describe in a pair of posts at the Politico, here and here, why I don't like Obama speaking to school kids. I wouldn't mind, actually, if he were using the kids as a backdrop to make a major policy speech - what I dislike is the fact that there is no reason for this speech, really, except that the President seems to think he needs to step in and help us all parent our kids. It's really obnoxious.

But looking at the text of his message, that's pretty obnoxious, too. Some excerpts below the fold.

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On Tuesday of next week the Supreme Court will meet in special session to rehear the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United, the government argued that a documentary produced by Citizens United, Hillary: The Movie, could be banned from distribution as a partisan political communication. The Court has specifically asked the parties to argue whether or not it should overrule Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld a ban on all corporate funded political expenditures. The Court's concern was prompted by the government's argument, at oral argument in March, that under Austin it could ban even the publication of books and films containing so much as one line of political candidate advocacy.

Supporters of the ban are in a rhetorical hole, because the reality is that, if Austin is good law and means what is says, the government is right. Yet few really believe that the First Amendment allows for book banning. And while advocates of "campaign finance reform" have long advocated limiting speech, they don't really like to be seen as quite so nakedly in favor of limiting political speech.

Hence, the latest tack of the "reform" community is to claim that corporate spending on politics should be prohibited in order to protect shareholder rights. Below the fold, we slice and dice this argument.

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HT: Justin Ross.

Here's David Henderson correcting a common mistake. Corporations aren't allowed to give money to candidates directly. Tracing money in politics is wickedly difficult, but I'm struck by the disproportionate representation of labor unions in big-money politics. At the very least, this suggests that people deriding opposition to the President's health care plan as an elaborate corporation-funded-and-directed "astroturf" movement need to check their premises--particularly since Big Pharma, insurance companies, and Walmart are in bed with the administration on this issue.

When I first saw these clips, my gut reaction was "there is no way this is true; the MSNBC video has to have been doctored to make the network look bad." From what I can tell, the MSNBC video is unadulterated. It's a tale of two clips: one is an MSNBC clip in which commentators discuss racial tension and people bringing openly-carried firearms to rallies. The discussion is motivated by video footage of someone carrying an AR-15. You can't identify him from the MSNBC video, but the other clip (and a story on MSNBC.com) reveals that he is an African-American. Needless to say, right-wing groups are seizing on the apparent shenanigans and claiming outright dishonesty on the part of the Liberal Elite Media. I think some of the anti-Obama backlash is racially motivated--see the flood of "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" emails that went around during his campaign and the Statement of Principles from the Council of Conservative Citizens, which affirms a commitment to "Cultural, national, and racial integrity"--and I don't think the presence of one African-American man toting a gun and protesting the President's plan blows this thesis out of the water. In this light, I thought I'd do a bit of political prognostificationizing. I see two possibilities:

1. MSNBC used judiciously-edited footage of an African-American man carrying an AR-15 at a health care rally to scare viewers about well-armed white racists. If this is true, then I predict that it will strengthen the right's conviction that there is a liberal media bias. Right-wing groups will have an easier time raising funds because they will have clear evidence that the Elite Liberal Media is distorting the news to further a political agenda. Further, the gentleman carrying the AR-15 will become the Right's next Joe the Plumber.

2. Newsbusters.org or a similar conservative group created a judiciously-edited clip that will backfire. Current developments and an MSNBC statement suggest that this isn't the case, but if it is true, then I predict that it will strengthen the left's conviction that the protesters are dishonest corporate flunkies. Left-wing groups will have an easier time raising funds because they will have clear evidence that the Corporate Conservative Media is lying about them to further a political agenda. Still, the gentleman carrying the AR-15 will become the Right's next Joe the Plumber.

Comments are open. HT: Natalie Danielshen, Mason Drake.

At Marketplace.org, Scott Jagow lays out some of the main issues, and he does so nicely until the takeaway:

[Cash 4 clunkers] does seem to be decent stimulus, but car sales will collapse, at least temporarily, no matter when this program ends. C4c is a drug. It even sounds like one. At some point, the car makers need to stop relying on incentives. The car-buying public is addicted to them. Not to mention, these particular incentives are being paid for by the taxpayers.

In the comments, I added:

Market prices are incentives. Government subsidies are distortions. To get correct, car makers and buyers need to stop relying on subsidies, not incentives.

Sorry for being all word police. But it’s a really, really important word. Incentives matter. The rest is commentary.

Today's cartoon from the Rome News-Tribune's Mike Lester:

UPDATE: This was in Chicago not the U.K. So I guess we need a 6th Amendment.

I have previously noted Britian's lack of a 4th Amendment but they also apparently lack a 6th Amendment.

Clifton Williams, 33, of Richton Park, is facing six months in jail for making what court documents call a yawn-like sound in Will County Judge Daniel Rozak's court last month. The yawn happened as Williams' cousin, Jason Mayfield, was being sentenced for a drug charge on July 23.Rozak found Williams in contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in jail...Six months is the maximum sentence judges can give for criminal contempt without a jury trial.

Emphasis added.

HT: Todd

"The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office has yet to mobilize
now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic
hope-munger. No, they can’t?" [Maureen Dowd, NYT op-ed]

Prompted by Frank's wondering, I offer this prediction: If AARP does endorse a policy, it will be one that redounds to the advantage of the United Health Group.

In a dog and pony show yesterday, President Obama incorrectly claimed that the AARP was "onboard" with his health care reforms. Hmmm ... a fishy claim ... I wonder if anyone has alerted flag@whitehouse.gov.

The Heritage Foundation paper "Congressional Ethics and the Administrative State" contains the following conclusion: "The system of government that has transformed congressmen from legislators to ombudsmen has spawned the corrupt favoritism that once defined New York's Tammany Hall, but now defines Washington and its emerging scandals. The framers of the Constitution understood the inevitable corruption of the administrative state, and had sought to avoid it with their constitutional prescriptions of federalism and separated powers."

The occasion for this paper was the S & L corruption (McCain, Keating, et al.), but the the analysis applies broadly. One of my favorite applications is to ethanol. There, EPA experts argued in Congress against allowing ethanol onto the list of oxygenating fuels, which Congress was about to mandate. Congress punted by refusing to specify a list. Rather, the EPA was to construct the list. After a few contacts from the likes of Bob Dole, the EPA saw the light and added ethanol to the list. Before long, it became the only oxygenating additive on the list.

A recent column by John Stossel brought this ancient history to mind. He says, "They've given us a system that now can be saved only if bureaucrats limit coverage by second-guessing retirees' decisions. Government will decide which Medicare services have value and which do not. Retirees may have a different opinion."

Dollars to donuts that the legislation, for all of its bulk, contains little specificity. Rather, the bureaucracy that will be created will surpass the EPA as a target of lobbying efforts by members of Congress, as the details are worked out.

I strive hard to avoid what I call Youtube moments - especially when a student asks a loaded question the answer to which might be very easily taken out of context. I am not sure if this compilation is necessarily taken out of context but it would definitely seem to be a "Youtube moment":

via Drudge

In his town hall dog and pony show (transcript) held in Raleigh earlier this week, President Obama decried the use of "scare tactics" by people opposed to his health care socialism reform. Well, it's not just opponents who are rolling out scare tactics. Check out this commercial that recently came through my tele--pay particular attention about 10 seconds in to the kid on the swing.

This is from the front page at Drudge (I claim fair use):

If the stories are true (evidently they are HT: Phil Miller's facebook page), then this should put all debate over the merits of the stimulus package to bed. If the Republicans or some third party cannot come up with enough arguments to dethrone the current ruling class (not that the Republicans were/are great but would likely not pursue such policies as depicted above - though I admit that's not guaranteed) then we should all plan our exit strategy.

From my travels, the northern coast of Morocco is beautiful (I'll leave it up to the game theorists to think about whether that is an honest claim or not).

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

From Pravda, Czar? You Mean Commissar:

There is a new silliness in the Western Anglo Media, comparing the US Emperor's Czar program to the number of Tsars that Holy Russia had. It is a good thing that the US/UK public is ignorant not only of ancient history but also of recent history, otherwise they might start to worry.

So let us go back and establish some historic references. Czar or rather Tsar, is a degradation of the Latin term Ceasar, similar to Germany's Kaiser. [...]

In order to control the vast nation and its revolutionary reshaping during a chaotic time, Lenin and later Stalin, created a system of Commissars. These were not limited to military and instilling party loyalty, but were used throughout Soviet society. A commissar and his staff had absolute authority, answering only to the dictator and by-passing the various local councils and people's senates. Two things to note here:

1. their spheres were ambiguous and often over lapped responsibilities of other commissars. This in turn caused a large volume of infighting. Sure this is very wasteful of resources and confusing, but what it does do, is allow the dictator to keep ultimate power by keeping his most powerful minions at each others throats with the dictator as the ultimate arbitrator of power.

2. The commissars were mostly young, had little achievement outside the power structure, self assured, true believers. They knew very well that outside their positions, created and granted by the dictator, they had little hope of career success. They were given responsibility much higher then their experience levels, further beholding them to their owner. It made them extremely jealous of their power, which in turn made them vengeful against anyone who stood in their way, especially other power hungry commissars.

Fast forward to modern transitional America. The American Emperor has taken the six commissars of his leftist predecessor and created at least 28 more. Yes, commissars do multiply quickly at first and many more are in the works, until the American parliament (congress) and the oblasts (states) assemblies (state senates) are powerless show pieces and all power centers (commissars) flow only to the dictator.

James Waylett, the boy who plays Crabbe in the Harry Potter movies, just got busted for possessing and growing a little mj.

On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to producing cannabis at a court hearing where it emerged that the pair were detained after Waylett took a photo of police while driving past a group of officers.

I know they don't have a 4th Amendment in England, but holy cripes? All he did was take a photo of the police? I guess in England only the police are allowed to take photos now? Sheesh.

Mark Steyn on princes and such:

As the British newspaper The Independent reported;

“Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned… And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the ‘age of convenience’ was over.” [...]

In the old days, we didn’t have these kinds of problems.

But then Mr and Mrs Peasant start remodeling the hovel, adding a rec room and indoor plumbing, replacing the emaciated old nag with a Honda Civic and driving to the mall in it, and next thing you know [...] they begin taking vacations in Florida.
[...]
[A]t this week’s G8 summit, America’s allies would commit only to the fuzziest and most meaningless of environmental goals. Europe has been hit far harder by the economic downturn. When your unemployment rate is 17 per cent (as in Spain), “unsustainable growth” is no longer your most pressing problem.

The environmental cult is itself a product of what the Prince calls the “Age of Convenience”: it’s what you worry about it when you don’t have to worry about jobs or falling house prices or collapsed retirement accounts.

The AP headline: Baaad news? Global warming now shrinking sheep

The content: local warming is reducing mortality among some wild sheep in Scotland. Wonder if the runts that now survive would count this as baaad news? Did I insert enough a's?

From Powerline:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained an EPA study of the "endangerment" to human well-being ostensibly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, together with a set of EPA emails indicating that the study, which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change, was suppressed by the EPA for political reasons.

The Powerline blog entry provides links to the CEI correspondence and supporting email messages, and to the suppressed study.

I caught this on NPR's "Morning Edition:"

When last month's town council race ended in a two-way tie, Mayor Vincent Francia thought it should be settled cowboy-style: "The two candidates would assemble downtown Cave Creek at High Noon and go at it with paintballs."

Instead they turned to Arizona law, which says tied local elections may be determined by chance: rolling dice, flipping a coin or cutting cards.

Cave Creek Magistrate George Preston, dressed in his black robes, shuffled the deck of cards Monday night that would finally decide the race. About 60 people crowded council chambers, including a few lawyers who had hashed out two pages of rules for the drawing.

The candidate drawing the highest card would be declared the winner.

Which got me to (barely) thinking: if the median voter theory is true, why not just save everyone the expense and headaches of campaigning and decide elections this way? Instead of three hourlong televised debates, you could, during a commercial break, show 30 seconds of McCain and Obama rolling dice to decide the winner. It certainly seems more efficient, since the FEC seems to indicate that there were almost $1.4 billion in total contributions to candidates in the 2008 Presidential campaign. How much does a deck of cards cost?

It also reminded me of the rhetoric of elections. How often do you hear of Presidents winning "landslide" elections? The Stat Abstract shows that the biggest percentage a recent candidate has garnered was Johnson's 1964 61.1%. If you had a student with a 61.1% average, would you consider him to have a "landslide" level of knowledge?

Frank's post reminds me of the situation in Saudi Arabia in 1985. Saudi had supported the production of wheat to the extent that they were self-sufficient, at least for a while.

The rationale was to diversify so that Saudis wouldn't depend so much on oil revenue and could become trained in other endeavors. The reality was that Europeans set up and ran large wheat farms and used foreign labor. Few, if any, Saudis developed any farming skills.

To make the scheme feasible, the government sold water to the farmers at a fraction of the cost of desalination, and it set a price at about five times the world price (if my memory serves). The Economist ran an article saying that the price was high enough to make it worthwhile for smugglers to bring food-aid wheat from Ethiopia via Yemen to sell to the Saudi government.

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the scheme went belly-up when the price of oil plummeted post-1985.

But these things never go away. Witness the "end" of the farm subsidies negotiated between Newt's Republicans and President Clinton.

The first paragraph of a Barrons article on GM's chairman:

DON'T BE HARD ON GM'S NEW CHAIRMAN EDWARD WHITACRE for confessing during an interview last week that he knows nothing about cars. He simply suffered a Joe Biden moment. Texans often tumble over their tongues when taking a stab at humility. In fact, few car companies, let alone their CEOs, know how to build cars, which is why so many of them are conking out. The Obama administration, in my view, picked Whitacre to run General Motors (ticker: GM) because he has a more important talent: He knows how to play Chicago-style politics.

I just sent this letter to the New York Times:

Your June 12 story about political influence on Federal Reserve lending decisions was distressing, but predictable. When the government commits to the principle that some industries and firms are "too big to fail," identifying those firms that are "too big to fail" necessarily becomes a political decision. Adam Smith addressed this over two centuries ago:

"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."

HT: Alex Tabarrok.

This letter to the Economist offers a useful suggestion:

There used to be, in the world of restructurings in the London market, a practice operated in a firm but gentlemanly manner by the Bank of England called the London Approach. It sounds as if the process under way for Chrysler, and widely anticipated for General Motors, could probably be dubbed the Chicago Approach.

So Kenny Boy wasn't just W's buddy. From the first of a series of articles in the Financial Post (Canada):

The climate-change industry ... has emerged as the world’s largest industry. ... Some of the climate-change profiteers are relatively unknown corporations; others are household names with only their behind-the-scenes role in the climate-change industry unknown. ... This series begins with Enron, a pioneer in the climate-change industry.

Almost two decades before President Barack Obama made “cap-and-trade” for carbon dioxide emissions a household term, an obscure company called Enron — a natural-gas pipeline company that had become a big-time trader in energy commodities — had figured out how to make millions in a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide emissions, thanks to changes in the U.S. government’s Clean Air Act. To the delight of shareholders, Enron’s stock price rose rapidly as it became the major trader in the U.S. government’s $20-billion a year emissions commodity market.

Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993. To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide.... To magnify the leverage of their political lobbying, Enron also worked the environmental groups.

The intense lobbying paid off. Lay became a member of president Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, as well as his friend and advisor. In the summer of 1997, prior to global warming meetings in Kyoto, Japan, Clinton sought Lay’s advice in White House discussions. The fruits of Enron’s efforts came soon after, with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol.

[From an internal memo, posted from Kyoto]: “Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute] and Worldwatch." [Furthermore]: “I now predict ratification within three years. I predict business opportunities within 18 months. I predict this agreement will have very significant influences on the energy sector within OECD and transitional economies and will accelerate renewable markets in developing countries. This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”

The May 22, 1909 NYT reports on French military planning at the time:

PARIS - The Superior Council of the Navy has decided upon a programme which includes bringing the number of French battleships up to thirty-eight, a total that would insure France fourth place among the naval powers of the world. It is proposed to lay down in 1910 two 21,000 ton vessels of an enlarged Danton type.

The armament has not yet been decided upon, but the Council is in favor of twelve 12-inch guns in six turrets, those aft to be superposed. The naval artillery experts, however, have brought forward arguments in favor of sixteen 10.8-inch guns in eight turrets.

All of which will mean squat to the men in Verdun some seven years later.

When govco discovers that the masses aren't remitting as expected it turns to long-forgotten means with which to extract the resources it so desperately needs. An example comes from today's Sporting News Today:

Some Bears season ticket holders were surprised to receive a notice saying they owe a city-issued amusement tax on seat licenses purchased up to seven years ago, according to the Chicago Tribune. A Bears spokesman, who says the team was unaware of the tax or the certified letters that were mailed out, says the franchise is looking into the issue.

From today's Tribune:

The city always planned to levy amusement taxes on Chicago Bears season ticket licenses, a city Department of Revenue spokesman said Thursday.

Ed Walsh also said a 7 percent amusement tax was paid by the Bears on the initial sales of the permanent seat licenses between late 2002 and early 2003. The amusement tax was raised to 9 percent this year.

"The amusement tax is applicable when a license is sold," Walsh said. "The tax burden is on the purchaser. This includes initial sales and re-sales, as any amount paid for the right to witness a game is subject to the tax."

Who's the guy behind the tree?

In today's inbox from Fine Wine & Beer by Gus here in Auburn:

Just before 3:00pm today, the Gourmet Beer Bill was brought up by the chair and we passed the Senate by a vote of 19-9. The House concurred with the amended Senate version just before 5:00pm. The amendment attempts to restrict beer with an ABV over 6% from being sold in convenience stores.

Celebrations are certainly in order, but we're not done yet.

At this point, we need the governor to sign the bill. Governor Bob Riley has two options:

He signs the bill and it becomes law.
He doesn't sign the bill and it doesn't become law.
There's no real veto at this point, thanks to the Constitutional "pocket veto" power of the governor this late in the session. The fate of our bill is solely in Governor Riley's hands.

Because of this, we're asking everyone to call, email, and/or fax the Governor's office asking him to sign HB373, the Gourmet Beer Bill.

I just talked to our political grassroots point-man, Dan Roberts. I think he put it best: "If that nice lady that answers the phone in Riley's office doesn't get sick of us and disconnect the phone, we're not doing enough."

One of the Governor's former staffers is a supporter, and offered the following advice:

The volume of letters and phone calls that he receives on a particular issue is reported to him every morning, and he takes them seriously. ... A couple quick points: They have a pretty sophisticated constituent database, so multiple calls/mail from the same person won't accomplish much. They report to him the number of persons, not the number of communications. Any arguments that sounds like something the gambling folks would say should be avoided ("People go over state lines to do it anyway..."). You don't want to equate yourself with those guys in his mind. Arguments about personal liberty and economic development will probably have more sway. Pointing out the surrounding states that allow it will also be helpful. The fact that GA, NC, SC, and WV have passed these bills in the past couple years is persuasive.

To contact Governor Riley's office:
Phone: (334) 242-7100
Fax: (334) 353-0004

The May 11, 1909 prints a letter to the editor that attempts to distinguish among the various Socialist movements:

Materialistic Socialists, alienated from religion by such religious leaders and teachers as Mr. Haldeman, set as their goal the material well-being of the masses. This is precisely why Christian Socialists so designate themselves, and sedulously seek to be so designated. it is not because their economics are different - the difference is not in their method, but in their motive. What is the Materialistic Socialist's goal is the Christian Socialist's first milestone, for he seeks the material advancement - the industrial enfranchisement - of the working classes chiefly as the starting point for them of a life race worth running - not, as now, a mad scramble for the bread that perisheth.

In this material advancement - that is, in the industrial justice which Socialism really means, however variously it may be defined - the Christian Socialist sees the foundation on which every man (not simply the few beneficiaries of past inequality or the present holders of favored and secluded positions) may, if he choose, live the life of Christ.

Without full Socialism, the past one hundred years has led to a dramatic increase in well-being and standards of living in the developed world (and some progress might have been made in the developing and undeveloped world as well). Notwithstanding the Romanticizing of the past, today's world includes so many diversions and opportunities for leisure that it is not clear whether the majority of us would want to actually be "industrially enfranchised."

What I found interesting upon reading the letter is that writer feels the need to distinguish one brand of (low?) Socialism which seeks to use coercion and theft to provide bread alone and another brand of (higher) Socialism which seeks to use coercion and theft to provide bread and circuses. According to the letter-writer, the latter form is to be lauded more because, ostensibly, the ability to address "industrial justice" is simply a matter of organization not a matter of understanding how wealth is generated by individuals not by "the masses."

If the letter was written only to Socialists, perhaps the letter writer can get away with the assumption that Socialism will work in its broad goals; after all, preaching to the choir does not require addressing first premises. However, a letter directed toward a general (i.e., non-Socialist) audience would seem to require stronger evidence in support of the coercion and theft required to introduce and maintain any form of Socialism.

The New York Times reports that at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, comedian Wanda Sykes said about one of the President's prominent critics: "I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?”

Really? Wanda, I wish you hadn't said that. Try visiting a dialysis clinic and you'll see why it isn't funny. I'm hard to offend, but that offends me. I'm going to have a hard time finding you funny from here on. Kidney failure is something you shouldn't wish on anyone, even for laughs.

From an LA Times article:

The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

Schwarzenegger's office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.

The May 6, 1909 NYT has an interesting letter to the editor:

The only relief in sight from existing conditions [concerning the consumption of high-alcohol drinks such as "whisky, cocktails, and various other mixed drinks"], lies, in my opinion, in the imposition of a virtually prohibitive Governmental tax on all highly alcoholic liquors, whose increased cost would have a tendency to lessen their use by the masses. This would have the effect of an increased consumption of milder beverages like beer and wine and would mitigate the evil. To abolish it is impossible.

You can prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks by law, but you cannot prevent their use, even if you make their use a crime.

On the one hand the author wishes to impose prohibitive taxation to alter behavior - looking for a substitution effect - but ignores the possible "scale" effect that individuals might drink more beer or wine in order to obtain the same level of "bliss" that the harder liquors provide.

The author then argues that prohibitions will not work - as the country will so ably prove over the next twenty odd years in the case of alcohol and is still proving today in the context of illicit drugs.

However, what is the difference between prohibitive taxation and prohibition? Granted, when facing two bad choices of taxation versus prohibition, taxation might be marginally more efficient (from society's point of view) as evading a tax is more likely to be penalized with a monetary fine whereas violating a prohibition is more likely to lead to incarceration and the associated social costs of that incarceration.

Both policies increase the expected and actual costs of consumption from the point of view of the consumer, and as such will price at least some individuals out of the market for the good - perhaps driving individuals to substitute goods. However, there is an additional cost to such policies because in both cases sime consumers, in their quest to obtain an arbitrarily expensive or banned product, face increased risk of consuming an adulterated product, the so-called "bathtub gin" problem, which might prove more dangerous than the original "sin."

When open markets are closed, whether through taxation or prohibition, many of the self-reienforcing mechanisms that consumers take for granted are likewise lost. Under-appreciated elements of the open market such as contestability (that is, the threat of entry and competition), reputation, self-imposed quality and innovation, and, ultimately, the threat of legal action for maltreatment of consumers, are all lost when either prohibitive taxation or prohibition is employed.

The letter writer makes a plea against prohibition, something that might be gaining more traction in today's world, but makes the mistake of assuming that behavior of the masses can be materially and permanently manipulated through arbitrary taxation. Unfortunately, this philosophy is alive and well in our modern world.

From the May 6, 1909 NYT:

The professed aim of the Socialists, or the one as to which most of them are, so far as we can make out, most nearly agreed, is the abolition of certain kinds of private ownership and of competition. The reason for the adoption of this aim that most of them advance is that private property, in the hands of its actual owners, is made the source of infinite wrong to the people generally; that it stimulates greed and injustice and cruelty and dishonesty; that it makes men heedless of the rights of others, and of the law which is intended to protect those rights; and that it gives rise to a system of organized plunder, under the form of law sometimes, often in violation of the law, by which the rich grow richer and the poor become poorer. They - the Socialists - insist that under the demoralizing and perverting influence of absolute ownership, the wealthy constantly evade their obligations to their fellows, and especially that they resort to every means acute and highly paid brains can devise to shift their share of the burdens of the cost of Government to the shoulders of the helpless poor. Competition the Socialists regard as a system that aids in the attainment of these ends, arming the rich, disarming the poor, reinforcing the strong, tending to make the weak helpless.

It seems that the current administration takes a similar view to competition. Whether in the area of consumer credit, student loans, home mortgages, health care, foreign profits, K-12 education, radio and print media, tax breaks for the "rich," "corporate greed," financial industry "stress tests," or any number of other issues, the continuing mantra that the private sector is fundamentally flawed and that it can only be efficiently replaced by the benevolent bureaucracy of the Federal and State governments seems to fit nicely with the characterization offered by the NYT editorial.

Free-market philosophy seems to be against the ropes at the moment; perhaps it will be for the next few years. However, when the ponzi scheme is revealed, whether through bureaucratic rationing or through massive overt and covert taxation, will the political will exist to roll back the regulations and policies that the current generation of politicians are using to purchase their continued employment?

I seem remember President Clinton referring to his early years in Hot Springs, Arkansas, as having some impact on his life. To be honest, I didn't pay that much attention.

But if true, then an event that merited four lines in the May 5, 1909 NYT might have yielded such unintended consequences:

LITTLE ROCK - The Senate, by a vote of 27 to 12, today passed the Wadley bill, permitting racing at Hot Springs. The bill will be reported to the House tomorrow.

Larry Summers's nap at a White House meeting yesterday has been circulated around ye olde internet. Here's hoping he's started a trend of nice long siestas among Washington officials at both ends of Penn. Ave. It's hard to imagine we'd be much worse off. The Congressional Effect Fund seems to bear out my thinking.

While I'm being snarky about politics ...

... here's a brickbat for Dick Morris. The title of his recent column is "Obama’s leap to socialism." Excuse me--that's no leap--it's Obama's true character as was abundantly clear during last year's campaign.

... and here's a swipe at Obama's Cuba policy. From a news report: "Obama administration lifted restrictions Monday on Cuban-Americans who want to travel and send money to their island homeland." Fantastic, but what if I--not a Cuban American--want to travel to Cuba? And isn't it unconstitutional to enact policies based on nationality and the like? Surely one couldn't pass a law saying that Cuban American must pay higher income tax rates just for being Cuban American. In fact, isn't there a cottage industry of lawyers who bring suit over policies that don't explicitly single out some group or another but supposedly have "disparate impact"? Maybe I should find one and file suit against Obama's policy on grounds that it has disparate impact on non-Cuban Americans. (Snark aside, I suspect the weasel wording that avoids the legal problems is a reference to relatives living in Cuba not to being Cuban American per se.)

The April 23, 1909 NYT published the following letter:

A man with a moderate fixed salary finds it impossible now to support his family decently with the high price of food, clothing, and rent. Those in this class, and it comprises the bulk of the country's population, read of the wild extravagance of Congress, but don't seem to realize that they are taxed for it; that if it was not for this wicked extravagance the cost of their living would be greatly reduced; that there would be no deficit in the Treasury, and that food, beef, mutton, poultry, butter, eggs, etc. would be brought into the country free of duty.

Now, on top of all of this, comes the prospect of dearer bread.

No new problems, only our problems.

An editorial from the April 23, 1909 NYT:

State Senator Timothy Sullivan is not wholly unreasonable in his contention that $1,500 per year is poor pay for Assemblymen and Senators, though he oversteps the bounds of reason when he declares that amount of wages would hardly pay a street cleaner...Some of the competent and earnest men in both houses are worth more. But on the whole the State pays a pretty high price for its annual lawmaking, considering the result. The Legislature as a body is worth no more than it is paid. Doubtless it is not worth as much as it gets. Whether or not better service could be obtained for larger salaries, under present political conditions, is an open question.

Amen.

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I gotta get me one of those portable air conditioners on a hand truck set ups!

The April 21, 2009 NYT reports on tax policy as seen through the eyes of President Taft:

President Taft agrees with Senator Aldrich that no new form of taxation will be necessary or advisable in case the Tariff Bill, as finally enacted, will raise sufficient revenue to meet the expenses of the Government. In case additional revenue is necessary, the President is in favor of trying first an inheritance tax, and next an excise tax on corporations.

How refreshing that the President didn't want to tax for taxation's sake.

An income tax is the kind of additional revenue measure least of all favored by Mr. Taft. In fact, he is of the opinion that such an income tax is undesirable, because, in the first place, it would fly directly in the face of the Supreme Court, and, in the next place, it would be a direct incentive to perjury. Certain men would be sure to evade it by perjury, while others paid it honestly, and it would be an unequal tax.

The President does not mention, or at least it wasn't reported, the incentive to avoid, rather than the more distasteful (from the government's point of view) evade, an income tax. One wonders if Taft is taking a merely pragmatic view that the perjury would reduce the ability to collect the tax or if he is making a moral pronouncement.

In that event [that there is insufficient revenue raised by the Tariff bill] his effort would be to secure the adoption of the inheritance tax. He believes that an inheritance tax is the most certain of collection and the easiest of all forms of additional taxation suggested.

It is true that dead men tell no lies, thus the perjury concern is probably off the table in the case of an inheritance tax. However, there is still an incentive to avoid the inheritance tax or at least the incentive to reduce the impact of the tax on one's estate. Again, no mention of avoidance.

If the Federal inheritance tax is not to be tried, then the President is in favor of an excise tax on the profits of corporations. He is convinced that it would entirely constitutional, and that no great difficulty would be experienced in its collection.

As if corporations are black boxes rather than being managed by the same households about which the the President expresses perjury concerns? Excise taxes on corporate profits are simply profits on the individuals who hold the residual claims on the firm. Supposedly the corporate profits tax is a path of less resistance but a corporate profit tax is still distortionary and creates incentives to avoid the tax.

Taft then hits a theme that sounds rather similar to today:

Mr. Taft agrees with Senator Aldrich in the effort to reduce expenses and has told his callers that he would back the Senator to the limit in everything aimed at that end. He thinks that there could be great savings in the War and Navy Departments. He has been informed by navy officers that consolidation of the bureau work in the navy yards will save at least $5,000,000 a year. The President means to go at this question of reducing expenditures with the greatest possible vigor.

Perhaps there was a culture of "small g" government in the early 1900s which would give Taft's words credibility. On the other hand, generally speaking vigorously trying to reduce the expenditures of the government in one area seems to be offset by vigorous increasing expenditures in other areas.

Alas, no new problems, only our problems.

Will Wilkinson makes a forceful argument for de-stigmatizing casual marijuana use, and tops it off with "My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it."

Borders are nothing except lines that politicians draw on maps.

... the one in Rome didn't feature a congressman who scored a paltry 52% on the Club for Growth's RePork Card. The congressman isn't the solution--he's part of the problem (though, to be fair, he's not alone and is hardly the most egregious).

'Streetlight user fees' among the new charges as governments get creative

HT: Drudge

The headline provided by Real Clear Politics says it all: "Poor, Black School Kids Don't Pay Union Dues." The rest of this article is details, but they're telling details.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, told a hometown crowd in Alabama today he believes there are several socialists in the House.

Actually, he says there are exactly 17 socialists in the House of Representatives.

Source. A more accurate count would be something around 400, perhaps including Rep. Bachus.

From the April 7, 1909 NYT:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The State Senate to-day passed a bill placing a heavy penalty on persons drinking intoxicants on trains in the State or on station platforms. This will probably affect buffet cars, although intended only to stop rowdyism.

How's this for an Orwellian ministry acronym?

In Britain, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reviews new medical treatments to determine whether or not a treatment's effectiveness justifies its price tag. Based on this assessment, NICE recommends whether new treatments should be covered under the country's public health care system, the National Health Service. Most of the time the NHS makes those recommendations hard-and-fast policy. As a result, NHS physicians are often prohibited from prescribing newer, more expensive treatments because NICE has determined they're not worth the cost.

Headline News just reported about a letter sent to President Obama by a couple of young girls asking why it is taking Congress so long to help people like their father, who is looking for work. The dark cloud: after piles of government make-work programs, the state might get numerous devotees and fans for life. The silver lining: maybe massive state failures will cause crises of faith among young statists.

A commenter at ryanavent.com says:

Libertarianism has much to offer our political discourse, but every belief system has its dogma, its blind spots. Libertarianism classically has two:

1. Government is the only agent of oppression.
2. Government can do nothing right.

Hmmmm....well this libertarian believes the following:

1. Only people can be agents of oppression. All people in government are agents of oppression; people engaged in market exchanges are never agents of oppression; people not in government or in markets are sometimes agents of oppression (theives) and sometimes not (friends).

2. People in government can do the right thing or the wrong thing, but either way, only by violating my freedom.

Read this headline carefully:

"Alabama House Panel votes against two bills to limit politics in judicial elections"

This letter to Edward Liddy addresses at least three questions:
1. Why do we need to give the AIG executives bonuses? After all, do they really have any alternatives?
2. Didn't they just lose a bunch of money, and now they want to be compensated for incompetence?
3. What are the identities of two of the thugs who are leading this witch hunt?

That's the title of today's superb column by George Will. Here are three paragraphs but read the whole thing:

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."

Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.

From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans.

I wondered why ABC News would spend 2 1/2 minutes of their Sunday night broadcast interviewing the granddaughter of Bank of America's founder, who trashed current management. No suggestion was made that she has any expertise. Then this article ("Cuomo wins ruling to name Merrill bonus recipients") made it clear. Andrew Cuomo is, of course, the brother of Chris Cuomo of ABC News.

Michael Goodwin on the recent witch hunt:

Everybody makes mistakes, and I made a beaut the other day. I was wrong to call members of Congress blow-hards and buffoons and declare them worse than useless.

I was too kind.

I should have said our representatives are gangsters in pinstripes and pearls. They are petty tyrants and the more power they grab, the more at risk we are. Homeland Security should flash Code Red any time this Congress is in session.
[...]

The House vote to use the tax code to retroactively punish bonus babies was an act of sheer madness. What started as phony outrage at AIG has crossed the line into insane policy. It is stunning that the vote was lopsided and bipartisan.

[...]
That Congress is a gang of cheap connivers is not news. Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, Charles Grassley, Barney Frank - they have been national embarrassments for years.

But now they are dangerous, emboldened by public fear and anger. They know nothing, but have power and smell opportunity for more.

Missing in action is the Barack Obama who vowed to unite the country around common values. Lately he has been the very opposite of the man he promised. Instead of hope, many have a growing fear of the arrogant government he leads.

Obama is smart, quick and charming, and, as he showed on "The Tonight Show," owner of a thousand-watt smile he can deploy at will. He silkily manages to make the ridiculous sound reasonable.

Charles Murray is back on ground that he covered in his second (and, of the ones I've read, best) book, In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government. Here's the central paragraph, plus one sentence:

For some years a metaphor has been stuck in my mind: The 20th century was the adolescence of Homo sapiens. Nineteenth-century science, from Darwin to Freud, offered a series of body blows to ways of thinking about human life that had prevailed since the dawn of civilization. Humans, just like adolescents, were deprived of some of the comforting simplicities of childhood and exposed to more complex knowledge about the world. And 20th-century intellectuals reacted precisely the way adolescents react when they think they have discovered that Mom and Dad are hopelessly out of date. It was as if they thought that if Darwin was right about evolution, then Aquinas was no longer worth reading; that if Freud was right about the unconscious mind, then the Nicomachean Ethics had nothing to teach us.

The nice thing about adolescence is that it is temporary, and when it passes, people discover that their parents were smarter than they thought.

Let's hope that the last sentence is correct.

I don't think Krauthammer hammers enough on the rank indecency of the posturing over the AIG bonuses, but he gets in some zingers. Two follow:

It is time for the president to state the obvious: This recession is not caused by excessive executive compensation in government-controlled companies. The economy has been sinking because of a lack of credit, stemming from a general lack of confidence, stemming from the lack of a plan to detoxify the major lending institutions, mainly the banks, which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money used to be.

Free trade is the one area where the world indisputably turns to Washington for leadership. What does it see? Grandstanding, parochialism, petty payoffs to truckers and a rush to mindless populism. Over what? Over 97 Mexican trucks -- and bonus money that comes to what the Yankees are paying for CC Sabathia's left arm.

February:

Talented political performer that he is, Obama primed the audience by promising that Caterpillar would give some workers their jobs back if Congress passed the rescue plan.

"The chairman and CEO of Caterpillar said that if the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan passes, his company would be able to rehire some of those employees," Obama said in a speech in Virginia yesterday.

March:

Caterpillar Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to lay off more than 2,400 employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.

Among the affected workers are 1,726 people at plants in Illinois. They include 911 workers at a plant in East Peoria that makes track-type tractors and pipelayers and 815 at a plant in Aurora, where the company produces hydraulic excavators and wheel loaders. Caterpillar notified the employees Tuesday of the layoffs which are expected to last at least six months starting in June.

Wonder if these jobs are some of the ones that the stimulus plan was supposed to save.

The March 18, 1909 NYT reports on the development of Maxim's silencer for firearms:

Who shall be authorized to carry and use firearms equipped with Mr. Hudson Maxim's "silencer"? No private person, surely. A true sportsman would not use it, and the "pot hunter" must be forbidden to hunt silently. The burglar, the highway robber, and the Black Hand assassin are the only other persons to whom it could be of advantage...

We therefore see a reason for the passage of Assemblyman Joseph's bill making it a felony, punishable by imprisonment for not more than five years, to make or sell the instrument for duly authorized military or civic organizations, or to have or to carry it concealed upon the person.

When the silencer is outlawed, only outlaws will have silencers?

A pot hunter is defined as "one who kills anything and everything that will help to fill has bag; also, a hunter who shoots game for the table or for the market."

I wonder if the editorial suggests that the pot hunter should forbidden to hunt silently because to do so would pose a negative externality on others. When a gun is fired by the pot hunter did the report serve as a warning to others in the area that someone was blasting away? The only other reason I can see is to provide a warning to the other (non human) animals in the area.

More seriously, I always find it interesting that our problems are not new - gun control issues have evidently been with us for quite some time.

After my recent post showing North Dakota's "deficit hawk" Sen. Kent Conrad holding up a copy of the Obama budget with a big grin on his face, I was pleased to see Kim Strassel's column in today's WSJ. It's good to see a big media platform like the WSJ digging into Sen. Conrad's fiscal conservative phoney baloney; there's even a picture of the senator grinning holding up the Obama budget.

From CQ Global Researcher (Feb. 2009):

In a recent Gallup Poll [conducted in certain countries outside the US] ... more than 85 percent of [adherents to a certain religion] surveyed said they believe democracy is the best form of government. Thus, they are not interested in imposing their views on others but wish to live according to the teachings of their religion while respecting people of other religions or opinions.

How does belief in democratic selecting the government imply disinterest in imposing one's views on others? If members of a single religious group are in the majority, can't they use majority rule to elect legislators who will impose their views and their restrictions on others?

They can. This been famously emphasized by Fareed Zakaria in his warnings about the dangers of illiberal democracy.

The 1909 inauguration of William Howard Taft was not a pleasant experience, either for Democrats or for the bystanders. As reported in the March 6, 1909 NYT, "[t]he results of the exposure are to be found in the crowded conditions of the hospitals to-day, scores having been taken ill because of the weather." The story goes on to report:

Speaker Cannon agreed to-day to assist in the movement for change [of the inauguration date]. Two bills have passed the Senate in times gone, the date in each being fixed for the last Thursday in April. The speaker believes, however, that this date is not late enough, and favors the substitution of May 1.

"That would give more assurance of fair weather," he said to-day, "for April showers are proverbially uncertain. As a Representative in Congress i will lend my efforts to having the change put into effect."

If this had been accomplished, we might have had three more months of Bushco, to the dismay of Obamaco, but then we might have actually heard rather than just watched Yo Yo Ma play his cello.

Today's offering from Mike Lester of the Rome News-Tribune:

See also this bumper sticker from the Tennessee Republican Party. Wonder if they'll make one that says "Honk if I'm paying your mortgage"?

Last summer, ND Sen. Kent Conrad said, "President Bush will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation's history."

Well, here's Sen. Conrad yesterday holding a copy of the Obama budget calling for huge spending increases and large budget deficits. Compared to this budget, President Bush's spending looks downright miserly. So, Sen. Conrad, why the big grin?

ADDENDUM: Below is a statement from Sen. Conrad's website; it's rather hard to square this statement with his grin about the Obama budget.

Senator Conrad is particularly concerned about the soaring federal debt that is forecast for the nation's long-term budget outlook. He believes that reducing this debt burden is essential to the future strength of the nation's economy. Over time, large deficits and debt will raise interest rates, crowd out private sector investment, and slow long-term economic growth.

ADDENDUM2: A better title for this post would have been "A Deficit Chicken Hawk."

Don Boudreaux comments on one aspect of this NYTimes story. Here's another:

The New York Times reported yesterday that the softness sought in toilet paper by Americans is wiping out forests. After all, paper doesn't grow on trees. Oh wait, it does. and that's the problem. [...] Swooping in to save the day are Wallypop toilet wipes, a reusable cloth product. The sales pitch: They're comfy and environmentally friendly. You can use them wet, and they won't fall apart.

The column concludes:

The company admits there's "a certain ick factor involved." Indeed. If you try this at home, let us know how everything comes out.

Maybe we should bring back corncobs. The increased demand for corn might provide political cover for a reduction in the ethanol subsidy.

Oops. I should have seen Frank's entry before posting this.

Is there any sense of irony in the Federal Government?

Programs, agencies, OMB, and the new, $84 million Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board (see p. 175 of the bill) are all required to report on the progress of spending, often on different timetables. In fact, according to new OMB guidance, there are eight levels of reporting that are now required, with the first report from agencies due March 3.

For real? The RAAT Board? Of course, it would have to be pronounced "the rat board"?

More here

An AP story on how Washington State provides 250,000 food stamp recipients improved access to the federal pipeline.

If you're up to looking at the sausage's ingredients, this site might be useful.

The strength stocks have shown lately vanished on Tuesday as the government unveiled a new bank-rescue plan and congressional action neared on a fresh round of fiscal stimulus for the wheezing U.S. economy.

Investors bid up stocks last week in anticipation of the plan's unveiling and were quick to unload them after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner revealed details of the package in a late-morning speech and the Senate passed the stimulus measure.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was recently off about 345 points, or 4.2%, at 7927. Bank of America was its weakest stock, dropping 18%, and Citigroup was off more than 12%. But all 30 of the blue-chip average's components were in the red. The S&P 500 tumbled 4.4% to trade near 832. All its sectors fell, led by an 8.4% slide in financials. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 3.5% to 1535.

Source. Can we get a hippocratic oath for politicians?

Doug Bandow's take on the Phelps incident:

Michael Phelps ... has violated the law. ... [H]e admitted the crime. The same crime for which the better part of a million people were arrested last year.

Shouldn’t Phelps be charged? Along with President Obama and his two predecessors, all of whom, it seems, used illegal drugs? If not, perhaps it is time to have a serious debate about the drug laws.

[...]

[H]undreds of thousands of Americans ended up in jail for doing precisely what Michael Phelps did: lighting up. Roughly three-quarters of those arrested for marijuana offenses were, like Phelps, under 30. With most of their lives ahead of them, they face the greatest harm from prosecution under the drug laws.

So why shouldn’t Phelps go to jail?

To ask the question is to answer it. While smoking pot may be a stupid thing to do for many reasons—risking adverse health effects, endangering endorsements, undermining Phelps’s status as a celebrity role model—he hurt no one but himself. He could have been photographed while drunk and stumbling out of a party, and it would have been no different. Bad press and angry sponsors would have forced an abject apology, and everyone would have moved on. Just like with his marijuana hit.

The Feb. 5, 1909 NYT provides a draw from the "Because I want it so" drawer:

A reduction of 2 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity in Brooklyn is provided for in a bill introduced to-day by Senator Cullen. The bill reduces the price from 12 to 10 cents, making it uniform in the Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The measure was referred to the Cities Committee, notwithstanding the protest of the introducer, who desired that it be referred to the Committee on Miscellaneous Corporations.

The "Committee of Miscellaneous Corporations"? Such a committee actually existed and was given that name?!? I understand that mandating lower prices for Brooklyn might have been seen as a "populist" stance, but how could Mr. Cullen have known what the optimal price for electricity was at the time? What would Mr. Cullen have done if such a law killed the infant electricity industry in its crib? I am sure he would have been outraged that the good "hard working" citizens of Brooklyn were being unfairly denied access to the life-improving, indeed in cases life-saving, service of electricity.

Today's s national average cost per kilowatt hour? 11.96 cents (not adjusted for inflation).

There was a time when K Street was just another street in Washington, DC. There was a time when it was less need to send "representatives" to Washington to lobby for and against legislation, there was less need to have "a man in Washington" to watch your six. There was a time when the Legislature wasn't used to tell others what to do with their private property.

Then along came "Populism" and the perception those with "too much" private property would use this property to harm others, to steal from others, to deny others their basic necessities. The cure was to use the Legislature to tell others what to do with their private property. This, in turn, created an incentive for those being attacked to "defend themselves" from the Legislature. It is reasonable for private property owners to respond in this manner, although I might be confusing cause and effect in certain instances.

Unfortunately, once the fixed costs of protecting property rights from the Legislature were borne, the marginal cost of shifting form the "defensive" to the "offensive" in Washintong. That is, using lobbyists, political contributions, graft, and other (perhaps even more objectionable) means to use the Legislature to protect or create profit potential, to erect entry barriers and increase the costs of potential and actual competitors, to finalize the creation of the "mixed economy."

The Feb. 5, 1909 NYT reports on the birth of such an "organization" in the wall paper industry:

Thirty manufacturers of wall paper, representing the largest wall paper mills in the country, met yesterday in the Hotel Victoria and organized the Wall Paper Manufacturers' Association of the United States. A call for the meeting had been sent to practically all the heads of wall paper manufacturing companies in the country, and nearly all responded...

A chief object of the association, outside of its social features, will be to keep the manufacturers posted on legislation and other matters likely to affect the trade. Committees are to be appointed to investigate conditions and, if possible, to prevent injurious or unwise legislation.

When the Congressional Committee was hearing arguments on the tariff, for instance, the wall paper manufacturers were deeply concerned, but, owing to the lack of organization, only a few individual manufacturers went to Washington to present their cases before the committee. Had the association of wall paper manufacturers been in existence then, its organizers say, a committee of much authority would have been sent to argue on behalf of a membership representing practically all of the wall paper plants in the country.

And so it began in the wall paper industry and a similar story was told in any number of other industries. One hundred years later not much seems to have changed.

The Democrats always rail against tax cheats, and complain that the rich don't pay their share of taxes, etc. etc. Now it appears from the President's cabinet nominees that every third Democrat doesn't pay his or her taxes. And why is it that they all seem to have nannies, drivers, and seven figure family incomes?

Meanwhile, Republicans are the party of public morals and opposition to free love and gay sex. Just ask Senator Craig and Representative Foley. Yet they get all the juicy sex scandals.

I'm sure there is some hidden message here. Your homework is to write a 500 word essay on the topic.

Not 1 but 2--Daschle and Nancy Killefer who apparently is yet Obama appointee with tax problems. It seems that Mark Perry's cartoon of the day is spot on.

Sorry, Bob. It's not a Cinemax title. Launched officially today, it's the cool new wiki that lets you search, evaluate, and "vote" for individual line items proposed for the the stimulus package. Brought to you by our friends Jerry Brito and Eileen Norcross. With details here.

By John Hasnas, posted on his website. What does it feel like to be a libertarian these days?

I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with a level of frustration that is nearly beyond human endurance. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events.

[...]

I remember attending a lecture at Georgetown in the mid-1990s given by a member of the libertarian Cato Institute in which he predicted that, unless changed, government policy would trigger an economic crisis by 2006. That prediction was obviously ideologically-motivated alarmism. After all, the crisis did not occur until 2008.

Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics. For the same reason, their predictions are usually negative and utterly inconsistent with the utopian wishful-thinking that lies at the heart of virtually all contemporary political advocacy. And because no one likes to hear that he cannot have his cake and eat it too or be told that his good intentions cannot be translated into reality either by waving a magic wand or by passing legislation, these predictions are greeted not merely with disbelief, but with derision.

ATSRTWT. Don't be fooled by John's brevity. There is much packed into few words here. Well worth the read. And well worth saving these ideas!

Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama's choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, paid about $140,000 in back taxes and interest after questions surfaced during the vetting of his nomination, according to documents being prepared by the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Daschle made the payments to cover a luxury car and driver provided to him by an investment firm where he was an adviser after leaving the U.S. Senate in 2005, but which he didn't report as income, people familiar with the report said. The payments also covered unreported consulting income and unwarranted charitable deductions. The tax period covered 2005 through 2007.

Source.

Here are two great quotes from Ludwig von Mises's Bureaucracy, originally written in 1944:

"The outstanding fact of intellectual history of the last hundred years is the struggle against economics." p. 89

"He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them." p. 100

to be shocked, that is. Lobbyists won't be marginalized after all, according to this AP release.

President Barack Obama's ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn't mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won't be able to funnel money to pet projects.

They're just working around it — and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

[...]

"'No earmarks' isn't a game-ender," said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. "It just means there's a different way of going about making sure the funding is there."

It won't be in legislative language that overtly sets aside money for them. That's the infamous practice known as earmarking, which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have agreed to nix for the massive stimulus package, expected to come up for a House vote this week.

Instead, the money will be doled out according to arcane formulas spelled out in the bill and in some cases based on the decisions of Obama administration officials, governors and state and local agencies that will choose the projects.

I felt left out when I didn't make the list of ethics free Republican hacks like Ed and some other folks I know. So try, try again.

In his inauguaral address, President Obama called for a "new era of responsibility." This from the president who wants an $800B "stimulus package" (The Real Voodoo Economics) and plans for deficit spending in excess of $1 trillion.

There was also some blather about ""our collective failure to make hard choices." This is offensive. For example, my wife and I have bought two houses, making a large downpayment on both. We've been aggressively saving for retirement (only to see our savings nearly halved by the Fed and the pols). The fact that many other citizens and our spendthrift pols have not similarly lived within their means does not make me complicit in their failure. Alas, genuinely responsible chumps people are likely the ones who will bear the cost of Obama's grandiose schemes.

This, on the inauguration of The One who will, inter alia, reverse the trend toward global warming:

The carbon footprint of Barack Obama's inauguration could exceed 575 million pounds of CO2. According to the Institute for Liberty, it would take the average U.S. household nearly 60,000 years of naughty ecological behavior to produce a carbon footprint equal to the largest self-congratulatory event in the history of humankind.

The Jan 9, 1909 NYT reports on a very different approach to announcing the incoming cabinet than the current "Office of the President-elect":

The Taft-Knox Cabinet conference is over and the Pennsylvania Senator is to-night on his way back to Washington. Neither the President-elect nor his adviser will discuss the result, and it is strongly hinted by Mr. Taft to-night that his Cabinet will be made known for the first time when he sends the names of the men who are to compose it to the Senate for confirmation after March 4.

There is more to the story, primarily discussing the Taft will attend a barbecue in South Carolina and that Governor-elect Joe Brown of Georgia had visited with Taft.

Perhaps it is better to release the names of the proposed cabinet members earlier than later so that the public and those with axes to grind in Congress can have time to amass their arguments against any proposed cabinet member. Moreover, there might be Richardson-like outcomes of a nomination that any president-elect would rather have occur before the actual nomination hearings or votes occur.

Nevertheless, given the extended announcements and bromide-filled press conferences held by the new species "Office of the President-elect" over the past two months, Taft's approach might have been preferred.

The January 9, 1909 NYT reports:

The Post Office Department is now engaged in an effort to collect $16 from Senator Tillman in postage on a typewriter, which he franked from his home in South Carolina to Washington recently.

Yesterday the department had a letter from him refusing to pay, and saying that the department could burn up the machine or do what it liked with it, as it was Government property and he would not pay postage on it.

From the Jan 5, 1909 NYT:

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - County school teachers here have not received their pay because the Biltmore estate failed to pay its $24,000 county taxes as expected. The county authorities have cabled Mr. Vanderbilt direct at Paris.

In the past Mr. Vanderbilt has paid half his taxes in December and half in January, and the estate office promised to make such payment this year. The taxes on an assessment of two and a half millions on Biltmore village and the estate proper were due in October.

I do not know what the operating budget of Buncombe County was in 1909, but I would wager it was considerably more than $24,000 per year. To blame the failure to pay teachers on a single tax payer is pathetic but, I suppose, rather Progressive.

Google search of blogs shows Greg Mankiw has picked this up, but I didn't find it elsewhere, so here goes. By email forward from Veronique de Rugy:

Subject: WANTED: STIMULUS SPENDING SKEPTICS

OBAMA AIDES SAY “ONLY ONE OUTSIDE ECONOMIST” HAS EXPRESSED SKEPTICISM ABOUT MASSIVE STIMULUS SPENDING PLAN

An AP story this morning (Kuhnhenn, Jim; “Obama Considers $1 Trillion Plan to Jolt Economy,” Associated Press, 18 Dec 08) indicates President-elect Obama and his advisors are contemplating an economic “stimulus” spending bill with a price tag as large as $1 trillion, with the vast majority of that number going to new spending on government programs and projects. The article quotes Obama transition officials as saying “[o]nly one outside economist contacted by Obama aides. . .voiced skepticism” about the President-elect’s emerging spending plans.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is compiling a list of credentialed American economists who would like to add their voices to the list of stimulus spending skeptics. If you know of an economist who would like to be added to this list, please visit http://gopleader.gov/jobs. The page includes a contact form that allows readers to sign up and submit comments. Please be aware that information submitted through the webpage can, and most likely will, be shared publicly.

Bill Greene
Republican Leader’s Office
202-225-4000

Here is Tyler Cowen "driving home the point" that there is no evidence to support the putative economic benefits of stimulus spending.

A valuable database

You might want see how your neighbors are making out. In my home county, four members of one family accounted for about one-third of the USDA subsidies.

... if the media will stop drooling over Caroline Kennedy long enough to point out that she has less experience than the (somewhat deservedly) maligned Sarah Palin. I'm not sure experience is a good thing, but if it's a fair charge to raise against Palin then it should be a fair charge to raise against Kennedy.

... if we'll hear anything about Bernie Madoff (and other Madoffs who I assume are related to him) making political contributions to Democrats (including Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer) in the same way we heard about George Bush's ties to "Kenny Boy" Lay in the wake of Enron's collapse.

This from page D08 of the WaPo:

Most Americans continue to oppose a government-backed rescue plan for Detroit's Big Three automakers as majorities blame the industry for its own problems and are unconvinced failure would hurt the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Maybe they think G. W. Bailout will not read that deeply into the paper. Maybe they're right.

Congratulations to Jeff Daiell, who won the Essay Contest I sponsored earlier this month. Jeff won a copy of Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent, and I learned a lot. Thanks for all the entries (a few dozen or so). And for people who are interested, I did vote (and then chose a winner after the fact). Jeff's winning essay is below the fold.

Read More »

I had just read this in a thoughtful column by Kevin Hassett:

The U.S. has always distinguished itself relative to its major trading partners by having a higher faith in free markets and a greater respect for the limits of big government. Sure, the U.S. passed a stimulus package now and then, but it also let failure run its course and refused to resort to excessive big- government intrusions into the private sector.

The risk is that we will forget this lesson. First we bailed out the financial companies; now President-elect Barack Obama is asking for $50 billion to bail out the auto companies, an effort backed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Next we will see a tax credit for people who buy General Motors Corp. cars at stores of bankrupt retailer Circuit City, provided they use the car to go to a Detroit Lions game.

A look at economic history suggests that the crazy policy intrusions have to stop.

Failure can be a good thing, and recessions force economic stragglers to make tough decisions. Those tough decisions set the stage for the recovery.

Then I read this in a puzzling column by Bill Kristol: "I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models."

Finally, a note posted below Kristol's article cleared it up: "Paul Krugman is off today." Nice of Kristol to fill in for him.

Not that it's likely to matter any time soon, but here's an excellent summary of at least one part of the ANWR debate.

The proponents of ANWR development have also distorted the picture by themselves making false arguments. First, it should be acknowledged that ANWR oil production will not in itself come close to achieving energy independence for the United States. Second, ANWR production alone will not affect oil prices significantly. Even the large reserves that ANWR possesses are not large enough, relative to the total world oil market, to have much effect on future world prices.

The real issue in ANWR is the proper use of the fiscal assets of the U.S. government. The oil there is worth, minimally, $500 billion in gross value and, potentially, $1 trillion dollars or more - depending obviously on the future world price of oil.

Steve Chapman is insightful, as usual:

Obama, as it happens, won by offering voters the same thing Reagan promised: tax cuts. Most of those who supported him did so on the assumption that they would not fall in the class of people who will have to cough up more to the IRS.

Not only that, but many voted against McCain partly because Obama successfully branded his health-care program as a tax increase. Americans are willing to embrace a bigger and more expensive federal government on one condition: that it doesn't cost them anything.

In this respect, the president-elect promises a continuation of the last eight years. With the exception of the recession brought on by the financial crisis, the biggest challenge is a vast array of commitments that have outgrown our willingness to pay for them. Living within our means is not a change Americans can quite believe in. Like Bush, Obama may hope to escape two terms without taking action on that front.

With all the precincts in Missouri reporting, unofficial totals as of this morning have McCain carrying the state by only 5,868 votes over Obama. In percentage terms, the outcome was 49.4% to 49.2%. You could say that Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, with 11,355 votes (0.4%) , held the “balance of power” or was a “spoiler”. But then you’d have to say the same about Ralph Nader, who drew 17,769 votes (0.6%).

Meanwhile, Barr is reportedly calling himself a spoiler in North Carolina, which is still too close to call at last report, where

Democrat Barack Oama has a 12,000-vote lead over Republican John McCain, and Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, has 25,181 votes, or 1 percent.

Mike made a pretty decent showing in the NC governor's race: 120,000 votes, 2.9% of the total.

I'm going to post a few thoughts as the evening progresses. Comments are open.

First up--CNN has "The Diff" in its election results.

Looks like Obama has it won; Fox has called PA and OH for him. FL, IN, NC, and VA are not yet called so Obama might take several moderate to large states from McCain.

Decent news on the gridlock front--GOP senators in GA and KY have held on and it looks like Trent Lott's seat in MS will stay GOP and there's some chance of taking a Dem seat from LA. Maybe the filibuster will still be an option.

UPDATE (9:30)--Bryan Caplan raises an issue I've been wondering about--would McCain have fared better if he had voted against the bailout? I think so.

UPDATE (9:40)--The Raleigh NC News and Observer reports co-blogger Mike Munger has 3% of the vote with 24 NC counties reporting complete results and 49 others reporting partial results.

UPDATE (10:00)--Much has been made of Starbucks giving out free coffee today (to the benefit of two of my favorite students), but Instapundit points to a shop giving out sex toys to folks who vote.

UPDATE (10:45)--Obama repeatedly charged that McCain supported tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas. What specifically was he refering to? Surely there is no tax credit or other break specifically for transferring a job from the US to overseas.

Last update of the night--Obama's large margin (13) in PA leaves me wondering why McCain spent so much time there over the past 10 days. Not that it mattered since Obama is rolling to about 375 electoral votes. Senate is Dems plus 5 with OR, MN, and AK to go.

On this election day, we do well to consider the opening of Frederic Bastiat's "The Law:"

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perveted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

He does so here.

I received quite a few emails about my decision to not vote. One issue was the question of whether I thought my vote matters. On this point it is important to note that my switch to non-voting status has nothing to do with whether I think my vote matters. I've always understood that my vote doesn't matter and yet I still voted previously.

The "logic" of my decision has to do with a change in my premise about the nature of voting. If your premise is that democracy is how we make decisions collectively, then there's nothing per se wrong with voting. I see nothing wrong, for example, with a group of people taking a vote to determine which restaurant to go to so long as individuals are then free to go with the group or not.

But my evolving premise is that democracy is closer to rape--that is, it is about some people forcing other people to go along with their will. Given that premise, which I consider immoral, I choose not to participate.

To be sure (1) I think someone who votes because he thinks his vote will matter is wrong as a matter of fact, but the main issue is that (2) I think someone who votes because she thinks voting is some sort of uplifting civic good needs to "check her premises" as Ayn Rand used to say.

From the Nov. 3, 1908 NYT (election day 1908):

NATIONAL ELECTION DAY

Oh, say,
To-day
The great Bald-Headed Eagle
Roosts on the peaks remote
And screemless folds his wings and tail
To watch the People vote.
The Bird
Hasn't a word
To say
Either way.
The Declaration's thunder tones,
Which erstwhile sent a thrill
Through tyrants' hearts
And other parts,
To-day is hushed and still.
The Glorious Fourth, our natal day,
This day, has been deposed;
Its fierce uproar
Is heard no more
Until the polls are closed.
The Starry Banner of the Free
Floats silent in the sky;
And that is all -
It has no call
Except to wave on high.
The Constitution holds its breath
And dodges out of sight
Until WE say,
By vote to-day,
What is or is not right.
The Ship of State is shaking now
From mizzenmast to keel,
And all her crew are wond'ring who
Will take her by the wheel.
The Nation's glories and her gods
To-day are merely dross,
And common stuff
To make a bluff -
VOX POPULI is BOSS.

W.J. Lampton

After voting in every presidential election since 1988 and almost every other election and special election since, I have decided to cut my losses. I have not registered to vote in my new state of Alabama and will not vote tomorrow or perhaps ever again.

My working metaphor for politics is gang rape. If 9 rapists and a woman are in a room and hold a vote, it's 9-1 in favor of raping the woman. If the woman doesn't vote, it's 9-0. Same result. But at least the victim doesn't have to sanctify the process that violates her rights. I am no longer going to go to the polls to give legitimacy to these criminal politicians.

Though I appreciate and agree with Brad's point that Obama is a serious threat to liberty--far more than McCain in fact. This is a case where I simply can not vote for the lesser of two evils.

I read a saying somewhere recently (where? anyone know?) that says "when faced with a choice between two evils, it is important to pick neither." Words to live by. [UPDATE: possible source: Charles Spurgeon. HT: Craig]

I sent this email replying to an email I received earlier today.

Dear X:

I care a lot more about losing our liberties than I do about our bulging waistlines. Americans should be free to eat 8000 calorie burgers and ogle all the naughty nurses they wish, and busybodies like you have no right to tell them otherwise.

Please do not solicit me again with such nonsense.

Bob Lawson

>>>
Date: 10/29/2008 4:01 PM
Subject: Controversial Restaurant Opening Near Campus

I've just been told that a restaurant called the Heart Attack Grill is going to be opening near campus. Their slogan is "Taste Worth Dying For!"
Anyone who finishes the Triple Bypass Burger gets pushed out to their car in a wheelchair by the Naughty Nurse waitresses.
I read an article saying that the Quadruple Bypass Burger has 8,000 calories. Isn't America fat enough already?? Hopefully someone on the faculty can help keep this idiocy away from our campus.

Much has been made of the respective ages of the two candidates for U.S. President in 2008. One is thought by many to be too young and one is thought by many to be too old. Is it possible to be a vigorous President at 72? Is it possible to be a wise leader at 47? We will find out the answer to one of these questions next week, but the Oct. 29, 1908 NYT reports on the ages of the prevailing "world leaders" at the time:

Theodore Roosevelt, President, United States, 50 years old.

Francis Joseph, Emperor, Austria-Hungary, 79 years old.

Porfirio Diaz, President, Mexico, 79 years old.

Leopold II, King, Belgium, 74 years old.

Armand Fallieres, President, French Republic, 67 years old.

Edward VII, King, England, 67 years old.

Frederick VIII, King, Denmark, 65 years old.

Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, Ottoman Empire, 57 years old.

Mutsuhito, Mikado, Japan, 56 years old.

Gustavus V., King, Sweden, 51 years old.

William II, Emperor, Germany, 49 years old.

Nicholas II, Czar, Russia, 40 years old.

Victor Emmanueal, King, Italy, 39 years old.

Alfonso XIII, King, Spain, 22 years old.

Manuel II, King, Portugal, 19 years old.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:46 AM in Politics

Prediction markets c. 1908

The Oct. 29, 1908 NYT reports more wagering on the upcoming 1908 elections:

A number of small wagers were made in the financial district yesterday at even money on Hughes and Chanler. Bets on Taft were few and far between, but a few were placed with odds on Taft, ranging from 4 1/2 to 3 to 1.

The largest bet heard of was one made early in the day by a Hughes man, who placed $5,000 on Hughes against $4,500 on Chanler. Later several bets of $1,000 were made on the State contest.

The largest bet on the Presidential outcome was reported from the Cotton Exchange, where it was said that $3,000 Taft money had been placed against $1,000 on Bryan. One Broadway Stock Exchange house placed $1,000 on Taft against $300 of Bryan money.

Those who have followed betting in Wall Street are agreed that there has never been a Presidential contest for a generation in which the wagering has been so light. Taft money seems to be plentiful, but the odds demanded by those with cash to bet on Bryan are considered prohibitive.

Taft wins (52% to 43%), as does Hughes (49% to 45%).

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:24 AM in Politics

Division of Labour Contest: Rock the Vote or Mock the Vote?

Several months ago, Russell Roberts asked his readers whether he should vote or not. I can't find Russ's original post, but I would like to try something similar because I'll be thinking about this a lot over the next couple of days at a Liberty Fund conference on Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter and Guido Pincione and Fernando R. Teson's Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation: A Theory of Discourse Failure.

Thus, I'm announcing The First Semi-Annual Division of Labour Purple Mountains Majesty Amber Waves of Grain Essay Contest, with the winner receiving a copy of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Here's the prompt:

A common argument in favor of voting is that it allows the voter to let his or her voice be heard in the political process, but others have argued that silence can be deafening. Take a position: should I vote or not? In 500 words or less, persuade me to do one or the other.

Entries are limited to 500 words and must be submitted by email to cardena@rhodes.edu by 6:00 AM Central Time on Tuesday, November 4. Depending on the number of entries, I reserve the right to read only the entries I have time to read. Happy writing.

Update, 3:18 PM: the entries are rolling in, and they're pretty good so far. Keep 'em coming!

Posted by Art Carden at 10:05 AM in Politics

October 28, 2008

A good bet? c. 1908

The October 28, 1908 NYT reports on an interesting investment opportunity:

Speyer & Co. and the National City Bank, having charge in this country of the subscription lists for the new thirty-five year 4 1/2 per cent. sinking fund gold bonds of the Institution for Encouragement of Irrigation Works and Development of Agriculture in Mexico, announced yesterday that these lists would be closed to-day. They report a large number of subscriptions having been received from all parts of the country.

I wonder how the Institute "encouraged" irrigation in Mexico and whether the Institute actually paid off on their bonds - after all, a lot is going to happen in the next 35 years.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:54 PM in Politics

On presidential favor c. 1908

The October 28, 1908 NYT reports a surprising fact concerning President Roosevelt's eldest son:

The announcement from Hartford, Conn. that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., has been promoted to the worsted room of the Hartford Carpet Company, but that his promotion carries no increase of wages, is supplemented by the statement of a close personal friend here that the weekly pay envelope of the President's eldest son contains exactly $4.50 [$104.60 in CPI adjusted 2007 dollars].

From the same source it is learned that Theodore, Jr., is likely to be advanced to $5 per week during the coming month.

The story is based on an unnamed source, which today would be (somewhat) frowned upon. However, if the story is true, the President's eldest son earned approximately $235 per year? EH.net suggests that nominal per-capita income in 1908 was about $340, which would mean that the President's namesake was paid less than the average citizen?

I am not sure I am buying this unless a) Theo, Jr. was simply a terrible worker, b) Theo, Jr. was intentionally taking a lower salary in order to "learn how the other half lives," or c) Both (a) and (b). On the other hand, perhaps Theo, Jr., was being paid considerably more than the average worker and this story is simply a viral means of deflecting from the state of privilege enjoyed by the children of politicos - especially "populist Republican" politicos as opposed to "populist Democrats" of today - about a week away from a Presidential election.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:48 PM in Politics

Who knew Ron Paul had a blimp?

Go here for Secretary: Part 1.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:24 AM in Politics

October 24, 2008

A Second Helping

Andrew Biggs in today's WSJ:

Imagine this: Barack Obama proposes a Social Security payroll tax cut for low earners. Workers earning up to $8,000 per year would receive back the full 6.2% employee share of the 12.4% total payroll tax, up to $500 per year. Workers earning over $8,000 would receive $500 each, with this credit phasing out for individuals earning between $75,000 and $85,000.

Hold on a minute--I thought the 1993 Clinton EITC expansion already offset the payroll taxes for low income workers. Indeed, this snip from The American Prospect (a lefty mag) confirms my memory:

The EITC dates to 1975. The original idea was to offset the bite of payroll taxes on low-wage workers in low-income families. Since then, the credit has been expanded considerably. There are now three different schedules: a small credit for single-person households and childless couples, a much larger credit for families with one child, and a still larger credit for families with two or more kids. And since eligibility is keyed to family income, the subsidy is quite finely targeted (rich kids with after-school jobs need not apply). As family income rises, EITC benefits initially grow, then level off, and then begin to phase out. A working parent with two children gets 40 cents in tax credit for each dollar earned up to an income level of $9,720. (These figures are for the year 2000.) The maximum annual benefit is thus $3,888. Then, starting at $12,690 in annual income for this type of family, the tax credit declines by 21 cents for each dollar earned, phasing out altogether at an annual income of $31,152. For a family with one child, the peak benefit is $2,353, and for a single person, it's $353.

Drop the payroll tax pretense--the EITC is already more than double the payroll tax (including the employer part) that low income workers pay--and call Obama's scheme the confiscation that it is.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:51 PM in Politics

October 22, 2008

On bold predictions c. 1908

The Oct. 22, 1908 NYT reports on a firebrand speech given by Eugene W. Chafin, who was the Prohibition candidate for president in 1908. He was giving his first speech at the Cooper Union. Some choice nuggets were reported:

"The Democratic platform is so long that it takes two newspapers to print it. It is like an old fashioned Mother Hubbard - is (sic) covers everything and touches nothing. The only difference between that and the Republican platform is that the latter looks like it was made for a child of four."

And he had this bold prediction:

This is a peculiar campaign. The people haven't yet made up their minds. Such a thing hasn't happened in forty years...Why haven't they made up their minds? they are thinking. They are not satisfied. This is the last battle of the Republican and Democratic Parties, anyway. In fact, there is no Democratic or Republican Party. It is either a Bryan or a Roosevelt party, each doing the master's bidding.

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:56 PM in Politics

A billion here, a billion there...

...and pretty soon we're talking about real money.

Turns out, the famous Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL) may never have coined the phrase that is so widely attributed to him. At least that's what the Dirksen Congressional Center concludes. However, the late Senator, for whom this building is named, had a penchant for pithy tales. Here is a good one:

"One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?'

"Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?' Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.'

"If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it." [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].

$328 billion. Quaint, no?

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 11:03 AM in Politics

October 17, 2008

The essence of Obama and McCain

As distilled by Will Wilkinson, live-blogging from the 2nd debate.

The financial crisis

Obama:

We’ve got an antique regulatory structure. Need to put back early 20th Century laws!

McCain:

Got to do something about home values. We have to make sure that markets prices don’t adjust. Government should buy tons of houses …

[Will the economy get worse before it gets better?] Not if we give people free houses!

Healthcare

Obama:

I’m gonna reform health care, which won’t cost anything.

When we’re this wealthy, the idea that sick people should have to not spend other people’s money is an outrage. Mandate won’t hurt that much. It’s for your own good. McCain doesn’t give a crap for kids because giving a crap for anything means voting to give them things.

McCain:

Online records, improve efficiencies. Obama is all like “government this government that.” Obama will fine you if you don’t get insurance. I’ll give you tax credit you can take anywhere.

Energy and the environment

Obama:

People other than us benefit from higher oil prices, which is outrageous. … Let’s think harder about how we use energy. Holy god there is nothing more important than not trading with foreigners for energy.

We can centrally plan green economy into prosperity.

McCain:

If only we had nuclear power Indians would not weep. The French do it! America’s the best! We can do anything!

Fiscal policy

Obama:

If people make more than you, its not fair for you to have to tighten your belt.

I will cut taxes for everyone other than the despicable wealthy.

McCain:

Freeze spending, except defense, VA, entitlements, and buying every house in America.

Foreign policy

Obama:

Basically, I have no principle. I leave it at the discretion of my evolved moral intuition.

Iran can’t get nukes. But let’s talk about it.

McCain:

America is greatest force for good in history of universe forever. We shed our blood everywhere. The question of when to kill people needs to be left [to] soldiers like me. Our wars are awesome because we’re a nation of good.

We should do whatever we can to help whenever we can. I have no principle for intervention either.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 04:58 PM in Politics

Political Quickies

An update on my RICO & ACORN post--apparently the FBI is investigating ACORN.

I'm guessing Joe the Plumber will be getting an IRS audit next year if we have an Obama victory. On a related note, Joe the Plumber is featured in Mike Lester's cartoon in today's RNT.

Folks who doubt gridlock is good might want to check out this article (scroll down to the box) in today's WSJ. The Repubs ability to filibuster the Senate has stopped much mischief. Here's hoping the GOP, for all its flaws, can keep at least 43 Senate seats.

As most DOL readers are likely aware, tonight brings a new John Stossel special, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics." That's must see tv at my house. 10:00 Eastern.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:17 PM in Politics

October 15, 2008

No Wonder Protectionism is on the Rise

I'm not normally one to whine about how Americans take so little interest in the affairs of other nations. But I couldn't help noticing this morning that my daily paper, the Columbus Dispatch, did not include any mention of yesterday's parliamentary elections in Canada.

This is one of the 30 or so largest daily papers in the U.S., in the capital city of a state which shares an extensive (albeit lake) border with Canada, the United States' largest trading partner. Trade between Ohio and Canada amounts to about $30 billion annually, about six times the trade between Ohio and any other foreign nation. It has been estimated that over 200,000 Ohio jobs are dependent on trade with Canada.

I found not a word about the Canadian elections in either the print or on-line editions of the Dispatch.

By the way, for those interested, the ruling party, the free-trading Conservatives, returned an increased plurality, but still fell short of a majority. They are expected to form another minority government. At the same time, the anti-NAFTA, anti-trade New Democratic Party and Green Party both gained seats in parliament.

Posted by Brad Smith at 11:12 AM in Politics

Oh to Have a "None of the Above" Choice

Here's Mike Lester's offering from today's RNT:

Here's a video that summarizes McCain's new economic plan and his campaign in general:

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:51 AM in Politics

October 13, 2008

New world order c. 1908

The October 13, 1908 NYT reports on the pending new world order (I suppose we are still waiting):

The Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, D.D. of the International Reform Bureau, who spoke at the Warren Avenue Baptist Church last night, declared in his address that within a few years Theodore Roosevelet would be "President of the World."

Dr. Crafts said that his bureau's work would result in an international government at The Hague with legislative and executive departments. At the head would be Mr. Roosevelt bearing the title above mentioned.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:12 PM in Politics

October 09, 2008

The guns of October? c. 1908

The Oct. 9, 1908 NYT reports on the response in Serbia of the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Belgrade, Servia: Great crowds surrounded the palace to-night shouting for war and calling for the King to appear. Finally King Peter, accompanied by the Crown Prince, came to the balcony, and implored the people not to cause disturbances. He said:

"Trust me and my government: both will do their duty."

The crowd cheered the King but continued to shout "war with Austria."

In about six years, the cheering crowd would have their way - and 9-10 million men under arms and 9-10 million civilians would die.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:45 PM in Politics

October 08, 2008

Li'l Help?

Please go here, and vote for Mike Munger.

He needs you.

(Second debate is tonight, on WUNC-TV, at 8 PM. On *T* *V*, so it must be important...)

Posted by Michael Munger at 12:08 PM in Politics

October 07, 2008

Tony Romo, Las Vegas Voter

This is why it's important to understand ACORN:

Nevada authorities have raided the Las Vegas office of the community-organizing group ACORN seeking evidence of voter fraud.

Investigators seized records and computers from ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The office was unstaffed at the time.

Secretary of State Ross Miller said fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said, according to the Associated Press. He said others used false names or information, or had duplicated information on multiple forms.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 07:32 PM in Politics

October 06, 2008

Battleground states c. 1908

Think the "battleground state" is a new development? The October 6, 1908 NYT reports:

New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana - these are the determining States. In both National committees this is fully recognized. From now until election day these are the States in which both the Republican and Democratic managers will centre their efforts. Into these states will go both Mr. Taft and Mr. Bryan. Bryan will reserve New York for the last.

The story goes on to show that candidates have ceded states to their opponents for quite some time:

Norman E. Mack, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, came here to-day and told the newspaper men that he left for the Republican in the East only Pennsylvania and two or three of the New England States, but some of his colleagues at the headquarters, when they learned that he had not put Pennsylvania into the debatable column, protested that he was altogether conservative.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:19 PM in Politics

October 05, 2008

Don't Know Much About History

Contrary to Joe Biden's claim that FDR took to the tele in 1929 to calm the nation after the stock market crash, the first televised White House address by a president was Harry Truman's address 61 years ago today.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:16 PM in Politics

October 01, 2008

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've told people before that my Plan for World Domination is to someday hire a group of fourth graders to follow me around singing "I Believe the Children Are Our Future," in which case I would be able to get whatever I want. If this video is legit, it looks like some of Barack Obama's supporters have beaten me to the punch:

Posted by Art Carden at 09:24 PM in Politics

Re:The Arsonists are Running the Fire Station...

Apparently John--I don't do earmarks--McCain intends to vote for the bill. To be fair, the wooden arrow provision isn't technically an earmark; it's a narrowly defined tax exemption not a specifically targeted federal expenditure. But that baby sure walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:04 PM in Politics

How Washington Works

... is to take a dubious proposition--the $700B bailout package--and make it worse:

Senate leaders scheduled a Wednesday vote on a $700 billion financial bailout package after accepting tax breaks and a higher limit for insured bank deposits in a bid to win House approval and send legislation to President Bush by the end of the week.

Top lawmakers said the Senate proposal, worked out after a day of behind the scenes maneuvering, would include tax breaks for businesses and alternative energy and higher government insurance for bank deposits.

In related news, George W. Bailout is up to his old tricks:

President George W. Bush on Tuesday signed into law a mammoth spending bill to keep the government running until early March 2009 that includes a $25 billion loan package for troubled automakers.

The $25 billion loan package, the biggest federal subsidy for the auto industry since the 1980 bailout of Chrysler, cleared Congress last weekend when the focus was on the debate over the $700 billion financial rescue package.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:27 AM in Politics

September 26, 2008

Debate Chat Transcript

Below the fold: the transcript of the live chat that occurred at www.commercialappeal.com earlier this evening (posted for my econ 101 students, who have a homework assignment based on the debate due on Tuesday). UPDATE: Apparently, I was only able to copy and paste the first 40 minutes of the chat. The rest is available here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/debatechat/.

Read More »

7:43
Commercial Appeal: Hi all. Welcome to The Commercial Appeal's live online chat! We're going to be watching the Presidential debate in Oxford and discussing.

7:45
[Comment From Nrogara]
Hi all
7:45
[Comment From Babs]
Hey
7:45
[Comment From Guest]
Vote Nader! There’s something fishy when both candidates exclude third parties from the debate. It’s as if the Dems and Republicans have rigged a system in which they alternate as President every 8 years.
7:45
[Comment From Andre]
Good evening
7:45
Commercial Appeal: Welcome

7:46
Commercial Appeal: Good question, guest. Not sure. But that's a question for another day, I think.
7:47
[Comment From Guest]
Why is Ralph Nader excluded from the debates? He’s the only candidate against this communist move to send 700,000,000,000 tax payer dollars to corporate fat cats who are destroying the economy. What is going on? Are these debates rigged or something? Nader’s at 5% in the national polls. That’s impressive considering he’s been ignored by the wall street owned media.
7:47
[Comment From Guest]
Hello, Michael here
7:47
[Comment From Stop]
Chat should never have sound
7:47
[Comment From Michael]
Hello,
7:47
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
Good evening everyone
7:48
Commercial Appeal: hi michael, hi kesha.
7:48
Commercial Appeal: 11 minutes on the countdown
7:48
[Comment From Stop]
Ralph Nader is a joke.
7:48
Commercial Appeal: let's leave ralph nader for another discussion.
7:48
[Comment From Kareem]
Hello everybody
7:49
Commercial Appeal: any early predictions on who will do well?
7:49
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
I say put in Prince Mongo... LOL
7:49
[Comment From Michael]
I didn't know that Nader was polling at 5% nationally. Where did you read this?
7:49
[Comment From LaTasha]
Hello everyone!
7:50
[Comment From Michael]
Obama will do much better than McCain with all but die hard McCain fans.
7:50
[Comment From Wayne]
Evening all...
7:50
[Comment From Nrogara]
Obama has an early advantage cause He can call out McCain on what he did just 48 hrs ago
7:50
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
I think both will do well. If Obama doesn't studder and McCain keeps his cool.
7:51
Commercial Appeal: what's everyone watching on? i have msnbc on

7:51
[Comment From Babs]
We all know that Obama has a talent for public speaking.
7:51
[Comment From Kareem]
CNN
7:52
[Comment From Babs]
WJCL
7:52
[Comment From B-Rob]
CNN here
7:52
[Comment From Wayne]
I am viewing on Channel 5
7:52
[Comment From Michael]
McCain is not to good under the gun. He did better than Obama at Ric Warren's event because o0f the nature of the questions and the lack of follow up questions.
7:52
[Comment From LaTasha]
channel 5 here
7:52
[Comment From Nader for The People]
Nader is polling at 5-7% in several natl polls
7:52
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
NBC
7:53
[Comment From Babs]
I think they both agreed on a freestyle debate tonight, right?
7:53
[Comment From Michael]
I'm watching on channel 5
7:53
Commercial Appeal: jim lehrer will be in charge, as usual. we'll see what style it takes. been an interesting couple of days leading up to this.
7:53
[Comment From Nader for The People]
the questions are prechosen
7:54
[Comment From doc1]
let's get ready to rumble
7:54
Commercial Appeal: LOL at doc1. we should have michael buffer announce.
7:54
[Comment From vera]
good evening!
7:54
Commercial Appeal: hi vera
7:55
[Comment From LaTasha]
is there some lag on here?
7:55
Commercial Appeal: i have to approve the comments, but i'll be setting it up for the folks i've been working with so that stops. shouldn't be a problem
7:55
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
yes there is
7:55
[Comment From doc1]
it will be an interesting evening, lets be civilized and have a good debate
7:55
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Good evening, everyone. Gary Robinson, are you here?
7:56
Commercial Appeal: hi Michael Huggins. i am
7:56
[Comment From Babs]
The lag's probably from them screening us.
7:56
[Comment From LaTasha]
oh, i see... i thought it was my system!
7:56
[Comment From Guest]
Cnn
7:56
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Am I logged in correctly to do what I need to do?
7:56
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
Everyone remember the golden rule, pls
7:56
Commercial Appeal: Michael, you're just fine.
7:56
[Comment From Art Carden]
Greetings, everyone. In addition to the debate between McCain and Obama, Libertarian candidate Bob Barr will be responding to debate questions at http://www.mogulus.com/reason, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney will be responding at www.bloggingthedebates.com. Does anyone know if Nader or any of the other candidates are responding in real time anywhere?
7:56
[Comment From doc1]
Gary, will you be involved in the debate or would u be just moderating
7:56
[Comment From Sarah]
how does this work
7:57
Commercial Appeal: Doc, most of my time will be just keeping up.

7:57
[Comment From vera]
I hope that this is a group for tangible and realistic discussion and not attacks! Are there ground rules Gary?
7:57
Commercial Appeal: Sarah, you just type your thoughts.
7:57
[Comment From Nrogara]
Sarah this works kinda like a chat room
7:57
Commercial Appeal: exactly, vera, thanks!!
7:57
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Out of curiosity, is anyone else logged in to MySpace.com/MyDebates to watch this online?
7:57
[Comment From Stop]
who is the moderator?
7:58
Commercial Appeal: Stop, i am the moderator. i'm Gary Robinson, online news editor at the CA.

7:58
[Comment From doc1]
we all r
7:58
[Comment From Michael]
Ladies and gentlemen, standing 6' 3'' tall, weighing 200 lbs, wearing the dark suit and red tie, from Chicago, Barrrrrrrack OOOOOOObamaaaa
7:58
[Comment From Aaron]
I'll try and keep up here, but am working over on Twitter during the debate
7:58
[Comment From doc1]
it is time fasten your seat belts ya'll, it will be a ride to remember
7:59
Commercial Appeal: OK folks, like vera says, let's have a great, sane, decent discussion about what comes up during the debate.
7:59
[Comment From Patricia]
Hello everyone!
7:59
[Comment From Michael]
And his opponnent.....
7:59
[Comment From Nrogara]
I'm watching this on cnn.com live and they're gettin ready
7:59
[Comment From 6burkes]
hello
7:59
[Comment From LaTasha]
let's do this man!
7:59
[Comment From Sarah]
talking about Memphis on CNN
7:59
[Comment From Nader for The People]
Nader has many people blogging, and will be on Bill Maher after the debate and will release online answers to all the q's right after the debate
7:59
[Comment From Shelton]
hello
8:00
[Comment From Frank]
Hello Everyone.
8:00
[Comment From Michael]
Sane and decent? Remember we're talking about politics!
8:00
[Comment From Aaron]
Who is playing the Debate shot game? Take a shot if McCain says "My Friends", Obama says "Change", Lehrer says "Senator, Two Minutes". HAVE FUN!!!
8:00
[Comment From Dawn S.]
Hi everyone
8:00
[Comment From Guest]
Hello from Corinth. MS
8:00
[Comment From GObama!]
Hey all
8:00
[Comment From TLH728]
Hi
8:00
Commercial Appeal: the debate shot game? LOL oh terrific.

8:01
[Comment From doc1]
everybody remember we r here to have a discussion so please be civilized and bring up good points lets c if we can solve our problems right here!!!
8:01
[Comment From TLH728]
I am ready!
8:01
[Comment From Dawn S.]
Here we go!
8:01
[Comment From vera]
Michael, even in politics there are exceptions:)
8:01
[Comment From doc1]
Gary r u ready?
8:01
Commercial Appeal: i sure hope so, doc!
8:01
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Jim Lehrer just said "You all." Being in the South must be getting to him!
8:01
[Comment From Nrogara]
Doc u ready??
8:01
[Comment From Jabril]
Well it's that time. Stand up Oxford.
8:01
[Comment From LaTasha]
Aaron that sounds very dangerous. You may risk alcohol poisoning.
8:01
[Comment From marcina1127]
hello everyone
8:02
[Comment From doc1]
cnn has a great set up
8:02
[Comment From JYoungest1]
woo how many people are in here
8:02
[Comment From Aaron]
Watching on CSPAN2, so no talking heads, just the debate
8:02
[Comment From doc1]
they have score cards for each candidates
8:02
[Comment From Dawn S.]
yeah, i'm on cnn too.
8:02
[Comment From LaTasha]
what's up with cnn's scorecard?
8:02
Commercial Appeal: a lot of folks here already

8:02
[Comment From doc1]
it will be fun to c the scores
8:02
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Direct exchanges between the candidates are permitted. This should be interesting.
8:02
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
whew! I am tired already.
8:03
[Comment From TLH728]
Because this is a very important debate
8:03
[Comment From Aaron]
Lehrer is DA MAN!
8:03
[Comment From JYoungest1]
Is CNN the only one broadcasting this
8:03
[Comment From LaTasha]
applause!
8:03
[Comment From Nrogara]
no
8:03
[Comment From JYoungest1]
online at least
8:03
[Comment From Kareem]
CNN has perception meters to from a group of registered ohio voters at the bottom that are holding little devices that they use to rate what the candidates are saying realtime
8:03
[Comment From doc1]
all channels are
8:03
[Comment From 6burkes]
not only cnn, its all over the tv
8:03
[Comment From Guest]
MSNBC is too
8:04
[Comment From JYoungest1]
i mean online wise
8:04
[Comment From doc1]
stright to economy
8:04
[Comment From Jabril]
Good Question
8:04
[Comment From Sarah]
stop thanking , start talking
8:04
[Comment From Nrogara]
I believe thanks is in order
8:04
[Comment From Michael]
Don't waste too much time with thanks
8:04
[Comment From LaTasha]
someone mentioned myspace
8:04
[Comment From TLH728]
I hope Obama does not give a speech
8:04
[Comment From 6burkes]
answer the question already
8:04
[Comment From Diane]
Hi everyone - good luck to each candidate!
8:04
[Comment From doc1]
he is right we r struggling
8:04
[Comment From Nrogara]
look how Obama is looking right at the camera as if he is talking to the people
8:04
[Comment From Jabril]
You greet your audience first. Comparative talking one on one.
8:04
[Comment From Michael]
Good relate it to the individuals
8:05
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
He's taking too much time "setting the stage," for an allocation of only 2 minutes.
8:05
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
New comers go back and read the house rules
8:05
[Comment From vera]
keep i
8:05
[Comment From TLH728]
I am glad he is giving a plan
8:05
[Comment From vera]
keep
8:05
[Comment From Stewart]
Isn't two mns. up yet?!
8:05
[Comment From Dawn S.]
i like how he's numerating his remarks
8:05
[Comment From Aaron]
He is going point by point
8:05
[Comment From doc1]
yey for te tax prayers
8:05
[Comment From Sarah]
nope..
8:05
[Comment From Diane]
Who's for McCain in here who's for Obama?
8:05
[Comment From Sarah]
that man is my hero
8:05
[Comment From 6burkes]
those are thery points, what is he going to actually do
8:05
[Comment From Stewart]
mccain
8:05
[Comment From Nader for The People]
there are more choices
8:05
[Comment From TLH728]
shot number 1
8:06
[Comment From JYoungest1]
wow Diane what a crazy question
8:06
[Comment From vera]
keep in mind Obama is a constitutional lawyer and accustomed to make presentations, not suggesting that McCain cannot. He did well at Saddlecreek, in my opinion.
8:06
[Comment From doc1]
good last [unch with bringin bush oin
8:06
[Comment From TLH728]
I am for Obama
8:06
[Comment From Dawn S.]
it's a lot to consider...this bailout thing. hard for anyone to really 'get it'
8:06
[Comment From Michael]
I for the truth. End the lies and the rest will take care of itself!
8:06
[Comment From Nrogara]
Oh my name it is nothin and my age means les
8:06
[Comment From TLH728]
oh gosh
8:06
[Comment From Jabril]
Shouldn't matter who you are for right now. Learn their policies and views
8:06
[Comment From Kareem]
there are only two realistic choices, otherwise i would vote for Barr or Ron Paul
8:06
[Comment From Aaron]
Good opening for Obama
8:06
[Comment From doc1]
can he talk any faster
8:06
[Comment From LaTasha]
mccain is wasting time...
8:06
[Comment From vera]
I think that we should be bi-partisan on this blog and discuss the tangible aspect of the debate and not whose bandwagon we're on, don't you agree!
8:06
[Comment From Sarah]
awww.. hes fewing a wittle better tonight
8:06
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain's mention of Kennedy is gracious, but he sounds sad and tired. Obama, by contrast, sounds determined and energetic.
8:06
[Comment From Frank]
I'm pro-Obama; but I'm hoping that he will stick with the issues and not attack McCain as he just did. Taking a strong position on the issues will suffice given the gravity of the issues.
8:07
[Comment From 6burkes]
they both are wasting time
8:07
[Comment From Nrogara]
McCain is looking at Leher and the people at the building notice the change between the two already
8:07
[Comment From Sarah]
McCain is exhausted
8:07
[Comment From Rob]
Their answers sound so prepared
8:07
[Comment From Stewart]
I disagree, Jabril.... most Americans are decided... and the debates do nothing but solidify their decisions.
8:07
[Comment From TLH728]
Yea Mccain you have been around a while
8:07
[Comment From Sarah]
poor old man.
8:07
[Comment From doc1]
mccain hasn't used "my friends" once yet
8:07
[Comment From Patricia]
With each candidate presentation means a lot, Certainly Obama leads in that category
8:07
[Comment From vera]
It's easy to watch on TV and become critical. If we were in their shoes things would be different.
8:07
[Comment From LaTasha]
i agree frank
8:07
[Comment From Nader for The People]
please stop saying we have to fix it and tell us how you will
8:07
[Comment From Dawn S.]
mccain seems faltering a little
8:08
[Comment From JYoungest1]
Since main stream media all the debates have been fake as the canidates
8:08
[Comment From matt]
There is no transparency or oversight in Paulson's package. What's McCain talking about?
8:08
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain is doing well in that he sounds like your wise and experienced uncle who has been around the block a few times. Obama, by contrast, sounded a little "theoretical," as someone noted earlier.
8:08
[Comment From 6burkes]
anyone truly undecided at this point is just not that interested
8:08
[Comment From Diane]
Jabril, I've already learned their policies and views haven't you? Just wanted to know who's for who already. I agree with Sarah.
8:08
[Comment From julie cee]
sorry I am late...major tech diffs
8:08
[Comment From Kareem]
my friends is irritating
8:08
[Comment From Jabril]
If anyone is decided before they even know what will happen before the election, they are not savvy voters
8:08
[Comment From Patricia]
Telling the truth is not really attacking another candidate it is the truth
8:08
[Comment From Stewart]
All Obama is, is theoretical.
8:08
[Comment From waqe]
I suspect even if mccain does well tonight, the vice-pres debate will reverse any gains made here.
8:08
[Comment From julie cee]
Neither Senator looks more tired than the other....focus on what matters, please
8:08
[Comment From Todd]
NOW he's for oversight...lol
8:08
[Comment From vera]
what does oil have to do with the recovery plan mentioned by mccain
8:08
[Comment From Lin]
Hi all
8:08
[Comment From Michael]
McCain meander too much and sounded weak.
8:08
[Comment From doc1]
hoe did oil from forgin came about about the plan
8:09
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain sounds as though he has been up all night, with his sleeves rolled up, working on this crisis. That buys sympathy. Obama needs to achieve a decisive tone that convinces hearers that he is the one to solve the problem.
8:09
[Comment From TLH728]
Oh gosh mccain start talking about what your plan is
8:09
[Comment From Art Carden]
Style points: Obama looks better than McCain after the first question. Here's an interesting question: what were the changes in incentives that produced the crisis?
8:09
[Comment From Frank]
I'm glad Lehrer didn't let them "off the hook."
8:09
[Comment From Sarah]
I agree. I'm very excited about seeing Palin fail.
8:09
[Comment From TLH728]
what is the plan
8:09
[Comment From Patricia]
I agree with that wage
8:09
[Comment From 6burkes]
obama asks himself a question instead of answering the one given
8:09
[Comment From doc1]
good call vera
8:09
[Comment From TLH728]
i agree doc1
8:09
[Comment From julie cee]
Obama is an empty suit as far as I am personally concerned, but our goal/role here is to be objective as possible.
8:09
[Comment From Jabril]
I will vote for the party that will best help America get out of the mess it is in
8:09
[Comment From Nader for The People]
It's not main stream media making the debates fake, it is the cpd taking control of the debates from the league of women voters - the cpd is run by the dem and repub parties
8:09
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
please can someone tell me how I can get my money right
8:09
[Comment From LaTasha]
obama was up all night too huh>
8:09
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
Pls go and read the house rules
8:10
[Comment From julie cee]
AMEN jabril...
8:10
[Comment From Diane]
uh...haven't things gone on for the last year +? Things have _already_ happened. This last couple weeks before the election is the rest of it.
8:10
[Comment From Patricia]
Remember McCain is old, probably up past his bed time
8:10
[Comment From LaTasha]
Good point Keesha
8:10
[Comment From bporlando]
I tought this debte was about foreign poicy
8:10
[Comment From TLH728]
jeez
8:10
[Comment From doc1]
look we all know people are going to vote party line but the undecided are important
8:10
[Comment From LaTasha]
Jim is a tough cookie.
8:10
[Comment From TLH728]
mccain
8:10
[Comment From Aaron]
Stop clearing your throat John
8:10
[Comment From Stewart]
Jabril.... after all of the policitics over the last year, you haven't figured out which party you think you will vote for? Come on... get real.
8:10
[Comment From Rob]
Where are the other candidates?
8:10
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
oh.. here we go another war story!!
8:10
[Comment From Sarah]
this is a bad night for him
8:10
[Comment From doc1]
i am falling sleep mccain
8:10
[Comment From TLH728]
i do not know anything about eisenhower answer the question
8:10
[Comment From Diane]
lol Patricia
8:11
[Comment From TLH728]
and i have heard this analogy 3 times
8:11
[Comment From Dawn S.]
where is mccain going with this? stay on topic dude!
8:11
[Comment From JYoungest1]
Nader for the People, all the candidates are fake now, they are made of so much plastic its ridiculous. No one needs the money they waste on their campaigns and if you like nader you know
8:11
[Comment From Aaron]
Answer the question!!
8:11
[Comment From Patricia]
Why vote party, instead of voting for the best candidate
8:11
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
how yourself accountable, McCain
8:11
[Comment From Michael]
Stories work good under some circumstances, but McCain looks like he is waisting time.
8:11
[Comment From Sarah]
I got excited for this?
8:11
[Comment From Diane]
Anyway Jabril, your views about this are only _one person's_ views and not the views of the whole. So thanks for your opinion - but no thanks.
8:11
[Comment From doc1]
somebody stab me with this story
8:11
[Comment From Sarah]
This is the first presidential debate I've ever watched
8:11
[Comment From julie cee]
TLH--google it for a history lesson--he preceded all of us!
8:11
[Comment From jake]
so far sooo boring
8:11
[Comment From Rob]
Yea how come Nader isn't here anyway?
8:11
[Comment From Stop]
he can't answer the question
8:11
[Comment From N.S]
They can't answer the question because they don't know what the plan is.
8:11
[Comment From matt]
Chairman of SEC will retire at end of Bush admin. That's an empty threat
8:11
[Comment From Jabril]
Look in the last few days a candidate wanted to suspend his campaign, this shows that neither the candidates are made up on what to do
8:12
[Comment From Dawn S.]
he's not saying anything concrete
8:12
[Comment From Kesha Williams]
tah dah!
8:12
[Comment From 6burkes]
they both are lame so far
8:12
[Comment From LaTasha]
i agree that we should hold the 'fat cats' accountable but hasn't this been going on? Where was he before now?
8:12
[Comment From TLH728]
i know julie cee...
8:12
[Comment From Michael]
Good verbal judo, but then a stumble.
8:12
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
The Chairman of the SEC wasn't chiefly responsible for this. McCain, again, has the right tone--the wise and experienced elder statesman who feels all this in his heart--but he and Obama both need to say specfically what they believe needs to be done.
8:12
[Comment From Nrogara]
McCain seems bored at this on CBS
8:12
[Comment From julie cee]
OBAMA's been smoking too much....he's anorexic...bless his heart
8:12
[Comment From Art Carden]
McCain on Greed: greed is a constant. Did the underlying level of greed change, or was it a change in incentives?
8:12
[Comment From tink]
yep
8:12
[Comment From doc1]
mccain knows about president eisenhwer b/c he was there with him writing the letter
8:12
[Comment From Frank]
They are afraid to answer the question. They both know that they are going to vote for the "bailout" plan. They are uncertain, though, about how the public feels about this payout. So they are deliberately posturing to be tentative.
8:12
[Comment From TLH728]
i dont need to know about eisenhower 3 times already
8:12
[Comment From Sarah]
lol...what's funny?..why are they laughing
8:12
[Comment From Nrogara]
good one doc
8:12
[Comment From Michael]
Nice body shot by Obama on fundementals
8:12
[Comment From Dawn S.]
good point frank.
8:13
[Comment From Art Carden]
"Wages and incomes for ordinary Americans to go down..." comparisons of medians, particularly for households, can be very misleading. In addition, benefits as a percentage of total compensation has increased.
8:13
[Comment From 6burkes]
Obama has not said anything all night
8:13
[Comment From doc1]
good call obama
8:13
[Comment From TLH728]
there is that key word...main street
8:13
[Comment From Michael]
Leher is tough on McCain
8:13
doc1: both senators had time to fix this mess in the senate in the past few years
8:13
[Comment From N.S]
MCcain suspended his campaign and still does not know the details of the plan
8:13
[Comment From Aaron]
Lehrer wants a fight!
8:13
[Comment From matt]
That's right. I need to know that my account (at Wachovia, which is searching for a buyer) will be worth tomorrow what its worth today!
8:13
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Obama is not being sufficiently aggressive as a debater. He needed to have turned to McCain and said, "Senator, what did you mean when you said the fundamentals of the economy were sound?" And then fold his arms and wait for an answer.
8:13
[Comment From marcina1127]
i don't think mccain has an answer to the first question. he went from "i hope i will support the plan" to "i will support the plan". he should know if he is or is not by now.
8:13
[Comment From Nader for The People]
Again, Nader and other candidates, McKinney, Baldwin, etc are not here bc the CPD is party controlled. Read the League of women voters statement on the '88 takeover of the cpd
8:14
[Comment From tink]
if i hear main street wall street one more time I"m gonna hurl
8:14
[Comment From vera]
try to be bipartisan if possible
8:14
[Comment From Rob]
here watch this it's more exciting a. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5WiE6MnmCM
8:14
[Comment From LaTasha]
good point NS
8:14
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Yes, Lehrer is being tougher on McCain than Obama is.
8:14
doc1: i was out for a while
8:14
[Comment From TLH728]
are we main street? or are american citizens
8:14
[Comment From Todd in Boise]
then pay them more, McCain
8:14
[Comment From Nrogara]
yea McCain quit Letterman pointed that out 2 nights ago
8:14
[Comment From Stop]
we need a commercial break
8:14
[Comment From Lin]
I thought McCain had a solid idea to help with bailout solution.
8:14
[Comment From vera]
lehr wants dynamics which is great for a debate, not a dialogue
8:14
[Comment From 6burkes]
there are no other candidates tonight, so go away
8:14
Kesha Williams: so true. Even though Obabma voted present at least he was there to know what was going on.. McCain wasn't there. he had to get the notes like he was in college.
8:14
[Comment From Nader for The People]
ALL ballot qualified candidates should be here - no one is harmed by hearing more views
8:14
[Comment From Michael]
Like two little senators can do something about a train about to wreck.
8:14
[Comment From LaTasha]
Nader for the People - can we discuss the candidates on the screen?
8:14
[Comment From julie cee]
i want to hear details, but it may be an unrealistic desire.
8:14
[Comment From Patricia]
McCain suspended his campaign because he was Grantstanding
8:14
[Comment From TLH728]
earmarks..pork belly spending
8:14
Commercial Appeal: Obama vs. McCain is our discussion tonight, please
8:15
[Comment From Stewart]
Yes... spending, spending, spending.... it is out of control and Obama wants even more!!!
8:15
[Comment From Jabril]
If people cannot look at this as a dress rehersal for the white house, then why have a debate. these debates are suppose to be for voters to find out what candidates really know and what they will do. why have them if everyones mind is made up. just go straight to the election.
8:15
[Comment From JYoungest1]
Not big on Mccain but he said that last one well
8:15
[Comment From julie cee]
Nader is not here...can we focus on what we're tasked with, please?
8:15
Kesha Williams: so did it take 8 yrs to find out that the spending was wrong?
8:15
[Comment From Michael]
What about earmarks in Alaska?
8:15
[Comment From matt]
he's used that joke before. kill it
8:15
[Comment From Sarah]
he's got a pen!!!!
8:15
[Comment From TLH728]
they both want to spend more
8:15
[Comment From TLH728]
famous?
8:15
[Comment From N.S]
We heard all of this before.
8:15
[Comment From Nader for The People]
we're tasked with the future of our country, no?
8:16
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain's obsession with earmarks is shortsighted. He rightly notes the incredible expansion of government spending, but the biggest single increase was in fighting the Iraq War. The earmarks he is so fond of denouncing account for only about $80 billion a year.
8:16
[Comment From matt]
Ask him about Palin's earmark requests
8:16
[Comment From Bobbieee]
not just any pen an old one
8:16
[Comment From Art Carden]
McCain is right that we have to get spending under control, but we've heard this before from politicians from both parties for decades. He isn't very clear on the specifics.
8:16
[Comment From Mem]
It didn't take 8 years . They didn't care
8:16
[Comment From doc1]
why did u vote for all the spending in the first place to now veto it
8:16
[Comment From julie cee]
ok...we getting specific amounts.....now--are they accurate?
8:16
[Comment From Michael]
Good Point Michael Huggins Iraq War
8:16
[Comment From Stewart]
Because, Jabril, it is educating the voters.
8:16
[Comment From Frank]
McCain says that he will veto every spending bill that comes across his desk. I wonder, though, if he would veto the "bailout" plan?
8:16
[Comment From Mem]
McCain is a lair.
8:17
[Comment From Stewart]
Question for the group... Have you decided who you are voting for? Just a quick Yes / No
8:17
[Comment From Jabril]
No president will be able to turn this mess we are in, without bi-partisanship. Americans have to work with whoever is elected President
8:17
[Comment From Sarah]
I can't vote!
8:17
[Comment From Dawn S.]
yes
8:17
[Comment From doc1]
good call obama
8:17
[Comment From marcina1127]
hes saying that he is going to stop excessive spending but he is supporting the bailout and at least 8 more years in iraq...
8:17
[Comment From Frank]
Yes.
8:17
[Comment From Guest]
yes
8:17
[Comment From LaTasha]
yes
8:17
[Comment From N.S]
Obama is making a very good point with nice figures.
8:17
[Comment From Patricia]
Frank do you need askm McClain will vote the bailout plan
8:17
[Comment From waqe]
mem, yes, seemingly considerably more than obama.
8:17
[Comment From julie cee]
can anyone validate the 18 million e-marks for 2007?
8:17
[Comment From matt]
I really don't care how much Obama (or anyone) raises taxes for the rich. I'm all for it. Tax the rich, feed the poor.
8:17
[Comment From Patricia]
dittop DOC1
8:17
[Comment From Mem]
Obama
8:17
Kesha Williams: can't have anything stable without a strong foundation or roots
8:17
[Comment From doc1]
sounds good to me lets tax people who make more
8:17
[Comment From Stewart]
yes
8:17
[Comment From Dawn S.]
realistically tho..can we expect a tax cut if we have to pay for this bailout?
8:18
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Obama still sounds too much like an economics professor discussing pros and cons in front of a class, and less like a warrior for his cause, seeking to defeat an opponent.
8:18
Kesha Williams: from the bottom up
8:18
[Comment From Frank]
Patricia, both of them will vote for the plan.
8:18
[Comment From conventional1]
These are both Senators talking like they are on the outside looking in when they comment on the financial crisis--suggesting they have to be President in order to monitor the greedy execs on Wall street
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
You
8:18
[Comment From TLH728]
oh gosh
8:18
[Comment From Donna]
If McCain uses the word "fundamental" again, I'm going to scream!
8:18
[Comment From Patricia]
mATT you can't really believe that
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
You
8:18
[Comment From matt]
I think a tax cut for most and a raise for the top 2% - 5% is reasonable
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
need
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
ome
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
one
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
who
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
can
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
hink
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
to
8:18
[Comment From Michael]
McCain is making a mistake
8:18
[Comment From Guest]
are yall watching the debate on cnn... they have the audience reaction gauge
8:18
[Comment From Art Carden]
Obama on "growing the economy from the bottom up:" how will tax cuts work without spending cuts?
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
run
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
the
8:18
Kesha Williams: uh oh sheriff= maverick
8:18
[Comment From Stewart]
I didn't see any NO's... sounds like eveyrone her has decided already... and so have most Americans.
8:18
[Comment From 6burkes]
once 51% learn they can screw the other 49% the whole country is doomed
8:18
[Comment From Mem]
country
8:19
[Comment From Mem]
not
8:19
[Comment From Mem]
a
8:19
[Comment From conventional1]
Neither one have any specifics--uh, we have to have reform
8:19
[Comment From matt]
Donna, you'll be hoarse by tomorrow morning
8:19
[Comment From TLH728]
keating 5
8:19
[Comment From Dawn S.]
a republican talking about corruption? thats laughable!
8:19
[Comment From Jabril]
The next president is going to have to reel in the federal reserve, many people don't know that it is a private entity
8:19
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
The "Reaction Gauge" is pretty confusing.
8:19
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
If McCain was called "The Sherriff," he needed to have exercised some of that spirit when dealing with Charles Keating.
8:19
[Comment From marcina1127]
from "maverick" to sherrif"... :-)
8:19
[Comment From N.S]
What is McCain reading from.
8:19
[Comment From Sarah]
that's neat.. audience meter
8:19
[Comment From Michael]
McCain is making a big mistake defending tax cut for wealth
8:19
[Comment From Aaron]
On snap, here we go!
8:19
[Comment From Guest]
hey dont make fun of my reaction gauge. ha, but yes all the colors just blur together.
8:19
[Comment From LaTasha]
that scared me!
8:20
[Comment From sarah]
took him long enough
8:20
[Comment From Donna]
The Kennedy comment McCain made was for sympathy only.
8:20
[Comment From Frank]
Obama JUST became impressive.
8:20
[Comment From Frank]
Obama JUST became impressive.
8:20
[Comment From Art Carden]
We can analyze Obama's health care program using basic supply and demand (giant hint, students). If the price of health care is zero, what happens to quantity demanded and quantity supplied?
8:20
[Comment From sarah]
eye contact!
8:20
[Comment From tink]
go Barak...interrupt and make your point....get tough....he needs to get a bit heated
8:20
Kesha Williams: abra cadabra
8:20
[Comment From Lin]
McCain is using scare tactics to capture voters
8:20
[Comment From Sarah]
what are earmarks? It might be more interesting if I understood what they were talking about.
8:20
[Comment From Aaron]
Obama is going after him. Here we go.
8:20
[Comment From waqe]
let's hear his comments on taxes.. i hope he not say he cutting taxes for everyone.
8:20
[Comment From TLH728]
the health plan will not happen
8:20
[Comment From 6burkes]
productive parts of society do not need the government unlawfully redistributing their work efforts
8:20
[Comment From B-Rob]
This "respond directly to the opponent" nonsense seems more like couples counseling than a debate
8:20
[Comment From Patricia]
McClain looks a little up set
8:21
[Comment From sarah w.]
what ever happened to caring about actual people...
8:21
[Comment From vera]
earmarks are pork (excess spending or special interest spending)
8:21
Kesha Williams: let's hope that his temper doesn't flare...it will turn into one of his tv ads.
8:21
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Ireland? What happened to China or Taiwan? =D
8:21
[Comment From waqe]
he has twisted the comments on personal taxes, and replying about corporate taxes.
8:21
[Comment From doc1]
here we go again, we r talking about ireland
8:21
[Comment From Patricia]
A Health plan needs to happen
8:21
[Comment From Stop]
Obama needs to snap on McCain about his choice of running mate and her earmarks
8:21
[Comment From Donna]
My thought is that McCain came into the debate behind, (tried to get out of it) so it's all downhill from there for him.
8:21
[Comment From Dawn S.]
mccain i don't want a story...tell me what these business tax cuts are really going to do to stimulate the economy
8:22
[Comment From LaTasha]
I recall mccain mocking obama for taxing corporations... am i alone in that?
8:22
[Comment From conventional1]
dumb comment from McCain on low taxes in Ireland--there aren't plentiful jobs in Ireland or a thriving economy there except for maybe tourism
8:22
6burkes: how can the government pay for your health when only the individual bears responsibility for being unhealthy
8:22
[Comment From Frank]
McCain can help himself, here, by speaking to the issue of the "hurting people."
8:22
[Comment From Aaron]
McCain is already repeating himself.
8:22
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
I want people to have free money, but thats not gonna happen now is it McCain?
8:22
[Comment From TLH728]
the road to nowhere
8:22
[Comment From Art Carden]
We can learn a lot from Ireland. It has been called the "Celtic Tiger" because of its robust economic growth in the last couple of decades, largely as a result of sound economic policies.
8:22
[Comment From Sarah]
I didn't hear anything about Ireland......oh my goodness
8:22
[Comment From doc1]
where does the 5000 will come when u r gining 700bil to corporations
8:22
[Comment From sarah w.]
who cares about a tax credit when you can't get coverage...
8:22
[Comment From Nader for The People]
paulson should reign end of story
8:22
[Comment From waqe]
700B bailout, and he wants every family to have tax cuts...
8:22
[Comment From vera]
How can we afford personal healthcare and gas at the same time?
8:22
[Comment From Jabril]
Greenspan was over the economy from the Reagan era, through George W, he had a lot to do with what is happening in America today. The next President must have control over the federal reserve and how wall street types are able to do business
8:22
[Comment From Guest]
arent earmarks basically a PS. we get more $ for ___ added on a piece of legislation
8:22
[Comment From julie cee]
well said, 6 burkes
8:23
[Comment From tink]
250000 WOW that is a lot of money!!!! do you make that much??????
8:23
[Comment From matt]
250 grand sounds fair to me
8:23
[Comment From Michael]
Nice counter punch by Obama
8:23
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
McCain didn
8:23
Kesha Williams: That is true 6Burkes
8:23
[Comment From TLH728]
im liking that obama is looking at mccain
8:23
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Obama needs to stop hemming and hawing. If he's this much of a milquetoast debating McCain, I wonder how he'll do if he faces Putin.
8:23
[Comment From Dawn S.]
obama's getting him good now.
8:23
[Comment From tink]
I'll take 150000 thank you!
8:23
[Comment From julie cee]
man...we need gas to drive ourselves TO health care
8:23
[Comment From Squatchmo]
Definition of rich: When you're not sure how many homes you own.
8:23
[Comment From Frank]
Obama is absolutely right concerning the disparity between the business tax rate and the effective tax paid.
8:23
[Comment From Donna]
Can anyone else hear the "education" behind Sen. Obama's comments versus the "off the cuff" comments spilling out of McCain's moutn?
8:23
[Comment From julie cee]
OBAMA was looking off into the wings and mouthing to someone...didja catch it?
8:23
Kesha Williams: There is that temper!!
8:23
[Comment From doc1]
good hit obama
8:24
[Comment From Michael]
If this was a boxing match, McCain would already be in trouble
8:24
[Comment From Art Carden]
On the comment about the President controlling the Fed: that's a really, really bad idea. Central Bank Independence is fundamental to a sound economy over the long run.
8:24
[Comment From vera]
Obama is standing his ground, like it or not!
8:24
[Comment From conventional1]
Ireland is not robust. have you been there? it's a more laid back England
8:24
[Comment From LaTasha]
who is this castellanos on cnn
8:24
[Comment From julie cee]
who besides me is a CPA here and has any clue about tax theory?
8:24
[Comment From Sarah]
oh..my ..goodness.. talking the talk
8:24
[Comment From Patricia]
If all the poor [people leave the US, what would the happen to the rich. There has got to be a happy median
8:24
[Comment From doc1]
why can't have both of them just tell the truth
8:24
[Comment From Nader for The People]
single payer healthcare solves lots
8:24
[Comment From TLH728]
not you mccain
8:24
[Comment From Guest]
no explain julie
8:24
[Comment From Donna]
If this was a boxing match....Sen McCain would already be in the dressing room....done.
8:24
[Comment From Michael]
McCain is swinging wildly
8:24
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Who?
8:24
[Comment From waqe]
sarah, getting deep in there.
8:24
[Comment From julie cee]
OBAMA has not been there (DC) long enough to GET a record or in the us for that matter.
8:24
[Comment From Rob]
People should go to http://www.opensecrets.org to see how both McCain and Obama are getting tons from Wall Street
8:25
[Comment From TLH728]
nobody in their right mind would want the old tax code
8:25
[Comment From Jabril]
It was this maverick independent free loaning and spending that got America in this mess. There should be rules and regulations in everything
8:25
Kesha Williams: by vote, how many people on here make more than $250,000...
8:25
[Comment From Rob]
Spending on wars -- billions and billions -- and giveaways -- earmarks are tiny
8:25
[Comment From matt]
choose your tax code? that's sounds unnecessarily complicated?
8:25
[Comment From Patricia]
McCain has been there too long
8:25
[Comment From Troy]
Everyone in congress make lots of money on the side
8:25
Kesha Williams: Not me...
8:25
[Comment From Wayne]
looks like Obama is about to lose his cool
8:25
[Comment From Donna]
Rob....stick to the debate issues.
8:25
[Comment From doc1]
mccain is talking about shifting hahahah
8:25
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain has the better speaking style--clear and too the point. "It was festooned with Christmas ornaments. I voted against it; Senator Obama voted for it."
8:25
[Comment From tink]
not us!
8:25
[Comment From fingers]
not me
8:25
[Comment From conventional1]
middle America--yes you decide if you want to be taxed to death or if you want a different tax code--duh
8:25
[Comment From LaTasha]
aaron you may need to add fundamentally to the drinking game?
8:25
[Comment From Michael]
Rob I agree, but after Bush I am looking for the lesser of two evils
8:25
[Comment From julie cee]
Please don't start talking about tax theory (effective/vs business--not even related) if you don't know what you're talking about....that's all I am asking.
8:25
6burkes: obama makes more the 250k
8:25
[Comment From Rob]
McCain is claiming he is raising a fuss of $18 billion in spending he doesn't like -- what about the $700 billion NOW.
8:25
[Comment From guest]
corporate funding is always an issue
8:25
[Comment From Art Carden]
Obama and McCain on Oil Company Profits: what do profits do in a market economy?
8:26
[Comment From alicia]
looks like mccain has to pee!!
8:26
Kesha Williams: in this room 6Burkes
8:26
[Comment From doc1]
mccain can't take a shot he keeps sneering
8:26
[Comment From Patricia]
Alicia LOL
8:26
[Comment From Nicole]
Looks like Mccain is about to cry
8:26
[Comment From otis]
Obama seems to be passionate about the $250.000
8:26
[Comment From Michael]
The referee seperates the two fighters
8:26
Kesha Williams: what I am trying to say is that a majority makes less than $250,000
8:26
[Comment From Troy]
mccain wet his depends
8:26
[Comment From julie cee]
There's ONLY one thing that will fix TAXation for individuals and it will NEVER happen....clean slate/start over.
8:26
[Comment From LaTasha]
the sneer means he's getting angry?
8:26
[Comment From Aaron]
Notice that McCain is not wearing a US Flag pin and Obama is. Where are the attacks on McCain's patriotism??
8:26
6burkes: a majority don't deserve $250
8:27
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Not to say that the whole financial rescue plan isn't riveting, I am kind of hoping to cover at least one more topic.
8:27
[Comment From Patricia]
McCain is nervous, he tried to backout
8:27
[Comment From Wayne]
If the company I work for pays less taxes, they make more profit and can afford to give me a raise. Makes sense.
8:27
[Comment From Art Carden]
Here's a great economics question from Lehrer: what do you give up for the $700 billion bailout? Excellent question.
8:27
[Comment From fingers]
obama's tie is much better
8:27
[Comment From waqe]
ROB -- nice recommend, will read after debate ends.
8:27
Kesha Williams: never said that they do. Just a fact that they don't
8:27
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Again, Obama is going to have to stop saying "Well......uh uh uh..." as he launches into his points.
8:27
[Comment From Rob]
Thank you
8:27
[Comment From tink]
McCain has got flag underoos on...no prob
8:27
[Comment From matt]
and NO CLEAN COAL!
8:27
[Comment From Jabril]
He should give up on hoping that Americans will help themselves, it seems as if most of us need to be led by the hand
8:27
[Comment From conventional1]
no wayne it just means that your CEO gets a bigger bonus
8:27
[Comment From alicia]
did you all see the diane sawyer interviews before the debate
8:27
[Comment From otis]
Why does McCain blink so much. Obama seems more relaxed.
8:28
[Comment From Nader for The People]
if we can talk about wearing depends and whose tie is better, I would hope that substantive issues like funding can be discussed
8:28
[Comment From LaTasha]
can someone repeat that web address for both records?
8:28
[Comment From doc1]
i say lets give up some of our 16 homes
8:28
[Comment From Michael]
Wayne, if the give you a raise they don;t have to pay tax on the money, but you do!
8:28
[Comment From julie cee]
we all need flag underoos....LOL...good joke!
8:28
[Comment From Art Carden]
Here's another point that can be analyzed with the theory of comparative advantage: why should we care about whether fuel-efficient cars are made in the US or in Japan?
8:28
[Comment From Nicole]
Blinking is a sign of lying
8:28
[Comment From TLH728]
we need a new deal
8:28
[Comment From fingers]
blinking is a sure sign of lying
8:28
Kesha Williams: Well, I have one house. If I had 6 or more I wouldn't be worried either.
8:28
[Comment From alicia]
or old age. sorry, done with th einsults.
8:28
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
If I recall, Lehrer's question was "What are you willing to give up?" I can't see that that question is being answered.
8:28
[Comment From fingers]
also, he is probably sending morse code
8:28
[Comment From waqe]
obama has great ideas, and with how the republican machine has been and is still running, i am going to give him the shot with my vote.
8:28
6burkes: obama says eliminate programs that dont work... but which ones would he cut?
8:28
[Comment From marcina1127]
i like how obama numbers all of his points when answering a question. that lets you know he has a real plan
8:29
[Comment From Arien]
it's not a matter of where they're made; rather that america does not have them yet
8:29
[Comment From Sarah]
that's silly. blinking is blinking.
8:29
[Comment From Michael]
Blink Blink Blink
8:29
[Comment From Art Carden]
TLH728: why would we need a New Deal? The New Deal made the Depression worse (see Robert Higgs, "Depression, War, and Cold War"
8:29
[Comment From Patricia]
Debaters remember there is an age difference here. Young versus Old. Believe me It Is hard on the old, I know because I am there
8:29
Kesha Williams: That's a great observatioon ^ Burkes
8:29
[Comment From conventional1]
competing hard in a global economy is difficult when our labor is cheaper overseas
8:29
[Comment From Dan Raphael]
A couple of months ago, Obama said "I love the market." Now we see his love child...and it turns out to be Rosemary's Baby! How come we only hear from these two corporate cutouts, and someone who predicted this meltdown--Ralph Nader--is excluded from the debate?
8:29
[Comment From Michael]
McCain is swinging wildly
8:29
[Comment From doc1]
how do we cut spending if we r giving away 700 bill
8:29
[Comment From Frank]
Michael, I agree.
8:29
[Comment From fingers]
Liberal voting record, wowowwowow
8:29
[Comment From alicia]
lol
8:29
[Comment From matt]
I agree with opposition to ethanol subsidies... and most agri-business subsidies
8:29
[Comment From Nicole]
sorry it's not...there is research on signs of lying
8:29
[Comment From Virgil]
so who's winning?
8:29
[Comment From Jabril]
Cut spending good idea, so that means that the military industrial complex needs to be curtailed
8:29
[Comment From julie cee]
M Huggins is the only one of us paying attn....questions aren't being answered...but what's new?
8:29
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain is no better. "No matter what, we've got to cut spending." Very well, the biggest components of spending are Medicare and Social Security. What percentage of those is McCain willing to cut?
8:29
[Comment From vera]
Patricia,
8:29
[Comment From Art Carden]
McCain scores a rhetorical point with "it's hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left."
8:29
[Comment From Donna]
Blinking does indicate nervousness and lying. Stop blinking so much Sen. McCain.
8:29
[Comment From waqe]
ethanol subsidies one of few things i like about mccain, i heard obama is for the ethanol subsidies, is that true?
8:30
[Comment From vera]
There is a difference in personalities; give them each a fair chance and place yourself in their shoes!
8:30
[Comment From Justin]
they aren't giving away 700 bil they are investing
8:30
[Comment From TLH728]
gosh if you listen to these 2 guys....apparently there are sooooooooooooooooo many subsidies, earmarks, and freebies given to companies and not to the "main street"
8:30
[Comment From tim]
How is John going cut spending when he refuses rolling back wealthy and oil tax breaks
8:30
[Comment From Rob]
McCain wants to cut the military budget? Now he DOES sound like Nader.
8:30
Kesha Williams: it is in the character of politians to avoid questions
8:30
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Intresting thing to read: http://www.learnbodylanguage.org/body_language_lying.html Body language is always fun... Look how thin McCains Lips Are?! GASP!
8:30
[Comment From doc1]
investing on what justin
8:30
[Comment From conventional1]
McCain is right--ethanol is a loser. drives the price of corn up and the owners can't even buy corn to fuel the plant. it's stupid
8:30
[Comment From julie cee]
The programs in the NEW DEAL were never meant to last....but both houses of Congress have perpetuated it...to where we are today.
8:30
[Comment From otis]
I am upset that McCain did not want to come. He should be able to do two things at once.
8:30
[Comment From Art Carden]
Econ 101 students: we haven't gotten to this in class yet, but how will government subsidies to ethanol producers affect the supply curve for ethanol?
8:30
[Comment From Aaron]
Piss off those Boeing employees
8:30
[Comment From doc1]
stock market
8:30
[Comment From Michael]
I'm glad I'm not in their shoes
8:30
[Comment From Nader for The People]
yes, obama is for ethanol
8:30
6burkes: change what!
8:31
[Comment From JS]
Corporations don't pay tax...they have to make a profit so they have to pass that cost along to the consumers so we are paying the corporate taxes and our income taxes and our sales taxes and our property taxes and so on and so on!!!!
8:31
[Comment From julie cee]
GO JIM GO...JL nailed the jello to the wall.
8:31
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain is correct about the shortsightedness of ethanol spending. He needs to elaborate on that. Still, he keeps misrepresenting the entire situation as a criminal conspiracy among wastrels, with himself as the prosecutor. That is drama, not a solution.
8:31
[Comment From Donna]
I don't care for Lehrer....never has.
8:31
[Comment From Justin]
doc: the "toxix assets" are still assets. they can't move in the market but that doesn't mean they are all bad.
8:31
Kesha Williams: Need? How do you piece apart a plan?
8:31
[Comment From fingers]
This isn't a debate. I want to see them go at it
8:31
6burkes: they both are just trying to not lose their current supporters, but are not saying anything really at all
8:31
[Comment From Nader for The People]
"neither one of you is suggesting any major changes!!" you heard the man
8:31
[Comment From Art Carden]
And here's another thing that can be analyzed with supply and demand. What do ethanol subsidies do to the demand for corn? Therefore, what happens to the price of corn? And what happens to the price of soybeans as a result?
8:31
[Comment From waqe]
Nadar, thats one thing i dislike about him. being for ethanol. &-:
8:31
[Comment From julie cee]
Is it safe to extrapolate that McCain's against subsidies PERIOD...and ethanol happened to be at hand?
8:31
[Comment From Nader for The People]
nader is not for ethanol
8:31
Kesha Williams: CaN i just gey gas prices like in 2000? .75 a gallon
8:31
[Comment From Sarah]
Tom..lol
8:31
[Comment From conventional1]
I was mad at first thinking McCain was going to backup but the bailout they tried to push through was a dog--he did the right thing
8:32
[Comment From julie cee]
NADER not NADAR
8:32
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Obama needs to learn to pronounce "insurors," just as Bush needs to learn to pronounce "terrorists."
8:32
[Comment From waqe]
as pres what will you give up in terms of spending -- the iraq war........
8:32
[Comment From Arien]
well corn prices would spike
8:32
[Comment From Justin]
doc: the reason they won't trade is because no one knows what the default rate is. overall it hasn't been that bad. citizens will realize most if not all of that 700 bil back
8:32
[Comment From TLH728]
obama has been using up alll of his minutes
8:32
[Comment From Banana]
he's for solar energy not ethanol
8:32
[Comment From Arien]
but then again at least we can grow corn on home soil
8:32
[Comment From Donna]
Bush's long headed policies.....I love it!!!!!
8:32
[Comment From Patricia]
What is wrong wtih being for ethanol, cheaper
8:32
[Comment From fingers]
McCain needs to avoid talking about jail....he should have been in one for Keating 5
8:32
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain is cleverly countering his well known reputation for irascibility by standing and smiling quietly as Obama makes his points.
8:32
Kesha Williams: Ethanol is $2.89 in MD right now
8:32
[Comment From Banana]
ethanol is completely inefficient
8:32
[Comment From N.S]
Why does he keep going with this question.
8:33
[Comment From Banana]
we can use wind and the sun
8:33
[Comment From Donna]
Maybe Jim Lehrer should have ran for President.
8:33
[Comment From JS]
might be 2.89 but you only get 1/2 the gas milage out of it
8:33
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Google would probably invest in "Google For Goverment" ??? They would make a beautifle GUI and in between spending they could have ads for "Money Management Help"
8:33
[Comment From Art Carden]
Here's another question that can be analyzed using comparative advantage: should we care whether we grow corn domestically (Google "Iowa Car Crop" for more information).
8:33
[Comment From Dawn S.]
spending freeze sounds like a last ditch effort.
8:33
[Comment From LaTasha]
spending freeze will be very bad
8:33
[Comment From julie cee]
we cannot produce ENOUGH corn to make ethanol viable....in compatability with other products currently based on corn crops.
8:33
[Comment From Michael]
Nice finesse by Obama
8:33
[Comment From fingers]
early child hood education....YAH!
8:33
[Comment From matt]
McCain would'nt pass the GI Bill! What does he care about Vets affairs?
8:33
[Comment From Frank]
"You're using a hatchet where you need a scapel." That's the statement of the night, so far.
8:33
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Lehrer represents a frustrated public, wishing that the candidates would give straight, specific answers.
8:33
[Comment From Guest]
Typical democrat... can't just freeze spending
8:33
Kesha Williams: but what about us who don't have vehicles that can use it. So I have to get more debt ( new car pymt)so I can get a compatible fuel
8:33
[Comment From Donna]
If you don't look at the tv when McCain is speaking, he sounds just like Bush.
8:33
[Comment From Ali]
Neither of the two candidates care about the American people. Obama spits on the fact that he is half white and McCain has supported Bush for the past eight years. Nader has my vote on November 4th and anyone who cares about this country please do the same. Nader ‘08
8:33
[Comment From conventional1]
if we get out of Iraq we would have some money
8:34
[Comment From Samuel (S)]
Wind-tied Solar Natural Gas? Wow...
8:34
[Comment From Dawn S.]
alternative fuel shou;d have been dealt with 30 years ago...too little too late.
8:34
[Comment From Sarah]
hello...McCain was the one who brought up the freeze
8:34
[Comment From fingers]
DRINK....terrorist
8:34
[Comment From alicia]
how ignorant.
8:34
6burkes: Iraq should pay the US treasury back for the war
8:34
[Comment From Art Carden]
McCain: "we're sending $700 billion overseas..." here's another question about international trade: what is being sent back?
8:34
[Comment From Nicole]
lol he does sound like bush!!!
8:34
[Comment From LaTasha]
good point dawn -
8:34
[Comment From conventional1]
we do need nuclear--it's all over Europe
8:34
[Comment From Rob]
Nuclear energy? We need renewable energy!
8:34
[Comment From Patricia]
Please, Nadar has spent his political life being a spoiler
8:34
[Comment From Sarah]
are there commercial breaks?
8:34
[Comment From matt]
Nukes are necessary, but as few as possible
8:34
[Comment From julie cee]
DEMS just let ban on off shore drilling lapse.....cannot one of them REMEMBER THIS....it just happened this week....
8:34
[Comment From Nader for The People]
they both support nuclear
8:34
[Comment From fingers]
freeze spending you cut your nose off to spite your face
8:34
[Comment From Michael]
If you live in Tennesse it doesn't matter wgo you vote for; McCain has a big lead.
8:34
[Comment From Rob]
Solar energy is all over Europe
8:35
[Comment From Frank]
Here's the score: McCain 0; Obama 0; Lehrer 4
8:35
[Comment From Guest]
Mccain is talking about helping veterans but he has consistently voted against veteran benefits
8:35
[Comment From otis]
Why are they skirting around the question?
8:35
[Comment From SueP]
We already had research on high-lipid algae as a biomass source twenty-five years ago...Reagan killed the research. FYI
8:35
[Comment From Nader for The People]
every candidate spoils for every other one.
8:35
[Comment From conventional1]
we should be driving eleectric cars, investing in solar and wind energy
8:35
[Comment From Michael]
Europe isn't run by oil companies
8:35
[Comment From alicia]
frank add McCains hair: -1
8:35
Kesha Williams: what about the veteran that are one Beale begging for money?
8:35
[Comment From julie cee]
I don't like the freewheeling use of eventually.
8:35
[Comment From vera]
I think Lehr is beating a dead horse. The abvious answer is yes. The economical situation will effect EVERYTHING!
8:35
[Comment From Dawn S.]
of course it will...this finacial thing has changed the playing field forever.
8:35
[Comment From Patricia]
If you live in Tennesee it does matter who you vote for.
8:35
[Comment From Rob]
This is why the debates need third party candidates, to force them to answer to the issues!
8:35
[Comment From Art Carden]
Lehrer: "the way you rule the country as President of the United States..." I'm sure this was a slip, but when did this become a monarchy? In what sense should the President "rule?"
8:35
[Comment From LaTasha]
why hasn't mccain done more to create ways to utilize alt energy before this new green rage
8:35
[Comment From Nicole]
Michael same for Florida....but you never now how it will all pan out on election day
8:36
[Comment From julie cee]
Nuclear energy will supplant electric car resource needs....or am I off base?
8:36
6burkes: I doubt those are real veterans, and the few who are, were messed up before hand
8:36
[Comment From Michael]
Nice move by Obama
8:36
[Comment From Robbie]
McCain wants to cut spending but raise defense spending
8:36
[Comment From vera]
Mccain i
8:36
[Comment From vera]
s
8:36
Kesha Williams: how so 6Burkes?
8:36
[Comment From vera]
mccain
8:36
[Comment From vera]
s
8:36
[Comment From Troy]
Time to make the iraqis to pay us back
8:36
[Comment From JS]
We should use our own oil for the next 10 years while alternatives are implimented. It can't happen over night.
8:36
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
Obama may have outstanding strategists in David Plouffe and David Axelrod, but if he doesn't get a good debate coach, he is headed, not for the Presidency of the United States, but for the Presidency of the Socratic Union at Oxford. I'm just glad he wasn't the prosecutor in LA in 1970, or Charles Manson might have gone free.
8:36
[Comment From LaTasha]
seems to me that if he's BEEN for it, he could have done more before 2008
8:36
[Comment From julie cee]
SCREECH....from energy to Healthcare with no seque?????
8:36
[Comment From vera]
mccain is too rich to understand what healthcare plans mean
8:36
[Comment From otis]
I am from Milwaukee and I wanted to know other views. What do you think of this debate?
8:36
[Comment From Frank]
Obama wins were "moves" are concerned; but neither one has answered the questions.
8:36
[Comment From Art Carden]
How is health care "crushing on people all over the country?" Sure, it's expensive, but it is technologically advanced and progressive.
8:36
[Comment From doc1]
why noy, we r giving everything else to the federal gov why not the healthcare
8:37
[Comment From waqe]
onion headline the other day: "Diebold accidentely (sp) leaks 2008 election results..."
8:37
[Comment From julie cee]
SO enuff he said/he said....tell me what you're gonna do..PLEASE
8:37
[Comment From N.S]
What do you all think about the audience reaction on CNN.
8:37
[Comment From Sarah]
What else is on?
8:37
[Comment From conventional1]
bad comment on medical by McCain--let families decide. who? families that don't have healcare, moron?
8:37
[Comment From matt]
Privatizing healthcare will only increase costs as healthcare companies look for more profit and fewer payouts. awful ide3a
8:37
6burkes: "veterans" come from the population, some enlist with preexisting problems, so when they get out, they are still problematic
8:37
[Comment From Robbie]
Obama has most closely answered the questions
8:37
[Comment From fingers]
NO NEW TAXES! sound familar
8:37
[Comment From Michael]
McCain hammering away and unless Obama answers then round goes to McCain
8:37
Kesha Williams: oh ok. Thanks for elaborating.
8:37
[Comment From Stop]
have you ever tried to purchase private health care insurance?
8:37
[Comment From Nader for The People]
most industrialized countries have single payer healthcare
8:37
[Comment From Stop]
health care is mutha
8:37
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
A spending freeze is too blunt an instrument. For one thing, we need to spend *more* on our badly outdated infrastructure.
8:37
[Comment From JS]
How about NO taxes. Sales tax only!
8:37
6burkes: Fair tax
8:37
Kesha Williams: For a single healthy 25 yr old insurance is $230 a month
8:37
[Comment From Rob]
We should have single payer healthcare for all Americans
8:38
[Comment From waqe]
but he will not name one of them that he would cut...
8:38
[Comment From Mem]
He has fought agains spending but it is out of control
8:38
[Comment From Michael]
Nice counter by Obama
8:38
[Comment From Sarah]
ORGY of spending
8:38
[Comment From Donna]
If McCain have fought against excessive spending all of his life, why does he have so many homes across the world?
8:38
[Comment From vera]
its interesting that mccain has 90% of the time voted for Bush and now he wants to be the lone rager
8:38
[Comment From N.S]
Why is McCain a republican his party is the one that is doing the spending.
8:38
[Comment From Michael Huggins]
McCain is like someone who talks of taming a werewolf by trimming the creature's nails.
8:38
[Comment From otis]
What about education? healthy children? housing market? I want to sell my house and I was told that it is 35% less. What are we going to do to make headway?
8:38
[Comment From SueP]
McCain creepy smile, when did he get so creepy?
8:38
[Comment From conventional1]
yeah our bridges are crumbling and roads falling apart
8:38
Commercial Appeal: domestic issues are next debate otis
8:38
[Comment From Rob]
We need to take this country in a new direction.
8:38
[Comment From N.S]
Another line we have heard
8:38
[Comment From Donna]
McXain
8:38
[Comment From alicia]
orgy... "hard to swallow" man obama keep it pg
8:38
[Comment From Nicole]
nicely said Obama!
8:38
Kesha Williams: uh oh.. here we go again. ANOTHER WAR STORY FROM THE MAVERICK
8:38
[Comment From LaTasha]
McCain smile means his temper is boiling
8:38
[Comment From Michael]
Obama needs to defens his own record
8:39
[Comment From Donna]
McCain
8:39
[Comment From Sarah]
when is the next debate?
8:39
[Comment From JS]
how many rebublicans can say they have ONLY voted with Bush 90%
8:39
[Comment From vera]
mccain keeps focusing on his "maverick" style, yet his vote does not align with his banter
8:39
[Comment From Sarah]
ooooh Vietnam
8:39
[Comment From Robbie]
McCain is just answering with attempting to draw attention to his record, but his record isn't the issue
8:39
[Comment From Nicole]
Lol kesha
8:39
[Comment From Mem]
McCain has voted with bush 95%
8:39
[Comment From Michael]
Round even
8:39
[Comment From fingers]
MAVERICK...drink
8:39
[Comment From Donna]
McCain
8:39
[Comment From Art Carden]
The problem with the "health insurance" debate is that what is being described as insurance isn't actually insurance: it's third-party subsidized consumption.
8:39
Kesha Williams: nice plug for your VP, McCain...not
8:39
[Comment From vera]
thanks Mem
8:39
[Comment From julie cee]
Remember, John McCain has health impairments from serving and protecting...I think he probably understands healthcare issues better (in the big picture) than any of us young'uns do....and he DOES have a history of doing what is right, rather than what is popular. Perhaps Obama would have same record if he were not in his infancy as a public servant.
8:39
[Comment From Rob]
Obama has voted with Bush and the Republicans more times than not
8:39
[Comment From Donna]
McCain

« Close It

Posted by Art Carden at 11:19 PM in Politics

You've Got to Love Bureaucracy

You've got to love bureaucracy, if only for the laughs. Libertarians like to mock government bureaucracy, but private bureaucracy can be just as intransigent and mind-numbing. The key thing about bureaucracy is that it always rolls on, a big, inpersonal machine that grinds all before it. And bureaucrats do what they are tasked to do, regardless of the circumstances.

Here, for example, is the last press release from Washington Mutual, issued September 24, as the company teetered on bankruptcy, one day before the buy-out by JP Morgan - Chase:

WaMu Recognized as Top Diverse Employer—Again
Company ranks in top ten of Hispanic Business’ Diversity Elite and earns perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index
SEATTLE, WA (September 24, 2008) – Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM), one of the nation’s leading banks for consumers and small businesses, has once again been recognized as a top employer by Hispanic Business magazine and the Human Rights Campaign.

Hispanic Business magazine recently ranked WaMu sixth in its annual Diversity Elite list, which names the top 60 companies for Hispanics. The company was honored specifically for its efforts to recruit Hispanic employees, reach out to Hispanic consumers and support Hispanic communities and organizations.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) civil rights organization, also awarded WaMu its second consecutive 100 percent score in the organization’s 2009 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which measures progress in attaining equal rights for GLBT employees and consumers. WaMu joins the ranks of 259 other major U.S. businesses that also received top marks in the annual survey. The CEI rated a total of 583 businesses on GLBT-related policies and practices, including non-discrimination policies and domestic partner benefits.

In both surveys, WaMu earned points for competitive diversity policies and programs, including the recently established Latino, African American and GLBT employee network groups, all of which have a corporate executive sponsor and champion.

“Diversity is an integral part of cultivating a welcoming, innovative and dynamic workplace here at WaMu. We are proud to be recognized for the opportunities and benefits we offer to all of our employees, including the specific efforts we have made to engage Hispanics and the GLBT community,” said Steve Rotella, WaMu president and COO. “We are committed to diversity at WaMu and pledge to listen to our customers and work closely with our employees to continue to make progress.”

You can't make this stuff up.

The full release is here. Hat tip to Mark Krikorian at The Corner .

Posted by Brad Smith at 09:20 AM in Funny Stuff ~ in Politics

September 25, 2008

Petty tyrants c. 1908

From the Sept. 25, 1908 NYT:

A rich New Yorker may have a swimming pool in his yacht, as one of them has planned; he may have a marble bathtub, though porcelain-laid tubs do very well for ninety-nine out of every hundred; he may bathe in cow's milk, goat's milk, or white asses' milk, as the books say some Romans did, but he may not have two doors to his bath room if it is in an apartment house in New York City...

The Tenement House Department has adopted a rule that no bath room shall have more than one door. And so the plans of the west side man for his bathrooms had to be changed.

"Two doors in a bath room," explained Commissioner Butler yesterday, "makes for the accidental collision of persons in the bathroom. It is so easy to forget about locking the door through which you did not come. There doesn't seem to be any good reason why the rule shouldn't be general. I don't know why anybody should want two doors in a bathroom."

Indeed, I am sure Mr. Butler didn't have a clue as to why someone would want two doors to a bathroom. Thus, as is too often the case with the "benevolent social planner," Commissioner Butler's preferences ruled supreme. Yet, did Mr. Butler's lack of knowledge and/or understanding of other people's preferences improve efficiency and social welfare? Hmmm.....

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:35 AM in Politics

September 23, 2008

Bail harder, it's raining....

A little squib of an op ed in the Charlotte Observer this a.m., for your reading pleasure.

The text:

From Mike Munger, a Duke University professor of economics and political science, and the Libertarian candidate for governor.

“The state is the great fiction by which each of us seeks to live at the expense of all of us.” The 19th French economist Frederic Bastiat recognized something that seems to be eluding our wise men in Washington, and Wall Street.

If Bastiat were alive, I can guess his reaction to the bailout: First, we don't know what we are doing, and we are as likely to do harm as help. The desperate hurry comes from electoral politics, and not from any real economic necessity.

Second, we aren't creating value. Government can't create value in financial markets. All we are doing is shifting costs from one group (Wall Street bankers, and mortgage sellers who took enormous and unsupportable risks) and transferring them to another group (taxpayers, who don't know any better).

When you hear someone say “The government bailout of Wall Street,” make a mental substitution: “The taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street.” And then remember that we have a federal debt bigger than Jupiter.

Deficits are future taxes. The bailout is simply a way of allowing irresponsible lenders to escape unharmed. If you have a mortgage, and can't pay, then you are responsible. If AIG has debts and can't pay, our leaders want to soak taxpayers for the bill.

The point is that you can't take money away from taxpayers who earned it, give it to the financiers who squandered it, and call that a good policy. There is no danger of another Depression, which was caused by a deflationary monetary policy. We are facing a temporary credit crunch, and it will sort itself out if we leave it alone. Things aren't so bad that a panicked bunch of politicians can't make it much, much worse.

Each can't live at the expense of all. Not even if you are a rich banker.

And....it made "THE CORNER"

Posted by Michael Munger at 02:17 PM in Politics

September 20, 2008

Why Vote McCain

The Armchair Economist, Steven Landsburg, makes the best case I've seen for lovers of liberty to support Senator McCain for President.

I love this little discussion of free trade:

"[P]rotectionism, like creationism, requires an extraordinary level of willful ignorance. The consensus for free trade among economists is approximately as solid as the consensus for evolution among biologists, and it is a consensus supported by a solid body of both theory and observation. To ignore that consensus betrays a degree of anti-intellectualism that frightens me.

"McCain is quite good on this issue, not just in terms of rhetoric (which I've known for a while) but in terms of voting record (which I've just recently researched). Obama, by contrast, promises to be our first explicitly protectionist president since Herbert Hoover."

Landsburg's bottom line: he, "support[s] John McCain. With trepidation."

Posted by Brad Smith at 12:11 AM in Politics

September 18, 2008

Reason #74 why libertarians don't gain much ground

From the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism (hey, sounds good so far) comes a blog post by one Nicholas Provenzo (9-16-08 entry). The first paragraph reads:

Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome. Given that Palin's decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.

Now, I am anti-abortion and, to the horrors of many libertarians, Catholic to boot. But I also consider myself libertarian. What has bugged the crud out of me for many years is the strident belief by many libertarians (Reason magazine seems to tilt strongly in this direction, or at least it did when I subscribed to it a year ago) that anyone religious is a backwards boob secretly or overtly determined to submit everyone who isn't hip to theocracy to an Inquisition.

My own thought, and I have read counter-arguments to my opinion, is that in normal situations a new human being begins when the full genetic blueprint for a new person is created, at conception. I don't see how, after the two haploids become a diploid, this being is anything but human, and thus deserving of the rights any other human has. So, in that sense, abortion violates the nonaggression axiom that virtually all libertarians profess. Sure, some humans are born with genetic defects just as some are born with attached earlobes, but to me that makes them no less human. But Provenzo would kill 'em all, even those with no genetic problems, and call it moral. I feel like I have to take a shower just typing that sentence.

Regardless, I don't see how a blog post such as Provenzo's would make an ideological fence-sitter say "well, heck yeah, gimme some more o' that capitalism then! I now think price controls and universal health care are wrong!" I get the same queasy feeling when obvious potheads call themselves libertarians just so they can get their drugs cheaper.

I realize this strain of thought is due to Rand's anti-religious bigotry, but I don't understand why these folks can't realize that a love of liberty and religion are not mutually exclusive. Heck, even higher-ups at the Vatican acknowledge that belief in God and in evolution can be compatible. Until this sect of libertarianism stops acting so fundamentalist, I'll continue to be slightly embarrased to admit my libertarian leanings.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:46 AM in Politics

September 12, 2008

Re: Election Prediction

Picking Palin certainly made things more interesting. She will likely help shore up pro-life votes for her side, since McCain can be faulted for wanting embryonic stem-cell research (which hasn't demonstrated any medical benefits, while adult stem cells have). Add that to the dual gaffes that both Pelosi and Biden have made on when life begins, which brought a united front of US bishops objections, and I think the McC-P side picks up most cultural conservatives, Dem or Rep.

Of course, the beauty pageant that is the US Presidential election will probably show the Obamessiah ascending, with the help of the press. They don't really need to worry about anything until two weeks before November anyway, since our attention spans won't remember or care about anything that happens now. And who cares about the prospect of nationalizing the US health care industry when you look so good on the beach?

Bottom line: Bush fatigue + McCain being an old fart + Obama rockstardom = Obama victory + Tim looking at the EFW index to find a country more free than where we will regress to.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 04:04 PM in Politics

Re: Election Prediction

Don't care enough to have one. Sorry.

Posted by Joshua Hall at 02:57 PM in Politics

My Prediction

I think Bob's prediction is close, but I still give the edge to Obama. Here's why--OH is almost certainly going to shift to Obama (though I'm not sure it'll yield as big a margin for Obama as Bob predicts--it probably depends on the def of big margin). A poll at RCP does have McCain up 2.2% in Ohio, but I think it's unlikely to be correct and/or sustained. The flipping of OH holding all else constant would give Obama a 272-266 Electoral College Victory.

As for other states, I think they are, on net, more likely to shift to Obama than away from Obama. While McCain may pick up NH, his next best hopes are probably places like MI, PA, and MN all of which are pretty Democrat states. By contrast, Obama is currently ahead in polls in CO and NM and also has a chance at VA.

As for events, momentum, etc--I'm guessing this might be something of a high water mark for McCain. I expect some of the Palinmania to subside (too bad--anyone who supported Steve Forbes in 1996 is off to a good start in my book); we may also get more gloomy (or at portrayed by the media as more gloomy) economic news. Or Cindy McCain may buy another house.

I realize I'm going against the current Intrade odds (53-46 in favor of McCain). I'm also going against my ever so slight preference (because gridlock is good!) for McCain.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:27 PM in Politics

Prediction Time

It's time all DoL bloggers to put up or shut up. Who's gonna win the big race for Dictator President?

I'll start, and I'll be specific:

Read More »

1. Obama wins the popular vote on the basis of big majorities in NY, IL, OH and CA.

2. McCain wins the Electoral College vote, and presidency, on the basis of slim victories elsewhere.

3. Democrats will cry election fraud in every state they lose. (Note, they will not complain about Ohio this time.)

4. After winning the popular vote but losing the election for the second time in recent memory, the Democrats will begin a serious drive to amend the Constitution to eliminate the "undemocratic" Electoral College in favor of a simple majority vote.

« Close It

Posted by Robert Lawson at 12:55 PM in Politics

Headlines that probably should have been revised

The headline from today's local fishwrapper:

"ACT scores up, black enrollment down in freshman class"

I might comment more but I don't want to get fired because of a blog post.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:38 AM in Politics

September 09, 2008

Apologists of the world unite!

Mary Theroux has a blog post about the various Depression-era Western apologists for communism. Heck I remember such apologists in my college days in the 1980s among fellow students as well as professors.

Her post reminded me of a recent conversation with a small group of people including a somewhat prominent mainstream economist.

We were talking about the Georgia-Russia war, and someone compared Russia's actions with the Nazis. I kinda chuckled and told a story about a poster I had in college. It had a swastika, a hammer & sickle, and picture of Stalin and Hitler. The caption read "Two Faces. One Ideology." I just loved that poster! It used to infuriate my commie-pinko leftist friends in college, which is precisely why I liked it so much.

Anyway, after a momentary pause, this prominent economist says, "Gee, I don't know if that's fair. I think they [i.e., the communists] meant well."

WTF? They meant well?!? They meant well?!?

For the record:
(1) No they didn't!
(2) Even if they did, that's no excuse!

Posted by Robert Lawson at 04:47 PM in Politics

September 08, 2008

Munger Interview

A nifty interview with co-blogger and NC gubernatorial candidate Mike Munger is here.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:27 AM in Politics

September 06, 2008

What Was Missing In Senator McCain's Speech?

At last week's GOP Convention, much attention was focused on John McCain's heroic life and the personal sacrifices he has made in defense of his country. It is easy to forget just all that Senator McCain has been through - this is a man who can no longer lift his arms over his head, as a result of the tortures he suffered in Vietnam - as Fred Thompson said, in a moving speech, Senator McCain, "can no longer salute the flag of the country he loves."

I am moved by Senator McCain's story as much as anyone - I have always said that he is a true American hero.

In his acceptance speech, Senator McCain explained that he "fell in love" with the United States during that time as a prisoner in Vietnam. Why did he finally fall in love with America? "[F]or it's decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for."

What's missing there? The decency of America, and the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people are all things I believe in, and reasons why I love this country. But I cannot imagine that if I were asked "what do you love about the United States," my answer would not begin with, "freedom." "Freedom" didn't make Senator McCain's list.

By this I don't suggest that Senator McCain doesn't value freedom. Clearly he does. Senator McCain closed his speech by saying that he "fight for the ideals and character of a free people" (good, although I didn't ask John McCain to fight for my "character," and I'm not quite sure what that means. If he meant he was going to stand up for my own character, well, that's one he forfeited long ago). Perhaps "freedom" is what he meant by the "idea" of America that he vaguely referenced. He did warn us of the "threats to peace and liberty." But there were no other uses of "free," "freedom," or "liberty" in his speech.

It is, perhaps, a telling omission that "freedom" did not make this list of core values, in a speech that must have been reviewed umpteen times to get every word just right.

Posted by Brad Smith at 11:04 AM in Politics

September 02, 2008

Third-Party Politics

The Onion covers the emerging Joad Cressbeckler campaign. One supporter says she is "voting for a man [she] can imagine drowning a bag of cats," but I have to take issue with his trade policy.

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

Posted by Art Carden at 04:48 PM in Politics

Next up: Putin sets world record in pole vault!

Ah Putin!

Be still my heart! The man is amazing!

Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran toward a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:03 AM in Politics

August 28, 2008

Georgia comic

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:24 AM in Politics

August 24, 2008

Political Action

A few thoughts on campaign dynamics. I just saw that an organization is offering free campaign schwag supporting a candidate for whom I do not plan to vote. I see a couple of possibilities:

1. I take the schwag, stick it in a drawer, and thereby impose costs on an organization that supports policies with which I disagree.

2. I take the schwag and wear it ironically, thereby using this organization's political ammunition against them.

3. I take the schwag and try 1) or 2), but the organization is able to get political mileage out of the fact that people want their stuff. My attempted subterfuge backfires.

4. There is an implicit agreement whereby I agree not to take someone else's campaign schwag unless either I collect it or I use it to support the organization. Incentives in the system imply that the agreement always breaks down, which could be one of the reasons why clean campaign rhetoric doesn't match dirty campaign reality. That could be an interesting political history paper, though I'd be surprised if someone hasn't written it already.

5. I blog about it, ignore it because accepting the offer will get me on every political mailing list in the solar system, and go on with my life.

Comments are open if anyone has thoughts.

Posted by Art Carden at 03:20 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (2)

Presidential Campaign Miscellania

OK, OK, presidential campaigns are no place to try to find economic wisdom, but this year's campaign seems more devoid of economic knowledge, and full of economic idiocy, than any I can remember in my lifetime -- a lifetime that remembers campaigns by Richard (wage & price controls) Nixon and Gerald ("Whip Inflation Now" buttons) Ford, not to mention a campaign by Walter Mondale.

Here we have Barack Obama, whose proposed solution to rising energy prices is to take steps to a) decrease supply (with new taxes and regulation of "big oil") and b) increase demand (by using the tax revenue so raised from suppliers to fund cash payments to consumers), up against John McCain, to whom "economics" is sort of like "the vision thing" was to the senior George Bush - it's something he knows is important, but he just can't quite get a handle on it, and often it appears that he's not even quite sure why it's important.

Now Senator Obama has decided to supplement his economic illiteracy by selecting Senator Joe Biden as a running mate. Biden is known for many things, but economic policy is not one of them.

Meanwhile, if Senator McCain picks a Senator as a vice presidential candidate, he'll complete an unprecedented sweep - all four members of the major party tickets will be sitting U.S. Senators. I'm pretty sure this is a sign of the apocalypse, but hold on while I check my references.

...

Yes, it is.

Meanwhile, poor old Bob Barr continues to make his pitch for voters to vote capital "L" Libertarian. Is he having success? John Zogby's latest interactive polls continue to include Barr, who makes some surprisingly strong showings. To wit:

Colorado: 8%
Florida: 5%
Michigan: 5%
Nevada 10%
New Hampshire: 11%
New Mexico: 5%
Ohio: 8%
Pennsylvania: 5%
Virginia: 5%

This is remarkable, really. Note that in none of these polls does Ralph Nader (also included by Zogby) top 3%. Of course, "interactive" polling remains highly controversial among pollsters. Even assuming these numbers are accurate, the norm is for third party support to fall off sharply close to election day, especially if the race between major party candidates is close. Nevertheless, these are surprisingly strong showings, especially given that Barr's fund-raising has been so-so and, like any third party candidate, he struggles to find any media oxygen (though he certainly is outdoing any previous Libertarian candidate). Could Barr really poll double digits, even in relatively libertarian Nevada or New Hampshire? And remember that Zogby's polling in early July showed Barr at 8% in Georgia (which he represented in Congress for four terms), six and seven percent in neighboring South Carolina and Tennessee, respectively, six percent in giant Texas, seven percent in McCain's home state of Arizona, and 5% in Obama's home state of Illinois, among other showings.

Common wisdom is that Barr's support comes primarily from Republicans, but it may be wrong to assume that Barr's candidacy helps Obama. It strikes me that at least as likely is that Barr gives libertarian leaning Republicans upset by the GOP's spending binge, corruption, and conservative positions on "social issues" a place to park their support short of pulling the Obama lever (or, for you conspiracy theorists, pushing the Obama button on their Diebold-rigged machine that will record their votes for McCain anyway). If that's the case, then Barr's candidacy helps McCain.

If I can find a bit of time, I hope to look at the Barr campaign's pronouncements on the economy to see if they actually do make more sense than the nonsense coming from the Obama camp and the bewilderment released by Senator McCain. I'll share the results here.

Posted by Brad Smith at 01:06 AM in Politics

August 22, 2008

But What About the Blogging Economists Who Like College Football And Barbecue Demographic?

Latest Poll Reveals 430 New Demographics That Will Decide Election

Of course, all this should be capitalized into prediction market prices.

Posted by Art Carden at 06:05 PM in Politics

August 20, 2008

Don't get sick!

Just got back from a doctor's office visit (darned high cholesterol!), and we had an interesting chat about the upcoming election. He told me that if the vote results in a particular candidate being elected, leading to a single-payer system, then the practice (of which he is part owner along with a few of the other docs) will end up laying off a huge number of staff. He bases this conclusion on the comparison with Medicare patients, who are a financial loss for the business.

If his thinking is correct, this could really harm our area, since there is a large presence of health care businesses here. Of course, would the voting public draw the connection between unemployed medical staff and universal health care? Would they recognize that the large wait times due to both less staff and increased quantity demand from patients is the inevitable result of their wishes for medical care at a zero price? Would they understand that the substandard medical care they are receiving is due to the neglect of prices and incentives? Do I really want the remaining overworked and underpaid staff to be sticking me with needles?

The only bright spot in our discussion was my doc's thought that, should this all happen, he would open a new practice with a visibly posted fee schedule, so patients knew what they were paying. Reminded me of John Stossel's Sick in America.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:26 AM in Politics

August 13, 2008

With peacekeepers like these...

...who needs invaders?

Hundreds of South Ossetian rebels with some Russian army personnel went house-to-house in villages near Gori. They set houses ablaze and looted buildings, witnesses said.

The body of a man, his mouth caked with blood, lay in a street in the village of Dzardzanis and nearby the body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned mini-van, an AFP journalist reported.

The Human Rights Watch group said its researchers in South Ossetia had on Tuesday "witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians."

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:44 AM in Politics

August 11, 2008

Dear John (Edwards)

Thank you for your heartfelt admission of guilt of cheating on your marriage vows and lying about it for the last two years. As these sorts of celebrity/politician apologies go, yours was as genuine as I can remember.

I was particularly struck by this part of your statement, "I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic." Who can blame you? You spent the last several years being wined and dined by the most powerful people in the world. You had scores of people telling you how great you and your ideas were. You could have become president! Heck I bet haven't driven yourself to work or gone to a grocery store in years!

Who wouldn't let this go to his head?

I fear this typically happens even to good people when they are elevated to political office. And this is precisely why it is so dangerous to give you politicians the kind of unlimited power over our lives that we have given you. Your political career is over perhaps, but we citizens still have to live under the rule of your "egocentric and narcissistic" colleagues who remain in office.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 04:38 PM in Politics

July 30, 2008

Why the airlines don't really mean it against oil speculators

J. D. Foster at Heritage writes:

Speculators accept risk that somebody else doesn't want. And speculators are rewarded for accepting risk if they prove right, and they lose money if they get it wrong.

Consider an important example today. Airlines have enormous demand for fuel. Those that can do so often hedge against a rise in the price of oil. The price of oil may or may not rise. The risk exists in any event. The question is: Who is going to bear the risk?

The airline doesn't want to bear the risk of higher oil prices. That's not their business. But at the right price, the speculator will take that risk. So the speculator contracts with the airline to deliver an amount of oil (or jet fuel) at a certain place and time and for a fixed price. The speculator, of course, does not have the oil. Rather, at the appointed time, the speculator buys the oil on the spot market for delivery. If the spot price is then below the price contracted with the airline, the speculator makes money. If not, the speculator loses. Either way, the airline's price is locked in.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 02:17 PM in Politics

July 29, 2008

On border control c. 1908

A July 29, 1908 NYT article concerns the militarization of the southern border of the U.S.:

Tired of being made the recruiting ground for filibusters the United States is taking steps to put an end to the hatching of conspiracies against the peace and welfare of its neighbors. The State Department is using every resource of the Government to prevent such violations and to punish the infringement of the neutrality laws. A stop is to be put in this country to such plotting as preceded the uprising in Northern Mexico...
Ambassador Creel's Government [of Mexico] is anxious to have the cooperation of this Government in establishing a chain of forts or army posts along the border between the United States and Mexico. The plan is for both countries to divide the expense of maintaining this chain of forts.

Oh, the irony.

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:07 PM in Politics

July 25, 2008

The Man from ACORN

Sobering piece by Steven Malanga:

Meeting last November with the leaders of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (Acorn)—the nationwide network of left-wing community groups that taps government money for a host of causes—Obama declared: “I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career,” including representing Acorn in a court case in Illinois. Acorn members apparently reciprocated by working hard to turn out voters for Obama’s Illinois campaigns, according to a 2003 piece in the magazine Social Policy by a Chicago-area Acorn organizer. After the candidate’s November appearance, Acorn’s affiliated political action committee endorsed Obama for president.

Obama’s nomination will be celebrated as a first for African-Americans. But the racial symbolism may obscure the importance of his presidential run to the tens of thousands of government-funded community groups that stand to benefit from an Obama agenda that’s right out of the 1960s. His presidential platform touts programs that would refuel the nonprofit sector, ranging from a commitment to boost money for federal relics like the ineffective and wasteful Community Development Block Grant program . . . to a plan for providing “a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities . . . from birth to college” to a series of “Promise Neighborhoods.”

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:32 AM in Politics

Masses vs. Classes c. 1908

An interesting quip from the July 25, 1908 NYT:

The "masses" and the "classes" in England differ in this - the former are to be bought with a drink, the latter with a dinner.

The same could be said of the masses and the classes of the United States today.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:10 AM in Politics

Rent Extraction on K Street

It’s tough to be a lobbyist these days, baby. It’s not all capture and vote-buying as the populists would have you believe. As Kimberly Strassel writes in today's Opinion Journal, politicians have no reason not to use what leverage they do have back against you.

As most of Washington met last week to fret over the economy, Harry Reid was attending a less-noticed summit. The Senate majority leader had summoned the titans of more than a dozen industry trade groups to a Capitol Hill meeting, where he delivered a crisp message: Get with our program, or get demolished.

[...]

In private, and public, Democrats are telling companies they're frustrated with what they view as too slow a shift in the political makeup of lobby shops. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez recently quipped that if companies didn't start sending friendlier faces, they might find it "a little difficult at the end of the day for them to achieve the success they want." North Dakota's Byron Dorgan (who apparently has read the ethics law) clarified: "It's not about how many Democrats are hired. It's about how they weigh in on issues."

Mr. Reid stepped up the pressure with last week's pow-wow. Democrats invited only presidents and CEOs of the most powerful trade groups, hoping to circumvent GOP lobbyists and take their message straight to the top. That message? According to one participant, the meeting was cordial, but the theme clear: "We have a narrow margin right now, and it is tough for us to get anything done. But there will be more of us next year, you'd better get used to it, and you better find a way to work with us."

It’s called “rent extraction” in the public choice literature. Fred McChesney did most of the work on it, culminating in his 1997 book, Money for Nothing. A variant of rent extraction is so-called “milker bills,” where legislators “float” a regulatory proposal that would harm industry or firm X, who is supposed to get the hint that a few extra campaign dollars could help get the proposed bill onto the back burner. Another variant is so-called tax farming, where the politicians play nice with tax base X while finding indirect ways to tax them. One indirect mechanism that’s become increasingly popular in recent decades is tort law. Take big tobacco, for example. Most of the monies that states have collected under the $246 billion master settlement have simply substituted for general tax dollars. A New York Times study did some of the bean counting, and found that 95 percent has gone to fund public works projects or property and sales tax relief. On this point, Jeffrey Haymond has a chapter in my forthcoming book, Law without Romance, titled "Class Action Rent Extraction." Torts, of course, are a kind of hidden broad-based tax. The Council of Economic Advisors in 2002 estimated the annual “tort tax” (higher prices imposed by business sector to cover costs of litigation) at nearly $200 billion. These lobbyist shenanigans—the K Street Project—aren’t much different.

So from a public choice perspective, the so-called "K Street Project Part Blue" isn't much of a shock at all. Sure, it is vaguely sordid to see pols strong-arm the hiring decisions of Big Lobby. But the article misses the larger point that rent seeking is socially costly in the first place, and rent extraction only furthers and compounds those losses.

Thanks to Richard Reinsch for the pointer.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 10:08 AM in Politics

July 21, 2008

Best Sentence I've Read Today*

Bryan Caplan on voting, relevant to my post from earlier today on whether or not one should rock the vote:

Apathy may not be a virtue, but it's a lot better than the activism of the irrational.

Thoughts? Comments are open.

*Meme: Marginal Revolution.

Posted by Art Carden at 08:51 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (95)

Lindsay Campbell: Mock the Vote

Lindsay Campbell at www.moblogic.tv makes the case for non-voting:

I'll elaborate on an important point that she makes. If you stand in line at the store for a couple of hours on the day after Thanksgiving, if you line up to get the new iPhone, or if you line up at midnight to see The Dark Knight (we didn't, but if there's a midnight showing of The Clone Wars in a few weeks, I'm there), you at least have something to show for it. If you stand in line for a few hours to vote, you exert exactly zero influence on the outcome and maybe you come away with an "I voted today" sticker. I still do it, though. My thoughts on voting in Presidential elections are here. Here's South Park's very intelligent but very less-than-wholesome take on voting. They use obscenity and vulgarity in the service of satire, but you've been warned.

Posted by Art Carden at 12:09 PM in Politics

July 18, 2008

Letter to the Editor: Mike Munger in the NC Debates

I just sent the following to the Raleigh News & Observer. The letter's marginal contribution to the probability that Mike is included in the debates is probably small, but every little bit helps and the idea is now on record.

While I am not a North Carolinian, I have been watching the discussion over whether Libertarian candidate and Duke University political scientist Michael Munger should be invited to the gubernatorial debate with some interest. I only first met Dr. Munger at a professional meeting in March, but I have admired his scholarship and contributions to the public understanding of economics and political science for years. Dr. Munger and the Libertarians did all that was required of them to appear on the ballot, and they did it all in very timely fashion. For this reason alone, Dr. Munger should be invited to the gubernatorial debates. Beyond this, however, Dr. Munger holds a PhD in economics and chairs the political science department at one of the world's elite universities. Including him would elevate the level of the debate considerably. Excluding him from the debates would be unfair to Dr. Munger, but the real injustice is done to the voters of North Carolina. If Dr. Munger is excluded, the voters are denied the opportunity to have a debate featuring all the legitimate candidates.

Posted by Art Carden at 12:44 AM in Politics

July 17, 2008

How Should One Decide Who to Support?

Not by "voting against" the candidate you don't like or by picking "the lesser of two evils." My thoughts are here.

Posted by Art Carden at 12:56 PM in Politics

July 16, 2008

Congratulations!!

You're the Terrorist Watch List's 1,000,000th customer!

I wonder what you win for that sort of thing?

HT: Anthony Gregory.

Posted by Art Carden at 08:50 PM in Politics

July 15, 2008

Point to ponder c. 1908

A letter to the editor of the NYT on July 15, 1908:

If the Democratic Party will run all of its States down hill, what will it do with the Nation if it gets it?

TAFT MAN

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:50 PM in Politics

July 10, 2008

YouTube Ad

The first YouTube ad of the campaign.

Major, major props to Rusty Sheridan. His company.

Posted by Michael Munger at 01:25 PM in Politics

July 09, 2008

Compulsory Volunteering

Via Cafe Hayek, here's an interesting dissection of proposals to mandate volunteering. I particularly like the discussion of intractable measurement problems: what is "service," what isn't, and who decides?

This exposes a glaring inconsistency in US labor policy. Working voluntarily for a wage of $5.00 per hour is unacceptable exploitation and is therefore illegal. Working involuntarily for a wage of $0.00 per hour, on the other hand, is ennobling service and may soon be required.

Posted by Art Carden at 04:16 PM in Politics

July 07, 2008

Podcast on Transantiago

Hey, you podcastrians!

It's a new installment of the Russ and Mike show.

For which, I should add, I was paid my full market wage.

We talked about the Transantiago cluster fig. And talking to Russ is always fun.

Posted by Michael Munger at 03:19 PM in Politics

Grenade: Thanks!

Lots of folks helped with the Money Grenade, and with getting word out about the difficulties I have been having even getting access to the normal assets of campaigning.

Read More »

I can't cite them all. So, for those I have missed: a blanket thank you, and a heartfelt one. In addition to the net postings I have missed, I want to thank Joy Elliott, Paul Elledge, Linda Ellis, Susan Hogarth, Barbara Howe, Tom Howe, Phillip Rhodes, Rob Rose, Rusty Sheridan, John Szamosi, and Richard Schilhavy. (Again, I'm sorry if I left you out, but it's 6:30 am, and I am at the beach celebrating my anniversary with my wife, and I have to get back to the room; there's marital work to do...)

As I noted, there were lots of internet mentions, and I appreciate them. But there are some I have to mention specifically.

Bill Anderson, on LR's site.

Art Carden, with a nice thought piece. Very nice.

Ed Cone helped out. Thanks, Ed!

Greg Dirasian has his little boxer shorts all twisted up in knots.

Last Free Voice posted the announement; thanks!

Scottille News came up big, too.

Third Party Watch posted the info on the Money Grenade. A BIG help; we 'pree-shayt it, man!

BUT: The main prize, the above and beyond, the hardest working man in the Blogosphere for the Munger campaign, has got to be.... Steve Newton! This post clearly brought in quite a few contributions, and I appreciate it!

« Close It

Posted by Michael Munger at 08:11 AM in Politics

July 02, 2008

Limiting Access to the Political Order in North Carolina

My short piece on Mike's adventures in North Carolina politics (see below) was published on the Independent Institute's blog here.

Posted by Art Carden at 08:26 PM in Politics

June 30, 2008

Internment Camps and You: Partners in Freedom

I've heard David Beito shows this video in some of his IHS history lectures:

Posted by Art Carden at 08:36 PM in Politics

June 28, 2008

Crimes Against ... Whatever

So who's the criminal? According to James Hansen, it's greedy CEOs:

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

According to an unnamed UN adviser, it's those pushing ethanol:

But several aid agencies and analysts have warned of the possible downside of biofuel crop cultivation.

One UN adviser went as far as describing biofuels as a "crime against humanity".

In both cases, it's pretty loose talk.

HT: CEI's "Cooler Heads Digest" 6/27/08

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 02:37 PM in Politics

June 27, 2008

Party platforms c. 1908

The June 27, 1908 NYT reports on what is expected to be in the Democratic Party's platform, to be introduced by William Jennings Bryan, the party's nominee that year.

It is fascinating that the next 100 years, during much of which the Democrats were in control of Congress (and occasionally the White House), the party platform has changed very little, suggesting that they haven't been very successful in implementing their goals. Whether this is an indictment of Democratic leadership or of their opposition, I am not sure.

Here is a paraphrased list of what the paper suggests will be in the Democratic party's agenda:

"A few general declarations in which the Republican Party is arraigned for having subordinated the Government to the favor-seeking corporations."

Insisting on a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

The establishment of equal rights, and the abolition of special privileges.

Laws prohibiting the pass and rebate [in railroads]

Making it unlawful for corporations to contribute to campaign funds

Requiring publicity of contributions before election, "of all individual contributions above a reasonable minimum."

Centralization of power through judicial concentration is opposed.

Constitutional authority of the General Government to prevent monopoly must be exercised via the Interstate commerce clause.

Laws to compel foreign corporations to submit their legal disputes to the courts of the States in which they do business.

The election of U.S. Senators by direct vote of the people.

Private monopoly must be made impossible.

Enforce the laws against trusts and trust magnates.

Immediate reduction of trade duties

Articles competing with trust-made articles should be duty free.

Constitutional amendment authorizing a tax upon individual and corporate incomes.

A national inheritance tax to reach the "swollen fortunes."

Immediate declaration of intent to recognize the independence of Philippine Islands "as soon as a stable Government can be established."

Powers of the National and State Railway Commissions should be expanded to protect people against discrimination and extortion.

Railroads should be forbidden to engage in any business that will compete with their shippers.

Railroad rates should be reduced until they reach a point that will leave only a "reasonable return on the present value of the roads."

Postal savings banks are favored as are rules protecting bank deposits.

An employer's liability law and an eight-hour day.

"The admission of Asiatic immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our population is opposed."

A stricter enforcement is demanded of immigration laws.

Certain planks have moved from one part to the other, but as far as populist agenda items go the current Democratic party might have be very similar.

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:35 PM in Politics

June 22, 2008

The Barr Factor

Will Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr be a factor in '08? Probably not, but don't discount the idea completely: at least some polls show Barr polling in the six percent range nationally. Third party support typically falls off close to election day, but in some crucial states. notably Georgia, which Barr represented for most of a decade in Congress, there is reason to believe he can hold most of his support, which has neared the 10 percent level in some polls.

Barr's fundraising has been so-so: he's raised about $50,000 a week, on average, since gaining the Libertarian nomination four weeks ago. But his media coverage has been impressive. He's done, among others, Fox News (at least twice) and CNN, the hip Colbert Report on Comedy Central, a full hour on Glen Beck's TV show on CNN, and Geraldo. This week he'll be doing some major talk radio, including Dennis Miller on Monday and Bob Grant later in the week.

If this is not quite Cadillac coverage, it's better than any Libertarian candidate has ever gotten before. A Lexis/Nexis search finds 427 stories referencing "Bob Barr" in the four weeks since his nomination on May 25 - by comparison, a Lexis search finds just 49 stories mentioning 2004 LP nominee Michael Badnarik in the four weeks after his nomination on May 27, 2004.

He's also got the requisite meet up groups going at Meetup, Facebook, and MySpace, and other web sites.

The obstacles to Barr's success - or that of any third party or independent candidate - are enormous. Ballot access laws force minor parties to spend large sums just getting on the ballot, whereas the Republican and Democratic Parties typically get automatic access in all 50 states. Campaign finance laws work against third parties, by limiting the amounts that can be contributed (historically, new parties, because of their smaller base of support, are more reliant on large donors) and by scaring away donors (I know of at least three people who have intentionally donated less than $200 to Barr's campaign in order to avoid having the names disclosed, as required by law for donors of $200 or more. Surely there are many more who limit their support or don't donate at all. For business and political reasons, many supporters, especially those active in politics or with business before the government, are afraid to make their support public). As Michael Munger has learned in his run for North Carolina Governor, it is almost impossible for even the most credible third party candidates to get into public debates. Most of all, the winner take all system of voting used in the U.S. (which I support) will always make it very difficult for a new party to break the two-party monopoly.

Still, Barr may be the is the strongest Libertarian nominee ever, and almost certainly since the articulate Ed Clark, funded by his wealthy running mate David Koch, picked up a bit over one percent of the vote in 1980. With many small government Republicans dismayed over the nomination of John McCain, there is an opening for Barr to gain meaningful numbers of votes and to draw attention to the need for and benefits of limited government.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:40 PM in Politics

June 20, 2008

Obama Moves to the Middle

I'm in Toronto for the ISNIE meetings, and I caught this story in today's Toronto Star. Apparently, Obama's sound and fury about NAFTA a few months ago was exactly what everyone thought it was.

Posted by Art Carden at 11:24 PM in Politics

June 17, 2008

Yard signs revisited

A few years ago I commented on my city's ban on political yard signs until 30 days before an election. I got the city attorney to admit that the law was unconstitutional.

Harrison, Ohio is being sued over their law.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:31 PM in Politics

June 15, 2008

Munger Excluded From Debates in NC

Some background, on the decision of five different organizations "independently" to exclude me from the gubernatorial debates. What are the odds of THAT happening, do you think?

An interesting exchange, worth reading in its entirety, on Steve Newton's blog.

Some thoughts:

1. I announced my candidacy in May 2006. I have been included in MANY forums and debates, and have appeared three times on the same stage as Bev Perdue and Pat McCrory at forums. Admittedly, these were serial, rather than simultaneous, appearances, but it was within minutes.

2. The success of the Libertarians in getting on the ballot was known in March, and was official in May. Furthermore, this is the 8th time the Libertarian candidate for Governor will be on the ballot, officially. This is not new, either in terms of history over 30 years, or formal process this election cycle.

3. The NC Bar Association is a private organization, and as far as I can tell the event will not be televised externally. That means that this is NOT an in-kind contribution to the candidates. So, as a matter of principle I would defend the right of that organization to choose the folks who will appear at their convention. But, to paraphrase Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," I'd have more respect for the NCBA if they'd just tell me to frig off. "We didn't know", if true, means that these people are way too dumb to be trying cases in state court. Fortunately, it's just not true. I think you would rather have a lawyer who is a good liar, compared to an idiot, right?

Posted by Michael Munger at 10:07 AM in Politics

June 13, 2008

WHO's kidding whom?

A summary of some of the sources of bias in WHO's health care quality index:

Michael Moore made great sport in his film "Sicko" of pointing out that the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked US health care a lowly 37th in the world, considerably below France and Canada. But, much like Mr. Moore himself, the rankings are far from impartial or empirically sound. [. . .] But an examination of the index tells us more about the ideology of the authors than it does about the quality of American healthcare. [. . .] The most obvious bias is that 62.5% of their weighting concerns not quality of service but equality. In other words, the rankings are less concerned with the ability of a health system to make sick people better than they are with the political consideration of achieving equal access and implementing state-controlled funding systems.

One of the five factors in the calculations is called "Financial Fairness". This favours systems that charge richer people more health tax, irrespective of how much, or little, health service they use. Colombia comes top. This measure has nothing to do with the quality of healthcare, yet it counts for a quarter of the weighting.
[. . .]
The rankings include measures for "health level" and "responsiveness." "Health Level" is their way of saying life expectancy, while "responsiveness" refers to a survey based on "respect for persons" and elements such as speed of service, convenience and choice—yet even in these cases half the weighting is determined by considerations of equality. Thus a country with a poor level of "responsiveness" throughout the population will score higher than a country with a good level in some parts and an excellent level in others.
[. . .]
Americans generally believe that whatever the other problems with the US healthcare system, its standards of care are high. In the details of the rankings there is evidence to support this belief. It shows the USA as having the most responsive health system in the world but this measure makes up only a small part of the overall rankings.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 06:45 PM in Politics

June 12, 2008

The Paternalist State

The Grey Lady wants you to be taken care of. Today's editorial on tomatoes ends:

"Industry, as well as consumers, need much better protection. They should not have to wait until the next food scare before Washington comes to the rescue."

Meanwhile, the FCC held hearings today on whether to prohibit early termination fees charged by mobile phone carriers. Public choice founder, James Buchanan, has argued that the State has supplanted God as the bearer of ultimate responsibility. Stand by for new sex legislation that people may only shout “Oh state, oh state, oh state!!!”

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 05:14 PM in Politics

June 11, 2008

Chilipunk'd!

The candidates from the "major" parties have organized their own private election, with just two people invited: Bev Purdue and Pat McCrory. Five debates, only two candidates will be allowed.

Here's the strange thing: It's really hard to get on the ballot in North Carolina. The Libertarians did what the state required. It wasn't easy, but we did it.

Why doesn't that translate into being included in the debate? Why do the state-sponsored parties get away with this? It's because you, the voters, are indifferent.

It's not the media; you can't blame them. Having me in the debate is MUCH more interesting, and would improve ratings. You can count on the media actually preferring that I be included.

But I'm not. Because the Dems and Repubs don't want even a whiff of competition to affect their cozy cartel.

Where's the outrage?

UPDATE: A snippet from the press release that will go out soon....

North Carolina has very restrictive ballot access laws. Simple fairness requires that every party crossing that very high threshold must be admitted to the debates. Let's be very clear: the General Assembly established a criterion for inclusion, and the Libertarians passed that test.

Yet the Libertarians have been excluded from participation, without explanation. The political elite of our state has made a decision to put its own convenience over the obvious will of the citizens.

As H.L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." When you watch a debate where one legally qualified party is excluded, you are watching North Carolina "democracy" in action. Is this the kind of democracy that you want to live in?

Posted by Michael Munger at 02:54 PM in Politics

June 06, 2008

Will Wilkinson on Production and Distribution

Will Wilkinson has a great post on European regulatory and redistributive institutions. Politically, people support redistribution through the regulatory system because it doesn't feel like redistribution. A choice passage:

The structure and regulation of an economy is conceptually separable from tax and transfer policy. Of course, it is really all one system, and taxes and transfers affect economic performance by affecting labor supply, etc., but this is relatively distinct from the body of law that defines the parameters and rules of the economic game. You could in principle have buck-wild laissez faire together with fairly high taxes and lavish social insurance. Nobody does do this, exactly, but it’s possible. Optimize the basic economic structure for maximizing wealth creation, not for creating a pattern of distribution, and then use the political institutions to take care of redistribution after the wealth is created. Because then there will be more wealth.

ASTRTWT.

Posted by Art Carden at 09:02 AM in Politics

May 30, 2008

On party pride c. 1908

Something to think about in the current election cycle comes from the May 30, 1908 NYT:

Col. Watterson knows perfectly well that the Republican Party organs regard Mr. Bryan's possible nomination cheerfully. They would like to feel sure of having no stronger man to beat, and have been hopefully predicting his nomination.

The opposition to Bryan's nomination comes from men who have the welfare of the whole Nation at heart, rather than party triumph. They want a strong, sane opposition to the Republican Party. They want the Democratic Party to cleanse itself, hold up its head, and do its duty bravely. They know perfectly well there is no danger of Bryan's election, and so does Col. Watterson.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:02 AM in Politics

May 29, 2008

On Congressional spending c. 1908

The May 29, 1908 NYT reports that Congress, for only the second time in the country's history, has appropriated more than $1 billion (the first time was in 1865).

The first paragraph says a lot:

When Congress packs its carpet bag this week and goes home, it will have established a record for expenditures never reached before in the United States in times of peace.

The same can be said of our current congress.

The article suggests that $1,007,086,569 will have been appropriated by the Congress (plus a little more perhaps). EH.net indicates that total GDP in 1908 was about $30.1 billion (in current dollars). Hence, Congress appropriated about 3% of total GDP. Today, it is closer to 20%.

In 1908, the U.S. Congress appropriated about $11.27 per capita, whereas today it is approximately $6,000 per capita.

In 1908, the U.S. Congress appropriated $391,474,342 for the U.S. Army and Navy (about 40% of the budget and about 1.3% of GDP) whereas today the U.S. government spends less than 5% of GDP and 20-25% of federal spending on the military (five branches rather than two).

The article does provide the totals by appropriation bill (where is such information today?):

Urgent deficiency $24,11,805

Indian 8,748,687

Legislative 32,833,821

Army 95,382,247

Post Office 224,065,142

Pensions 163,053,000

Fortifications 9,570,745

Agriculture 11,672,106

District of Columbia 10,117,669

Diplomatic 3,947,539

Naval 122,662,716

Sundry Civil 112,937,314

Military Academy 845,634

General deficiency 30,782,848

Permanent annual 154,194,296

Additional urgent 2,163,500

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:10 PM in Politics

May 28, 2008

Politics as usual?

The blatant selling-out of politicians never ceases to amaze me. What is even more amazing is that the electorate seems fairly comfortable with the entire process. The ideal of one-man-one-vote and that average schleps like me might be able to gain access to members of Congress or the executive branch seem far away from today's political antics (perhaps there never was a golden era).

Today's New York Times reports that the Democratic party is having a hard time "raising" the money for its convention in Denver this August. The term "raising" is a bit of a stretch because it doesn't seem like the party is reaching out to the individual party members but to the corporate bigwigs without even attepting to veil their selling-out:

Denver’s mayor, John W. Hickenlooper, has suggested that the Democrats’ long nominating battle has distracted potential donors. But, no matter the obstacles, the Denver host committee is aggressively packaging corporate sponsorships that promise corporate executives access to key politicians in return for writing a check to the host committee.

In addition, the Denver committee is appealing to civic pride.

Hosting a political convention isn't worth much to the local economy in terms of net new spending. As shown in this paper by Dennis Coates and myself, Houston lost approximately $19 million in taxable activity when it hosted the Republican convention in 1992. This negative net result is not refuted by this study by Baade, Baumann, and Matheson [note: incorrect abstract] which shows that hosting a political convention does nothing for employment, per-capita income, or income growth.

Thus the appeal to civic pride, the last bastion of the politician who wants to spend other peoples' money to enlarge their own reputation and stature.

Not to be outdone by the mis-remembering and mis-speaking that the two party candidates seem to engage in on a daily basis, the next paragraph contains a juicy statement by the spokesman for the Denver host committee:

"This is a historic event for Denver," Mr. Lopez said. "It's the first national convention in the interior West. It gives Denver a chance to demonstrate that it can host a national convention and show that Denver has the wherewithal to raise money and be the place where you want to be."

Perhaps Mr. Lopez (no relation, I hope to our co-blogger Ed) doesn't consider the 1908 Democrat national convention in Denver to have been a national convention? Perhaps the convention took place so long ago that no-one remembers or should remember?

My guess is that CNN or Fox or some news network will hearken back to the Denver (19)08 convention to bring up WJB, the platform of the day, and how it relates to contemporary issues. At that point, will anyone remember (or better yet even care) that the spokesman for the Denver hosting committee was so incorrect?

Posted by Craig Depken at 06:00 PM in Politics

Government is a Force That Gives us Meaning

David Boaz's article in today's Wall Street Journal on the Presidential Candidates' exhortations to "collective service" (?!) has already made the rounds on the blogosphere. Arnold Kling weighs in here. Here's Will Wilkinson on the insufficiency of "meaning" as a criterion for indulgence.

I want to add a couple of points. First, it's ironic that mutli-millionaire politicians like Obama and McCain are tut-tutting us for our alleged devotion to unrighteous mammon. Second, I borrow here a meme from co-blogger Wilson Mixon and ask whether it is better to feel good than to do good. Are the candidates interested in outcomes, or is it the sacrifice per se that is important? Comments are open until I get spammed with the first offer for porn, mortgage refinancing, or no-limit Texas Hold 'em.

Posted by Art Carden at 04:03 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (2)

Baptists, Bootleggers & Horrid History

From The Economist's review of "Fatal Misconception" by Michael Connelly (Harvard University Press):

All too easily arrogance slides into inhumanity. Much of the evil done in the name of slowing population growth had its roots in an uneasy coalition between feminists, humanitarians and environmentalists, who wished to help the unwillingly fecund, and the racists, eugenicists and militarists who wished to see particular patterns of reproduction, regardless of the desires of those involved. The first group knew perfectly well that economic development, education and rights for women were very effective in reducing birth rates. But the second regarded promoting these ends as too slow and expensive. And even suggesting them risked shattering the coalition: among the hardliners were many who found the tendency of educated women to have fewer children almost as problematic as that of uneducated ones to breed prolifically.

As the world population soared, the population controllers came to believe they were fighting a war, and there would be collateral damage. Millions of intra-uterine contraceptive devices were exported to poor countries although they were known to cause infections and sterility. “Perhaps the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things,” said a participant at a conference on the devices organised in 1962 by the Population Council, a research institute founded by John D. Rockefeller, “particularly if the infection she acquires is sterilising but not lethal.” In 1969 Robert McNamara, then president of the World Bank, said he was reluctant to finance health care “unless it was very strictly related to population control, because usually health facilities contributed to the decline of the death rate, and thereby to the population explosion.”

[...]

Mr Connelly's most devastating critique of population control is not that it destroyed lives, or was based on imperialist or eugenic ideas, but that it did not work. In country after country—even in China—birth rates were already falling when the government began implementing more coercive policies. Furthermore, statistical estimates suggest that as much as 90% of the reason that women have families of a particular size is simply because that is the number of children they want.

I disagree with the view that the most devastating critique is that population control policies didn't work, but the review is most compelling and quite well done.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 10:56 AM in Politics

May 21, 2008

On party politics c. 1908

On May 20, 1908, a number of state Democratic conventions were held. The majority of delegates instructed on that day were for Bryan. However, the May 21, 1908 NYT has an amazing piece of writing that is as relevant today as it was yesterday (and that is unfortunate):

Intimating that the system of party government in this country is threatened with disintegration by the progress of intelligence and free thought in themselves, and declaring that already there are signs of its demoralization by the gathering independent forces outside of the party organization, Goldwin Smith, the English scholar, has written from his home in Toronto to students at Cornell bidding them to take a careful study of present conditions, with a view of determining for themselves that party government and parties are not the best means for the welfare of the state.

The first paragraph already asks a lot of the reader. How many college students today have been asked or, better yet, thought to ask themselves if party politics is the best way? My guess is very few. As for why the parties still exist 100 years later with barely any viable competition? Perhaps one way to continue party dominance is to retard the progress of intelligence and free thought? It worked (for a while) in Soviet Russia and elsewhere.

Smith goes on to describe the forthcoming presidential campaign:

"But in a few weeks Democrats and Republicans will be organizing a political war against each other in a spirit hardly less bellicose than that of actual warfare, with arsenals full of political projectiles on both sides; while the community will be inflamed; intrigue, and perhaps not a little corruption of different kinds, will be at work, and the press on both sides will be blowing the trumpets with more regard to effect than truth.

The only difference today is that there is an Orwellian feel of "ongoing war" in today's politics, although there was a similar if less ubiquitous banter in the early 1900s.

Smith then asks the important question that many "independents" may have already answered:

Is this an institution in which a Nation can forever acquiesce? Are there not symptoms or signs of a change already in the shape of independent forces gathering outside the regular organizations and threatening to disorganize them in time? will not the progress of intelligence and free thought of themselves bring disintegrations?"

While the parties might have faced competition, Teddy Roosevelt will run a third-party campaign in the next election (1912), economic theory would predict that they would use the power of the government to protect their duopoly (joint monopoly) status, which indeed it seems they have. The parties have raised the costs of potential rivals, directly and indirectly, that the possibility of a legitimate third party competitor is unlikely.

Smith finishes by providing a bit of U.S. history concerning parties:

"It is needless to say that nothing like this was contemplated by the framers of your [U.S.] Constitution. Washington sought, by putting Hamilton and Jefferson together in his Administration, to stifle partyism in its birth. The present intensity of party perhaps hardly antedates the Jacksonian era.

"You see to what party has come in England. What is called the Liberal Party is made up of motley and discordant elements - Liberals, Radicals, Laborites, Socialists, and Irish Home Rulers - combined to hold possession of the Government and tampering with vital interests for that purpose."

Indeed, how many "motley and discordant elements" comprise every party today? However, the interesting point Smith offers is that parties necessarily cobble together a coalition but each member has to sacrifice "vital interests" to do so. In cartel theory, economists propose that a cartel member might voluntarily sacrifice some sovereignty for a chance at higher profits. Without sufficient monitoring of behavior and enforcement against cheating against the cartel, solidarity is hard to maintain.

Political parties would seem to have a similar problem. It is difficult to monitor certain behaviors, such as voting in secret ballots. However, one thing the party has over the private cartel is the ability to tax and bribe those "discordant elements" to maintain solidarity.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:45 AM in Politics

May 20, 2008

Delegate dilemma c. 1908

Just so that we know that delegate allocation has been a problem in the past, the May 20, 1908 NYT reports on possible shenanigans in Pennsylvania:

The Democratic State Convention, which meets here to-morrow, promises to be one of the warmest in the recent history of that party. The fight, which has divided the Democracy of the State, is on the question of whether the convention shall send the four delegates at large to the National Convention under binding instructions to vote for William J. Bryan or whether they shall go to Denver unfettered.

Col. James M. Guffey of Pittsburg, State leader and the National committeeman, to-night was positive that the convention will not instruct the delegates. He said that he and his followers would control the convention two to one. The Bryanites assert that they will have a safe majority and that the delegates will go to Denver under instructions. The Executive Committee to-day formally ratified Col. Guffey's choice for temporary chairman. The fight will be precipitated over the selection of the permanent Chairman.

This is amazing.

Democrats go to Denver in 1908 and 2008. Delegate dilemmas abound in 1908 and 2008. However, if these dilemmas were truly problematic in picking a candidate, the party would have revamped the way it chooses delegates. However, because the same dilemmas persist 100 years later, it must be that someone benefits from the confusion and wiggle-room. I'd presume it's the party insiders.

The headline of the 1908 NYT story reads:

"Both Bryanites and Their Foes Claim Victory in To-day's Convention."

"Headlines" from the May 20, 2008 Drudge Report:

DECLARE, IF YOU DARE... [Hillary referring to Obama]

Obama seeks delegate majority in Ore., Ky. primaries...

HILLARY CLAIMS POPULAR VOTE LEAD...

Count...

At least they could try to be original in their disputes, but alas...

Posted by Craig Depken at 05:16 PM in Politics

Kentucky endorsement c. 1908

Interesting enough, May 19, 1908, was the day the Kentucky state Democratic "decided" to go for William Jennings Bryan for the 1908 Presidential election. From the May 20, 1908 NYT:

Kentucky's Democratic Central Committee met here [Frankfort, KY] today and decided to hold the state convention at Lexington on June 11. A resolution indorsing [sic] William Jennings Bryan for the Presidential nomination was adopted.

One hundred years later, which of the contending Democratic candidates is most like WJB? Comments open for a day or two.

Posted by Craig Depken at 05:05 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (3)

May 13, 2008

Subsidies for Millionaires; Tax Hikes if You Make $100k

1. President Bush wants to limit farm subsidies to farmers earning $200k or less; Democrats want millionaire farmers to continue to be eligible for subsidies. (Source here; scroll down to #1.)

2. While wanting to continue to subsidize millionaire farmers, Democrats want to increase taxes on people earning as little as $102k (e.g., Obama thinks the taxable earnings cap on the payroll tax should be eliminated; Obama also favors eliminating the Bush tax cuts).

Huh?

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:31 PM in Politics

May 12, 2008

Collars for Dollars

In a new editorial, Jacob Sullum at Reason writes of New York City's little-noticed marijuana crackdown.

While marijuana arrests have risen between two- and three-fold nationwide since 1990, the increase in New York has been much more dramatic. "From 1997 to 2006," sociologist Harry Levine and drug policy activist Deborah Small note in the NYCLU report, "the New York City Police Department arrested and jailed more than 353,000 people simply for possessing small amounts of marijuana. This was eleven times more marijuana arrests than in the previous decade."

Based on their analysis of arrest data and their interviews with police, arrestees, and public defenders, Levine and Small conclude that the pot busts are largely a byproduct of the NYPD's aggressive "stop and frisk" tactics. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police may briefly detain people they suspect of involvement in criminal activity and, as a precautionary measure, pat them down for weapons. Taking advantage of this Fourth Amendment loophole, New York City police stopped and frisked people more than half a million times in 2006.

...

Levine and Small note that busting pot smokers is a relatively safe and easy way to pad arrest figures, which creates the illusion of productivity, and generate overtime pay, a practice known as "collars for dollars."

From the collars' perspective, getting arrested for a trivial, victimless offense, which saddles them with criminal records that can impair their ability to obtain an education and make a living, is humiliating and embittering. It is especially rankling because police seem to be targeting poor black and Hispanic men for treatment that would not be tolerated if it were aimed at affluent white New Yorkers.

Survey data indicate that among 18-to-25-year-olds, the age group where the pot busts are concentrated, whites are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to smoke marijuana. Yet Levine and Small found that in New York blacks and Hispanics are, respectively, five and three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 01:27 PM in Politics

May 07, 2008

Not Too Chaotic

Calling his effort "Operation Chaos," Rush Limbaugh has been urging Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary. There are competing claims about how successful his effort has been (here and here), so I decided to exploit variation in the Indiana and NC primary rules to see how much influence Limbaugh had on yesterday's results.

Here's the key idea--Indiana has an open primary but NC does not permit Republicans to vote in the Democrat primary (unaffiliated voters can). Moreover, NC had a contested primary for the GOP nomination for governor that would serve to keep NC Republicans in their own election.

So I estimated a regression model for the percent of the vote received by Hillary in NC and IN counties. RHS variables include the black percent of the population, the percent of the population between ages 16 & 24, the percent of the population over 65, the percent of the population that is male, and per capita income. The model also includes a dummy variable taking a value of 1 for IN counties--this variable should pick up any support for Hillary that is not explained by the other variables thereby making it a crude measure of the Rush effect.

So what do the results find? The Indiana dummy has a coefficient of 0.53 meaning that on average Hillary got a about one-half percentage point larger share in Indiana than would be explained by the control variables. The point estimate is not statistically significant (t = 0.43). The regressors perform as one would expect, except the percent male has no effect (either in magnitude or significance).

My student worker Katie compiled data for me and is compiling more as I type. Look for updates later.

BTW, Limbaugh has just come on. He is claiming credit for tilting IN to Hillary and playing audio to that effect from John Kerry. My results suggest otherwise.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:09 PM in Politics

May 06, 2008

Food crises c. 1908

As there are bad policies today concerning food, there were bad policies yesterday. From the May 6, 1908 NYT:

ST. PETERSBURG [Russia] - The Russian sugar industry centering at Kiev is passing through a serious crisis. it already has resulted in the suspension of payments by two of the great manufacturing and refining firms...The trouble in the sugar industry is due in large measure to restriction of exports; the production is far in excess of the Russian market.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:38 PM in Politics

In-kind Taxation c. 1908

Taxation can take a number of forms, but the most insidious are those that are non-monetary in nature. A good example comes from the May 6, 1908 NYT:

George H. Fearons, General Attorney for the Western Union Telegraph Company, addressed the House Committee on Inter-State and Foreign Commerce to-day in opposition to the bill introduced by Mr. Carey of Wisconsin to require telegraph companies to transmit with telegrams the time of filing messages and the time of putting them on the wire.

Mr. Fearons said that 60 per cent. of the telegraph business of the country was the transmission of information for Exchanges, Boards of Trade, and similar commercial bodies, 20 per cent. was newspaper matter, 15 per cent. railroad intelligence, and less than 3 per cent. "private and social telegrams."

He said that on the basis of 74,805,000 telegrams transmitted annually, the additional number of words imposed by the bill upon the Western union Company for transmission would be equal to 17,454,000 ten word-messages.

The extra messages would represent an in-kind tax because the marginal cost of an additional message was not zero - there were congestion problems, no doubt. Assuming the attorney was telling the truth, the 17+ million requred additional messages would represet a 23% increase in the number of messages sent. Western Union would likely have respond by sending fewer non-required messages.

I wonder what political interest group Rep. Carey was trying to appease: were there claims that Western Union sat on certain messages and gave preference to other messages, sort of a 1908-version of net neutrality? My hunch is that Rep. Carey was responding to a complaint from one or more "private and social" consumers.

If the Boards and Exchanges were anxious about timely delivery of information, given their market share of telegrams sent they would have been able to exert some pressure on Western Union to improve service. The same woudl have gone for the newspapers and the railroads.

I wonder if this bill, like many bills, was submitted to "protect the rights" of small-time consumers and in the process tax the heck out of the firm that provided a valuable service. This sounds a lot like many of the bad policies proffered today.

However, history shows that Western Union already faced competition: the postal service, the telephone, the wireless, and eventually the fax, and the Internet. It took a while but roughly 100 years later Western Union sent its last telegram.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:36 PM in Politics

May 02, 2008

Funniest sentence I read today.

From a Canadian colleague about an upcoming conference he's attending in the middle east that Al Jazeera is covering:

This is good from a Canadian point of view. Al Jazeera is far to the right of the CBC and much less sympathetic to terrorists.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:55 AM in Politics

April 28, 2008

America the Prisoner

From Lew Rockwell's Prisoner Nation:

There are 2.3 million people behind bars. China, with four times as many people, has 1.6 million in prison.

In terms of population, the United States has 751 people in prison for every 100,000, while the closest competitor in this regard is Russia with 627. I'm struck by this figure: 531 in Cuba. The median global rate is 125.

What's amazing is that most of this imprisoning trend is recent, dating really from the 1980s, and most of the change is due to drug laws. From 1925 to 1975, the rate of imprisonment was stable at 110, lower than the international average, which is what you might expect in a country that purports to value freedom. But then it suddenly shot up in the 1980s. There were 30,000 people in jail for drugs in 1980, while today there are half a million.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:00 PM in Politics

April 22, 2008

McCain on Clinton-Obama

Have you seen ANY challenge to the notion that McCain is benefitting from the protracted Clinton-Obama primary? Some things to consider.

1. As a general rule, doesn't head-to-head competition make for better competitors? Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire a decade ago. Or even hopped-up Ben Johnson made Carl Lewis a better sprinter two decades ago. Athletes are one thing. Would the same hold for politicians?

2. The standard story for why the primary benefits McCain is somethign like this. The two Ds have to go hard left in the primary, and the harder left Obama and Clinton have to go to beat each other, the harder it'll be for them to come back to center in the general. A counter argument is that the primary and general election dimensions are sufficiently different (there are D issues and then there are R issues) that it doesn't much matter. An additional counter argument is that by beating each other up, Clinton and Obama work out all the kinks and hone their messages and leave very little for McCain to go negative with.

3. Generic ballot tests. When pollsters pit a generic Democrat with an unnamed Republica, the Democrat easily wins. Does the attention and exposure of the Democratic primary strengthen or weaken that?

4. The lack of a known opponent has to be hurting McCain's campaign finance. According to the FEC, he's raised just over $80 million so far this election cycle. He'll need to raise another $300 million in the next 9 months to match W's total for the 2004 cycle. So far Obama's raised $240 mil.

It just seems to me that to say this benefits McCain is to say that political competition is ruinous. Maybe so. But maybe not, too.

Any thoughts?

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 04:03 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (4)

Wise Words ...

... from co-blogger Mike Munger:

"If John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were on a bridge and it collapsed, America would be saved."

Mike may be a bit optimistic here--he'd also need Edwards, Huckabee, and large chunk of Congress to be on the bridge.

ADDENDUM: Save the emails, it's only a methaphorical bridge. I don't advocate harming these folks and I'm sure Mike doesn't either.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:59 AM in Politics

April 16, 2008

Biofuels, food, and the environment

Does this Guardian article offer a portent of things to come for the US?

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the [UK] government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:56 AM in Politics

April 09, 2008

Internet and Freedom

I’m on the way back from the APEE meetings, where a lot of DOLers have been for the past few days. There were a ton of really good papers on the program, and the plenary talks were outstanding. My favorite was yesterday when David Henderson gave a talk, “Is the ‘Net, on net, good for freedom?” In short, David’s answer is ‘yes,’ although he acknowledges that governments use advanced technologies to track individuals and censors uses of these same technologies. I think it's very difficult to say whether the Internet itself is good for freedom, because it depends on how limited government is in the first place, and that varies across societies. Clearly in closed societies, socialist governments have a strong interest in limiting communication of any sort. Alvaro Vargas Llosa writes about the dramatic story of the failed attempt by Raul Castro's government to censor the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who writes about daily life in under the degenerate regime. The film, Lives of Others, highlights various forms of information being banned under East Germany, from books and newspapers to even government statistics on suicide rates. Before Vietnam's doi moi reforms in the late 1980's people there had virtually no contact with the outside world but now there are something like 15 million Internet users. As societies become more open in general, their peoples become less tolerant of government controlling anything, including the Internet. Even private organizations, such as Google, are scrutinized for storing data on individuals [story on EU here]. I am largely ignorant of the details of this debate but I do think David is right. Still, I think it's important to say that the Internet's benefit to freedom isn't certain; it depends on people's vigilance against censorship and privacy invasion in general.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 12:05 PM in Politics

April 03, 2008

PETA moment c. 1908

The April 3, 1908 NYT has a report that you would NEVER see today:

President Roosevelt has been the recipient of gifts of almost every conceivable description...Yesterday a monster sea turtle weighing 350 pounds, a product of Nicaraguan waters, was presented to the President...

The President spent nearly an hour contemplating his new pet and debating as to what disposition to make of it. Finally the splendid specimen of sea food was turned over to the White House chef. Mr. Roosevelt has asked several luncheon guests for the next several days.

Nice.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:25 AM in Politics

April 02, 2008

It's good to be the king c. 1908

From the April 2, 1908 NYT:

BERLIN - An authentic report is in circulation here that a bill will soon be introduced in the Prussian Diet raising the civil list of the Emperor. This list now amounts to $3,900,000 a year, which is paid the Emperor as King of Prussia and not as German Emperor; the latter position carries no salary.

The explanation offered for raising the list is the increased cost of living, which bears particularly heavy on the royal house because of the large number of children and other persons dependent upon the purse of the monarch.

So many kids!! Good grief.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:30 AM in Politics

Elections matter c. 1908

From the April 2, 1908 NYT:

MILWAUKEE, Wis. -- Fear of a Social Democrat victory at the election next Tuesday is said to be the reason that there was not a single bid received from any banking house for the $325,000 bond issue, which was to have been allotted today. The Social Democrats have been gaining in strength here for several years past, and polled 12,000 votes out of a total of about 60,000.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:27 AM in Politics

March 26, 2008

A New TR?

Matt Welch on McCain and individualism:

Like many country-first, party-second military officers who began second careers in Washington, Mr. McCain is often mischaracterized as a politician without any identifiable ideology. But all of his actions can be seen as an attempt to use the federal government to restore your faith in ... the federal government. Once we all put our shoulder on the same wheel, there’s nothing this country can’t do.

[...] I, for one, would welcome President McCain’s unilateral wars on pork-barrel spending and waterboarding — but it’s treacherous territory for those of us who consider “the pursuit of happiness” as something best defined by individuals, not crusading presidents-to-be.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:47 PM in Politics

Gravel 2008: All over the map

Former senator (D-Alaska) a gadfly Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel announced yesterday that he is joining the Libertarian Party and will be seeking its 2008 nomination for president. Fox News reports:

In an e-mail to supporters, Gravel, 77, wrote, “I look forward to advancing my presidential candidacy within the Libertarian Party, which is considerably closer to my values, my foreign policy views and my domestic views.”

The same report also notes, however:

Last month, Gravel endorsed Green Party presidential nominee Jesse Johnson. [According to a spokesman,] Gravel didn’t see any reason “why not” to offer his backing since “voting party line is not smart” and he agrees with Johnson’s message as well as the Green Party’s approach of “direct democracy, mobilizing at a grassroots level, working with people one-on-one and enabling citizen democracy.”

The LP national convention will be held in May. 14 announced candidates are already in contention for the nomination. Apart from Gravel, the only candidate I've heard of is ... wait, I haven't heard of any of them.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 11:51 AM in Politics

March 14, 2008

Anthony Downs was on to something

In the U.S., third parties and anti-establishment folks groan about the two-party dominance that is American politics. Today's Iranian elections provide a little perspective. Reuters has the full story here. A few key excerpts.

By Zahra Hosseinian and Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians voted on Friday in a low-key election likely to keep parliament in the grip of conservatives after unelected state bodies barred many reformist foes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the race.

[...]

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has effectively endorsed Ahmadinejad and his government, cast his ballot early and urged others to do the same.

Khamenei usually stays above the political fray, but he was quoted as saying in newspapers on Thursday that Iranians should consider "voting for those who can pave the way for the current government which is active and willing to serve".

His support for Ahmadinejad was relayed by anonymous text messages to mobile phone users on Friday.

Shrugging off reformists' complaints that the system was stacked against them, Ahmadinejad said after voting: "Our revolution means the presence of people ... Parliament belongs to people and it should be a reflection of what they want."

[...]

The president can rely on loyalists like Hassan Siavashi, 45. "It is my religious duty to vote. I pray God will help Ahmadinejad's group to win," he said before voting in Tehran.

Bibi Zahra, an elderly woman in a black chador, said she had put her trust in her son's choice. "I don't know who I was voting for, he filled in the form for me," she added.

.

When this much makes it into the press, you know it's only the tip of the iceberg. Without meaningful political competition, democracy collapses toward autocracy.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 11:57 AM in Politics

Kudos to Mike Munger ...

... for getting to participate in the North Carolina gubernatorial debate in October (he's the Libertarian candidate). The debate will be held in Charlotte--maybe Craig can live blog it for us.

Looking for some supreme swag--then donate to Mike's campaign. Logo t-shirts, collector's quality coffee mugs, and more--all for a modest donation. It's the best $50 I've spent today ...

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:45 AM in Politics

March 13, 2008

Home schooling news

My trolling of Catholic blogs brought up two stories I'm guessing are of interest to DoL readers (who are probably Friedman fans, himself a staunch supporter of more choices in education). First, Jimmy Akin directs to this story about a California state appelate court case on the credentials of home-schooling parents:

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court.

A second post by Carl Olson points to an opinion piece in the Manila Standard Today:

The inevitable question is whether it is in the best interest of the child to be insulated from beliefs, ideas and values outside of what his parents allow. To say it more accurately, should the state stand by and allow children to be raised in accordance with their parents‘ biases and prejudices? Or does the state, in accordance with its own right to preserve itself, have the right to intervene, even to the point of infringing on parental authority, in order to provide the child with a more holistic view of the world and humanity?

Call me a conspiracy nut, but is it that hard to believe that, perhaps, parents who hold dissenting views on human-caused global warming, the benefits of redistribution programs, political correctness, or heck, even the logic of Social Security, might be deemed unfit to teach their children outside of state supervision? I take a medium-size tinfoil hat, please.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:11 AM in Politics

March 12, 2008

Brain-dead Statist

Interesting article, especially given the author's identity. Its title is "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal,'" but Gary Roseman says I must use the word Statist.

I wrote a play about politics, ... [a]nd as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics, ... which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, ... a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. ...

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart. This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part. ...

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out? I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to.

Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). ...

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 03:14 PM in Politics

March 11, 2008

Rich, beautiful, shameless

Malcolm Forbes is supposed to have said, "Nepotism's OK as long as it's kept in the family." In that vein, NPR's "Steve Inskeep talks to [Scott] Simon, host of [NPR's] Weekend Edition Saturday, about his book, about growing up in Chicago and about the simultaneously selfless — and self-absorbed — enterprise of politics."

On the last point, Simon approvingly quotes his principal character: "Of course, the system isn't fair. It favors the rich, and the beautiful, and the shameless. But everyone gets a chance in the end."

That bit of praise sounds like a succinct statement the condemnation that statists use when calling for "regulation" of markets. Doesn't it occur to them that, given the levers available in both the market and the political system, the rich, the beautiful, and shameless are even more likely to prosper than if "regulation" were absent?

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:27 PM in Politics

February 27, 2008

Buckley, RIP

William F. Buckley died today. This is a sad day for me. He was my first introduction to conservative/libertarian thought thanks to a friend's willingness to let me read his National Review magazine back in high school.* Already a budding anti-communist, Buckley opened my eyes to the importance of economic liberalism as part of the the American tradition. Buckley was a great uniter among libertarians and conservatives in the 1970s and 80s.

Yes, I know Buckley was no Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist, and my own views have traveled far from those high school days. I didn't always agree with him then and found my views moving farther away from Buckley's over time. Still I will allow myself a moment to honor the man who helped me get where I am today.

Sadly, Buckley's passing is symbolic also of the death of the libertarianism in the American conservative movement. I'm afraid there aren't too many conservatives left who would sail out to international waters to try some pot (or rather few who'd admit to it).

*Reading The Freeman, at the instigation of a high school teacher, was my first intro to real libertarian thought.

Addendum: I also read and enjoyed most of his spy novels. Not high literature by any standard, but good for the genre.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:10 PM in Politics

Socializing risk, ex post

Holman Jenkins in today's Opinion Journal [link here, thanks to Richard Reinsch for the pointer]:

Any debate about a housing bailout can be put aside -- the bailout is underway... No, the perverse effect won't be a replay of the '30s, or even Japan's decade of stagnation in the '90s, but the latter is your model, with a little inflation thrown in. The goal: avoid foreclosures and slow the fall of home prices to market-clearing levels.

As for the "little inflation thrown in," SJSU's Barstool Economists have this:

Warren Gibson queries:

According to the BLS wizards at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm the housing component has been rising at a annual rate of about 3%, though not quite that fast in the last couple months. Can anyone tell me why, with house prices declining, the housing component of CPI continues to rise? What am I missing here? I know they assume homeowners are renting to themselves, and maybe BLS isn't "marking to market" existing houses.

Jeff Hummell replies:

Not since 1982 has the CPI included house prices, nor is there any logical reason that it should. It is after all, a "consumer" price index, and the purchase of a house is primarily an investment. About 40 percent of the CPI comes from housing costs, which includes actual and imputed rents (30 percent), fuel and other utilities (5 percent), and household furnishings and operations (5 percent). Do you know any tenant who has seen a decrease in rents over the last year? I certainly don't. Rents are imputed for owner-occupied housing from the actual market rents of similar propertis, so you are right, they are not marked to the market value of the house, in either the CPI or the National Income and Product Accounts. Imputed rents should only noticeably fall with a decline in house prices if they noticeably rose (faster than other goods and services) with an increase in house prices.

Back to Jenkins and the policy question:

Making the hole even harder to climb out of in tough-love fashion, government policy itself played a big role in creating the bubble, on the bipartisan theory that homeownership begets "social stability."

[...]

So much for subsidizing our way to greater "social stability" by luring marginal borrowers into debt to own a home. The truth today is that politicians are rushing to prop up house prices not to rescue the poor from the ignominy of renting, but to get past the next election without affluent voters having to confront a realistic decline in the market value of their main assets.

So that clears things up, huh?

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 09:42 AM in Politics

February 25, 2008

Patience c. 1908

It is interesting to read about the prohibition movement and its success in the South during the mid nineteen-aughts. Of course, within a decade the rest of the country will jump on the prohibition wagon (as it were). An important lesson from that episode is the amazing amount of patience and persistence the prohibitionists displayed. Today, there are similar groups with patience and persistence and the empirical question is whether their policies would be any better than those of the past.

The Feb. 25, 1908 NYT has the following information:

Representative E. F. Acheson now proposes to give Congress an opportunity to put itself on record on the question of National Prohibition. Many of the members of Congress, including several from Pennsylvania, have declared that they are in favor of National prohibition, but are opposed to State and local option, as it cannot be enforced.

Mr. Acheson introduced a resolution to-day for an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that the sale, importation, and manufacture of intoxicating liquors, including beer, ale, wine, and of opium, cocaine, or other narcotic drugs, except for medicinal and mechanical purposes shall be prohibited in the United States and all the Territories.

Whether Acheson was the first or not, such suggestions ultimately led to this:

Amendment XVIII

Passed by Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed by amendment 21.

Section 1.

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2.

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Thanks.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:01 AM in Politics

Haven't I Heard This Somewhere Before?

Recently, the Mrs. and I caught a snippet of Barack Obama calling for "a leader who can end the division in Washington." One of us asked the other didn't Bush run to be a uniter not a divider or some such pablum? Indeed he did (maybe Hillary should try to sniff out some plagiarism). Actually, I'm with Kevin "Gridlock is Good" Grier--bipartisanship is vastly overrated (think stimulus package).

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:20 AM in Politics

February 18, 2008

On inside jobs c. 1908

The "9/11 Truthers" contend that the attacks of that day were an "inside job" designed to "lead the U.S. to war." The Feb. 18, 1908 NYT reports on the "Maine Truthers" (from Spain):

The Diario Espanol, the organof the ultra-Spanish element, in a leading article to-day referring to the special celebration by Americans of the tenth anniversary of the blowing up of the battleship maine, says:

"This commemorates the blackest blot on American history, the world, including honest Americans, believing that the ship was blown up by direct orders from the War Department for the purpose of justification in the plan to despoil Spain of Cuba."

The paper adduces as "convincing proof" that the officers of the Maine attended the funeral of the victims in full dress uniform, which showed that they must have sent their uniforms ashore "in anticipation of the explosion," and alleges that the reason the wreck has not been raised is that it would conclusively demonstrate that the explosion was in the magazine.

More here

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:11 AM in Politics

February 11, 2008

On rebuilding after disaster c. 1908

From the Feb. 11, 1908 NYT concerning the rebuilding of Chinatown after the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake:

The rebuilt Chinatown of San Francisco contains substantial new buildings as picturesque as those destroyed by the fire and earthquake, but more convenient and sanitary...

The Oriental aspect of the Chinese quarter is carefully preserved for good business reasons...

Fully 15,000 Chinese have returned to San Francisco from Oakland and other places of refuge. they have not yet reestablished their temples, as they feared the gods would not be contented at the scene of the great disaster. But this year the cornerstones of new temples are to be laid, and many more Chinese will return, taking their gods with them.

I am admittedly not well versed in the history of Chinatown(s) - my suspicion is that they are/were a form of segregation. However, what is striking is the rebuilding is ostensibly completed in less than two years and without a hint of government assistance mentioned in the story.

One wants to make comparisons with another disaster area in this country, even if to do so is not completely honest.

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:14 PM in Politics

February 09, 2008

On bridge tolls c. 1908

For our friends in the Northeast (and elsewhere) who face dramatic increases in road and bridge tolls in the near future, a letter to the editor from the Feb. 9, 1908 NYT:

Now that the Thaw trial is over, please turn your attention to a free Brooklyn Bridge topic and let me know why I should pay 10 cents [$2.26 in 2006 dollars] to drive across the [Brooklyn] bridge, who gets the money, and such other information as will explain why, after I have crossed the bridge, I can drive free over several hundred miles of paved, cleaned, and lighted thoroughfares, that cost many millions of dollars to build and cost ten times as much to maintain as both bridges?

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:20 AM in Politics

February 07, 2008

Pre-election antics c. 1908

An article in the Feb. 7, 1908 NYT puts our current primary antics in some perspective:

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - The wildest scenes of disorder characterized the proceedings of the Republican Convention here to-day, which elected two complete delegations to the National Convention, one in favor of Taft and the other uninstructed.

For several weeks there had been a threatened departure from the expressed wishes of the Administration forces, who had been laying plans for the indorsement of the Administration and the sending to the National Convention of a delegation favoring Taft.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:49 AM in Politics

February 06, 2008

Political hot air c. 1908

From the Jan. 6, 1908 NYT:

The eagle which has perched upon the top of the historic mace at the right hand of the Speaker of the House of Representatives these sixty-seven years, since John Tyler was President, is sick.

For all these years the eagle has withstood the onslaughts of eloquence. It sat there calmly through the thunders of war statesmen. The slavery question was debated in its presence, and after the war it heard Conkling, Blaine, Lamar, Sunset Cox, and a long line of orators, even down to the present time of John Wesley Gaines, all without a quiver. But this week has been too much for it.

The spread-eagle speeches which have shaken the rafters not only of the Capitol, but of the country, have at last aroused the emulation of the silver eagle, and it decided to stretch its mighty pinions for a flight. But, alas! like so many other flights of the week, it fell flat.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:46 AM in Politics

February 04, 2008

"The poor souls"

I received this note from an economist friend in Nairobi, Kenya whose home is close to one of the areas of the unrest:

I am unable to sleep, I have called all the police numbers, called intelligence agents, newsrooms-nobody is rescuing the poor souls. I am watching from my window, impotent and enraged.

For his safety, I will not reveal his name. He is now trying to move his family and staff to safer digs. Donations (501c3 deductible thanks to his American friends) are being accepted. Contact me directly for details if you're interested/able to help.

[No, this is not a scam. I know the guy and this is real.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 06:42 PM in Politics

Biofuels for fun and profits

George Will on biofuels. The Riady story needs to be repeated as often as possible.

The political importance of corn-growing, ethanol-making Iowa is one reason that biofuel mandates flow from Washington the way oil would flow from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if it had nominating caucuses.

ANWR's 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet's saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), who block drilling in even a tiny patch of ANWR. You could fit Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware into ANWR's frozen desolation; the "footprint" of the drilling operation would be one sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport.

Americans can still drill for … water. Water rights (T. Boone Pickens has bought 400,000 acres of them in the Texas Panhandle) are becoming more valuable as ethanol production, which is extremely water-intensive, puts pressure on supplies.

To avoid drilling for oil in ANWR's moonscape, the planet savers evidently prefer destroying forests, even though they absorb greenhouse gases. ... The destruction of forests is one reason European governments are rethinking their biofuel enthusiasm. The European Union has awakened to the fact that growing crops (which requires diesel fuel for tractors, and nitrogen fertilizer made with natural gas) and turning them into biofuel (transporting them to energy-devouring manufacturing plants) takes a toll on the environment

If the argument for ethanol is that domestically produced energy should be increased, there are better ways of doing that. On the outer continental shelf there is a 50-year supply of clean-burning natural gas . . . that the government . . . will not allow to be extracted. But, then, consider what was done in 1996 by the dominant half of today's Clinton tandem presidential candidacy.

Bill Clinton, by executive edict, declared 1.7 million acres of Utah to be a national monument. Under those acres are the largest known deposit—more than 60 billion tons—of low-sulfur, clean-burning coal. The second largest deposit, the value of which rose because of Clinton's action locking up an alternative supply, is in Indonesia and is owned by a member of the Indonesian Riady family, of fragrant memory, which was generous to Clinton's 1992 campaign.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 10:42 AM in Politics

Some pot in every chicken?

Steve Chapman on Obama's stance(s) regarding marijuana:

Recently, he had told a New Hampshire newspaper, "I'm not in favor of decriminalization."

This episode reveals that as a candidate, Obama is more fond of bold rhetoric than bold policies. But it also proves the impossibility of talking sense on the subject of illicit drugs during a political campaign. That course of action would mean admitting the inadmissible: that the prohibition of cannabis has been cruel, wasteful and fraudulent.

Cruel because it leads to the arrest of nearly 700,000 people a year for mere possession of a substance that is comparatively benign. Wasteful because it expends billions of dollars in police, court and correctional resources that could be deployed against dangerous predators. Fraudulent because it hasn't solved anything: According to the federal government, nearly 100 million Americans have tried the stuff.
. . .
Had we enforced our statutes more vigorously, of course, Bush, Clinton and the others would never have been elected anything, because they would be ex-convicts. Yet Bush, Clinton and the others were happy to put people behind bars for crimes they themselves committed.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 10:28 AM in Politics

CCC at the state level c. 1908

From the Feb. 4, 1908 NYT:

With the unanimous consent in the [New York] Senate to-night, Senator McCall of the Sixteenth District introduced a bill authorizing the Park Board of New York to spend an additional sum of $1,500,000 for the development of parks and driveways.

"Fourteen years ago," he said, "a law was enacted permitting this expenditure for the benefit of the unemployed. The need for such relief is greater now than it was fourteen years ago. It is estimated that 130,000 skilled mechanics and 15,000 men without trades, are without employment in New York today."

Unmentioned is that such an expenditure "for the benefit of the unemployed" came at the expense of the employed (at least to some degree).

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:49 AM in Politics

January 31, 2008

John McCain? Say it ain't so!

I just took this reasonably (but not perfectly) crafted quiz that selects the presidential candidate closest to your views. It spit out John McCain! Not Ron Paul?! Huh?!

It could the be quiz itself I guess. It had no questions on campaign finance and I LOATHE John McCain's views there. Plus I have a deep fear that McCain is a hot head, but that character issue wasn't on the quiz. Plus Paul's views (e.g., abortion is a state issue) don't lend themselves to the quiz format very well.

But I can't deny the fact that except for Iraq and Immigration. issues on which I disagree with all of the Republicans (except for Paul on Iraq), I seem close to McCain.

Here were the results:

Agree with McCain:
Taxes
Stem-Cell Research
Health Care
Abortion
Social Security
Line-Item Veto
Energy
Marriage
Death Penalty
Gun Control
Environment
Education

Disagree with McCain:
Iraq
Immigration

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:48 AM in Politics

January 30, 2008

Clinton vs. Prosperity

From Reuters.

Prophetic?

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:23 PM in Politics

January 23, 2008

Spot On!

Another excellent offering from Mike Lester of the Rome News-Tribune:

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:21 PM in Politics

On political dynasties c. 1908

A fascinating editorial in the Jan. 23, 1908 NYT discusses how the Democratic party might want to get rid of a candidate that has been hanging around for too long:

Why should [William Jennings] Bryan get out unless he is forced out? From the point of view of the Democrat, the patriot, the wise party leader, innumerable reasons may be advanced why he should abandon his pretensions to the candidacy; from the personal point of view of Mr. Bryan, not one. Mr. Bryan is a very successful man. In seeking a third nomination he is pursuing the path of success that has led him to fame and fortune. He is a rich man. He has said that he has money enough to make him comfortable the rest of his life. He has made his fortune by being the candidate, by refusing to relinquish his grasp upon the leadership of the Democratic Party. Because of the position he holds men buy his Commoner, and lecture committees pay him large fees. Mr. Bryan, in the language of the street, has a "good thing." He would be a fool to let go of it.

Might this apply to a certain "third term" seeker today?

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:01 PM in Politics

January 15, 2008

Context

From John J. DiIulio Jr.'s analysis ("The Wacko-Vet Myth: Now echoed by the New York Times") of the Times's drive-by shooting ("Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles"):

The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and other veterans' advocacy groups are absolutely correct that not merely "many" but the vast majority of veterans not only remain completely law-abiding but go on to lead stable and productive personal, professional, and civic lives. Assuming 121 homicide cases in relation to 749,932 total discharges through 2007, 99.98 percent of all discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have not committed or been charged with homicide.

And assuming 121 cases and 749,932 total discharges, the homicide offending rate for the discharged veterans would be 16.1 per 100,000. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has demographic data aplenty on homicide offending rates. For instance, in 2005, for white males aged 18-24, the rate was about 20 per 100,000. The Times opined that 121 was the "minimum" number, even as it counted veterans charged but not convicted with veterans tried and found guilty. Doubling the number to 242 would double the rate to 32.2 per 100,000.

Such crude but contextualizing calculations aside, the right question to ask is whether the veterans, other things being equal (controlling for age, race, gender, education, income, prior criminal history, and other variables), offend at rates that are significantly different from otherwise comparable groups (including groups that have an extreme PTSD incidence). Without doing the relevant statistical (multiple-regression) analyses with all the requisite empirical data, it is impossible to say.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:29 PM in Politics

If It's So Rotten, Why Are You Running for It?

Hillary Clinton likens White House to prison

Perhaps it has something to do with her soaring narcissism and lust for power.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:16 AM in Politics

January 13, 2008

Papers please! Papiere bitte! Papeles, por favor!

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says,

Only three categories of people need be "disappointed" by the forthcoming identification cards, the Homeland Security chief told attendees at a midday press conference here: terrorists, illegal immigrants, and con-men.

I'm not a terrorist, illegal immigrant or con man, but I'm not happy about this. So make that four categories, you nazi wannabe.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 06:37 PM in Politics

January 08, 2008

Bryan's cross c. 1908

From the Jan. 8, 1908 NYT:

"I know that some people are giving much thought to the money question, but that is not worrying me much. The people of this country have made it possible for me to acquire an independent income for all time to come, so I have no worry on that score."

This remark was made by William Jennings Bryan toward the close of his address here [Omaha, Neb.] last night before the Jacksonian Club. This is Mr. Bryan's first statement as to the extent of his own finances.

Here's WJB's famous "Cross of Gold" speech.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:36 AM in Politics

January 01, 2008

Stormy Weather

Wherein John Tierney represents Al Gore as an "availability entrepreneur." Seems like a charitable term.

[A]vailability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 07:06 PM in Politics

December 23, 2007

Legislative restraint c. 1907

The Dec. 23, 1907 NYT reports on legislative restraint on the part of Confederate veterans:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - United Confederate Veterans, of this city, yesterday by unanimous vote went on record in opposition to the bill introduced by Congressman Hobson providing for pensioning Confederate veterans. The resolution concludes:

"While we appreciate the good intentions of the distinguished gentleman, we feel assured no such bill could ever become a law. The offering of such a bill in Congress would result in the reopening of wounds long since healed, and engendering bitterness long since abandoned."

It would be refreshing if some today would show similar restraint.

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:11 PM in Politics

December 22, 2007

Emissions Comparison

From a Competitive Enterprise Institute posting: "It seems the [Washington] Post believes that if an emission drops and no bureaucrat was around to mandate it, it didn't really drop. ... Under any relevant modern baseline, e.g., the year Europe made its Kyoto promise (1997) or thereafter, U.S. emissions have risen far more slowly than those of its noisiest antagonists. For example, International Energy Agency data show that over the past 7 years (2000-2006), the annual rate of increase for U.S. CO2 emissions is approximately one-third of the EU's rate of increase. Indeed, over the same period even the smaller EU-15 economy has increased its CO2 emissions in actual volume greater than the U.S. by more than 20%, even while the U.S. economy and population also grew more rapidly."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:36 AM in Politics

December 13, 2007

On government corruption c. 1907

From the December 13, 1907 NYT:

CHICAGO - Far-reaching effects of the great snowstorm of January, 1905, were uncovered last night by the City Civil Service Commission. The phenomenon discovered was that 1,100 street laborers still are employed by the city for the removal of that remarkable snowfall. Notwithstanding the scientific interest developed, the commission unanimously decided that from reasons of economy, a new rule be enacting limiting to five days the period for which emergency street cleaning laborers may be employed in Chicago.

According to the records, these 1,100 emergency laborers were kept pegging away at the removal of that snow all through the campaign for the election of Mayor Edward F. Dunne and all through his administration. Curiously enough, the number of men required for the removal of snow rose to 1,500 in July.

Excellent.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:17 AM in Politics

December 10, 2007

Pearls of Wisdom ...

... from co-blogger Brad Smith:

Next year, more candidates than ever will have the funds needed to get their messages to voters. That's because 2008 is shaping up to be the best-financed campaign in history.

But some people aren't celebrating this diversity of messages. Supporters of campaign finance and speech regulation, in the name of "reform," want to expand government subsidized campaigns. Behind the rhetoric of "clean" elections is a system that suppresses political speech by ordinary citizens, decreases confidence in government and produces none of what it promises.

The last major campaign finance law, known as McCain-Feingold, required the independent audit and investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, to study government financing systems in Maine and Arizona, states that proponents cited as exemplary of the alleged benefits of government financing. ...

Tax funding of campaigns is supposed to reduce special-interest influence. But since Maine's program began, the number of lobbyists in the state has increased dramatically. ...

Tax financing of campaigns takes your money and gives it to someone else so that person can run against the things in which you believe. Such a welfare system for politicians will not cure our system. Real reform will occur only after citizens are freed of government restraints on their political speech. Call it "the First Amendment solution."

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:53 PM in Politics

December 08, 2007

From Today's Inbox: Academics for Paul

Dear Professor,

Dr. David Beito of the University of Alabama and I have been working on a project to collect endorsements for Ron Paul from those in academia. Our Web site is http://www.academicsforpaul.com/ . So far we have quite a few signatories, and I am wondering if you would be interested in signing on as well. To learn more about Congressman Paul, visit www.RonPaul2008.com. Also, a press release was sent out by the official campaign touting the endorsements of these Professors: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/press-releases/.

Please let me know if you would like to endorse Ron Paul for President. Also, if you know of another Professor who may be interested, please forward this message to them. Thanks for your consideration.


Sincerely,

Aaron Biterman (AULibertarians@aol.com)

Posted by Robert Lawson at 05:43 PM in Politics

December 06, 2007

Domestic use of the Army c. 1907

From the Dec. 6, 1907 NYT:

WASHINGTON - President Roosevelt to-night instructed Gen. Funston to dispatch a sufficient force of regulars to Goldfield, Nev., to control the situation there. This action was taken upon receipt of a telegraphic request from the Governor of Nevada. The troops will proceed from San Francisco and the strength of the expedition is left to the judgement of Gen. Funson.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:54 AM in Politics

The Politics of Truth

Why do politicians lie?

The traditional public choice answer is "because they can." Once in office incumbents enjoy an electoral advantage because rational ignorance creates some slack between voter-principals and politician-agents. Politicians with enough reputational capital can afford to indulge in prevaricating rhetoric, wealth transfers to special interests, and perhaps even the occasional tryst, because democratic institutions are inefficient. Incentives matter, dammit!

The new generation of public choice invokes systematic biases in the beliefs of voter-principals deviating from political truth, as revealed by scientific method. For all the much deserved attention to Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter, the lesser-known yet equally forceful book, Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation, by political theorists Guido Pincione and Fernando Teson, is well-suited to explaining systematic lies in politics and the democratic failure that results. One voter bias, due to epistemic rational ignorance, is a preference for vivid information over opaque explanations. Vivid information is

"a) emotionally interesting, b) concrete and imagery-provoking, and c) proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way." For example, we will feel more indignant about a heinous crime if we watch the gory details on the evening news. If the newscaster also tells us that the suspect was out of prison on a "technicality," we will overstate the relevance of the crime as confirmatory evidence for the theory that heinous crimes are due to the leniency of the justice system. [Pincione and Teson, p.23, omitting footnotes]

In contrast, we spurn opaque explanations like invisible hand, spontaneous order, comparative advantage, reputational self-regulation, and broken window fallacies. People adopt vivid beliefs by default and confirmatory biases put a premium on vivid information that reinforces the default. So false stories can become ingrained, and [p]oliticians have an incentive to spread vivid explanations, for the public will believe them given their default views" (p.35).

Take Al Gore, who is flying to Stockholm (a shocking carbon waste!) to receive his piece of Nobel history on Monday. Yesterday's WSJ.com Opinion Journal has Holman Jenkins on "The Science of Gore's Nobel", which was "awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis." Jenkins invokes the same cognitive psychology that supports political failure arguments of Caplan, Pincione & Teson, and others like Tyler Cowen on voter self-deception. Voter bias finds root in anchoring effects like cognitive-cost-minimizing people choosing to adopt views that are the most available or accessible. Jenkins:

[Kahneman and Tversky's] insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascades" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

Falsely claiming consensus behind one's views is a form of political deception, which as Pincione and Teson point out, commits the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Logic be damned. Rather, "citing agreement of others is, in short, a particularly vivid (and often fallacious) way to argue in politics." (p.43)

What this all amounts to is a refinement of government failure theory. Throw cognitive biases together in large numbers and systemic failures pop out. Pincione and Teson:

Discourse failure as a social phenomenon results...from the mutually reinforcing interaction of rational ignorance and posturing against the background of redistributive politics. Political actors who stand to gain from spreading certain kinds of information will be helped by citizens who are willing to do their share, as it were, in the acquisition of confirmatory evidence of the default vivid beliefs. In other words, the cost of supplying convenient information is reduced by ingrained cognitive errors, and correspondingly, those who want to change public opinion in the direction of opaque theories will face higher costs. Not only will they have to argue against vivid views that the public holds by default; they will also have to counter the psychological biases just discussed. (p.44)

Politicians lie because they can, yes, but also "because they have to!" Incentives yada yada. Perceptions matter too, dammit!

Hat tips to:
Nico Maloberti for showing me the Pincione and Teson book;
Richard Reinsch for pointer to the Jenkins WSJ.com article.

Here is Jenkins on the science of global warming: "Let's be honets, all we have is a hypothesis."
Here is my previous entry on the challenges of Liberal persuasion.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 10:46 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)

November 21, 2007

Energy Independence

Steve Chapman on the beguiling notion of energy independence:

[A]lready I can guarantee two things. First, the next president will be elected on a promise to lead the nation to energy independence. Second, the promise won't be kept.

It's enchanting to imagine swearing off foreign oil in favor of ethanol . . ., or fuels derived from . . . coal. But even if all the corn grown in this country went toward ethanol, it would cut our gasoline consumption by no more than 12 percent. So why does ethanol get treated like the prettiest girl at the prom? . . . I've got two words for you: Iowa caucuses.

As for coal, schemes to turn it into liquid fuel for cars and planes have been around for half a century — including a dismal failure launched during Jimmy Carter's administration.

It would be good to reduce our consumption of oil, if only because it would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. But replacing oil with alternatives that also pollute misses the point. And as ethanol demonstrates, a drive for energy independence is likely to veer off into wasteful handouts to powerful interests

A better approach would be a carbon tax, which would simultaneously promote conservation, curb emissions and impartially boost environment-friendly alternatives. But a carbon tax would be a tough sell to the American public.

And why bother? Energy independence is a mirage, but it sells itself..

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 07:37 PM in Politics

On Social Security: Krugman vs. Krugman

Ruth Marcus takes on Paul Krugman:

In liberal Democratic circles, the debate over Social Security has taken a dangerous "don't worry, be happy" turn.

The argument has two equally dishonest components. The first is to deny that Social Security faces a daunting financing problem .... The second is to mischaracterize the arguments of those who advocate responsible action, accusing them of hyping the system's woes.

One prominent practitioner of this misguided approach is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security -- declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers -- is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are," Krugman wrote last week. "In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided."

Somebody should introduce Paul Krugman to . . . Paul Krugman.

"[A] decade from now the population served by those programs [Social Security and Medicare] will explode. . . . Because of those facts, merely balancing the federal budget would be a deeply irresponsible policy -- because that would leave us unprepared for the demographic deluge, with no alternative once it arrives except to raise taxes and slash benefits." (July 11, 2001)

And so forth.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 03:19 PM in Politics

November 14, 2007

"In God We Trust" and TR c. 1907

Imagine something like this, from the Nov. 14, 1907 NYT, being written today:

In answer to one of the numerous protests which have been received at the White House against the new gold coin which have been coined without the words "In God We Trust," President Roosevelt has written a letter:

"When the question of the new coinage came up we looked into the law and found there was no warrant therein for putting "In God We Trust" on the coins. As the custom, although without legal warrant, had grown up, however, I might have felt at liberty to keep the inscription had I approved of its being on the coinage. But as I did not approve of it I did not direct that it should again be put on...

My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good, but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege.

Needless to say, TR's stance was not popular. For example, a "red-hot debate" took place in the Episcopal Diocesan Convention.:

yesterday, by a vote of 131 to 81, passed resolutions protesting against the elimination of the motto "In God We Trust" from the new ten-dollar gold pieces. The debate on the question lasted an hour and a half, and for a part of that time the convention was in some disorder.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:16 PM in Politics

November 13, 2007

Taxing the rich

Closing lines of an interesting column by Jonah Goldberg:

I don't know what the best tax rates are, for rich or poor.

But I'm pretty sure that it's unhealthy for a democracy when the majority of citizens don't see government as a service they're reluctantly paying for but as an extortionist that cuts them in for a share of the loot.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:22 PM in Politics

November 07, 2007

Happy Bolshevik Day!

90 years ago today saw the Bolshevik Revolution, and NPR dedicated some on-air time this morning to the event. Surprisingly, the first paragraph admits that "The communist revolution ushered in a totalitarian dictatorship that killed and imprisoned tens of millions of people." Since capitalism's demise is supposedly inevitable but has yet to happen, the price tag for the socialist paradise must be in the hundreds of millions then.

The story interviews a Russian born in 1917 who had both his parents killed by the workers' regime, fought for Russia in WWII, was captured and imprisoned by Nazis, and survived only to return home and be imprisoned 10 years by Russians who thought he was a German spy.

So, though the 90 year old who lived through the era recognizes the horrors of Bolshevism, those who didn't live through it do not:

Syleia Daripova, 34, says she believes Stalin was a great man.
"Not every person can accumulate power in his hands like that," Daripova says. People say he murdered half of Russia … but, still, he was a unique personality. There are very few like him in history."

Imagine how much more unique he would have been if he killed three-fourths!

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:39 AM in Politics

October 31, 2007

Hillary Care

Notes on socialized medicine:

Michael Moore's SiCKO is opening in Britain this week, but the British are not amused. Anyone can extol the virtues of universal government-furnished health care, they say, when they have never had to use it.

Peter Huber in "Cherry Garcia and the End of Socialized Medicine" in City Journal. The new age of "molecular medicine," of designer drugs for specific genetic defects, is going to break up the current system of government universal health care that Michael Moore so loves.

But Michael Moore and his slacker-liberal army would fight to the last mockumentary to stop that. They have a right to free and unlimited health care and they know it.

You might wonder why they make such a fuss. After all, Huber writes,"Three-dollar statins in New York in 1996 get 30-cent statins to London in 2006 and three-cent statins to Kuala Lumpur a few years later."

But that's not good enough for our progressive friends. They want three-cent statins now. Anything less is a triumph of greed over human need.

That's why it would be prudent not to place any bets on the end of socialized medicine any time soon.

Instead, we should expect it to lurch from one disaster to the next.

It's encouraging to think that Hillary Clinton is uniquely qualified, by education, temperament, experience, and plain dumb luck to be the US leader fated to test universal health insurance to destruction.

After she and her wrecking crew have finished then we can start to build a health care system that really works.

Meanwhile there is always medical tourism.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 02:53 PM in Politics

October 24, 2007

Worst Chart of the Day

Bushies might claim that much of the spending growth is for military purposes, but take a look at Reagan who also spent much on strengthening the military. Source here.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:18 AM in Politics

October 17, 2007

Wisdom from George Will

John Edwards, too, has puzzling ideas. For the entertainment of Iowans, he has reinvented himself as a 19th-century Kansan -- Mary Elizabeth Lease, the prairie populist who urged farmers to "raise less corn and more Hell." In August, Edwards urged an Iowa audience to throw off Washington's yoke: "We need to take the power out of the hands of these insiders that are rigging the system against you."

To measure how much Iowans are suffering from the rigging, Stephen Slivinski of the libertarian Cato Institute was asked to mine the most recent Census Bureau data. He concluded that Iowans paid $15.6 billion in revenues to the federal government and got $19.4 billion back, a gain of $1,286.53 per Iowan.

But that is not all. Washington has rigged the system to inundate corn-growing Iowa with subsidies for corn-based ethanol. Slivinski says it is difficult to pin down the Iowa corn farmers' harvest of dollars because the subsidies come from exemptions from excise taxes and tariffs (54 cents per imported gallon) that stifle competition from cheap ethanol imports. It is, however, reasonable to add $2 billion to Iowa's gain from Washington's rigging of the system, so the average Iowan's gain is at least $1,963.65.

Suppose Iowa did not have crucial presidential nominating caucuses. Or suppose it had them but that its crucial crop were, say, broccoli rather than corn. Would the federal government still be, well, rigging the system to create a phony "market" to satisfy a specious "demand" for mandatory and subsidized ethanol? No, but it probably would be mandating broccoli at every meal.

Many politicians pander, as Edwards does with gusto, to Americans' current penchant for self-pity. Hence the incessant talk about "the forgotten middle class." Because such talk is incessant, it of course refutes itself.

Article here.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:16 PM in Politics

October 12, 2007

Public Schools and Others

This report from Yahoo News by Nancy Zuckerbrod, AP Education Writer, is fairly typical:

WASHINGTON - Low-income students who attend urban public high schools generally do just as well as private-school students with similar backgrounds, according to a study being released Wednesday.

Students at independent private schools and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public high schools when income and other family characteristics were taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

Of course, this is not what the report from the "nonpartisan" CEP says. The actual report is based on a set of regression equations in which 8th grade tests are the major predictors of 12th grade test results. Thus, at most the report tells something about how much the students gain between the 8th and 12th grades. Even this is problematic, as the body of the study concedes (p. 19): "Just as it is possible in the NAEP research that private schools attract higher achieving students to begin with, it is possible in this study that private schools promote greater
parental involvement."

No F scores are provided for non-comprehensive public schools as a group, and none are provided for parental characteristics as a group. For some of the school types, the number of observations appears to be quite small (Report, p. 26: "No type had fewer than 25 NELS survey participants for this analysis.")

Back to the AP story:

[T]he new study not only compared students by income levels but also looked at a range of other family characteristics, such as whether a parent participates in school life. "When these were taken into account, the private-school advantage went away," the report states. The study looked at 1,000 low-income students from cities who are part of a nationally representative sample of kids surveyed over a period of years, along with parents and teachers, as part of a federal research effort.

In fact, the estimated impacts of these family characteristics as measured by beta coefficients is quite small and not always with the "right" sign. And the sample used in this study is anything but "nationally representative" as the report (p.26) says: "This subset amounted to 1,003 students. By focusing on this subset, the study limited private school comparisons to those affecting inner-city populations...."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:52 AM in Politics

October 11, 2007

Do as we say

From Cooler Heads Digest, 10/10/07:

Hypocrite of the Week

Connie Heidegaard, Denmark’s Environment Minister, last week claimed to be an increasingly impatient emissary on behalf of “the planet”, demanding that the U.S. make the same promise as Europe to reduce its greenhouse gas (principally CO2) emissions.

That same week, Denmark released figures showing that it increased its 2006 CO2 emissions by 16.1% over 2005 levels, citing their growing economy (which relies on coal-fired power, it seems).

U.S. emissions, however, dropped 1.3% over the same time, while the economy grew by 3.3%.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:50 PM in Politics

October 10, 2007

Fuzzy Math?

From John Leo's column on the political leanings of professors:

Although business school professors are believed to be predominantly conservative, professors of business voted 2-1 for Kerry. These professors were barely more conservative than liberal.

I don't how one can describe a group that voted 2-1 for Kerry as being more conservative than liberal.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:14 PM in Politics

October 05, 2007

On centralization c. 1907

From a letter to the editor of the October 5, 1907 NYT:

While Mr. Roosevelt is interested in the later days of the Roman Empire, could you not call his attention to the fact that one chief reason of its disintegration and its easy final "fall" was the gradual weakening of local governments and the centralizing of these old local powers in the capital city? When the centre became weak there was no strength left elsewhere.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:48 PM in Politics

On (not) stopping global warming

Steven Milloy reports that the Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007 "would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion in its first 10 years and untold trillions of dollars in subsequent decades." Further, "This week, the EPA sent its analysis of the bill’s impact on climate to Bingaman and Specter. Now we can see what we’d get for our money, and we may as well just build a giant bonfire with the cash and enjoy toasting marshmallows over it." [Milloy does not examine the global-warming implications of the bonfire.]

Using IPCC formulas, Milloy estimates the implications of the EPA's estimates for the earth's temperature. (The EPA does't make these computations. Milloy suspects that's because the results would be embarrassing to the Act's authors.) Milloy's estimates:

Under the no-action scenario (718-to-695 ppm), the IPCC formulas indicate that the multitrillion-dollar Bingaman-Specter bill might reduce average global temperature by 0.13 degrees Celsius. Under the maximum regulation scenario (514-to-491 ppm), Bingaman-Specter might reduce average global temperature by 0.18 degrees Celsius.

Foreign Affairs carries the article, "Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped," that suggests the approach with highest payoff: "Dollar for dollar, the most efficient way to cut global greenhouse gas emissions would be, in theory, to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to improve China’s energy efficiency. But Congress would never support such an approach." That last sentence might be the understatement of the century.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:37 AM in Politics

October 03, 2007

TR vs. GWB c. 1907

This headline from the Oct. 3, 1907 NYT, describing a speech President Teddy Roosevelt gave in St. Louis, could easily describe the current political environment:

USE VAST FEDERAL POWER - ROOSEVELT

Constitution Must Be Interpreted to Fit the Modern Day Conditions

BATTLESHIPS TO RETURN

Tells St. Louisians Nation's Duty is to Restore the Mississippi River to Its Proper Place in Commerce

The entirety of the speech is printed in the paper, with the following section headings:

"Great Lakes a Prime Example" - for a national waterway policy

"Nation's Share of Levee Building" - levees are the federal government's responsibility.

"Advantage of the Panama Canal" - indirectly connects the Great Lakes with the Pacific

"Urges Great Fighting Navy"

"Control of Corporations"

"Growth of National Powers" - a more populous nation requires more centralized government powers.

"Control our Inter-state commerce"

Nice.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:57 AM in Politics

September 30, 2007

On Republicans c. 1907

I have mentioned this in some earlier post, but the Democrat candidate for the 1908 election was chosen in 1906 - there were no primaries or anything like that. This is just to put the current marathon, multi-year Presidential race in some perspective.

The Sept. 30, 1907 NYT has a letter to the editor concerning the 1908 election which ends with the following paragraph:

The object for which the Republican Party was organized was accomplished forty-two years ago, and there is no further reason under the sun for its continued existence. In fact, the party has degenerated into a system of commercial despotism which acts through party legislation as if we were at commercial war with the world, and taxes the people on a war basis so increasingly oppressive that it is becoming a problem for the average citizen now live decently.

PRO BONO PUBLICO

I submit that the spirit of this paragraph pertains to both major parties in the U.S. today.

Posted by Craig Depken at 07:55 PM in Politics

September 27, 2007

On fairness c. 1907

From the September 27, 1907 NYT:

North Dakota will be the name of Battleship No. 23, one of the new 20,000-ton vessels, contracts for which were recently awarded by the Navy Department. The other vessel will be called the Deleware.

President Roosevelt has decided that as so many vessels bear the names of New York cities it would be unfair to carry out the original plan of naming No. 23 the New York and of changing the cruiser of that name to the Saratoga. Utah now is the only one of the States after which no war vessel has been named.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:17 AM in Politics

September 24, 2007

Taxation for thee but not for me c. 1907

From the Sept. 24, 1907 NYT:

It is known that the members of the French Chamber of Deputies last year voted themselves an additional salary of 6,000 francs. It is not so well known that this action was resented by the Socialists...By some means it came to be understood that a "divvy" was the duty of the Socialist Deputy. If he handed over half of the "unearned increment" to the Socialist Treasury he might keep the other half.

So far, so good. However, it is interesting that the socialists didn't take all of the pay raise.

But it gets better:

Thirty-two Socialist Deputies have accordingly submitted to this Socialist tax. But ten have made only a partial surrender of the moiety, pleading, possibly the same "increase in the cost of living" which was pleaded in behalf of the increase of pay. Eight have omitted to divided with the party to any extent whatever, being apparently of the opinion that 3,000 francs would compensate them for any odium they might incur by keeping it for themselves...

Such an excellent and subtle economic argument offered in a similar story today would be surprising.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:30 PM in Politics

September 22, 2007

HillaryCare Catch-22

From the WSJ's "Best of the Web Today":

The Associated Press reports on a Hillary Clinton health-care speech:

"It is long past time that Americans and the richest of all countries realize that health care is a right and not a privilege," Clinton said at a labor forum in Chicago. "And that goes especially for people who work hard every single day."

First she claims that "health care is a right and not a privilege," but then she qualifies this statement by saying "that goes especially for people who work hard every single day." The implication of the latter statement is that the right to health care is contingent on working hard "every single day."

But just the other day, the New York Post quoted Mrs. Clinton as drawing a different link between work and medicine:

The former first lady said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview--like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination.

"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," she said.

Well, that's reassuring. In Hillary Clinton's America, it seems, health insurance will be like experience: You can't get a job without it, and you can't get it without a job.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:33 PM in Politics

Irony

GA political columnist Bill Shipp writes in today's RNT (no link) that "Georgia's congressmen don't bring home bacon." Shipp writes that Rep. Jack Kingston (his district is southeastern GA along the coast) owes "Georgians a big fat apology" and calls the $83 million in federal funds that Kingston has obtained for local projects "peanuts." It's rather ironic then that Kingston is Georgia's most pork happy Republican congressman.

Even more ironic--the page opposite of Shipp's column contains a photo of our congressman posing with the results of a local project for which he obtained federal funding.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:17 PM in Politics

September 21, 2007

Polar Opposites

Best of the Web points to an NYT article, "Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice." The article runs 459 words. The first 441 words expand on the title. Here are the last 18 words: "Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 08:41 PM in Politics

Capitalist anarchists? c. 1907

From the Sept. 21, 1907 NYT:

PITTSBURG - Intense excitement was caused here this afternoon when an Anarchistic notice was found posted on the high board fence which surrounds the old cathedral property, for which H. C. Frick paid $1,300,000...

The notice was written on a typewritter, and was perfect as to spelling and punctuation. It was as follows:

ANARCHIST'S NOTICE

Murder the Rich and Burn their Homes.

Too long have the working people of this city been trampled by the rich. How easy it is for them to enjoy themselves, when they grind out the lives of the poor to add to their riches! How easy it is for them to enjoy themselves by sacrificing men's lives! Join with us and redress your wrongs. We have suffered too long.

We want agents to murder the rich and burn their homes. Wages, $10 a day. If you are the right kind of a man, go to the corner of Wood Street and Fifth Avenue, and a man will give you the proper sign.

EH.net suggests that nominal GDP per capita was about $390 per year, or approximately $2 per day. Now, if the redressing of wrongs provides a "good," the "right man" should be willing to pay for the privelege. Having to pay five times the average day's wage (and 8 times what Rockefeller paid his summer help), suggests that the recruitment of anarchists, and especially those who would be willing to commit murder and arson, was not easy.

The police at first think the posting is a joke but then:

they noticed several suspicious persons at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street, [and] they arrested them.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:59 PM in Politics

For the Children

An interesting historical note from a reader at the Mises blog site:

As early as 1871 the Liberals in my home town of Kettering, England, had (as Herbert Spencer in near by Darby would have been aware) already given up supporting liberty.

They campaigned for a School Board (which they were able to do under the Act of Parliament passed by the Liberal party government the previous year) to force people to pay for schools they wished to build and control.

The Liberals did this not because there were no schools in Kettering, but because most of them were Church of England "National" schools and they disliked the Anglican Church.

There was nothing to stop the Liberals building more "Nonconformist" (i.e. hard line Protestant) "British" schools, and most of the rich manufacturers in the town were Liberal "nonconformists" (so they could have educated the children of the poor in schools that avoided the "wicked" teachings of the Church of England had they chosen to spend their own money) - but they choose to opt for force (i.e. to reject liberty).

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:26 PM in Politics

September 19, 2007

On campaign financing c. 1907

From a Sept. 28, 1907 NYT editorial describing a speech by Judge Parker at Jamestown:

In the struggle for mastery in both State and Nation money has been sought as well for illegitimate uses as legitimate uses. As the corruption of the electorate has widened and deepened the demand for money has increased, a demand which long ago outgrew any sum that could be raised by patriotic contributors. So corporations having favors to ask were invited to contribute, and they did so, knowing full well that when legislation was needed or undesirable legislation was threatened the head of the organization could be relied upon for assistance; that his statement that this corporation contributed ten or one hundred thousand dollars to the campaign fund would lock or unlock the door to legislative or administrative action.

On the other hand, the "head of the organization" could simply claim that they did not know the individual or corporation who had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars, could insist that they would not be swayed by contributions, and could "swear off" political action committee dollars.

As I have mentioned before, our problems aren't necessarily new, they are just "ours."

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:48 PM in Politics

September 14, 2007

" ... the strangest product launch since that of New Coke in 1985"

So says George Will about the launch of Fred Thompson's campaign for president. Will is especially scathing about Thompson's role in McCain-Feingold; a snippet:

In 1997, Thompson chaired a Senate committee investigating 1996 election spending. In its final report, issued in 1998, Thompson's committee recommended a statutory "restriction on issue advocacy" during "a set period prior to an election" when the speech includes "any use of a candidate's name or image." And in 1999, Thompson co-sponsored legislation containing what became, in 2002, the McCain-Feingold blackout periods imposed on any television or radio ad that "refers to" a candidate for federal office -- a portion of which the Supreme Court in June declared unconstitutional.

Thompson, contrary to his current memories, was deeply involved in expanding government restrictions on political speech generally and the ban on issue ads specifically. Yet he told Ingraham "I voted for all of it," meaning McCain-Feingold, but said "I don't support that" provision of it.

Oh? Why, then, did he file his own brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold McCain-Feingold, stressing Congress' especially "compelling interest" in squelching issue ads that "influence" elections?

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:45 PM in Politics

September 10, 2007

Higgs on 9/11

On this sad anniversary, Bob Higgs pulls few punches reminding us of the many ways in which the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 have been used to feed Leviathan. Exerpt:

In the United States, everything memorable becomes an article of commerce in some fashion, and 9/11 is no exception. Many of these commercial offerings are maudlin or otherwise in bad taste, to be sure, but in this country no one is shocked when sellers market tasteless products successfully, and anyone who does not fancy the goods may simply decline to consume them. Indeed, one suspects that by this time, the demand for 9/11 media extravaganzas may be wearing rather thin even among those of mawkish sensibilities.

Far more troubling and much more dangerous, however, is the state’s exploitation of 9/11. During the past six years, 9/11 has often served as an all-purpose instrument in the state’s propaganda kit. For the Bush administration, it has provided the answer to every critical question about foreign and defense policies, among other things. If we challenge the wisdom, legality, or morality of the U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the government’s spokesmen and supporters throw 9/11 in our face. If we criticize the enormous run-up in spending for military purposes and for “homeland security,” much of it obvious political pork that contributes nothing to the public’s safety, the response to our criticism is that the people dare not risk another 9/11. If we express doubts about the wildly ambitious and morally presumptuous U.S. foreign policy of global hegemony, which, in its present swollen form, followed closely on the heels of George W. Bush’s embrace of a humble foreign policy with no nation building during the 2000 presidential campaign (“I don’t want to be the world’s policeman”), we are told that 9/11 changed everything. If we object to the government’s multifaceted assault on our civil liberties, the president stridently declares that everything being done is necessary to prevent another 9/11. If we wave our copy of the Constitution and express doubts about the president’s claim of overriding power as a “unitary executive,” the government’s lawyers assert that since 9/11 the nation has been “at war,” and hence the president’s constitutional power as commander-in-chief trumps everything else.

Comparisons between 9/11/2001 and 12/07/1941 follow. Full editorial here.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 09:18 PM in Politics

August 31, 2007

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Jon Ham of The Locker Room points to this photo of John--people should sacrifice their SUVs--Edwards's house. There are lots of SUVs in the driveway. Maybe they all belong to guests ...

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:20 PM in Politics

August 30, 2007

Funding for Big Apples

I'm back from getting married, a honeymoon, and starting a new semester, so I'll try to get to my usual blog rate of one post whenever I get an idea.

National Review's blog links to a map of Manhattanites who receive, yes, agriculture subsidies. For some reason the map isn't visible anymore, but just the fact that a map exists that shows NYC dwellers who receive more than $250,000 in farm subsidies is troubling. Granted, I've only been to Gotham once about a decade ago for a FEE conference, and it seemed pretty built up then. Maybe there is more green space now. For a quarter million a pop, those guys better be growing some big apples.

HT: Fark

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 01:26 PM in Politics

August 28, 2007

Fat State, Red State; Thin State, Blue State

The Trust for America's Health has released data on obesity rates by state. The fattest state, as measured by the percentage of obese residents, is Mississippi, at 30.6% (giving them the dubious distinction of being the first state ever to break the 30% rate in the survey). The thinnest? Colorado at 17.6%

Let's look at the states by how they voted in the last presidential election, from fattest to thinest:
1. Mississippi - Bush
2. West Virginia - Bush
3. Alabama - Bush
4. Louisiana - Bush
5. South Carolina - Bush
5. Tennessee - Bush
7. Kentucky - Bush
8. Arkansas - Bush
9. Indiana - Bush
9. Oklahoma - Bush
9. Michigan - Kerry
12. Missouri - Bush
12. Texas - Bush
14. Georgia - Bush
15. Ohio - Bush
16. Alaska - Bush
17. North Carolina - Bush
18. Nebraska - Bush
19. North Dakota - Bush
20. Iowa - Bush
20. South Dakota - Bush
22. Wisconsin - Kerry
23. Virginia - Bush

These are the fattest 23 states. Twenty-one of them, totaling 209 electoral votes, went for Bush. Two, totaling 29 electoral votes, went for Kerry. But it's worth noting that in Wisconsin (#22 on the list) Kerry's margin was a razor thin 11,000 votes (50%-49%), while Michigan, the only non-Bush state in the top 10, was also competitive, falling to Kerry by just 51% to 48%.

So what are we to make of this? Is Karl Rove manipulating the minds of obese people with subliminal messages in Bush commercials? Why would heavy people be more likely to vote Republican?

Is this odd, given that data also shows - according to this guy - that Republicans tend to lead more active lives than Democrats. But maybe we can truly say that Republicans are "fat and happy."

Below the fold is the rest of the data:

Read More »

23. Pennsylvania - Kerry
25. Illinois - Kerry
25. Maryland - Kerry
27. Kansas - Bush
28. Minnesota - Kerry
29. Delaware - Kerry
30. Oregon - Kerry
31. Idaho - Bush
31. Washington - Kerry
33. Maine - Kerry
34. Florida - Bush
35. Wyoming - Bush
36. California - Kerry
37. Nevada - Bush
38. New Hampshire - Kerry
39. New York - Kerry
40. DC - Kerry
40. New Jersey - Kerry
42. New Mexico - Bush
43. Arizona - Bush
44. Utah - Bush
45. Montana - Bush
46. Rhode Island - Kerry
47. Connecticut - Kerry
48. Hawaii - Kerry
49. Vermont - Kerry
50. Massachusetts - Kerry
51. Colorado - Bush

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 03:29 PM in Politics

August 19, 2007

A shrinking story?

Here's the headline for a recent AP story: "Arctic sea ice shrinks to record low"

Here's the first paragraph: "There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported."

The amount of ice has fallen about 1.5 percent in two years.

Here's the 7th paragraph: "Scientists began monitoring the extent of Arctic sea ice in the 1970s when satellite images became available."

So the headline could read: "Slight reduction in Arctic ice, to lowest level in 35 years."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 08:40 PM in Politics

August 13, 2007

Katrina Aid Goes Toward Football Condos

From the AJC:

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium.

About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and 'Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art.

While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any special Katrina-related tax breaks, many others are real estate investors who are purchasing the condos with plans to rent them out.

And they intend to take full advantage of the generous tax benefits available to investors under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO Zone, according to Associated Press interviews with buyers and real estate officials.

The GO Zone contains a variety of tax breaks designed to stimulate construction in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. It offers tax-free bonds to developers to finance big commercial projects like shopping centers or hotels. It also allows real estate investors who buy condos or other properties in the GO Zone to take accelerated depreciation on their purchases when they file their taxes.

The GO Zone was drawn to include the Tuscaloosa area even though it is about 200 miles from the coast and got only heavy rain and scattered wind damage from Katrina.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:56 PM in Politics

July 31, 2007

Prohibition in Georgia c. 1907

From the July 31, 1907 NYT:

ATLANTA, July 30 - After ten hours of exciting debate the lower house of the Georgia General Assembly this evening, by a vote of 139 to 39, passed the Senate bill prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages in the State after Jan. 1, 1908. Gov. Hoke Smith has announced that he will sign the measure, although prohibition mean the closing of the bar of the Piedmont Hotel, from which he receives a handsome income.

All day long the Capitol grounds and corridors were thronged with Woman's Christian Temperance Union women and other white ribboners. As soon as the final vote was taken the great crowd burst into "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow." Enthusiastic men lifted to their shoulders Seaborn Wright, the Prohibition leader in the lower house, and marched through the Capitol singing "Gloria in Excelsis."

The bill affects really only fifteen counties in the State, 135 already being dry under the local option law. Several large distilleries will be closed, and also breweries. It will cause a loss in revenue, State and municipal, of $1,000,000.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:06 PM in Politics

July 30, 2007

ACORN's Mischief

John Fund addresses voter fraud in general and ACORN's contribution thereto in particular:

[In] Seattle ... local prosecutors indicted seven workers for Acorn, a union-backed activist group that last year registered more than 540,000 low-income and minority voters nationwide and deployed more than 4,000 get-out-the-vote workers. The Acorn defendants stand accused of submitting phony forms in what Secretary of State Sam Reed says is the "worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history" of the state.

Local officials refused to accept the registrations because they had been delivered after last year's Oct. 7 registration deadline. Initially, Acorn officials demanded the registrations be accepted and threatened to sue King County (Seattle) officials if they were tossed out. ... Of the 1,805 names submitted by Acorn, only nine have been confirmed as valid, and another 34 are still being investigated. The rest--over 97%--were fake.

But ACORN gets off with a very light slap on the wrist:

In Washington state, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said that in lieu of charging Acorn itself as part of the registration fraud case, he had worked out an agreement by which the group will pay $25,000 to reimburse the costs of the investigation and formally agree to tighten supervision of its activities....

From disenchanted ACORN employees (recall ACORN's strongly pro-union stance on issues):

Last year several Acorn employees told me that the Acorn scandals that have cropped up around the country are no accident. "There's no quality control on purpose, no checks and balances," says Nate Toler, who was head of an Acorn campaign against Wal-Mart in California until late last year, when Acorn fired him for speaking to me.

Loretta Barton, another former community organizer for Acorn, told me that "all Acorn wanted from registration drives was results." Ironically, given Acorn's strong backing from unions, Ms. Barton alleges that when she and her co-workers asked about forming a union, they were slapped down: "We were told if you get a union, you won't have a job." There is some history here: In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Acorn to rehire and pay restitution to three employees it had illegally fired for trying to organize a union.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:55 PM in Politics

July 26, 2007

Stack the Court?

This NY Times op-ed piece suggests that, assuming a Democrat wins the 2008 presidential election and the congress remains Democratic, a resizing of the Supreme Court might be in order.

"Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues might do well to bear in mind that the roll call of presidents who have used this option includes not just Roosevelt but also Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:49 AM in Politics

July 17, 2007

Farewell, Antioch by George Will

George Will provides an appropriate eulogy for Antioch College.

During the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film "To Die in Madrid," a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film's narrator intoned, "The rebels advanced on Madrid," the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco's fascists.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:47 AM in Politics

July 10, 2007

A preview of HillaryCare II

Senator Obama visited Birmingham yesterday. The Birmingham News's story about his campaigning gives us just a hint of the rent-seeking/protection orgy we will see should the Democrats win both the Presidency and Congressional majorities in '08, and proceed to "reform" the American health care industry:

At the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Birmingham, an energized Obama told a large, diverse and enthusiastic crowd that America under President Bush has seen a government that "can't do, won't do and won't even try."

"Americans are hungry for change. They are desperate for something new," Obama told about 2,000 cheering fans, most of whom had paid $25 each to listen to him. "We have had so much dysfunction, so much nonsense ... in Washington D.C., that people have just said enough."

The crowd, a mixture of white and black, young and old, affluent and not, repeatedly cheered as Obama criticized Bush.

"We've got a health care system that is broken, that is bankrupting families all across America," Obama said.

. . .

After his downtown speech, Obama headed to another fundraiser, this one at the Mountain Brook home of HealthSouth President and CEO Jay Grinney. Those attending paid $1,000 to $2,300 a person to meet the White House hopeful who by most polls is chasing Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination for president.

Posted by Mike DeBow at 12:34 PM in Politics

July 06, 2007

March to the Sea c. 1907

The July 6, 1907 NYT reports on yet another attempt to re-create Sherman's March to the Sea through Georgia. Being from Northwest Georgia this pressing desire to recreate the march is interesting:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - A start was made yesterday by military men to traverse the route pursued by Gen. W.T. Sherman, on his march through Georgia. A year ago Father Sherman, a Jesuit priest and son of the Union General, attempted to make the trip, but only reached Cartersville, where he was stopped because of public criticism.

The trip is being made by commissioned officers, with only enough enlisted men to care for the stock and to pitch camps. There are thirty-four officers from the Military Staff College at Leavenworth in the party.

There was considerable comment by Confederate veterans, but none of the objections raised was of serious import.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:21 PM in Politics

July 01, 2007

Then and Now c. 1907

The July 1, 1907 NYT has the following concerning the State of Illinois planning a commemoration of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, to be held in the presidential election year of 1908:

The Illinois commemoration is well worth while if only to impress alike the parallel and the distinction between conditions then and now. Then there were bitter differences of opinion, whereas now it is difficult to draw party distinctions, as the parties might almost exchange their leading candidates...Perhaps the greatest distinction between then and now is that whereas in the old time all the talk was of what the Constitution meant, now all the talk is how the Constitution can be made to mean what the temper of the hour would like it to mean. The distinction is vital. The Constitution is a written document, and the meaning of the words has not changed. Yet the Supreme Court from the bench has found it necessary to say the lawful way to change it, if the Nation wants to change it, as according to the method provided, and not by "construction."

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:48 AM in Politics

June 25, 2007

R.I.P. Antioch College

The board of Antioch College, located in the lovely town of Yellow Springs, Ohio and the home of the world's most bizarre sexual conduct policy, has announced its decision to close the main campus of the college.

What are radicalized lefty students who aren't smart enough to get into Oberlin College going to do now?

NB: Links to funny Onion stories about Oberlin here and here.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:10 PM in Politics

June 09, 2007

Global warming non est disputandum

Wired.com reports an AP story, "NASA Head Regrets Global Warming Remarks"

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that "unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it."

Hot air has this great headline:
NASA chief steps in global warming goo

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 02:46 PM in Politics

May 23, 2007

On political symbolism c. 1907

I am back from a trip to South Carolina/North Carolina during which I was unplugged from news/politics/blogging. Blogging on my part will recommence with the usual quality.

The May 23, 1907 NYT has a letter to the editor which asks an interesting question:

It is amusing to note the very many unsatisfactory attempts made by the Socialists to explain the use of the red flag in their parades and as a symbol of their beliefs. As the cross is a sign of Christendom throughout the world so is the red banner symbolic of international Socialism, is one of the explanations. In answer to the fore going may I ask...why the color of red of all colors known to mankind was chosen as best expressing the doctrines of Socialism?

Where the black flag stands for piracy so does the red flag stand for anarchy; where the white flag signifies peace, so does the red flag signify war; and a red banner flauntingly displayed in a peaceful land does not signify the good intentions of those bearing it.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:08 PM in Politics

May 05, 2007

Commencement Blues Part XII

Just got back from the university's commencement. Sigh.

The speaker was Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) who among many other irritating things said something to the effect that the increases in our life expectancy since 1900 are owed to government programs like "Medicaid and Medicare". To which, I reply:

Other DoL commencement related posts.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 04:17 PM in Politics

April 19, 2007

On revenues vs. freedom c. 1907

From the April 19, 1907 NYT:

Thousands of Americans will give attention to Mr. Cortelyou's inquiry into the present barbarous method of conducting the customs examination of passengers' baggage, and if he should order sensible reforms their gratitude will be his reward.

The present method is senseless, outrageous, and indecent. It makes the Government seem to assume that every citizen of this Republic returning from abroad is a cheat and a liar. Lest some might forbear to lie intentionally arrangements are made to betray them into lying by inadvertence. The exacting of a declaration aboard the ship and the enforcing of a further examination on the dock constitute a method that would be most offensive against criminals or the public enemy. The resulting benefit to the revenues is insignificant, the annoyance to everybody is serious enough to constitute a public abuse.

We are glad that the Secretary of the Treasury is thinking about the matter.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:29 AM in Politics

On cigarettes c. 1907

From the April 19, 1907 NYT:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The House to-day passed the Young anti-cigarette bill making unlawful the selling of cigarettes or cigarette papers in Illinois. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:24 AM in Politics

On terrorism c. 1907

From the April 19, 1907 NYT:

ST. PETERSBURG - To-morrow will witness a stormy debate in the Lower House of Parliament that has been in preparation for a fortnight past.

The Conservatives will introduce a motion that the House disapproves of Terrorism. A resolution of the Constitutional Democrats, the Poles, and the Mohammedans, expresses horror at the great wave of Terrorism, but says that it is an outgrowth of the absence of a constitutional regime. A resolution to be introduced by the members of the Group of Toil and the Social Democrats will set forth that Terrorism is necessary to break the grip of Despotism.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:18 AM in Politics

April 13, 2007

When adaptive expectations goes wrong

Remember how horrible the 2005 hurricane season was? And, since none of you stopped driving your SUVs, the 2006 season was supposed to be worse. So, FEMA stockpiled tons of food to be ready. Of course, there were maybe two hurricanes during 2006, and now all that FEMA food has spoiled.

In late August 2006, I was listening to NPR report on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina while also warning of the coming Hurricane Ernesto. I guess the editors of NPR didn't realize that they wouldn't be successful in drumming up fear of the '06 season when we were only in the E's while the year before we were already in the K's.

If you're looking for something to do early next week, check out the FairTax rallies. If any DOL readers happen to be in the Shreveport area, you can join Doug and I Tuesday evening and hear us discuss it on Tom Pace's radio show Monday starting at 4pm. For those unfamiliar with the FairTax, learn more here.

Hope APEE went well. My fiancee joined the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil last saturday, so I had to skip. I also sponsored one of my former students who joined as well.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:39 PM in Politics

Old Wine

The two biggest ideas pushed early in the Bill Clinton's administration were centrally planned health care and National Performance Review ("let's make government run like a business with no profit motive!"). Already in her presidential run, Hillary Clinton has promised universal health care (confusing health care with insurance coverage, cost sharing with cost reduction). Today HRC advocates coming in and cleaning up government.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton said the government needed to become more consumer-friendly, cost-efficient and transparent in the way it does business. "We have to bring the government into the 21st century," she said. "We expect to be able to go to an ATM machine, stick a card in and get money, but we can't figure out how to get medical records from the Department of Defense over to the VA. It makes no sense."

Meanwhile John Edwards spends a day as a health care worker.

Not a lot of new ideas.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 12:09 PM in Politics

April 12, 2007

Madeleine Albright Lecture

I've just returned from hearing Madeleine Albright deliver Berry's Shatto Lecture; the event is part of this week's inauguration of Berry's new president. (Side note: Fed Chair William McChesney Martin is one of Berry's past presidents.)

I have a mixed review of Albright's talk. One the positive hand, she criticized Europe's lack of support for bringing an end to the Iraq mess and (in response to a student question) she rightly characterized the thuggish regime of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe as corrupt.

On the negative hand, Albright criticized the U.S. for being the second worst donor, in percent of GDP, of foreign aid among developed countries. That figure is, in one sense, correct (source here--scroll down to Chart 1 (p.14)), but it refers only to official or governmental development assistance. Since only 20% of foreign aid is governmental (same link as before; scroll down to Table 1), the U.S.'s aid to other countries is 5 times the amount of official development assistance. Of course, the argument for aid presupposes that foreign aid is actually useful in alleviating poverty--the evidence supporting this assumption is weak at best.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:20 PM in Politics

Should Taxpayers Buy Me a Printing Press or a TV Network?

From CNN:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party.

"Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city.

A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar declaration in 1989 in a speech to the "Women's Coalition" appeared recently on the Internet.

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."

"If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."

Rudy doesn't seem to know the difference between positive rights and negative rights. If he thinks a constitutional right to abortion means that they must be taxpayer subsidized, then he should be for taxpayers providing me with a printing press or tv network to exercise my First Amendment rights. I wouldn't have voted for him in any case, but Rudy has now made it clear that he is incapable of fulfilling the presidential oath to protect and defend the constitution.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:54 AM in Politics

April 11, 2007

Dennis Miller's radio show

Comedian and libertarian-ish neo-conservative Dennis Miller now has a talk radio show. Check your local listings; here in St. Louis it runs 10am - 1pm. To give you the flavor of the show, today's guests are Christopher Horner (Competitive Enterprise Institute), John McEnroe, Irshad Manji ("The Trouble with Islam Today"), and Gloria Allred.

Miller's enthusiasm for the Iraq war may be as delusional as Dwight Schrute's enthusiasm for superheroes (note Milleresque zany pop-culture reference!) but he's always perceptive, and he's always good for a chuckle. Bonus: the show uses cool bumper music (e.g. Dick Dale's "Misirlou"; John Barry's James Bond themes).

My favorite line from Miller's interview in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this morning:

Al Gore -- At some point, he'll come riding over the hill like he's the cavalry. But it won't take long for everyone to figure out he's not Forrest Tucker. He's Larry Storch, and he's got his hat on sideways.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 10:55 AM in Politics

April 09, 2007

Adapting to Warming

Newsweek has a remarkable series of articles on global warming. The articles try to identify gainers as well as losers, and they paint a much less gloomy picture than most of the mainstream media. This article by Richard S. Lindzen probably should be read as the theme article. (Links to other articles are at this site.) Its opening sentences:

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true.

What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:08 PM in Politics

April 06, 2007

Restore Freedom of Speech

Most recent reports about the money-raising success of candidates are all about the horse race. Few have suggested the fairly obvious point that McCain-Feingold has not been effective. This editorial gets it pretty much right:

But corruption has, if anything, surged. Confidence in government remains low. Nasty, attack-ad politics are as prevalent as ever. And, of course, corporations, unions and billionaires quickly found a new vehicle for their soft-money influence-peddling – the so-called “527” groups.

The predictions that arguably did come to pass did so for reasons having little to do with McCain-Feingold. Does anyone really think that grass-roots groups are thriving because of the law and not because of the unprecedented networking power offered by the Internet? Does anyone really think the fact that 28 Republican incumbents (but no Democratic incumbents) lost their House and Senate races last year was because of the law and not because of the GOP's vast, poll-confirmed plunge in popularity?

The failure of McCain-Feingold, however, does not mean that all attempts at campaign reform are futile. Instead, it's time for a new approach – one that has transparency as its primary goal, not unworkable and at times legally dubious attempts to restrict political speech and campaign spending.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 10:51 AM in Politics

April 05, 2007

Worst First Pitch EVER!

In case you missed it, check out the Mayor of Cincinnati's opening day first pitch. I really like the puzzled look on former Red Eric Davis' face.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:51 AM in Politics

April 01, 2007

Socialism vs. Individualism c. 1907

The April 1, 1907 NYT reports on a speech given by Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler at the University of California a few days earlier. In the article is the following quote of Dr. Butler:

At bottom, and without special reference to immediate concrete proposals, Socialism would substitute for individual initiative collective and corporate responsibility in matters relating to property and production, in the hope thereby of correcting and overcoming the evils which attach to an individualism run wild. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the corporate or collective responsibility which it would substitute for individual initiative is only such corporate or collective responsibility as a group of these very same individuals could exercise. Therefore Socialism is primarily an attempt to overcome man's individual imperfections by adding them together, in the hope that they will cancel each other. This is not only bad mathematics, but worse psychology.

Unfortunately for about 100 million people during the twentieth century, Dr. Butler's words were not (I think) intended as an April Fools joke. Adding up human imperfections in the manner Dr. Murray describes seems to have led to tsunami of suffering and misery perpetrated by the very people and against the very people the system was supposed to "save" from the avarices of capitalism and capitalists.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:44 AM in Politics

March 30, 2007

What's in a word? c. 1907

The March 30, 1907 NYT reports that the Oklahoma state constitution has been sent to the printer:

The printer who has charge of getting out the Oklahoma Constitution announces that the work will be finished next week and the distribution commenced.

It will consist of 125 pages, including the boundary provision, and will contain over one hundred thousand words. [emphasis added]

My version of the U.S. Constitution, sans all amendments, is 4,426 words. Including the first ten amendments adds another 482 words (and what a contentious 482 words they have proved to be!).

From 1789 to 1907, the constitution of a state-to-be required 22.5 times as many words as the U.S. Constitution? I wonder whether the Oklahoma territory faced more and more complicated issues that required more words to clarify. Another hypothesis is that by 1907 government had intruded into the lives of individuals 22.5 times more than it had in 1789. Another possibility (my personal favorite), is that the 100,000 word Oklahoma constitution is a testimony to the genius of the Founders, who knew how to say what they wanted to say without extra verbiage.

If the state constitution of Oklahoma was intended to outline the same rights at the state level as are conveyed in the U.S. Constitution, yet it took 22.5 times as many words to do so, would this suggest that the (legal/moral/explicative) value per word in the Oklahoma constitution was lower? If so, was this the effect of demand side or supply side influences (or both)?

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:33 AM in Politics

March 29, 2007

On immigration c. 1907

The March 29, NYT has the following report on the population of the United States:

There are now nearly 8,000,000 more people in the Continental United States than there were six years ago, according to an estimate based upon the figures compiled by the Census Bureau in a special report issued to-day. According to its estimates the population of the Continental United States in 906 wasa 83,941,510, an increase over 1900 of 7,946,935....The growth in population in the Continental United States from 1905 to 1906 was 1,367,315.

Computed on the basis of the estimate the density of the population of the Continental United States in 1906 was 28 person per square mile, as compared with 26 in 1900.

The five leading cities and their estimated population in 1906 are as follows:

New York: 4,113,043
Chicago: 2,049,185
Philadelphia: 1,441,735
St. Louis: 649,320
Boston: 602,278

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:23 AM in Politics

March 28, 2007

Bush yucks it up a notch

There's a surrealness to this AP story about the Prez yuckin it up good for the correspondents dinner.

In keeping with the lighthearted traditions of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner, Bush poked fun at himself and a few others in remarks that drew laughter and applause at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

...

Looking ahead to life after leaving the White House, Bush said he might follow
President Clinton's lead and produce a memoir.

"I'm thinking of something really fun and creative for mine," he said. "You know, maybe a pop-up book."

Possible titles: "How W. Got His Groove Back, "Who Moved My Presidency?" and "Tuesday with Cheney."

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 11:50 PM in Politics

March 27, 2007

No Smoking Comrade

I'm not a smoker and don't like the habit in others, but I love liberty more than I hate smoking. Click above for some great anti-ban gear.

HT: Ben

Posted by Robert Lawson at 12:49 PM in Politics

Incentives Matter: Campaign Cash Edition

A news item:

BOSTON (AP) - A millionaire thanks to his work as a venture capitalist, Mitt Romney is acutely aware of the motivating power of money. His presidential campaign hopes it will have a similar effect on college students, which is why it's offering them a cut of their fundraising.

Participants in "Students for Mitt" will get 10 percent of the money they raise for the campaign beyond the first $1,000. While candidates often offer professional fundraisers commissions up to 8 percent, campaign experts believe the Massachusetts Republican is the first to do so with the legion of college students who have historically served as campaign volunteers.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:17 AM in Politics

March 21, 2007

Global Warming Debate

Robert J. Samuelson nails it as regards global warming policy discussion:

What's most popular and acceptable (say, more solar) may be the least consequential in its effects; and what's most consequential in its effects (a hefty energy tax) may be the least popular and acceptable.

The actual politics of global warming defy Hollywood's stereotypes. It's not saints versus sinners. The lifestyles that produce greenhouse gases are deeply ingrained in modern economies and societies. Without major changes in technology, the consequences may be unalterable. Those who believe that addressing global warming is a moral imperative face an equivalent moral imperative to be candid about the costs, difficulties and uncertainties.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 01:05 PM in Politics

March 19, 2007

Happy Feet & Unhappy Bears?

‘They [polar bears] cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming. Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice….’ says an article on global warming. According to the article from which the following excerpts are taken, the only factually correct part of this quote is that the image was captured on film.

This is the Disneyfication of politics: bad, greedy people on one side, and ‘cuddly’, helpless polar bears on the other. How long till we get an animated fable about polar bears to sit alongside the penguin eco-flick Happy Feet?

Whatever the truth about climate change, we need to get beyond these childish tales of two legs bad, four legs good – of wicked man, and innocent beast. ... What we need is a cool-headed and balanced discussion about the costs and benefits of different courses of action, from Kyoto-style emissions cuts and new, non-carbon technologies, to adaptive measures and the promotion of economic growth as a means of coping with problems. ...

The debate we’re getting – simple but cynical tales of human greed, backed by cute photos of cuddly creatures – is the polar opposite of the debate we need.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:10 AM in Politics

March 14, 2007

Keystone Kops Election Bureau

A news item on election security:

Some key components of one of Georgia's most sacred institutions — that had been discovered in discarded office furniture — were recently auctioned on eBay.

About 40 voter access cards and three electronic ballot encoders belonging to DeKalb County were purchased earlier this month on the auction Web site, according to Secretary of State Karen Handel. Another seven supervisor's cards, used to activate the encoders, also were up for bid.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:59 PM in Politics

Compare Quotes

From the AJC [bold added for emphasis]:

"We call on Congress to reauthorize SCHIP," [Georgia Governor Sonny] Perdue said at an event that highlighted a study showing a drop in the number of working families nationally that get insurance through their employers. "We call on Congress to fix SCHIP's inadequate funding formulas. And we call on Congress to provide funding to states like Georgia who have successfully implemented the program and now face an immediate federal funding shortfall.

"Georgia stands ready to do our part," the governor said, "but we simply cannot go it alone."

From Bastiat:

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:45 PM in Politics

March 13, 2007

A Rewrite of History

This article conveys a sense of the historical nonsense that appears to be found in 300. The closing sentence provides an apt summary and an indication of the nature of the state that "Spartan virtues" would yield: "Most Greeks would have traded their homes in Athens for hovels in Sparta about as willingly as I would trade my apartment in Toronto for a condo in Pyongyang."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:26 PM in Politics

March 11, 2007

Are we buying this one?

The OMB has released a "study' of the costs and benefits of major legislations and rules changes at the Federal level. I haven't digested all of the report, but this graph (and associated paragraph) was a bit too much:

The difference between cost and benefits shows the net benefits of major regulations from 1992 though September 2006. We were unable to go back beyond 1992 because of a lack of comparable data on benefits. Figure 2-2 also shows that in no year were costs significantly greater than benefits, even though benefits are likely understated relative to the costs since agencies estimate costs but not benefits for some of the rules reviewed by OMB over this time period.52 Figure 2-2 also shows that over its first 6 years, this Administration issued regulations with average annual net benefits 262 percent greater than the average annual net benefits produced by the regulations issued during the previous eight years.

It seems the graph is attempting to depict the marginal cost and marginal benefit of regulation, i.e. the costs and benefits of new regulations and rules changes. As an economist, I recognize the possibility (if not the probability) that public policy can provide significantly greater marginal benefits than marginal costs. However, after more than 100 years of active legislation and rules changes, would not diminishing returns set in? Is it likely that, in the 21st century, new regulations are uncovering vast oceans of previously unrealized benefits? I am not so sure.

I have a hard time believing that every major regulation over the past fourteen years has been an overwhelming success in this arena, but perhaps my priors are clouding my judgement.

OMB report here

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:47 PM in Politics

March 07, 2007

Did they really get the message?

The anti-pork, er, I mean anti-earmark campaign hit its stride last year. In this year's Citizens Against Government Waste 2007 Pork Book, is a historical trend in the number of earmarks (JPEG here).

CAGW estimates pork spending in FY2007 (thus far) at 13 billion, down from $29b in FY2006.

That's a savings of $53 for every man, woman, and child (including non-citizens)! How about that.

Now, if it will only stick.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:57 PM in Politics

February 27, 2007

Another Installment of Al Gore's "Do as I Say, Not as I Do ..."

From the Tennessee Center for Policy Research:

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

For a previous installment of the Al Gore hypocrite, see here.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:59 AM in Politics

February 26, 2007

Presidential debates c. 1907

The Democrat(ic?) party selected William Jennings Bryan to run for President in 1908. The party chose their candidate in 1906. At this time, a century ago, the Republican party hasn't chosen their candidate (at least not publicly), although there are a number of contenders. One being Albert J. Beveridge.

The timing of presidential politics in 1906-1908 is interesting. The campaign of 1908 seems to have started earlier than most presidential campaigns I can remember - save for the seven Democrats running in 2003. I am not a presidential historian, but I'd wager it took much longer to campaign in the past as communications and transportation technology were less efficient. Further, from what I have read about the debates between politicians from that era (and earlier), it seems that the debate was oftentimes more in-depth, and perhaps honest, than today; thereby requiring a little more time than a YouTube video. Finally, as many in today's media and society seem shocked that the 2008 presidential campaign seems to be in second, if not third, gear, it is informative (at least to me) to see that the long-campaign is nothing new in our history.

The Feb. 26, 1907 NYT reports on a written "debate" between Mr. Bryan and Mr. Beveridge which was printed in Reader Magazine, focusing, in part, on the role of the states relative to the federal government. It is interesting that Bryan would "debate" with a presidential candidate (not nominee) of the other party so early in the campaign - such interchange today would be so refreshing it might actually be terrifying. Perhaps the willingness of Bryan to engage Beveridge in debate is a signal of the strength of Bryan's (and Beveridge's) convictions?

See if you can identify the candidate by their language:

1.

A systematic absorption of power by the Federal Government would not only cause discontent and weaken the attachment of the people for the Government, but a withdrawal of power from the State would breed indifference to public affairs - the forerunner of despotism.

The further the legislative body is from the community affected by the law, the easier it is for special interests to control. This has been illustrated in State Legislatures when long-time charters have been granted to franchise corporations by the votes of members whose constituents, not being interested, do not hold them to strict account, and it would be worse if Congress acted on the same subjects.

2.

Every corporation, so great that its business in Nation-wide, is championing State rights. Every railroad that has felt the regulating hand of the Nation's Government, is earnestly for State rights. Every trust attorney is declaiming against the dangers of centralization. Do you know who is not? I do not say that all advocates of State rights are trust attorneys, but all trust attorneys are advocates of State rights.

We are one people, speaking one language, living in one country, under one flag. What affects one of us, affects all of us. Most of the evils that develop among us are common evils, to be reached only by a common remedy. Scarcely any evil is confined to one State. It is clear that where an evil is general, States acting separately cannot uniformly attack it; and it is a fact that in the case of every general evil the States, acting separately, never have uniformly attacked it. The American people alone, acting in common - that is, acting as a Nation - can destroy evils which affect them in common - that is, affect them as a Nation.

Answer below the fold.

Read More »

1. William Jennings Bryan
2. Albert J. Beveridge

Wow.

« Close It

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:30 AM in Politics

February 24, 2007

On the cost of government c. 1907

The Feb. 24, 1907 NYT reports that the 59th Congress (1907-1908) will spend a little more than $1 billion per year - the most to date. In 1907 the economy was estiamted to be approximately $34b, and the federal government was spending approximately 3% of the economy per year. The per-capita cost of the federal government was approximately $12.50 ($268 in 2005 dollars), whereas in 1879-1880 the cost per capita was $7. Today, the per-capita cost for the federal government it is approaching $10,000 (ouch) and federal government spending amounts to appproximately 20% of the nation's economy.

What's driving the run-up in costs in 1907? The military. The largest increase in appropriations was for the navy: in 1897 the navy was appropriated $30m, in 1907 the total was $102m. The story offers that spending on the navy in 1907 was $20m more than the spending during the Spanish-American War of 1898-1899. The largest proportional increase in spending was for fortifications ($24m over two years).

The article does have this to say about the increases in government spending:

If the wealth of the country, rather than its population, is considered, the cost of Government is now at a much less figure on $1,000 per capita [of national income] than ever before in the history of the Republic. The fact that big Congressional appropriations are no longer political issues shows that the people care little for economy in administration so long as there is general prosperity. At the close of each Congress the minority seeks to show that there have been great extravagances in appropriations. The presentation made by the ranking Democrat of the Appropriations Committee receives space in the newspapers, but seldom attracts more than one editorial paragraph in the way of comment. [emphasis added]

I like the use of the word "Republic" - we don't see enough of that word these days.

Note: The Republicans held the majority after the 1906 elections.

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:07 PM in Politics

February 22, 2007

On G.W. (the first) c. 1907

The Feb. 22, 1907 NYT has the following story concerning the legacy of George Washington:

It is not a wholly easy task that the Italian Government has set for the School Directors of the kingdom in directing them to explain to their pupils to-day "the meaning and importance" of the anniversary of Washington's birth in the United States. It is, indeed, a task for which a good many of our own teachers might find themselves only indifferently equipped.

Nothing different today.

[I]t is hard to picture definitely what it was that he did for his country and what was the full significance of his remarkable career. This is all the harder because the approximately true Washington is known and can be known only to a limited number of rather careful students, while the portrait that serves and must serve for the great mass of us is at best vague and in many respects quite misleading.

At least the Washington mythology seems to have been foisted on him and not created and nurtured by him. This is in stark contrast to today's leaders who seem to write a book a year with yet another explanation of their life and why we should think it important.

Two seemingly contradictory facts stand out in the life of Washington. One is that we cannot conceive of the independence of the country won and its National Government established without him, and the other is that in peaceful times it is quite possible that Washington would have passed thorough an uneventful existence known only to his immediate associates.

Following up on Ed's post earlier today:

Had he lived in the latter half of the nineteenth century he might, indeed, have been one of the great property holders of the day as he actually was of his own day. He was by native propensity a bold speculator in land values, and at seventeen, when surveying for Lord Fairfax, he located lands he afterward secured and made very profitable. His fortune, estimated at above half a million at his death - among the very largest, if not the largest, of that time - was gathered in part by skillful and sagacious farming, but also by shrewd speculation and by investment in corporate ventures.

The NYT offers a final salutation:

But all this conjecture is really beside the mark. What we know and what we cannot afford to forget are his indispensable services to our country and the splendid unselfishness with which they were rendered.

Posted by Craig Depken at 06:26 PM in Politics

Something to think about?

I've just finished Ernle Bradford's "Hannibal," part of the Wordsworth Military Library. Finally I think I have a grasp of why Hannibal is important to world history and, as it turns out, it has little to do with elephants and the Alps.

On page 95 Bradford writes:

The one thing that Fabius [Roman Consul turned dictator] had to do, he realised, was avoid defeat. The victory that he must aim for was not the traditional one upon the battlefield - something that the genius of his opponent rendered unlikely - but success achieved over a very long period of time, if need be. The presence of his troops must be used to reassure the allies and their cities that Rome was watching over them. Time and the extent of the land itself must be made to work for him. The Carthaginian's [Hannibal's] army must be reduced slowly, its morale snapped, and its opportunities for engaging him in a straightforward battle reduced to a minimum.

The delaying tactics led to a 17 year war that was fought on two continents - Europe and Africa - from Spain to Macedonia. While Hannibal pretty much had his way with the Romans whenever they engaged in battle, Hannibal ultimately lost. The question is, which side of the current-day conflict is Hannibal and which side is Fabius?

Early in the war with Hannibal, Rome had it's political strife. After Hannibal crosses the Alps, rests, and then takes it to the Romans, for example at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, Fabius's strategy of delay is attacked as intentionally prolonging the war, leading to the election of Gaius Terentius Varro to co-consul. As Bradford writes:

Varro was a plebeian of ultra-democratic opinions who had managed to get voted into office by the people for his defamatory attacks on Fabius the dictator. His arguments, and those of his supporters, will be familiar to those who have observed the pattern of similar politicians in later centuries: the nobles had been seeking war for many years, and it was they who had brought Hannibal to Italy. It was their machinations, too, that were spinning out the war, when it might be brought to a victorious conclusion; the consuls had employed the arts of Fabius to prolong the war, when they could have ended it. The nobles had all made a compact to this effect; nor would the people see an end to the war until they had elected a true plebeian, a new man, to the consulship."

The newly elected co-consuls don't see eye-to-eye about things and this division of leadership and intention leads to the disaster at Cannae.

Whether current-day Varroses would do the same is something to think about. The uncanny "repeat of history" suggests that human nature has not changed over the course of 2200 plus years. It is therefore unlikely that it will change in the next three or four.

Posted by Craig Depken at 05:48 PM in Politics

The Partisan Perils of Winning the Presidency

This is interesting data assembled by Lou Jacobs of Roll Call.

Seats Held by Party at Inaugurations and after Six Years in Office
President Clinton
U.S. House 258 211
U.S. Senate 57 45
Governorships 30 17
State Houses Controlled 33 26
State Senates Controlled 30 26

President Bush
U.S. House 221 202
U.S. Senate 50 49
Governorships 29 22
State Houses Controlled 24 22
State Senates Controlled 24 19

Jacobs compiled numbers from the president's first inauguration. It seems to me he ought to base it from before that first election, as the president ought to get some credit for seats gained in his first election. But it's still interesting, and it's a good reminder to you partisans that in every election loss, there is a silver lining.

Posted by Brad Smith at 04:17 PM in Politics

February 19, 2007

On the price of gasoline c. 1907

From the Feb. 19, 1907 NYT:

The motor car manufacturers have a double reason for urging the passage of the bill enabling small famrers to distill alcohol for fuel. They have favored it because many thousands of stationary farm engines could use the alcohol, lessening the demand and lowering the price of gasoline to automobile owners. Now that alcohol has been found more efficient than gasoline in their own motors, they may be expected to insist even more strongly that the senate sanction the bill, which has already passed the House.

Isn't it interesting that the 1907 New York Times expected its readers to understand supply and demand whereas the 2007 New York Times seems to expects its readers to not understand supply and demand.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:46 AM in Politics

February 17, 2007

Mr. Anyone vs. Mr. Lincoln

One wonders if forty years from now anything close to the following homage, printed in the Feb. 17, 1907 NYT, would be written for any current-day politician:

Two angels at his cradle met
The day of Lincoln's birth;
"What gift shall we bestow," said one,
"Upon this child of earth -
A sword, a pen, a bell, a book,
A crucible or spade?"
"Nay," cried the other, "let an axe
Within his hand be laid."

So Lincoln swung the humble blade,
And felled the forest tree,
Struck off the ancient rusty chains
And set the bondman free.
For all who climbed toward the stars
He blazed the way to fame,
And carved upon his native land
The letters of his name.

Beside the hatchet Washington
Once owned in early youth,
Which ever since has pointed out
The glory of the truth,
And with the flashing sword which Grant
to splendid victory bore,
The Nation treasures Lincoln's axe
Immortal evermore.

Minna Irving

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:35 PM in Politics

February 06, 2007

Make your voice heard! maybe...

Thanks to Boortz for pointing out this page, where you can ask a question to Stephen S. McMillin, Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget. Here is my question to him, we'll see if he responds:

As an economics professor, I have my own opinion on the answers to the following questions, but I am interested in yours:
To what extent does the President, his staff, his or the other party, and the government in general, believe that he and/or they know better than I how to spend my money? What justification do you have for the fact that government today spends over $10,000 per person, while for the first century of our existence, government spent below $100 per person? Lastly, if one believes John Locke's statement that the mixing of labor effort (whether physical or mental) creates a property right to the fruits of that labor, how does the government justify its apparent belief in its right to my property, of which it had no part in creating?

I'm looking forward to questions posed by fellow DoLers and its fans.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 04:00 PM in Politics

February 04, 2007

On lobbyists c. 1907

I failed to mention that the Feb. 3, 1907 NYT reported a number of individuals who had filed with the State of New York to be a lobbyist. A new state law at the time aimed to reduce influence-peddling and outright corruption through the sunshine of public knowledge. Of the thirty five individuals and firms listed, here are the "interests" identified:

• State Homeopathic Medical Society
  
• New York Anti-Saloon League
  
• One firm representing the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, Manhattant Railway Company, New York City Railway Company, New York and Queens County Railway Company, and twelve (!) other railway companies in the state.
  
• Buffalo Southern Railway Company
  
• Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (9 individuals)
  
• Civil Service Reform Association (3 individuals)
  
• New York Telephone Company
  
• Merchants' Legislative League of Utica
  
• Congress of Knights of Labor
  
• New York State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage of Women
  
• Municipal Gas Company
  
• Buffalo Life Insurance Company
  

One hundred years ago the lobbyists were prowling the halls of State legislatures looking for cash or other rents. So it has been and so it will be. Yet today's Congress and state legislatures promise long-awaited "reform"?

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:08 PM in Politics

February 01, 2007

Nuevo Speak

News of the Chavez thing is everywhere. A few observations, which together suggest a whole new vocabulary is developing.

Brain drain: Among the Venezuelan intelligentsia, a sabbatical is now called a "chavatical".

El Guapo would be proud: In a festive scene from the ¡Three Amigos!, two German hit men join a crowd of Mexican outlaws in boistrous celebration of their leader, the infamous El Guapo, shooting their pistols in the air and screaming "viva El Guapo." Of course, a more literal reprise of this scene has been playing out in Caracas these past two days. As from this CNN report, "Long live the sovereign people! Long live President Hugo Chavez! Long live socialism!" said National Assembly President Cilia Flores as she proclaimed the law approved. And the German connection? It's no less obvious, e.g. the infamous enabling act of 1933.

Democracy as red herring: From the same CNN story.

“What kind of a dictatorship is this?" [Vice President Jorge] Rodriguez asked the crowd, saying the law "only serves to sow democracy and peace."

"Dictatorship is what there used to be," Rodriguez said. "We want to impose the dictatorship of a true democracy."

Can "democracy" have any meaning after this?

HT: Wayne Leighton

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 12:11 PM in Politics

Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

From the Washington Times:

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware yesterday made it official that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination, but stumbled out of the gate with a memorable gaffe that became the focus of his day.
In a critique of the Democratic field, he said of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he told the New York Observer, a weekly. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Articulate--imagine that Joe.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:59 AM in Politics

January 31, 2007

What's all the Caracas?

Well, this one should be fun, if predictable, to watch.

Hundreds of [Hugo] Chavez supporters wearing red -- the color of Venezuela's ruling party -- gathered in the plaza, waving signs reading "Socialism is democracy" as lawmakers read out passages of the law giving Chavez special powers for 18 months to transform 11 broadly defined areas, including the economy, energy and defense.

Chavez, a former paratroop commander who easily won re-election in December, has said he will use the law to decree nationalizations of Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, slap new taxes on the rich and impose greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries.

The law also allows Chavez to dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and "adapt" legislation to ensure "the equal distribution of wealth" as part of a new "social and economic model."

Yeah, "new;" no one's ever tried that before. At least Hillary will be provided with a model upon which to base her Presidential platform.

"Viva President Hugo Chavez, long live socialism!" National Assembly President Cilia Flores said as she proclaimed the law approved. "Fatherland, socialism or death!"

If history is any guide, she'll at least get the latter two.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 03:08 PM in Politics

Loser-tarians?

Michael Medved does the best he can to make a logical argument. But then, his best is none too good.

When Reagan won the Presidency in 1980, crushing the incumbent Jimmy Carter 51% to 41%, he not only overcame a third party vanity race by a former Republican Congressman named John Anderson (his “Independent” Party drew 6.6% of the vote), but he also triumphed over by far the strongest Libertarian Party candidate in Presidential history.
Amazingly enough, Ed Clark, the Libertarian standard bearer, won almost a million votes (921,188) for 1.06% of the total.
To rational observers, a national campaign that wins only 1% of the vote looks pointless and pathetic, but by Libertarian standards the Clark campaign represented a veritable juggernaut, and the party’s breathtaking summit of achievement. Clark’s performance more than doubled all subsequent Libertarian nominees, even though some of them (like two time loser Harry Browne) raised and spent far more money for their sad little races. In terms of their percentage of the popular vote, Libertarian presidential candidates since the high-water mark of 1980 have drawn between 0.24% (David Bergland in 1984) and 0.5 (Harry Browne in his first race of 1996). Most recently, that burning hunk of unstoppable charisma Michael Bednarik earned a paltry 0.3% of the popular vote – less than one-third the showing that Ed Clark managed 24 years earlier.
The point isn’t merely that the Loser-tarian Party has moved decisively in the wrong direction (you don’t build majorities by losing two-thirds of your voters), it’s that they happened to succeed best against the finest conservative candidate in recent history.
In other words, the Libertarians lie or at least delude themselves when they claim that they will win votes by drawing people who are disillusioned with both big government Democrats and me-too Republicans. They drew more votes when running against the unequivocally conservative Ronald Reagan than they did against the likes of Bob Dole, either President Bush, or Gerald Ford for that matter.
Thus, the argument that they are pushing the Republican Party in a more conservative direction by taking away votes of die-hard conservatives is, like so much else about the Libertarian Party, a complete fraud.

Three facts the inexplicable Medved might want to consider:

1. Reagan had for years taken a strong "Government isn't the solution, government is the PROBLEM" line. He was not unequivocally conservative. I myself worked in the Reagan administration, for the Federal Trade Commission, precisely because he had strong libertarian sentiments in regulation and tax policy. These came to little, I agree, but Reagan was more complex than GW Bush, who is "unequivocally conservative," all right. And you can HAVE Mr. Bush; I don't want him anymore.

2. Reagan was running against JIMMY CARTER. This was Carter after the rabbit attack, after the flaccid reaction to the storming of our embassy in Tehran and the taking of hostages. That's not exactly the Dems' first team. And the Carter monetary policy and regulatory policy (Remember Michael Pertschuk?) had a big role in expanding the Libertarian vote. So, the reasons Clark did well were (1) He was a pretty good candidate, and (2) he was running against Carter, a "Let's Mate with the State!" guy from way back. Carter sent folks running to Reagan if they were gullible, and to Clark if they saw things clearly. That there are more gullible people than clear-thinking ones is not exactly front-page news.

3. In a dozen ways, "Loser-tarians" have already won. The CATO Institute, REASON mag, and a lot of other libertarian perspective are given respect and credence in DC policy debates and in the state houses.

Our candidates, perhaps, have not been competitive in national races, but that is just Duverger's Law in action. It's not as if any OTHER third party has made any inroads, either. The state-sponsored parties don't make it very easy. Imagine that Coke and Pepsi go to write their own antitrust laws; there wouldn't be any 7-Up on the shelves. "Shelf crowding, confuses the customers!"

And it may be true that Libertarians wouldn't be very good in office if we got there. But if we can reduce the power, scope, and intrusiveness of government by making persuasive arguments, who cares if we actually serve in office? The law, and lots of regulations, have come a long way toward what libertarians advocate in the last 25 years.

Posted by Michael Munger at 01:40 PM in Politics

January 25, 2007

The smoking gun?

I have little to stay about the Scooter Libby case. It all seems a bit of an overkill. But then there are certain principles that our Democracy must not sacrifice, such as lying to a grand jury....er, wait a second.

Anyway, the DOJ has posted some of its "smoking gun evidence" here. I use the term loosely because with all the blacked-out information on the Schmall notes it is hard for us mere mortals to tell what is going on.

Enjoy.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:28 AM in Politics

January 24, 2007

On the nature of conflict

The Human Security Centre has released it's updated report on the number of pending conflicts. They also report a time series of the number of conflicts over time (among other things). The data are interesting, although difficult for me to confirm at times.

Here's a time plot of the post-WWII period (the vertical line is at 1989 - the end of the Soviet Union)

It is interesting how the nature of war has changed. Is this the result of the credible threat of WMDs? Is world-wide bloodshed worse under a regime of MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Perhaps smaller conflicts are allowed to simmer because the bigger players are reluctant to get involved for fear of the bigger toys coming into play?

Posted by Craig Depken at 05:38 PM in Politics

Oh really, George?

President Bush last night said, “it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk.”

Actually, it would be like us...

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:30 AM in Politics

January 22, 2007

Did Huey Long read Bastiat?

My wife has been after me for weeks (months?) to clean up my home "office" and so, over this past weekend, I began going through stacks of books and papers I had not looked at, to be honest, in years. Like, for example, the Spring 1985 issue of The Southern Review. This was one of three special issues celebrating that journal's 50th anniversary and it is chock full of interesting stuff -- such as, Huey Long's thoughts on taxpayer funding of higher education. According to the introductory note, Long spoke in 1935 to a gathering at LSU honoring the Italian ambassador to the US, who had been invited to visit the university as part of the celebration of its 75th anniversary. Long's remarks, as "reported the same day in the Baton Rouge State-Times," included the following gems:

I want to give some advice to the colleges. I'm the worst politician in the Untied States. The way I get along with the people of this state is not by answering criticisms. I know that there are so many more that know something about themselves that they don't want told I at least get the sympathy of a large number. You will find out that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time. You may not like getting money from one source and spending it for another. But the thing for the school people to do is that if the politicians are going to steal, make them steal for the schools.
. . .
Let me assure all you good people that we have received some lessons from you and you can learn from us. I say the school teacher should get into politics. The school teacher who doesn't get into politics is standing in his own light and in the light of others.
. . .
Whenever school people take up the fight, to fight for the principles that the man who teaches gets as much as the man who operates a slot machine and that every boy regardless of whether he is born of wealthy or poor parents has the right for education, whenever the teachers and professors have made the politicians yield the various sources of plunder, then they will have done their share in the training of youth.

What more is there to say? The citation is Huey P. Long, Politics and Education, Southern Review, 21:257-259 (1985). No link; sorry.

Posted by Mike DeBow at 05:51 PM in Politics

January 19, 2007

Profiles in Courage

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-GA, withstood the pressure from his colleagues to go along, and instead cast the lone "nay" vote on House Resolution 39.

The resolution in question was to commend the University of Florida football team on its BCS Championship victory. Kingston is a loyal University of Georgia alumnus (1978, economics). Kingston explained his vote to the UGA student newspaper The Red and Black:

"I thought that with all the serious issues facing our country such as Iraq and terrorism, voting on Florida seemed kind of silly; but if we're going to vote on silly stuff, I might as well remind people there are a few Bulldog fans in Congress," Kingston said.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 10:31 AM in Politics

January 15, 2007

Georgia's Gubernatorial Race c. 1907

For those of us from or living in Georgia, some of these names will ring familiar:

SAVANNAH - Col. John Holbrook Estill, editor of the Morning News, yesterday announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor. This makes five entries, the others being Clark Howell and Hoke Smith of Atlanta, James M. Smith of Oglethorpe County, and Judge Richard B. Russell of Winder. The primary will be held next Summer.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:54 AM in Politics

January 12, 2007

Shocked! Shocked!

From the Washington Times:

On Wednesday, the House voted to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.

One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

"I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party's chief deputy whip....

Update, from the New York Times (1/13/07):

Fending off charges of favoritism, House Democrats say a just-passed minimum wage bill will be changed to cover all U.S. territories -- including American Samoa -- before it reaches President Bush's desk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she has instructed the House Education and Labor Committee to help get the bill changed to ''make sure that all of the territories have to comply with the U.S. law on minimum wage.''

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 08:35 PM in Politics

Civil War defined c. 1907

As we seem to have trouble defining "civil war" today, it seems that in 1907 there was a similar problem in the U.S. Senate. Ostensibly, the Senate determined that the conflict that stretched from 1861-1865 was actually a "civil war" not a "War of Rebellion" or a "War of Yankee Aggression," or even a "War Between the States."

Why all the hubub?

When Senator McCumber of North Dakota, who for nearly forty years has labored under the impression that there was a War of the Rebellion, admitted in the Senate today that he might be in error and was willing to accept the statement that there was a civil war, and so provide for service pensions, the terminology of the greatest event in the history of the States was determined.

In other words, including the term 'War of the Rebellion' in a Service Pension Bill was deemed complicated. The story goes on:

The North Dakota Senator was proceeding in the dispassionate and expressionless way which always empties the galleries, when an expression dropped by him was caught by the acute ear of Carmack of Tennessee.

In pre-C-SPAN days there were dry and boring Senators?

Money of Mississippi was promptly on his feet, clamoring to be heard. An accommodating Vice President recognized him, whereupon the Mississippian asserted that neither McCumber nor Carmack knew just what to call the occurrences of 1861-5. There might have been a rebellion and there certainly was civil war, but historically and legally the events within the period named should be classified as "a War Between States."

As this debate was surely spinning out of control, a voice of reason contributes:

The meek-appearing but bellicose Teller could no longer refrain from joining in the melee. He delivered himself in sarcastic tone of this dictum: "The facts of history cannot be altered by splitting hairs over terminology."

After a few more rounds of squabbling and one side-story about a father buried in the Confederate flag and a son being buried in the U.S. flag, the story ends by stating:

Thereupon the Service Pension bill was amended so as to recognize as having earned a pension those soldiers who served in the Union Army in "the Civil War."

The bill grants the pension of $12 a month to survivors of the civil and Mexican wars who have reached the age of 62; $15 to those who are 70 years of age, and $20 to those who are 75 or over.

As one who grew up on a Civil War battlefield, such stories are of interest. If there had been no Pension Bill would the accepted terminology considering the conflict be different? If so, who would have determined the terminology - the population, the media, or the academics? Perhaps the politicians might have grabbed first-mover-advantage.

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:32 AM in Politics

January 11, 2007

On States Rights c. 1907

The Jan 11, 1907 NYT is full of interesting stories. One reports a quotation/prediction by Chairman Tawney of the House Appropriations Committee:

The people of the states are rapidly forgetting, or at least ignoring, the fact that the founders of our Federal Government never intended that it should encroach upon the rights of the States in respect to matters which pertain exclusively to them, nor did they intend that the States should surrender the functions of government which they reserved to themselves, and encroach upon the Federal Treasury for the purpose of securing money to perform those functions which they thus reserved and which belong to them.

If the tendency in this direction, which has grown so enormously during the past eight years, is not checked it will not be long before State lines are obliterated, and practically every right and governmental function about States reserved to themselves will have been surrendered to the Federal Government, and the people of the States will find themselves governed by bureaucracy.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:06 PM in Politics

January 10, 2007

This says it all

From Crop News Weekly:

Already a new ethanol related bill has been introduced and new farm bill discussions are being thrown around the Hill as legislators settle back into their routines.

The solution to any bad habit is to alter your routine. Perhaps Congress doesn't think it has any bad habits?

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:05 AM in Politics

January 09, 2007

Discerning voters

This article suggests that anti-WalMart is not good politics, except maybe for getting nominated as a Democratic candidate.

Three-in-four voters say attacks by politicians on Wal-Mart won't affect their voting behavior. But among those who say it will, those people are much more likely to vote against a candidate who skewers Wal-Mart than they are to vote for him

A plurality of voters also believes that Democrats who attack Wal-Mart are doing so to curry favor with organized labor, which is unhappy with the firm because its stores are non-union.

[N]ot only do these voters shop there, they overwhelmingly see the company as a positive force in their community, and by a solid margin as a good thing for the country.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:36 AM in Politics

December 28, 2006

One 'A' too many c. 1906

The Dec. 28, 1906 NYT reports this little ditty (borrowed from Harper's Weekly):

A number of years ago when the present Second Assistant Secretary of State, Alvey A. Adee, was Third Assistant, an employe of the State Department was called to the 'phone.

"Will you kindly give me the name of the Third Assistant Secretary of State?" asked the voice at the other end of the wire."

"Adee."

"A. D. what?"

"A. A. Adee."

"Spell it, please"

"A."

"Yes"

"A."

"Yes."

"A --"

"You go to hell," and the receiver was indignantly hung up.

Never heard of Alvey A. Adee? Neither had I. Yet, he merits a Wikipedia entry, which is more than I can say about myself. His claim to fame, other than an interesting name? He served as acting Secretary of State during the Spanish-American War.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:38 AM in Politics

December 27, 2006

The "Wise Men" Solution c. 1906

From an editorial in the Dec. 27, 1906 NYT:

Our inquiries at the country's traffic centres did not reveal any single cause of the shortage of cars which is annoying every railway, every shipper, and every consumer of anything transported by railway. The unfeeling railway men seem to think that there is nothing to do but to work out of the congestion as best as we may, but down at Washington the wise men know better than that. The true remedy is to give power to the wise and strong man who are charged, it is true, with other matters, but who would have not objection to taking charge of any other small jobs which are badly attended to.

In other words, the supply of railway services, specifically the capacity of railway cars, seems to be less than the demand for railway services. This, in turn, has created a shortage for which there seems to be two options: let the private sector deal with the problem or give the solution to the program to the "wise men" of the government.

The editorial goes on:

The President has taken up the subject with the Inter-State Commerce Commission and has asked them to draft drastic remedial legislation giving them power..."to compel any railroad to forward an adequate number of cars to any point at any time of emergency." This is thorough, but too slow for Senator Hansrough's taste. He is to the force with a project of law "to compel the railroads to anticipate extraordinary movements of commodities, and to take care of such shipments when they are offered."

In something that would seemed to have come from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, one branch of the Federal government proposes to compel private companies to respond to "emergencies" with an "adequate number of cars." Who is to define an emergency and who is to define adequate? The implication is the "wise men" of the ICC will take care of those definitions, thank you very much.

But another branch of government tops the other with proposed legislation that requires railroads to "anticipate extraordinary movements of commodities."
Yet, how can a lack of "anticipation" be made illegal? The NYT editorial board asks the same question, albeit tongue-in-cheek:

These are excellent remedies. The only defect is that they are to be applied solely to the railways. It would be derisory to suggest that Congress should pass an act enabling, or rather "compelling," all of us to be foresighted and forehanded. We would not make any such absurd suggestion as that, but recommend only that the Inter-State Commerce Commission, or the President, or both, should have power over all directly concerned. On Christmas Day, for instance, there were 14,000 cars idle at Galveston because shippers would not unload them. Is it not clear that the situation would be relieved if the Inter-State Commerce Commission had authority to order every shipper to provide himself with storage facilities adequate to enable him to take the goods out of the cars and turn them back for other loads?

The NYT pokes fun at the idea that the government should be able to compel private firms to not only formulate accurate expectations but to act upon them for the betterment of others, with no regard for the profitability of doing so.
The editorial finally zeroes in on the major problem of the "wise men" solution, long before Hayek, Mises, or Rand put pen to paper:

There can be one objection. If the Commission orders everybody else to be foresighted who will enforce the order? We are not aware that the Commission had placed itself upon record as ordering now what it would order for the next emergency.

This is exactly the post-Katrina criticism many levelled against FEMA. The editorial slams the door shut on the "wise men" solution with a penetrating logic we could only hope those in the halls of Congress would employ:

We heartily favor making everybody foresighted and competent by law, but we are a little anxious about the detail of making those issuing the orders themselves foresighted and competent.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:47 AM in Politics

December 26, 2006

Rationality of Ideology

My main man at Clemson, Bill Dougan, and I had a paper in the Journal of Law and Economics in 1989, entitled "The Rationality of Ideology".

We tried to think of examples that our theory would explain, examples that standard rational choice theory might miss. We thought of some.

But here is a terrific one:

"Republican House staff members who are losing their jobs in the aftermath
of November's loss of control are hoping Democrats will re-extend the hand
of largesse to them next month. As the old Congress wound down in a scramble
of post-election activity, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to
pay two months' severance to staff members working on some committees and in
House leadership offices. But her offer was scuttled - by Republican
lawmakers, who complained they didn't have the opportunity to study the
proposal and look at costs. The Senate already provides two months pay for
displaced staff members. One of the affected House staffers said his
comrades are mystified that a plan that would benefit employees of
Republicans would be killed by Republicans: 'We hope the Democrats revisit
it.'" [Wall Street Journal]

Now, that does NOT explain why these same yo-yos voted FOR all those roads bills, and earmarks. But the point is that the only way to establish an ideological reputation is when it costs you to do so.

(Nod to KL, who is neither rational nor ideological)

Posted by Michael Munger at 02:18 PM in Politics

December 19, 2006

Baptists and Bootleggers Once More

On irradiation, from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

The technology is known as food "irradiation," a process that propels gamma rays into meat, poultry and produce in order to kill most insects and bacteria. It is similar to milk pasteurization, and it's a shame some food marketer didn't call it that from the beginning because its safety and health benefits are well established. The American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization have all certified that a big reduction in disease could result from irradiating foods.

Says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota: "If even 50% of meat and poultry consumed in the United States were irradiated, the potential impact on foodborne disease would be a reduction in 900,000 cases, and 350 deaths." A 2005 CDC assessment agrees: "Food irradiation is a logical next step to reducing the burden of food borne diseases in the United States."

Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling "Fast Food Nation," also disparages irradiation as an "exotic technology" developed "while conducting research for the Star Wars antimissile program." Scary.

None of these mythologies has ever been substantiated by science. The Centers for Disease Control concluded its investigation by noting: "An overwhelming body of scientific evidence demonstrates that irradiation does not harm the nutritional value of food, nor does it make the food unsafe to eat." According to Paisan Loaharanu, a former director at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "The safety of irradiated foods is well established through many toxicological studies. . . . No other food technology has gone through more safety tests than food irradiation."

So what's stopping irradiation? The answer is a combination of political pressure, media scare tactics and bureaucratic and industry timidity. And it starts with organic food groups and such left-wing pressure groups as Public Citizen that have engaged in a fright campaign to persuade Americans that irradiation causes cancer and disease. Something called the Stop Food Irradiation Project tells consumers to tell grocers not to carry irradiated foods.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 12:04 PM in Politics

December 16, 2006

Guns or caviar?

Slate reports a handy-dandy measure of global bellicosity.

So, which is it? Is the world more peaceful or more warlike? Since Americans are doing the lion's share of the fighting and military policing, it's difficult for us to answer the question objectively. Fortunately, there is an unbiased global economic indicator that sheds some light on the question: the Guns-to-Caviar Index.

The index is the brainchild of Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group. For the last 17 years, Aboulafia has been charting a relatively simple relationship: how much money the world spends on fighter jets (guns) versus how much money the world spends on private business jets (caviar).

The graph is here.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:24 AM in Politics

December 15, 2006

The System Is the Problem

Good deeds don't go unpunished, as this Washington Post article demonstrates.

At dawn on Tuesday more than a thousand Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on six plants owned by Swift & Co., one of the country's largest meat processors. Some 1,300 workers were arrested, and operations at all six slaughterhouses were suspended. Seen in one light, the raids were perfectly justified. Both employer and employees were breaking the law.
...
Far from ignoring or shrugging off the law, the firm has been trying to comply with it. When job applicants started showing up with what the company suspected were false papers, it tried inquiring into their backgrounds -- only to be sued for discrimination by the Justice Department.

When the government created a program meant to help employers verify that their workers were in the country legally by checking Social Security numbers against a central database, Swift was among the first to sign up. And when that program didn't seem to be catching the worst offenders -- people using not false Social Security cards but stolen ones -- Swift came to Washington to testify in Congress about the problem. The reward: That was precisely the offense that ICE raided the company for on Tuesday.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 04:20 PM in Politics

December 14, 2006

Chinese turmoil

"China in Revolt" paints a picture consistent with Friedman's view that markets erode authority.

By Deng’s time, frustrated bureaucrats and countless individuals, including some of the poorest and most desperate citizens in China, were ready to take the next step—ignoring central-government decrees and building large private businesses that now account for at least 40 percent of the Chinese economy. This became China’s “economic miracle,” brought to fruition even as government officials remained holed up in their offices in Beijing, preparing meticulously detailed five-year plans.

Mao built the People’s Republic on the concept of isolation—separating China from the rest of the world and the Chinese people from one another. Three decades after his death, technology has put them back in touch. In China, a cell-phone subscriber—and no country in the world has more of them—can send a text message that may be read by 100 million citizens within an hour, and acted upon by tens of thousands.

Leaving China a half-decade ago, an American banker remarked: “There’s a billion people here who don’t like following instructions.” If anything, Chinese society since then has become even more willful. It may not always be defiant, but it is frequently disobedient. For better and also for worse, we have entered a period marked by the emergence of a great people from millennia of autocratic rule. ... Thirty years after the death of Mao, the Chinese people have unfinished business to conduct, and their transition into the future is unlikely to be smooth.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 04:52 PM in Politics

How Reuters analyzes the minimum wage

Reuters carries the story, "Democrats to raise wages for poor workers."

The incoming Democratic-led U.S. Congress intends to give a hand to dishwashers, fast-food cooks and America's other poorest-paid workers by raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

The article makes no mention of possible employment effects or any other negative impact. One secondary effect is claimed:

In addition to raising the pay of people who now earn less than $7.25 per hour, the proposed new minimum wage, an increase would prompt employers to increase the wages of an estimated 8.3 million other low-paid workers, according to some estimates.

"There's a spillover effect," said Harry Holzer, a former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department. "Some employers like to stay a buck or two above the minimum."

Not only will the minimum wage increase further distort the labor market, but it will also carry baggage in the form of goodies for Republican constituents, though the Democrats might not have to give the Republicans much due to the bill's popularity:

"I think a minimum-wage bill -- pretty much a Democratic document without a lot of extras to placate Republicans and their small-business allies -- will pass, hit the president's desk and he'll sign it," said Ethan Siegal of the Washington Exchange, a private group that tracks Congress for institutional investors.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 10:16 AM in Politics

December 13, 2006

Flair Enters NC Gov Race

And, forgive me for being excited....

BUT THE FREAKIN' NATURE BOY HAS ENTERED THE NC GOVERNOR'S RACE!

You can find the tale o' the tape here....

Posted by Michael Munger at 07:41 AM in Politics

December 12, 2006

Pinochet

This is the concluding paragraph in a remarkable Washington Post editorial.

The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

This article in the Sun-Times provides much more detail.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 07:02 PM in Politics

On Socialism c. 1906

From the Dec. 12, 1906 NYT:

Socialism is not, as is sometimes thought, the enemy of capital. The real antagonist of Socialism, the power against which Socialism is striking, and which, if Socialism wins, must be destroyed, is the family.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:51 AM in Politics

December 11, 2006

Warming, Global and Otherwise

George Will's roundup of some strange and ominous happenings of the past year includes these:

Two U.S. explorers went to the North Pole to study how global warming threatens polar bears. They had planned to go last year, but were forced to delay Project Thin Ice because of unusually heavy snow and ice.

Modern Greece this year gave the world a new wrinkle in creative accounting: It became 25 percent richer after its GDP was revised to account for such booming service industries as prostitution and money laundering.

More on the latter from The Guardian:

The new figures are the result of Greece's determination to avoid a ticking off from the EU, which has the right to impose hefty fines on a eurozone country if its budget deficit rises above 3% [sic] of GDP. By boosting the size of its economy the Greek deficit will fall from 2.1% of GDP to 1.9%. Without the change the deficit would have fallen from 2.6% of GDP to 2.4%, according to the Financial Times.

But it might have backfired:

While the new figures will allow Greece to escape possible fines for running a high deficit, the country will pay for its honesty in other ways.

"Greece will be a victim because it will lose structural funds and will have to pay more into the EU budget," Mr [Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform] said. "I think we should therefore take them seriously."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:53 PM in Politics

December 09, 2006

Academic freedom

David Horowitz ("Academic freedom for students") reports on remarkable goings-on in the Pennsylvania university system:

[W]hen the regulations were examined, it was evident that they applied only to professors. In other words, students not only did not know their rights, they didn't have any. The committee has recommended that this deficiency be corrected, and universities have already stepped forward to do so.

"Students having concerns about situations that arise within the classroom, or concerns with instructor behavior in a course that violates university standards of classroom conduct as defined in Policy HR64, 'Academic Freedom,' may seek resolution according to the recommended procedures. ...

"It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. ...

"No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 02:54 PM in Politics

December 08, 2006

Libertarian Progressives

Larry informs me that the Lindsey essay is available here.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 04:16 PM in Politics

Libertarian Progressives

Brink Lindsey (subscription required) calls for a new fusion of libertarians and progressives. He characterizes the current state of affairs thusly:

Yet progressives remain stubbornly resistant to embracing capitalism, their great natural ally. In particular, they are unable to make their peace with the more competitive, more entrepreneurial, more globalized U.S. economy that emerged out of the stagflationary mess of the 1970s. Knee-jerk antipathy to markets and the creative destruction they bring continues to be widespread, and bitter denunciations of the unfairness of the system, mixed with nostalgia for the good old days of the Big Government/Big Labor/Big Business triumvirate, too often substitute for clear thinking about realistic policy options.

Hence today's reactionary politics. Here, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the rival ideologies of left and right are both pining for the '50s. The only difference is that liberals want to work there, while conservatives want to go home there.

Lindsey points to a few cases in which some fusion has occurred and closes with the following assessment of what would be required for his program to be realized:

It must be based on a real intellectual movement, with intellectual coherence. A movement that, at the philosophical level, seeks some kind of reconciliation between Hayek and Rawls.

If such an exploration could be launched, liberal and libertarian thinkers would begin talking with one another and engaging one another regularly. Over time, they would come to see themselves as joined in a common endeavor. And, in the shared identity that would emerge, there would be plenty of room for continuing disagreements, even sharp ones, just as there is in any robust political movement.

Can liberals and libertarians really learn to work together? I don't know, but their alternative is most probably to languish separately.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:39 AM in Politics

December 05, 2006

On Congressional salaries c. 1906

The Dec. 5, 1906 NYT reports on Congressmen proposing to raise their salaries (once again):

A proposition is underway to increase the salaries of Congressmen to a point where they will not be tempted to eke out their incomes by porch-climbing and panhandling...If the Democrats can be induced to restrain their propensities for making the eagle scream, the measure stands an excellent chance.

At present, a Congressman gets $5,000 a year, which is what he used to get when Pennsylvania Avenue was a mud road and the best hotel cost about what a hallroom in the northwest section does now. Nobody has the least doubt that the pay ought to be raised to $7,500, but every Congressman is mortally afraid of the how about "salary grabs" which is sure to be raised...

The Speaker's solution of the difficulty was for the Committee on Rules to report a bill, separate from the Legislative bill, and have it put through, provided the Democrats would agree not to make a fuss. The Democrats can vote against the bill, if they like, for the sake of keeping up their record for economy, but they must not make speeches about the toiling masses whose sweat-bedewed bread is being wrenched from them to pamper the children of luxury in the halls of legislation. If the Democrats will not bind themselves to this course of conduct, the bill is to be dropped and nothing more done about it.

$5,000 in 1906 is approximately $112,000 in 2005 CPI adjusted dollars and $7,500 in 1906 would be worth about $168,000. Current Congressional salaries are right at $165,000 today.

In other words, we pay Congressmen the same today, in real terms, as we did 100 years ago. In return, we have a much more intrusive and paternalistic government. Correlation or causation?

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:03 AM in Politics

November 30, 2006

Czarist favors c. 1906

In the Nov. 30, 1906 NYT is this little ditty:

The Emperor has approved the resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers fixing twelve hours as a working day, including two hours for meals in all industrial establishments. This law will become operative six weeks after its promulgation.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:02 PM in Politics

November 22, 2006

World's worst pork

In contrast to my yummy earlier post on Wagyu beef, a new report from Heritage Foundation details the yucky mounds pork in this year's federal budget. Money passage:

Giving lawmakers their own pot of taxpayer dollars to distribute as they wish invites corruption. Not surprisingly, the media has been saturated with stories of lawmakers earmarking federal grants to projects directly benefiting campaign contributors, friends, relatives, and even themselves.

In addition to waste and corruption, lawmakers’ obsession with pork raises a larger concern about the role of the federal government. Members of the U.S. Congress—a national legislature that has historically debated war, Americans’ rights, and broad economic policy—have become, in the words of Rep. Dan Lungren (R–CA), “mere errand boys for local government and constituents.”

The report lists the top 100+ pork projects still in the FY2007 budget (as of 11-15-06). My favorite: $1,000,000 for Mormon cricket and grasshopper activities in Utah. What the...?

Spotlighting this stuff helps, of course. But policymakers respond more to incentives fundamentally shaped by institutions. Because the U.S. system is geographically based with single representative districts, each legislator has a strong incentive to advance budget items that impart benefits on their home district while imposing the costs on the general tax fund. In this system, logrolling, omnibus bills, and more recently earmarks, enable policies that would otherwise fail if voted on individually. The institutional structure—not bad politicians—is the root cause of economically inefficient policies such as pork barrel spending. In order to achieve fewer bad policies, public choice analysis would suggest divorcing representation from geography.

Happy earmarking.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 08:15 PM in Politics

November 17, 2006

John Edwards vs. Wal-Mart

Reason's Jeff Taylor knocks one out of the park.

Posted by Mike DeBow at 05:14 PM in Politics

Statistical Discrimination

Thursday's (11/16/2006) All Things Considered carried an interesting story on profiling, "Hearing Sounds of Religion, and Fanaticism" (available on Lexis/Nexis). An excerpt:

I didn't want to be caught staring so I looked away, but not before I noticed he was driving a white cargo truck. Hold it. Muslim guy in a cargo truck. My mind played a flash round of word and picture association - all involving the words truck bombs.

My boring, suburban calm turned to an adrenalin-spiked code orange. I wished the light would hurry up and turn green already. Come on, come on, I said, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. I glanced back at my kids in the rearview mirror. My daughter, still sleepy-eyed, had her headphones plugged into her ears and my 5 year old son, staring out the other window, seemed equally oblivious.

When the light finally turned green I made my left turn and the truck headed straight down the main thoroughfare. I felt such a sense of relief, and then - wait a minute - I thought to myself. What's gotten into me? I'm a Muslim of Egyptian decent, born and reared in the U.S.

Of course, this being NPR, the essayist chalked it up to societal conditioning.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:48 AM in Politics

Two Wal-Marts: One for us, one for John

Is Wal-Mart entering the negative campaign ad game? Maybe so, according to this report: "Wal-Mart had noted in a news release Thursday that on the same day Edwards was criticizing the company in a conference call with union-backed activists, the volunteer staff member had asked a Raleigh, N.C., electronics department manager to obtain a PS3 for the ex- senator's family."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 08:53 AM in Politics

November 16, 2006

Electability

I know this is playing fast and loose with statistics, but it seems like harmless fun. I treat the prices at Intrade.com as probabilities. They give the price for these six candidates to be nominated (I call this ProbNom) and to win the presidency (my ProbWin). From this, I compute the conditional "probability" of winning given nomination for the six leading contenders.

Name ProbNom ProbWin Prob(Win|Nom)
McCain 0.49 0.34 0.69
Gore 0.11 0.07 0.63
Obama 0.13 0.08 0.62
Giuliani 0.18 0.11 0.60
Clinton 0.56 0.31 0.55
Romney 0.12 0.07 0.54

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 12:42 PM in Politics

November 15, 2006

The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism?

I saw a newspaper write-up today about this new book (and forthcoming 20/20 segment):

Who Really Cares: America's Charity Divide; Who Gives, Who Doesn't, and Why It Matters.

Copied from the website:

Arthur Brooks, a top scholar of economics and public policy, ... demonstrates conclusively that conservatives really are compassionate-far more compassionate than their liberal foes. Strong families, church attendance, earned income (as opposed to state-subsidized income), and the belief that individuals, not government, offer the best solution to social ills-all of these factors determine how likely one is to give. Charity matters--not just to the givers and to the recipients, but to the nation as a whole.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 01:44 PM in Politics

November 13, 2006

HillaryCare Once More?

The return of HillaryCare? This, from AP:

She also said Democrats would focus on improving the quality and affordability of health care - a touchy matter for the former first lady, who in 1993 led her husband's calamitous attempt to overhaul the nation's health care system. The failure of that effort helped Republicans win control of both the Senate and House the following year.

"Health care is coming back," Clinton warned, adding, "It may be a bad dream for some."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:02 PM in Politics

Ortega's Election

"¡Viva el Capitalismo!" provides an interesting analysis of the recent Nicaraguan election. An exerpt: "In a sense, these moderate left-wing leaders, perhaps now including Mr. Ortega, are a lot more in sync with what Ronald Reagan and his men were aiming for in Central America in the 1980s than Oliver North would care to admit."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 04:35 PM in Politics

November 11, 2006

Libertarian Dems?

This New Republic article contains some suspect economic analysis, but the political anallysis is intriguing.

Democrats have responded by fielding candidates like Tester who support gun rights, oppose gay marriage, and attack the Bush administration for expanding the reach of government.

Western Democrats like Tester have the potential to intellectually reinvigorate the Democratic Party as a whole. Indeed, they may be the only thing that can save a party flush with victory from heading down a road that will lead to future defeats.

About one-third of the credible Western Democratic candidates for major office this election cycle received "A" ratings from the National Rifle Association. Many spoke out against the Patriot Act on privacy grounds.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 11:17 AM in Politics

November 09, 2006

Bias?

Here, from USA Today, is a classic example of biased reporting. Under the headline, "Liberals mark big victories with ballot initiatives," USA Today goes crazy.

"Liberals claimed unprecedented victory in Tuesday's ballot measures as voters raised the minimum wage in six states, overturned South Dakota's restrictive abortion law and defeated for the first time a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
"Also defeated were 16 of 17 efforts to limit state and local government through term limits, tax cuts and revenue restrictions, said Jennie Bowser of the National Conference of State Legislatures."

All true enough. But unmentioned in the entire article are the defeats of tax increase proposals in California and elsewhere, some of which I outline here.

Passage of the Michigan Civil Rights initiative draws this passing reference, buried in mid-paragraph, "In Michigan, voters approved a ban on several affirmative action programs." Does anyone doubt its defeat would have been trumpeted to the hills?

There is no mention at all about nine states that made it harder for state and local governments to seize private property. No mention at all about the failure of campaign finance restrictions in liberal California and "good government" Oregon.

Bias, anyone?

Posted by Brad Smith at 09:44 AM in Politics

Election Reflections - A Center-right Country

Some thoughts on Tuesday's results can be found below the fold. A bad day for Republicans, but not for limited government.

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The elections were bad news for Republicans but not terribly bad news for those interested in limited government.

A. PARTIES

From a partisan standpoint, they mark a clear repudiation of Republicans. Not only did the Democrats gain both control of both houses of Congress, but not a single incumbent Democrat lost a race for House, Senate or Governor. Moreover, down ballot the Democrats captured control of 9 state legislative chambers. Whether this is bad for limited government is hard to say. Let's leave aside the theories about how gridlock is helpful here - I am skeptical that having Democrats, who generally want more government, can be better than having Republicans in control, who at least talk about limiting government. Does anyone really believe that Democratic rule, Congress would have been spending less over the past 6 years? The Democrats will want to pursue a number of initiatives such as minimum wage increases, prescription price controls and the like. I an not at all sure that Republicans will filibuster such measures in the Senate, or that the President will veto them.

But there is another way to look at this. The Democrats generally campaigned as conservatives, favoring "fiscal responsibility," opposing wasteful spending, and burying any talk of large new government programs. In fact many of those elected will moderate the Democratic caucus. Jim Webb and Bob Casey, and even Joe Tester and Sheldon Whitehouse, will be on the right side of the Democratic Senate caucus. Similarly with many of the new House members, such as Heath Schuler and Baron Hill. Meanwhile, many of the Republicans to lose, such as Chafee in the Senate and some of the northeastern House members, have been more prone to support spending, oppose tax cuts, and generally favor bigger government than their caucus. Thus, while congress overall may be more in favor of big government, the center of each party caucus may move toward smaller government. And this would be a good thing.

Leadership battles on the GOP side may also be good for limited government. Already, Michael Pence (R-IN), one of the real stalwarts for limited government from his position as Chair of the House Republican Study Committee, has announced for minority leader. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, another libertarian-Republican, will be managing his campaign. Arizona's John Shadegg, yet another libertarian-leaning Republican, will be running for the Chief Whip's spot. A GOP leadership team of Pence/Shadegg would be a great boon for limited government. Current majority leader John Boehner of Ohio will be running, and the word is that Virginia's Eric Cantor will also seek the post, with Matt Blount seeking reelection as whip. They would represent the status quo. Joe Barton may also be a candidate for leadership. Ohio's Deborah Pryce has announced that she is stepping down from the #4 GOP leadership slot, as Conference Chair, and Marsha Blackburn, a limited government fan, is rumored as a possible replacement.

On the Senate side the GOP leadership will almost certainly go to Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the smartest, toughest member of the GOP caucus, and also one of the most principled in defense of limited government, whether staking out unpopular positions such as opposition to campaign finance reform and a flag burning amendment or pushing for lower taxes.

B. ISSUES

Meanwhile, Republicans who took a hardline position against immigration, such as Minuteman leader Randy Graf and J.D. Hayworth, did not fare well. Voters in Arizona approved ballot measures to limit government benefits to illegal aliens, and also overwhelmingly approved making English the state's official language. That is to say, voters opposed expansions of the welfare state for illegal immigrants, but did not support drastic immigration restrictions.

Limited government also faired well in other ballot initiatives. True, voters endorsed minimum wage increases everywhere they appeared on the ballot, but that's to be expected, frankly. Otherwise, though, voters took after big government. A California proposition to impose an "extraction fee" on energy companies and fund a $4 billion government research program for alternative fuels failed by 55-45. California voters approved $37 billion in government bonds, but rejected a new tax on tobacco and a $450 million property tax increase for education.

Higher taxes on tobacco were approved in Arizona and Colorado, but rejected in Missouri, as well as California.

However, taxpayers bills of rights and state spending caps, which failed in Maine, Oregon, and Nebraska.

Another California proposition, calling for tax financing of political campaigns, failed by an astonishing 75-25 margin. Campaign contributions limits also failed in Oregon by a lopsided 60-40 margin.

On the property rights front, the Kelo rebellion gained steam, as 9 of 11 ballot proposals limiting the ability of government to take private property were successful.

In Michigan, a civil rights initiative to halt state use of racial preferences passed by a comfortable margin.

Efforts to decriminalize marijuana failed. Bans on gay marriage were generally successful. Limitations on abortion generally failed, by narrow margins. A Massachusetts initiative to allow food stores to sell wine failed.

All in all, a mixed bag, but not one that suggests that people are longing for a more government spending and regulation.

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 12:34 AM in Politics

November 08, 2006

Gridlock: Good News or Wishful Thinking?

From the WaPo (with a HT to Dan Alban):

NEW YORK -- Wall Street rose for a third straight session Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrials reaching another record close as investors grew more confident that a huge victory by Democrats in congressional elections would result in gridlock and keep lawmakers out of the way of business interests.

I hope Wall Street is right, but I'm skeptical. Congress has passed all sorts of slop over the past 6 years but Bush has found only one bill objectionable enough to warrant a veto. I expect Bush to cave on CAFE, the minimum wage, and drug price controls (if not explicit then implicit via the "buying power" of Medicare). Pro-growth tax policy, one of the few Bush bright spots, is likely to be substantially undermined by the Dems desire for "middle class tax cuts."

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:01 PM in Politics

Whew

That's finally over.

My city elected a mayor who, in a radio interview, claimed that he didn't vote to raise taxes while in the state legislature, since some of them were fees, some votes were to continue existing taxes, etc. A rose by any other name...

On NPR's live coverage last night, the anchor, referring to the slim margin in Virginia, said something to the effect of "and you think your one vote doesn't count?"

Isn't it sad when your one vote does count? We are establishing who will determine the laws and policies which will constrain our lives, confiscate our income, and ideally protect our life, liberty, and property. Yet that determination may be made by some dude in Virginia who decided to go to the polls because the Outdoor Channel was showing a rerun of a deer hunting episode. New episode? Completely different election result, different legislative direction of our country for two years.

"Every vote counts." That's why, if I had wasted a half hour of my life yesterday, I could have voted for the Libertarian who ran, oh wait, no Libertarians ran in my district. But I guess I could have enjoyed fulfilling my "civic duty" of tapping a computer screen with a three-foot curtain pulled behind me. My benefit-cost analysis of voting doesn't include emotional benefits. A half hour of my time vs. one more vote out of several hundred thousand for a candidate I don't like.

"Soldiers die protecting your right to vote." I honor their sacrifice. Which is the worse offense, that I don't vote or that those who I can vote for stand against every Constitutional principle?

"But if everyone thought that way..." I'm not everyone, I'm just me.

I can't remember where he said it, but Walter Williams said that in the best NBA games, you never notice the referee. They make consistent calls and apply the rules fairly. Visiting fans get annoyed when a hometown ref shows favoritism. In Congress, it shouldn't matter who we elect; their job is to apply the Constitution fairly. When the understanding of our political system devolves from a Constitutional republic into a mob-rule democracy, suddenly everyone is clamoring to pick the ref who will make the worst calls in their favor.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 03:59 PM in Politics

Bummer

No, the headline doesn't refer to the commiecrat takeover of the House and the Senate. While the Democrats' big year did take down some decent Republicans (e.g., Chris Chocola of IN), the party of pills for seniors, bloated farm bills, and bridges to nowhere didn't deserve to retain control. Of course, it's hard to make a case that the Dummycrats deserve to win. Not only is their agenda rotten, but campaign tactics such as GA Rep John Lewis's telling black voters that "Your very life may depend" on voting against a Republican running for the Fulton County Commission are outrageous.

Instead, the headline refers to Maine's defeat of a Taxpayers' Bill of Rights proposal. The proposal was given a good chance to pass and its passage would have given the TABOR movement momentum in other states. TABOR's failure in Maine makes it a bit less likely that GA's Republican leadership will push the measure.

One bright spot--several states including GA passed ballot items making it more difficult for government to seize property via eminent domain. I'd be more enthusiastic if I thought the measures would truly stop government predation. Instead, I expect crafty pols will make use of loopholes or creative reading of the measures to continue their legal plunder.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:44 AM in Politics

November 07, 2006

Midterm elections c. 1906

A sample of articles from the Nov. 7, 1906 NYT:

1. The Sixtieth Congress will be Republican. The majority in the House will be about 84, a falling off of 30...The result is something of a surprise, for even the Republicans expected more of a cut in their majority. The Democrats did not make noticeable gains in any section of the country, but picked up a Congressman here and there.

2. CONCORD, N.H. - The indications point to a failure of Floyd to secure a majority [in the gubernatorial election], and the settlement of the contest by the Legislature under the law.

3. Nearly 500 women cast their "votes" in a private polling booth at 2,034 Fifth Avenue yesterday. They admitted that they had no legal right to vote, but they "voted" all the same, and went through the whole procedure of "electing" one of the candidates with solemn reverence for election laws. They had a board of election, election inspectors, polling clerks, and ballot clerks.

4. PATERSON, N.J. - For the greater part of the day there was plenty of liquor to be had in a polling place in the Fourth Ward. A rear room was used as a storage place for liquor and beer, and all voters could pass through to this room and get free drinks. The stuff is said to have been the gift of a local worker.

5. MONTGOMERY, Ala - Incomplete returns indicate an overwhelming victory for the entire Democratic State ticket and nominees for Congress. The vote was light.

6. Innumerable thousands in Times Square last night saw the successive bulletins that told of Mr. Hughes's election and Mr. Hearst's defeat, and then made a colossal noise about it.

   Last night in Times Square duplicated the election scenes there last election da y and last New Year's. The crowd, as a rule, was good-natured all night logn, the returns from both up-state and Greater New York tending to give both Hughes and Hearst partisans plenty of news to make them glad at least temporarily...

   No small proportion of the crowds in Times Square last night were out to have a good time, regardless of who was elected...

   
   This last story suggests that in 1906 there was a sense of celebration about the voting process, warts and all, that seems to have been lost today.
   

Some other headlines:

CALIFORNIA.; Republicans Elect Gillette Governor -- Hearst's Man Badly Beaten

COLORADO.; Buchtel Carries the State by at Least 15,000

CONNECTICUT.; Sweeping Victory for Republican Candidates.

DELAWARE.; Burton Elected Governor -- Republicans Control Legislature.

FLORIDA.; State Goes Democratic -- Drainage Amendment Defeated.

INDIANA.; Republicans Claim Election of State Ticket by 50,000 Majority

IOWA; Election of Porter (Dem.), over Cummings by 10,000 Indicated.

Jersey Republican; Dryden may Lose

KANSAS.; Hoch May Be Beaten -- Republican Loss in Congress Districts.

KENTUCKY.; Primary Results Doubtful -- Each Faction Claims Victory

MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN; Gov. Guild Re-elected by Plurality of 34,000.

MICHIGAN.; Republicans Elect Warner Governor by About 100,000 Majority.

MISSOURI.; Both Parties Claim State, but Looks Like Democratic Victory.

NEW MEXICO.; Early Returns Favor Joint Statehood by Small Majority

NORTH CAROLINA.; All Districts Go Democratic -- Plurality Over 40,000.

NORTH DAKOTA.; Democratic Gains Throughout State and Sarles Will Have Close Call.

PENNSYLVANIA.; Republican Ticket Elected in State and in Philadelphia.

REPUBLICANS WIN IN ILLINOIS AGAIN; Claim a Plurality of 125,000 in the State.

RHODE ISLAND.; Higgins, Democrat, Elected Governor -- Republicans Control Assembly

SOUTH DAKOTA.; Republican Plurality of 35,000 Expected for State Ticket

WEST VIRGINIA.; Returns Indicate Election of Five Republican Congressmen.

WISCONSIN.; Claim Election of Davidson [a Republican] for Governor by 60,000 Plurality.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:56 AM in Politics

November 06, 2006

Vote early (and irrationally?)

Perfect timing for Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter." Some excerpts:

But why are there some areas — like politics and religion — where irrationality seems especially pronounced? My answer is that irrationality, like ignorance, is sensitive to price, and false beliefs about politics and religion are cheap. If you underestimate the costs of excessive drinking, you can ruin your life. In contrast, if you underestimate the benefits of immigration, or the evidence in favor of the theory of evolution, what happens to you? In all probability, the same thing that would have happened to you if you knew the whole truth.

In a sense, then, there is a method to the average voter's madness. Even when his views are completely wrong, he gets the psychological benefit of emotionally appealing political beliefs at a bargain price. No wonder he buys in bulk.

So what remedies for voter irrationality would I propose? Above all, relying less on democracy and more on private choice and free markets.[12] By and large, we don't even ask voters whether we should allow unpopular speech or religion, and this "elitist" practice has saved us a world of trouble. Why not take more issues off the agenda? Even if the free market does a mediocre job, the relevant question is not whether smart, well-meaning regulation would be better. The relevant question is whether the kind of regulation that appeals to the majority would be better.

As long as elites persist in unmerited deference to and flattery of the majority, containing the dangers of voter irrationality will be very hard. Someone has to tell the emperor when he is naked. He may not listen, but if no one speaks up, he will almost surely continue embarrassing himself and traumatizing spectators.

HT to Don Boudreaux

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 05:17 PM in Politics

November 05, 2006

Vote early (and vote often?)

From a Nov. 5, 1906 NYT editorial:

To all our readers...we tender the urgent advice to vote as early as possible.

In many districts in the city there will be a heavy vote cast. In some there will be attempts at illegal voting. In some also there is reason to expect more or less disturbance. The man who votes early is pretty sure to escape unpleasant consequences from any of these causes. Mr Rock, the Labor and Independent candidate for the Senate, has supplied much amusement and no small amount of sound council in this campaign. His most urgent appeal to his friends is to vote early lest some one votes for you....

Posted by Craig Depken at 06:17 PM in Politics

October 31, 2006

Courts and ballots c. 1906

File this in the "things never change" drawer. From the Oct. 31, 1906 NYT:

There is doubt in the minds of the members of the Election Board whether ballots for Tuesday's election can be printed in time. Never before has so short a time been allowed the printers to get out the enormous amount of work before them, and it was admitted early this morning, when the decision of the Court of Appeals was received, that only by the exertion of every energy could the ballots be in the voting places when the polls open on Tuesday morning...

The actual work of printing is no small item, either. There must be printed 3,000,000 ballots, and they are to be divided among 1,487 election districts. Every one of them must be in the hands of the Inspectors in each district before the polls open on Tuesday morning.

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:13 AM in Politics

October 30, 2006

Revealed preference in the arms trade?

From this Yahoo! story:

The United States has ceded to Russia and France last year its role of the top arms supplier to the developing world as it failed to take full advantage of emerging markets and opportunities created by booming oil prices, according to a new congressional study.

The annual report by the Congressional Research Service showed the US share of the arms transfer market dropped from 35.4 percent to 20.5 percent between 2004 and 2005.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:07 AM in Politics

October 24, 2006

Pre-election blues c. 1906

From the Oct. 24, 1906 NYT:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Republican County Chairman of Ohio informed Chairman Dick of the State Executive Committee at a meeting Tuesday that they must have money to hire campaign workers if satisfactory results are to be expected. Apathy exists everywhere, the Chairman said when called upon to report after speeches had been made by Congressmen Burton and Kiefer. "For ten years the Republican workers have been fed on things material," he explained, "and it is now too late to feed them on promises." In other words, it takes money to make the political mare go fast enough to bring in votes. However, the Chairman reported that the chances for Republican success are constantly growing brighter.

On a related note, Barron's Magazine (sub req'd) predicts House and Senate races based on the amount of money each candidate raises. This sounds familiar, as my 1998 Economics Letters paper outlines the same basic approach, although I differentiate between individual, PAC, and party contributions. I found that PAC contributions delivered more votes per dollar, whereas party contributions correlated with fewer votes - my reasoning being that parties only give substantial money to losers in order to save face.

Did Barron's steal from me? I am not that egotistical, however it is nice to see "independent" confirmation of years-old research.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:21 PM in Politics

October 20, 2006

Is the Club for Growth Going Soft?

I'm a huge fan of and small contributor to the Club for Growth. The Club has been a major donor to the few bright spots in Congress (e.g., Jeff Flake).

One of the Club's endorsements for this year is Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. However, a Kyl ad I saw while in Arizona makes me wonder if the Club has lowered its standards. The ad features a quadriplegic woman recounting how Sen. Kyl obtained medical benefits for her. (The ad is here; it is the one called "Heather.") Presumably the benefits are from a government program, but the ad isn't specific. Hence it strikes me as odd that the Club would support a candidate campaigning on how effective he is at spending tax dollars. Indeed, money being fungible, Club members might be effectively underwriting the ad. In fairness to the Club, Kyl might have other ads that tout his limited government positions. And one might even make a decent case that this woman's dire circumstance (her paralysis apparently resulted from an attacker sent by her ex-husband) is a legit function of government. Nonetheless I wonder if an ad of this sort, rather than an anti-tax ad, is a sign of panic by Kyl or the Club.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 05:12 PM in Politics

Dumb and Dumber

Jeff Daniels, of the funny (yes, I admit it) film "Dumb and Dumber", has been popping up on my tv lately as a pitchman for "economic development" in Michigan (he's a native and resident of the state). I suspected garden variety mercantilism, albeit using a celebrity rather than a pol. It turns out, though, that the absence of a pol in the commercials doesn't mean there isn't a political angle--the ads are part of Michigan Governor Granholm's effort to buy enough votes for re-election. From the WSJ:

LANSING, Mich. -- Economic anxiety hangs heavy over the midterm elections in this cradle of the American auto industry.

That has meant trouble for the re-election campaign of Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Her response: flexing the power of incumbency and mounting a minibailout of the Big Three, along with other companies in the state, as Washington stands by.

She is offering tax incentives and cash loans in return for promises -- which critics describe as vague -- to preserve or create jobs. In April Ms. Granholm gave General Motors Corp. $40 million in tax breaks for a pair of factory retoolings. Last month she attended the ribbon-cutting of a drivetrain plant in Flint, which the company rehabbed in return for $28.2 million in state tax breaks. In August Ms. Granholm offered Ford Motor Co. $151 million for investments she claimed would retain more than 50,000 Michigan jobs.

As economic policy, the value of Ms. Granholm's corporate largess is questionable. The state aid is minuscule compared with losses the auto makers face. GM says the breaks are unlikely to swell its payroll. And even with the $151 million on offer, Ford appears bent on reducing its global work force by 40% within three years -- a move Ms. Granholm's critics say could wipe out 7,000 Michigan jobs.

"A good announcement here, a good announcement there; the fact is that government handouts don't create jobs," state Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis says.

But as a political move, the drumbeat of business-subsidy announcements looks to be working for the 47-year-old incumbent. She recently took a 50-45 poll lead against an opponent she trailed in July.

ADDENDUM: Andrew Roth of The Club for Growth Blog also picked up on the dumb and dumber theme.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:59 PM in Politics

October 17, 2006

On public corruption c. 1906

From the October 17, 1906 NYT editorial page:

It is reported from Washington that in the mind of that queer community there is some sort of sympathy for ex-Senator Burton of Kansas, who...will have to go to jail. He was convicted of having accepted a fee for representing a client before the departments while he was a Senator. The ground of the sympathy, it seems, is that other Senators and Representatives have sinned in the same way and escaped. Yet it is plain in any other latitude than that of Washington that the offense was one essentially impossible for a man with a decent sense of his duty as a Senator. It is highly necessary that it should be punished and abolished and all the more so if there be many offenders. To accomplish this some one must be the first victim of justice. In this case the victim was unquestionably guilty, and exhausted all the resources of technical defense to evade the penalty due. Sympathy would seem to be misplaced in his case. (emphasis added)

I don't like the term "victim of justice," as the bribery undermined the public trust and the proper role of a limited government (ironically, bribes might be part of the proper role of an unlimited government). The victim in this case was the constituents who didn't have elite access.

All of this sounds familiar, I understand, but in the current environment it seems useful to remind ourselves that there was never a time when politicians weren't on the take but there was a time when we punished at least one grafter with something beyond an "ethics censure."

In a similar vein, since when does revising your ethics report indicate that you have revised your ethics?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:57 PM in Politics

Ohio Voting 101

I voted by absentee ballot yesterday because I'll be out of the country on election day. How did I vote?

Read More »

Governor. This one was weird. I actually know, on a first-name basis, both major party candidates. Ken Blackwell, the Republican, and I have worked on various projects over the years included medicaid reform and the tax-expenditures limitation. I am not thrilled with his run to the religious right, but understand that he felt that was necessary to get elected in the primary given the mainstream GOPs hositility to him. Democrat Ted Strikland, or Red Ted as I like to call him, and I worked together at Shawnee State University. We were in the same department (Social Sciences) even and his office was just a few doors away. He taught psychology. After a year and a half he went off to Congress. I also know Bill Pierce, the Libertarian candidate who is a professor of economics at Case Western.

Sorry, Ken, I voted for Bill.

I basically skipped all the other races as I couldn't vote for either candidate. As for the issues:

State Issue 1 Referendum on Am. Sub. SB 7 - Workers’ Compensation: The unions want a worker's comp reform overturned (yes to overturn the reforms). My enemy's enemy is my friend: NO.

State Issue 2 Proposed Constitutional Amendment - Minimum Wage: Duh! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

State Issue 3 Proposed Constitutional Amendment - Gambling and college scholarships - Learn & Earn: This is a tough one. On first principles I think gambling should be legal and I'm normally an incrementalist about these things willing to take what I can get. But legalizing just some types of gambling to satisfy a few special interests, and then tying the government's huge take to higher education scholarships? Sorry, guys, NO.

State Issue 4 Proposed Constitutional Amendment - Restrict smoking places - Smoke Less

State Issue 5 Proposed Law – Prohibit smoking in places of employment and most public places - Smoke Free

On the basis of first principles, I think private property owners should determine smoking policies for themselves. (Smoking is banned in my house for example, but I'm willing to let you decide this at your house or place of business.) Issue 4 would on the one hand ban smoking in a lot of places, while excepting others like bars, bowling alleys and a lot of restaurants (so long as they had separate sections). But it would also overturn local smoking bans that are broader, so it would make smoking easier in these places (Columbus e.g.). Issue 5 would basically be a statewide ban in all public places.

I voted NO on both of them.

I don't like Issue 5 obviously as I don't think the state has the right (though obviously they have the power) to tell private owners what to allow or not allow on their property. Issue 4 would ban smoking (at the margin) in some places while re-legalizing it in others. What to do? If we're going to have smoking bans at all, I'd prefer at least that they be locally passed. This way some communities can decide to allow smoking, and competition between the communities may check the more extreme anti-smoking zealots.

« Close It

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:52 AM in Politics

October 16, 2006

Curious headlines c. 1906

The ProQuest NYT archive reports headlines as follows:

129. REFEREES' NOTICES.
New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Oct 16, 1906. p. 15 (1 page)

130. REGISTRATION, 659,747, BEATING 1905 BY 16,000; Only 29,000 Smaller Than in the National Campaign of 1904. 50,000 FAILED TO QUALIFY Leaders Get Their First Line on the Voting Strength of the Newly Apportioned Districts.
New York Times (1857-Current. Oct 16, 1906. p. 1 (1 page)

In the case of letters to the editor, multiple letters are filed under the heading of the first letter published. However, the archive lists the letters in reverse order.

Anyway, the October 16, 1906 NYT has the following series of headlines:

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Use of Tobacco by Young Boys.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Reckless Auto Drivers.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Green, Been, Ween.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Wealth and Poverty.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Paying 80 Cents for Gas.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Chinese Labor on Hearst Ranch.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; One Place Where Hearst is Sincere.

REPUBLICANS MUST WAKE UP!; Danger That Overconfidence May Result in Hearst Victory.

Again, the RMWU warning is associated with the first letter which warns against overconfidence against the Democrat Hearst. However, the irony of the other headlines in the archive attracted my eye.

Posted by Craig Depken at 06:14 PM in Politics

October 15, 2006

On media bias c. 1906

From a letter to the editor in the October 15, 1906 NYT:

Born to irresponsibility "with a silver spoon in his mouth," he [William Randolf Hearst] was amply qualified to establish an "American" newspaper, first as a plaything, then as a perverter of morals and a destroyer of principles essential to the continuance of the true American commonwealth.

Why is such a misleading possible in the broad daylight of to-day? Because of the tremendous power of the press, a power that when prostituted creates a widespread mind disease that requires a summoning of all the curative agencies that can be got together.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:51 AM in Politics

October 11, 2006

In the wilderness c. 1906

From a letter to the editor in the October 11, 1906 NYT:

Being a Democrat and wishing to take part in the present campaign, I would like to know how I stand, that is, whether I am forced to support the Republican or Independence League candidate, there being no Democrat in the field.

The letter writer refers to the nomination of William Randolph Hearst as Democrat candidate for the governor of New York, yet many "small l" democrats might ask the same question today in many parts of the country.

From another letter to the editor in the same edition:

Any man or set of men who would set class against class in this Republic, whatever his label, is not and cannot be a follower of Jefferson and a Democrat. Any men who will endeavor for his own purposes to foment and capitalize the latent unrest of humanity is a foe to every form of law and government.

...It is a sad commentary on our self-seeking age that only self-seeking demagogues have found it worth while to spend time and money in the exposure of great evils...A man and men are needed to remedy both the original evils and the almost greater evil of an inflamed public mind, a public aroused to destroy. For it seems to be the age of destruction, with the gospel of reconstruction unrevealed. Our National safety in this crisis depends upon sane leadership, and our National ruin lies along the path of Hearstism.

The letter writer in this case refers to insurance scandals that required investigations and indictments earlier in the year, of which Hearst was lead dog. Nevertheless, the language seems equally pertinent today.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:20 AM in Politics

Vote Buying Pols: NY State Senator Edition

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed's blog:

At least a dozen state senators in New York have been getting free election-year publicity from the state’s private colleges after using taxpayer dollars to publish college guidebooks, each with one of the lawmakers’ photographs on the cover.

The Times Union, a newspaper in Albany, N.Y., first reported that Republican lawmakers had diverted tens of thousands of dollars from a special-projects fund—known as the General Legislative Operations Programs, or GLOP, account—to the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. The private-college association then used the money to print special editions of a guide to New York’s private colleges featuring the sponsoring senator’s photograph and to distribute the books to high schools, community colleges, and libraries in the senator’s home district.

One more data point for the public choice view of politicians over fantasy that pols are selfless public servants.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:00 AM in Politics

October 09, 2006

Journalism 101: Got No Story? Make one up.

The local fishwrapper headline read, "Outside of Columbus few Central Ohio black coaches can be found."

Of course it would have been just as accurate to write "Outside of Columbus few Central Ohio black people can be found."

Posted by Robert Lawson at 05:30 PM in Politics

October 06, 2006

Campaign finance reform c. 1906

The Oct. 6, 1906 NYT lists various legislative limits on campaign financing with a big one at the end. I provide the bullet-list form:

Every committee must have a Treasurer.

No money can be received or spent for political purposes except by a committee with a Treasurer

Any committee receiving $200 or more, in all, must keep a careful account of income and outgo.

Any committee receiving $200 or more must have vouchers for every item of $10 or more.

Any one giving money except through such a committee is guilty of a misdemeanor

Any one...expending money for political purposes, save through a committee, is also guilty of a misdemeanor

Every committee must within 20 days after an election file a detailed statement of receipts and expenditures.

Then comes the hammer, which I quote:

No corporation or joint-stock association doing business in this State, except a corporation or association organized or maintained for political purposes only, shall directly or indirectly pay or use or offer, consent or agree to pay or use any money or property for or in aid of any political party, committee, or organization, or for, or in aid of, any corporation, joint-stock or other association organized or maintained for political purposes, or for, or in aid of, any candidate for political office, or for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the reimbursement or indemnification of any person for moneys or property so used. Any officer, Director, stockholder, attorney, or agent of any corporation or joint-stock association which violates any of the provisions of this section, who participates in, aids, abets, or advises or consents to any such violation, and any person who solicits or knowingly receives any money or property in violation of this section, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and punishable by imprisonment in a penitentiary or county jail for not more than one year and a fine of not more than one thousand dollars.

Take that!!

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:00 PM in Politics

October 03, 2006

Washington Libertarian candidate "hocks" his way into TV debate

Television station KING/5 in Seattle is hosting a debate on October 17 among U. S. Senate candidates. Everyone expected the debate to include only Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Mike McGavick. But the station’s guidelines for admission to the debate, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, allow any candidate who has raised

at least 10 percent of the funds raised by the winner of the previous Senate election. The station used the 2004 third-quarter fundraising report filed by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who had raised $12.1 million.

To meet the $1.21 million test, the Libertarian Party candidate, Bruce Guthrie, has now lent his own campaign $1.18 million (he had already raised $31,062). Pretty clever, given that he doesn’t actually have to spend it:

[Guthrie] admitted he might not spend much of it, saying: "This is a loan, and I do intend to get most of it back. If the fundraising doesn't go well, I might not spend most of it. If the fundraising does go well, I might spend most of it."

He needs it back, because he’s not a rich man:

Guthrie, 43, a former part-time college instructor, said he mortgaged his Bellingham house and depleted his savings to raise the money.

Will Guthrie’s participation affect the race? It might. Republican Sen. Slade Gorton lost to Cantwell in 2000 by a mere 2,229 votes; the Libertarian that year got 64,734 votes.

Prediction: Next time around, the TV station has a new set of qualifications.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 05:16 PM in Politics

Boots on the ground c. 1906

Over the past two months or so in 1906, Cuba has experienced a revolution of sorts. The United States is mobilizing naval and marine forces to be sent to the island nation - we will be there until January 1909 - but it is not clear that our intervention made things better.

The October 3, 1906 NYT provides a brief quote by a Major General Shafter (Ret.):

"A hundred soldiers would be sufficient to seize and hold Cuba at the present time...The Cubans themselves realize this and will make no effort to offer resistance to the army of occupation. There are, however, some very wily natives among the contending Cuban forces, and they may be expected to hold out and be an uncertain quantity until assured that the American occupation is an occupation in fact.

Hmmm....sounds all too familiar.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:58 PM in Politics

October 02, 2006

More on Farm Subsidies from the AJC

This installment takes on farmers who set up dummy companies and otherwise game the system to circumvent the cap on subsidy payments. Story here; don't read unless you have some anti-depressants handy.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:22 PM in Politics

September 28, 2006

Making a Libertarian

Arnold Kling on the making of a Libertarian:

I travelled the route from Far Left to libertarian. I think that quite a few libertarians have travelled that route, and yet I cannot think of anyone who has gone the other direction. This leads me to suspect that:

1. Far Leftists and libertarianism have much in common.
2. Libertarians know something that Far Leftists do not.

What I believe that Far Leftists and libertarians have in common includes:

1. A passion for social and political issues. ...
2. Frustration with political incumbents. ...
3. Anti-elitism. ...

Libertarians have learned is what social psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error. The error is to attribute behavior to a person's character when this behavior is in fact based on context. ...

The Far Left believes that bad policies come from evil motives. In this view, villains ... oppose good policies, and political incumbents lack the strength and courage to overcome the villains.

Libertarians ... believe that government power is inherently corrupting, regardless of who holds leadership positions or how they are influenced. We believe that the market does a relatively good job of channelling self-interest toward socially desirable ends.

For those ... still on the Far Left, my advice is to study the consequences of policy, not simply the motives and intentions of those who advocate the policy. Once one understands and corrects for the Fundamental Attribution Error, the passion for better public policy translates into a support for libertarian principles.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:15 PM in Politics

September 26, 2006

Your federal tax dollars at work …

… fighting efforts to lower your state’s taxes and spending. The PBS show “NOW” on Friday did a hatchet job on donor Howie Rich and the efforts to limit state government spending in Montana and elsewhere through ballot initiatives. Though the show acknowledges that it’s perfectly legal for out-of-staters to donate funds to support initiative campaigns, and that Rich’s donations have been fully disclosed in states that require disclosure, “NOW” gave many minutes to opponents of those initiatives (they also interviewed one pro-initiative Montanan organizer, whom they put on the spot). The opponents – and the “NOW” reporter herself – insinuated that there’s something improper about non-disclosure in states that don’t require disclosure, and more generally something nefarious about a "wealthy New Yorker" funding such initiatives in pursuit of his “extreme” agenda. (The show also reports that some hired gatherers apparently faked a fair number of petition signatures in some states, which is bad, but that’s a guilt-by-association diversion from the funding issue.)

But don’t take my word for it that “NOW” has an anti-spending-limit slant. View the video (takes about 20 minutes), or read this copy from the PBS website, and judge for yourself:

The aim is to slash state spending, with the potential for deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? This week, NOW investigates how organizations associated with one wealthy New Yorker, Howard Rich, are secretly providing major funding for ballot measures. In some states, those contributions have been matched by ones from Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group headed by the politically well-connected Grover Norquist. Since 2001, Norquist visited the White House nearly 100 times, including six meetings with President Bush.

NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot. Is someone manipulating your state's laws, your vote, and you?

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 05:51 PM in Politics

September 22, 2006

DDT: Some History

Steven Malloy offers an insightful history of DDT policy. Among the villains: the Audubon Society, EDF, the Sierra Club, William Ruckelshaus, and (of course) Rachel Carson.

On the activist groups: "Business are often held liable and forced to pay monetary damages for defective products and false statements. Why shouldn't the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and other anti-DDT activist groups be held liable for the harm caused by their recklessly defective activism?"

On Ruckelshaus: "The DDT ban solidified Ruckelshaus’ environmental credentials, which he has surfed to great success in business, including stints as CEO of Browning Ferris Industries and as a director of a number of other companies .... Corporate wrongdoers ... were sentenced to prison for crimes against mere property. But what should the punishment be for government wrongdoers like Ruckleshaus who ... abused his power and affirmatively deprived billions of poor, helpless people of the only practical weapon against malaria?"

On Carson: "She was even honored with a 1981 U.S. postage stamp. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her birth. Many celebrations are being planned. It’s quite a tribute for someone who was so dead wrong."

Malloy might be a little hard on Carson, but he's spot-on with the rest. A charitable reading of Carson would include this sentence (Wikipedia entry for DDT): "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity.'" I did say, "A charitable reading."

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 12:34 PM in Politics

September 21, 2006

On campaign contributions c. 1906

Another editorial from the September 21, 1906 NYT:

We have been invited to send a dollar contribution to the Republican campaign fund that is being raised by popular subscription and to which President Roosevelt recently subscribed. We would like to have our dollar in such select company all right, but we've done all the contributing we intend to this year.

We recently have completed building a house at a cost of something over $4,000, and for every foot of lumber, every pane of glass, every sack of cement, every pound of nails, and, in fact, for nearly every bit of material that went into it we made a good, liberal contribution through the trusts that control them, and we guess we have done our share. [emphasis added]

We'll just let the several trusts to which we have had to pay unwilling tribute in the past year pay our dollar for us. We need it and they don't.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:42 PM in Politics

Party advice c. 1906

From the September 21, 1906 NYT:

Recent events point to the belief that the Democratic nominee for 1908 must come from that section of the country wherein lies the voting strength of the party...it is well to cast about for an available standard bearer. Alabama has many favorite sons; so, too, have Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, and even Florida. Virginia has a score or more of very able men...

So far, so good. Pull a candidate from, at the time, the heavily Democrat south. Yet the editorial closes with advice that is as sound today, suggesting that the South, and therefore the Democrat party,

...must now assert its independence, cast out demagogues, blatherskites, wild-eyed visionaries, who would use the organization to advance selfish interests...

I like the word blatherskites ("A babbling, foolish person"). Clearly, neither of the major parties has fully asserted its independence from such folks.

Does this mean that parties are, by definition, comprised of blatherskites and demagogues, and there is no reason for parties to change in nature? Or is it that successful parties are those populated with demagogues, and blatherskites (see, I love that word), that serve to lure the median voter? Many insist they want a third party, but of what kind? More of the same, yet different?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:36 PM in Politics

Choose Life Ohio.

The local fishwrapper reports

Ohio motorists can keep buying "Choose Life" license plates now that abortion-rights advocates have dropped their lawsuit to block sales of the plates. The move came because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a decision upholding a similar program in Tennessee.

Given that the state has authorized dozens of other license plates expressing clear viewpoints (Breast Cancer Awareness, Celebrate Kids, Cleveland Browns (ugh!), National Rifle Association...), this seems to make sense to me. Of course, a Choose Death Pro-Choice license plate would also have to be allowable. We'll probably have to wait for a Democratic majority in the legislature for that to happen though.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:51 AM in Politics

September 20, 2006

Will the Democrats Flip the House?

Slate's mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, says the odds of a Democratic victory depend on the degree of correlation among races, but, "it's fair to say that the Democrats' chances of flipping the House are somewhere between 15 percent (the scenario in which the races are independent) and 50 percent (where the races are as correlated as possible)."

Intrade quotes 56.5 as the price of "Republican Party to retain control," suggesting a probability around 43.5%. The Washington Stock Exchange places the probability that Republicans retain control at 69.0%.

Posted by Wilson Mixon at 09:17 PM in Politics

September 18, 2006

Is the solution the problem?

This article at the Chronicle of Higher Education describes a proposal in the Senate to provide funds that "would help states collect data on individual students from pre-kindergarten through the baccalaureate level. Officials and researchers could use the information to examine retention and graduation rates of college students..."

How this will not lead to a single nation-wide database of students, as students and their families move from one state to another, is not discussed. There is substantial opposition to the proposal, but not necessarily from the folks you would expect.

However, consider the following phrase from the article:

Meanwhile, momentum has been building in the Senate this year for a bill to help improve the country's global economic competitiveness...

What "bill" (that has a chance in Hades of passing) will improve our global economic competitiveness?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:28 PM in Politics

September 15, 2006

The Elephant in the Room

Regular readers of this blog would likely be interested in Ryan Sager's new book, The Elephant in the Room, analyzing what the future holds for the long-standing coalition of libertarians and traditionalist conservatives that have made Republicans the majority party in America. I haven't read it yet, but Ryan, a rising libertarian star, is a bright young guy and an extremely good writer, so at an absolute minimum I'd expect a pithy, fun read. Excerpts suggest to me it will deliver more than that.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:15 AM in Politics

September 14, 2006

9/11 Crackpots

Brad and I have both commented on folks who think the government was involved in destroying the WTC or had advance knowledge of the attack. Andrew Samwick has a post on conspiracy theorists and includes links to some sites debunking the bunk. He also has this excerpt from an editon of CNN's "Reliable Sources":

[Program Host] KURTZ: I want to put up some pretty eye-opening poll figures from a Scripps Howard survey about 9/11 conspiracies. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed suspect the U.S. promoted or acquiesced in the 9/11 attacks; 16 percent believe explosives, not airplanes, toppled the World Trade Center; 12 percent believe it was a cruise missile that hit the Pentagon.]

Incredible--this is probably another reason to think that too many people vote not too few.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:37 PM in Politics

September 11, 2006

Washington Stock Exchange is Now Active: Check it Out

Be sure to check out the Washington Stock Exchange, which went live today. In addition to being fun and hopefully leading us to good political forecasting, my guess is that an enterprising professor can find ways to use it as a good teaching tool in politics or economics.

Posted by Brad Smith at 07:05 PM in Politics

9/11 Lunacy

I've been watching some C-Span this morning. I've watched about an hour of call ins, and at least 8 callers have called to claim that 9/11 was a plot by the U.S. government. Even allowing for the cranks and kooks to call in in disproportionate numbers, I find it incredibly disturbing how many people believe this nonsense.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:59 AM in Politics ~ in Politics

9/11 Lunacy

I've been watching some C-Span this morning. I've watched about an hour of call ins, and at least 8 callers have called to claim that 9/11 was a plot by the U.S. government. Even allowing for the cranks and kooks to call in in disproportionate numbers, I find it incredibly disturbing how many people believe this nonsense.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:59 AM in Politics ~ in Politics

September 09, 2006

On Government c. 1906

From the September 9, 1906 NYT:

As it was in times past most marked in the minds of ignorant but eager savages, so now it is to be found among our contemporaries who unite a modest range of information with considerable mental movement... toward the personification of the...State, or the Government. In reality the Government...is an agency chosen through more or less clumsy or complex methods, by the portion of the residents of a country possessing votes, to attend to the common business which it is not convenient or practicable for private persons to attend to. Being an agency, it is necessarily composed of agents, organized with various duties and powers, intrusted to them for terms usually short, tenure being uncertain and changes frequent. In itself the Government is not at all a person, with the unity and completeness of a person. it is not even an "artificial person," like a corporation, with definite obligations that can be enforced in the courts. It is a fluctuating body of individual agents, with varying abilities, notions, purposes, tendencies, according as the electorate may itself vary.

The real nature of the Government is not easy to grasp, still less is it easy to discuss with men who have not analyzed it and traced its development in history. To a certain type of mind it readily assumes the form of a separate and independent entity, capable of essential virtues, self-sustained, and potentially profoundly influential on the course of human events. It becomes to men of this type of mind something not unlike the deity of the savage, and is worshiped in a spirit not dissimilar. It is looked to to provide work for the idle, liesure for the overworked, better wages for the industrious, pensions for the aged. And, in these later times, there be those who would have it take over and run all our lines of transportation...

Through all these attributions it will be noted there runs the notion of supernatural power, the notion of something above all human experience, unattainable by the painful and laborious methods the world has so far known how to employ.

It was an ancient belief, which still survives...that the dim and unknown will of the deities within whose control lies the determination of human happiness or misery could be touched by systematic prayers...A superstition not wholly unlike this prevails among those who regard the Government as a mysterious entity of unlimited powers, and all over our enlightened land...there have lately been signs of its active application. [emphasis added]

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:02 PM in Politics

Vote Buying Pols

To borrow (with slight modification) a phrase from Tim, I realize that highlighting vote buying politicians is about as revelatory as realizing that the Pope is Catholic, but here goes. Some excerpts from an article in The Hill (with a HT to the Club for Growth):

The data, culled from The Hill’s analysis of 1,810 projects in the pending Labor-HHS-Education appropriations measure, reveal a system in which earmarks are distributed first to appropriators then to vulnerable incumbents and finally to rank-and-file lawmakers.

“We’re playing a game of politics over need and that’s why the whole earmark system needs to be blown up. Blown up and rebuilt,” said Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy at the government watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

In the Labor-HHS-Education bill for fiscal year 2007, more than $146 million in hometown projects is reserved for appropriators’ districts, placing roughly 30 percent of the earmarked money in the hands of 15 percent of the House members. If passed as written, the average appropriator’s district would get $2.25 million compared with averages of $1.35 million for the districts of 43 politically vulnerable lawmakers who are not appropriators and $663,000 for districts that are neither competitive nor represented by an appropriator.

The eight endangered appropriators – Northup, Reps. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), Jim Walsh (R-N.Y.), Charles Taylor (R-N.C.), John Doolittle (R-Calif.), John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), Chet Edwards (D-Texas) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) – average $2.76 million per district.

Figures in this story are based on the 1,712 projects representing $472 million that could be tracked to entities, such as colleges or hospitals in one district. It is impossible to know —without benefit of the Appropriations Committee’s publicly financed tracking system exactly who sought which earmarks.

The Labor-HHS-Education measure is just one of the House’s dozen annual appropriations bills, but it provides a glimpse into how power and electoral strategy influence the expenditure of public money.

Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ralph Regula, the bill’s chief draftsman, set aside millions for his northeast Ohio’s Canton-based 16th District. Thirty-nine earmarks totaling $10 million dollars are headed to Regula’s district, nearly 30 percent of the $34 million haul for Ohio. Regula also may have been active in securing money for Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones’s 11th District in nearby Cleveland, which houses Case Western Reserve University’s National Center for Regenerative Medicine and other institutions important to the region they share.

In Cincinnati, where Rep. Steve Chabot is trying to fend off a challenge from Democratic City Councilman John Cranley, the arts community will receive a $1 million boost out of the 1st District’s total of $2.5 million in Labor-HHS-Education earmarks. The rest will go to educational and medical initiatives.

Republican Reps. Taylor and Patrick McHenry represent neighboring districts in North Carolina. The bill gives McHenry, a freshman who won with nearly two-thirds of the vote in 2004, $650,000. Taylor, an appropriator who is up against local football legend Heath Shuler, landed more than $3 million for his district.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:00 AM in Politics

September 08, 2006

In Honor of McCain-Feingold

I was in class this morning so Brad’s post on McCain-Feingold beat me to the punch. As Brad noted, we are now within 60 days of an election and certain forms of political advertising are now prohibited. I understand and appreciate Brad’s explanation of the logic of the Supreme Court’s finding that McCain-Feingold is constitutional, but it sure seems like piling one lousy decision on top of another. After all the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech ….” That shouldn't be so difficult to understand.

So, as my little protest of McCain-Feingold’s infringement of liberty, I am going to criticize my Representative Phil Gingrey. Gingrey voted for the massive Medicare pills expansions, he’s pretty weak on pork (voting for only 8 of the 19 “Flake Amendments” (pdf; scroll down) to cut pork barrel spending projects), and he scores a mediocre 62 on the Club for Growth’s House Scorecard. In short, he's no great friend to the taxpayer and no big fan of small government. In fairness, he has been clearly preferable to any of the candidates who have run against him. His first opponent, Roger Kahn, was especially pathetic.

For more on the abomination that is McCain-Feingold see this post at the Club for Growth.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:43 PM in Politics

Shut Up! - McCain-Feingold Ban Kicks In Today

Today the McCain-Feingold ban on certain broadcast ads run within 60 days of an election kicks in. From now through election day, it will be illegal for non-profit citizens' groups - from the ACLU to the Chamber of Commerce; from the Sierra Club to the AFL-CIO; from the NRA to Handgun Control, Inc.; from Planned Parenthood to Right to Life - to run most ads that even mention a federal officeholder.

Read on...

Read More »

This outrageous provision of McCain-Feingold is sometimes called a "blackout," but "brownout" is more appropriate. You can still speak, you just can't do it at anything close to full volume. An organization can do newspaper ads, for example, but broadcast ads, the most effective form of communication today, are limited. An organization can run broadcast ads if it has a PAC to pay for them, but few organizations have PACs that large, and most don't have PACs at all. Of course, if you're rich enough to buy TV ads without belonging to a group, then the law allows you to do so. This in the name of equality.

This means for most citizens' organizations, it is tough to mount an effective grassroots campaign to get Congress to vote one way or another. Meanwhile, it is not as if Congress goes out of session. In the next few weeks they will be debating such trivial issues as making certain tax reductions permanent; increasing the minimum wage; and setting up military commissions to try terrorist war suspects, just to name three. Not to mention the federal budget.

Although many believe, as I do, that this limit is blatantly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has upheld it, and there is a certain logic to the Supreme Court's opinion. Having already ruled that the government can limit your ability to spend your own money to urge people to vote for or against a political candidate, why shouldn't it be allowed to limit your ability to talk about an officeholder's position on issues. After all, if being able to say, "Vote against this jerk" is the core of what democracy and free elections and free speech are about, and if that can be limited, then why not also limit less important speech, such as the right to say, "Urge Congressman Jones to vote for tax cuts."

It is also worth noting here that the so-called "reformers" who push these limits do have at least some vague understanding of economics. They recognize that if the system of private, voluntary political participation can be made difficult enough, and its transaction costs high enough, so-called "publicly financed" (by which they really mean "tax financed" campaigns will begin to look like a more attractive alternative. McCain-Feingold is a step on the way.

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 09:02 AM in Politics

September 07, 2006

The MEAL Act

This Act may be cited as the `Menu Education and Labeling Act' or the `MEAL Act'.

More here

You might ask how/why I would know about the MEAL Act. Good question. It is because the Center for Science in the Public Interest is gunning for your lattes.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:28 PM in Politics

Let's change course! Wait, no, just kidding!

I realize that highlighting politician hypocrisy is about as revelatory as realizing that the Pope is Catholic, but here goes.

On NPR this morning, they reported on the attempt yesterday to have a vote of no confidence in Rummy. Apparently, though, he's doin' a heck of a job because the attempt was quashed. One of the lines the Democrats used (sorry, I can't find a link to a direct quote) was that "staying the course [in Iraq] is not a strategy for success." Which got me to thinking of other situations where a change of course was or has been suggested:

--school choice
--ending affirmative action
--ending the "war" on poverty
--ending the "war" on drugs
--ending subsidized housing
--ending subsidized groceries / food stamps
--privatizing Social Security
--privatizing airport security
--lowering taxes on anything
--lowering or eliminating spending on any government program
--reducing union monopoly power / promoting right-to-work

Which political party more likely always wants to "stay the course" and continue these dreadful policies? In fact, I can remember Democrats saying exactly that regarding the Social Security debate a few years back. "We don't need to change, the system is working..." which anyone who has ever tried to balance a Trivial Pursuit pie piece on its tip knows is ridiculous.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:15 PM in Politics

September 05, 2006

On "The Plan" c. 1906

The last of what I found interesting in the Sept. 5, 1906 NYT was an editorial excoriating Democratic Nominee for President William Jennings Bryan's proposal that state and federal governments take over the private rail network in the United States (seems like an Atlas Shrugged type of proposal):

Mr. Bryan is wasting his time, and wasting the time of the public and of the Democrat Party. His advocacy of an eight-hour day for labor does not interest the country. Everybody knew, or could have guessed, his views upon labor issues. The thoughts he has expressed about international arbitration and universal peace are as old as the hills. But his plan for the transfer of all the railroads in the country to the Federal and State Governments is new, yet he does not explain how the momentous change is to be brought about, presents no plan even in outline, tells us nothing about it, in fact, save that it ought to be done...

Substitute your favorite government power grab - be it retirement plans, nationalized health care, or whatever - fiddle with a few politician and party names and we have the same criticism (of both parties) today.

When he [Bryan] accepted the Democratic nomination to the Presidency ten years ago and began to advocate the free, unlimited, and independent coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, his writings and his speeches abounded in detail and explanation. He told the country precisely what he meant. Everybody understood that under the coinage laws as he would shape them a man having 100 ounces of silver could take the metal to the United States Mint and get it coined into 129 silver dollars. As silver could at the time be bought in the open market for about 67 cents an ounce, every mind could grasp in an instant the meaning and scope of the change proposed by Mr. Bryan in our financial policy and currency laws. His supporters could understand him, his opponents could get at him...

And this is as it should be. Politicians who want to spend the public's money and want to fundamentally alter the way individuals live their lives, unintended consequences and all, should provide full information. My criterion: if the proposal is too complicated to convey during a thirty minute infomercial, then the proposal should be dropped. Heck, it is possible to show all the benefits of the Ab Crusher 5000 and the Salad Shooter during the same amount of time.

Mr. Bryan now asks the Democratic Party to accept him upon a platform of Government ownership and operation of railroads, but he does not even in a general way tell us how the Federal and State Governments are to come into possession of the thirteen billions' worth of railroad property now privately owned. Absurdities are not infrequent in politics, and electorates sometimes behave as if they were deprived of reason and without foresight. But there is a limit...

Are we once again reaching that limit today? I wonder.

The undertaking he advocates is so gigantic that the unaided imagination cannot supply the missing details. Nobody except Mr. Bryan could present a working plan for carrying this policy into effect that would not be at once destroyed by the fire of criticism...

The Democratic Party has of late shown disturbing symptoms of senility, but it is not altogether a fool. It has the right to know how its candidate is going to build his bridge to the moon and it will insist on knowing.

In my opinion, this editorial could be written in ad lib (mad lib?)fashion today and be almost as poignant; just fill in the blank of politician, party, and proposal and the wording would be as germane today.

The lack of a "plan" is a political convenience that we as an electorate allow politicians to get away with. We should demand clear language and specific plans on whatever it is the politicians propose to do with our tax dollars, let's say (for giggles): Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Natural Disaster "Relief," Nationalized Health Care, Immigration "Reform," Education "Reform," and National Security. This list alone would likely make the average voter's head explode - but isn't that in itself an indication of the problem?

Yet we know that the specific proposals are not forthcoming, because to do so would alienate/disgust voters to the extent that numerous (most?) political careers would crash and burn on "both sides of the aisle."

Not being a scholar of political science, I wonder if the lack of a plan is "justified," in the minds of politicians, by what happened to Bryan in the 1896 election (assuming the story is true)?

On the other hand, perhaps there simply is no plan, period. Which possibility is worse?

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:16 PM in Politics

Legislative proposals c. 1906

The September 5, 1906 NYT also includes a tongue-in-cheek checklist for national legislation as offered by the Louisville Courier-Journal, some of which might be a better use of Congressional time even today:

1. There ought to be a law prohibiting the crushing of mint in the compilation of a julep;
   
2. There ought to be a law forbidding the use of the doggerel known as "baby" talk, or "goo-goo" talk to infants, on the ground that it retards the progress of young Americans in the mastery of real English;
   
3. It ought to be declared a felony for any one at the theatre to tell his companion "what's coming next";
   
4. A law should declare it perfectly proper for a clergyman to say something besides "Fudge!" when he hits at a golf ball and plows up a ton of earth;
   
5. It should be illegal for a preacher to reiterate his text more than fifty times in the course of one sermon, or to go higher than the "thirtiethly" in his enumeration of points to be made;
   
6. It should be against the law for a group of women to discuss the servant problem more than one hour at a time without a change of subject, unless they first obtain written permission of the President of the United States

#1 might still find support amongst the temperance groups but would be opposed by the mint farmers on national security reasons and also because without mint juleps they would need federal subsidies. Bourbon distillers might also be concerned but would not be allowed to participate in the debate for fear that they would write the legislation.

#2 could be opposed by natural language folks and early education types and on first amendment grounds.

#3 would be opposed by net neutrality folks and those who like to read the end of a fiction novel first.

#4 and #5 could easily be opposed on church and state grounds but #4 might be supported by the Parent's Television Council.

#6 is largely immaterial due to technological changes but could be opposed on first amendment grounds and a separation of powers argument.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:28 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)

What's in a name c. 1906

From the September 5, 1906 NYT:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark - Additional returns from yesterday's State election show that the Democrats will have a thirty-four out of thirty-five members of the State Senate and 95 out of 100 members of the House, assuring the election of Gov. Jeff Davis, Democrat nominee, as United States Senator...

Chances of a Democrat or Republican named Jefferson "Jeff" Davis being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006?

Anyone?

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:17 PM in Politics

Blackwell-Strickland Debate

Watched the first Blackwell-Strickland debate on Ohio News Network.

Ken Blackwell did what he needed to do - he was pleasant, funny, on top of the facts, quick to hit Strickland's weaknesses, and to deflect attention from his own - and did it all without coming across as overbearing or as bullying Strickland. He was clearly the winner on high school debate points - most of Strickland's answers were puff, devoid of serious content. Will it be enough in a race in which he trails by double digits? Well, one debate won't turn it around, but there are 3 more.

Bob Lawson's old Shawnee State colleague Ted Strickland, for his part, probably did the minimum he needed to do. He said some dumb things - see below -

Read More »

but no classic "gotcha" gaffes that reporters love. He was congenial, as he always is, and had a good prepared closing statement. Strickland has a tendency to read prepared statements, but he didn't read this one, and he's much better when speaking from prepared text than in thinking fast on his feet. Exhibits of his weakness in off-the-cuff oratory:

Commenting on his years in Congress, Strickland said he had "left a light footprint in Washington." Rather odd to boast about being a lightweight congressman.

At another point, responding to a question about reviving the Mahoning Valley, where the debate was held, Srickland said, "My opponent is unwilling to invest anything in this Valley, except things that may benefit the private sector." The private sector as a way to help the state economy? What kind of nonsense is this Blackwell guy peddling?

Strickland walked into one, as well, when he spent some time bragging about how all the state's "big city mayors" supported him. "Why?" he asked rhetorically, "because they know I have a plan." Blackwell hammered him. "The reason the mayors of big cities support Ted is because they're all Democrats, and that's one reason our cities are doing so poorly."

But in the end, Strickland was still a nice guy, and if he didn't get beyond platitudes in any proposed solution, he didn't stumble and promise to raise taxes either. In this year, that may be enough.

Libertarian Bill Pierce was, of course, not invited to participate. It's too bad, as it would undoubtedly make the debates more interesting. Still, as these things go, this one was pretty good.

It airs again tonight at 11:00 on Ohio News Network. The two front-running candidates will debate two more times, the next on September 20.

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 03:10 PM in Politics

Mexican Election

From CNN:

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Felipe Calderon became president-elect of Mexico on Tuesday, two months after a disputed election, when the nation's top electoral court voted unanimously to reject allegations of fraud and certify his narrow victory.

His leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, had said he would not recognize the ruling.

How does one say Sore-Loserman in Spanish?

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:55 PM in Politics

September 02, 2006

Security searches c. 1906

From the September 2, 1906 NYT:

MOSCOW - A huge pumpkin carried by a man garbed as a country-man to-day attracted the attention of the police in the market here by its excessive weight and induced them to make an investigation with the result that it was found to be filled with cartridges.

The bearer of the pumpkin was subsequently identified as a revolutionist.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:57 AM in Politics

September 01, 2006

Rationally Irrational Politicians?

My brother in Savannah informs me that yesterday, the day that Ernesto was predicted to possibly, maybe, hit Savannah with estimated 40mph winds and 4 inches of rain, Savannah closed its schools:

The threat of Tropical Storm Ernesto downgraded to a tropical depression overnight Wednesday, nevertheless canceled classes today for Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools.

"The decision is to close the schools," Superintendent Thomas Lockamy said at a news conference Wednesday with officials from the Chatham Emergency Management Agency. "That's based on the fact we're in a tropical storm warning and based on the safety of our children."

More evidence that in the post-Katrina world the expected marginal-cost to the politicians/buerucrats of not acting in a time of "emergency" has increased?

[More at Heavy Lifting]

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:04 PM in Politics

California dreamin'

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
-- Mark Twain
The 2005-06 California legislative session ended yesterday. Among other things, the California solons approved 1) global warming legislation that adopts "the broadest restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions in the nation" and 2) health-care legislation that "would blow up the state's current health insurance structure and create a system where the state provides coverage for all Californians . . . [thus] mimic[ing] systems in Europe." For good measure, the legislators also passed a health benefits statute modeled on the Maryland law designed to harass Wal-Mart, and raised the minimum wage.

According to the pundits, Gov. Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the global-warming and minimum-wage bills, but veto the socialized-medicine and Wal-Mart bills. (For more on conservatives' disappointment with the Governor's performance, see Shikha Dalmia in the Wall Street Journal and Steven Greenhut in the OC Register.)

And, if that's not enough economic illiteracy for one post, I will point out that in November Californians will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 87 -- a measure that would raise taxes on California oil production. The thinking is that it may pass because voters are angry about high gasoline prices. If you're wondering why people would think that increasing taxes on a product would help lower its price, rest assured that (according to the California AG's description of the proposition) it "[p]rohibits producers from passing tax to consumers."

Posted by Mike DeBow at 11:34 AM in Politics

August 30, 2006

Wal-Mart round-up

Robert Samuelson invites Congressional Democrats to put-up-or-shut-up regarding Wal-Mart:

"Congress should just buy the company and then legislate good behavior. Wal-Mart executives 'talk about paying [workers] $10 an hour,' Sen. Joseph Biden told a rally in Iowa, according to the Times. 'How can you live a middle-class life on that?'

"Well, if $10 is too little, the government could order the Department of Wal-Mart to pay more. How about $15 or $20? Similarly, if Wal-Mart's health insurance is inadequate, Congress could command more coverage."

Other recent defenses of the company include Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg on NRO; and Michael Strong on Tech Central Station. Strong roughly estimates that Wal-Mart may be "single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year."

(Just after I posted this, I noticed that Frank had already highlighted Strong's article. This additional nod shouldn't hurt, though.)

Update: One more -- Richard Vedder and Bryan O'Keefe in The Washington Times: "Take Mr. Biden's comments. Contrary to his claims, there is enormous economic evidence that Wal-Mart's has helped poor and middle class consumers--in fact, more than anybody else. Our own data analysis shows Wal-Mart is concentrated primarily in smaller, rural counties with a per capita income far lower than other retailers, like Costco. And, unlike the picture painted by labor activists, when the Wal-Mart moves in, good things happen. Looking at 25 small towns where Wal-Mart opened stores in 2002, we found employment growth was much stronger in 'Wal-Mart communities' than in other areas.

"Other academics have reached similar conclusions about Wal-Mart's positive effects for the poor and middle class. University of Missouri economist Emek Basker shows Wal-Mart's presence tends to lower prices by varying amounts, perhaps nearly 10 percent in the long run.

"Respected Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jerry Hausman argues that consumer welfare gains are even larger than those estimated by Mr. Basker, probably in excess of 20 percent of sales."

Here's some more good news: Vedder and O'Keefe have a book forthcoming from AEI, titled The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy.

Posted by Mike DeBow at 12:04 PM in Politics

August 29, 2006

The Duke Rape Case Fraud

Stuart Taylor has this excellent column at Slate, on the alleged - and it now appears almost certainly false - rape of a stripper by members of the Duke Lacrosse team. It's a story of dishonest, politically ambitious prosecutors; crooked cops bent on making the evidence fit the crime, ideologically driven academics, and mostly, the shameless, ideologically charged reporting of America's most influential newspaper. It's long, but well worth a read - a real life Bonfire of the Vanities.

Posted by Brad Smith at 08:27 PM in Culture ~ in Misc. ~ in Politics

Which "world issues," exactly?

I don't really know what this means, about CNN.com visitors or whatever, but the "QuickVote" on CNN.com's homepage has the following question:

Who would win a debate on world issues between President Bush and Iranian President Ahmadinejad?

Results as of 10:45am are

Bush 36% 244 votes
Ahmadinejad 64% 426 votes

Apparently Iran's prez wants to debate W, "so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end world predicaments." I'll just take a stab at this, but I'm betting that, from Mahmoud's point of view, the primary way to end all the world's predicaments is to stiff-arm the residents of a certain Middle Eastern Jewish state into the Mediterranean.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:52 AM in Politics

August 27, 2006

On immigration c. 1906

From the August 27, 1906 NYT:

There is considerable agitation at the present for the radical restriction of immigration, actuated, as freely admitted, by a desire to thwart the demoralizing influence of foreign labor in the commercial and manufacturing centres of the country....The permanent benefits derived by this country from foreign labor, foreign brains, and foreign capital, aside from the patriotic devotion displayed by foreign-born citizens of this country in times of peril, must certainly be fresh in the memory of those who now seek the exclusion of their brethren. To whom do you owe the Monitor, and can you soon forget the Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:09 PM in Politics

August 25, 2006

Proudly coming in last

Whew, not a good week for my adopted home state of Louisiana. One story that you have probably heard, and two that you probably haven't.

1) Re-elected New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, when asked why his city still hasn't been cleaned up (an Atlanta Fed publication says that 86% of debris caused by the storm on private property still remains) said "You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair." Which reminds me of just about every other time I've heard pleas for fairness in public debate. When all outcomes of a group are equal to the worst performing member of that group, it is labeled "fair." It's been my experience that comparing your position with others, instead of with a goal you set for yourself, usually is stifling. Instead of figuring out how to fix his city, Nagin finds a worse situation, points to it, which enables him to continue to sit around.

2) A white school bus driver in Coushatta made nine black children sit in the back of the bus, saying that the front of the bus was for white kids. I guess you can take solace in the fact that instances like this are so rare that, when they do happen, they make the news. Wonder if the driver has a Confederate flag flying at home. I know, I know, the South didn't fight to keep slavery. State's rights and such, yup. And Al Qaeda hates us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia, not because we're not Muslims.

3) And, rounding out why you shouldn't want to move here (thanks, Baton Rouge pols!), Louisiana came in not 48th, not 49th, but dead last in a Forbes ranking of the best states for business. Virginia came in first. Too bad there isn't a hole in New York we can blame this on. Our neighbor, Texas, is number two on the list, so you'd think some spillover effects of good governance might occur, but I've noticed that Louisianans like corrupt politicians because it gives them something to laugh at. Like when you voted for the loser for prom king because you wanted to laugh at me! er, I mean him.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:11 PM in Politics

Eating Crow c. 1906

From the August 25, 1906 NYT:

Judge James Nixon of the Americus City Court and a former member of the Georgia Legislature ate broiled crow to-day to settle an election wager which he made with Judge Paschal.

Nixon was a supporter of Clark Howell for the nomination for Governor and agreed to eat the crow if Hoke Smith should defeat Howell. Hoke Smith won.

Paschal gave a dinner and invited hundreds of people to see Nixon pay the wager. A crow was killed and broiled and Nixon ate all of the meat, but had no appetite for the other viands on the table.

I wonder how the political discourse would change if we could go back to having our esteemed leaders literally eat crow.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:02 PM in Politics

August 24, 2006

Put US aircraft to better use

This looks to me like an improvement over current US policies in Iraq ...

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 07:24 PM in Politics

August 18, 2006

Andrew Young's Trent Lott Moment?

Andrew Young's endorsement of Cynthia McKinney seemed a bit odd since Young has a reputation as something of a statesman rather than a rabble-rouser. Judging by comments in today's AJC, the McKinney endorsement does seem in keeping with Young's view of the world:

In an interview published in Thursday's Los Angeles Sentinel, Young was asked to comment on whether he is concerned that Wal-Mart causes mom-and-pop stores to close.

"Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the Sentinel, a newspaper serving the African-American community, reported. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

Of course, it's likely that the left-of-mainstream media will mostly give Young a free pass (there doesn't appear to be anything on CNN.com as of this writing) unlike the treatment of Lott or the recent treatment of George Allen. All such comments are repugnant, not just the ones uttered by Republicans.

ADDENDUM: An email from a friend reminds me that Young will definitely get some flak from the left-of-mainstream media--they'll go after him for saying something positive about Wal-Mart.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:26 AM in Politics

August 15, 2006

Welfare Reform Shell Game

The 1996 welfare reform is widely hailed as a success. Not so fast says Douglas Besharov in today's NYT:

What about the other 50 percent of families who left welfare? Well, some mothers did not “need” welfare, perhaps because they were living with parents or a boyfriend, and some left because of intense pressure from caseworkers. More troubling, about a quarter of those who leave welfare return to the program, with many cycling in and out as they face temporary ups and downs.

In addition, when they’re off welfare, some of these families survive only because they still receive government assistance — through food stamps (an average of more than $2,500), the Women, Infants and Children program (about $1,800 for infants and new mothers), Supplemental Security Income (an average of over $6,500), or housing aid (an average of $6,000). Their children also qualify for Medicaid. In reality, these families are still on welfare because they are still receiving benefits and not working — call it “welfare lite.”

So, yes, welfare reform reduced welfare dependency, but not as much as suggested by the political rhetoric, and a great deal of dependency is now diffused and hidden within larger social welfare programs.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:39 PM in Politics

Why Voter Turnout is Too High

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.

Twice as many people (23 percent) were able to identify the most recent winner of the television talent show "American Idol," Taylor Hicks, as were able to name the Supreme Court Justice confirmed in January 2006, Samuel Alito (11 percent).

It's taken as a given that not enough people vote; this is the reason for motor voter, extending polling hours, increased absentee voting, and the like. I'm a contrarian; I don't think we're well-served by having folks more familiar with American Idol than the U.S. Constitution voting on our life, liberty, and property.

ADDENDUM: This CATO paper by Ilya Somin has more on voter ignorance.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:57 PM in Politics

August 10, 2006

An Inconvenient Hypocrite

From USA Today:

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:29 AM in Politics

August 07, 2006

This Year's Minimum Wage Politics

Last week Senate Democrats successfully filibustered the "Trifecta" bill favored by Republicans. If you're the average American, you're wondering what the heck the "Trifecta" bill was.

Well, it has nothing to do with horse racing. Rather, it was an attempt to package together an increase in the minimum wage with estate tax reduction and the extension of several other tax breaks, including deductability of state sales tax on federal income tax, and some business tax breaks, that will otherwise expire in the near future.

Republicans adopted the "Trifecta" package as a way to force the tax extenders and estate tax reduction past a Democratic filibuster, by tying it to a minimum wage increase, which the Republican leadership is under great pressure to pass anyway. The GOP theory was that it was a no-lose situation - either they'd get the tax breaks at an acceptable cost of getting the minimum wage monkey off their backs, or that they could label the Democrats as "obstructionist," and accuse them of voting against a minimum wage increase.

This is one of those typical Republican moves that is probably too cute to work in the short term, and counterproductive in the long term. The problem here is that most Americans tend to support raising the minimum wage. Republicans understand that doing so merely robs Peter to pay Paul. I'm not sure that the American public doesn't understand this too - I have no idea how many people grasp the notion that minimum wage increases can hurt overall employment for example - but even if they do most Americans seem to think that low wage worker Paul is more deserving even if Peter is already an unemployed worker at the bottom of the economic latter.

For Republicans to make the "obstructionist" label work, they have to convince voters that Democrats are to blame. One way to do that is to announce that Republicans favor a higher minimum wage. But then, so do Democrats. So if that is really true, Republicans are the obstructionists for linking a higher minimum wage, which both they and Democrats want, to something else. Option B is to announce that Republicans oppose the minimum wage increase, but were willing to compromise with Democrats - "we'll give you something, you give us something." That's reasonable, and if people are really as fed up with partisanship as some claim, it's not a bad argument. Indeed, that really was the offer. But I doubt very much that Republicans will make that argument, because they sense that the public likes minimum wage hikes.

The end result, then, is that the Republicans, instead of arguing that tax cuts are good, will be out on the campaign trail arguing that minimum wage hikes are good, and the Democrats refused to pass one. But that won't make the "obstructionist" label stick to Democrats. Democrats will just announce that they favor minimum wage increases too, but not at the cost of "tax cuts for the rich." Meanwhile, voters just won't believe the Republican spin - everyone knows it's Democrats who want to raise the minimum wage. And it means Republicans will be arguing exactly the wrong thing: the wrong thing to fire up their base; the wrong thing to reach out to growth-minded independents and Democrats; and the wrong thing to educate the public in the long-term on the benefits of limited government. And Republicans must educate the public on the benefits of limited government if they are to win elections down the road. After all, that is the philosophy that Republicans stand for in the public mind, the philosophy that most Republicans are most comfortable running on, and the philosophy on which Republicans hold a competitive advantage over the Democrats in the mind of the electorate.

Cross posted at Redstate.

Posted by Brad Smith at 11:15 AM in Politics

August 03, 2006

Military blunder c. 1906?

I have only a passing knowledge of the history of the submarine. This little tidbit is a new one to me, so I wonder if the French had taken advantage of this offer if the German capabilities would have been comparatively less about eight years later:

KIEL - A submarine boat constructed by an engineer name Mont Justin at Krupp's Germania Works was launched to-day. The trials will take place in September.

Mont Justin, who was born in Vienna of Spanish parents, offered the plans of his boat to the French Government, which rejected them. They were accepted by the late Frederick Krupp, who contracted with the German Government to build a boat on Mont Justin's plans.

The boat displaces 180 tons. It has a radius of action of 3,000 miles, a surface speed of twelve knots, and a speed of nine knots below the surface. Her engines are driven by electric motors, and she will carry a crew of from 12 to 16 men.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:59 AM in Politics

August 02, 2006

Send flowers to Havana

As he becomes more and more like Dr. Laura every day, Sean Hannity on his radio show yesterday said that he hopes Fidel Castro's latest illness is fatal. Does anyone remember, before the 2000 election, when Hannity was relatively sane? When he would actually ask liberal guests or callers intelligent questions? Now, his critiques consist of avoiding questions, calling those who disagree "big libs," and doing Clinton and Ted Kennedy impressions.

But, let not your hearts be troubled. Even though Castro is sick, we know that he has the best possible chance for survival. As we've been told for decades, the only humane system of health care is one that is universal, one which the government oversees. Of course, Cuba is near the top of the list of countries that provide all of their citizens free health care, so Castro couldn't be in a better place. It's really amazing that more high-level diplomats, politicians, and celebrities in other countries don't go to Cuba when in a dire medical emergency.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:19 AM in Politics

August 01, 2006

Setting the bar high c. 1906

From the Aug. 1, 1906 NYT concerning the recruitment of Federal Meat Inspectors, precipitated by federal legislation rather hastily passed after Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published earlier in the year:

It may be no easy matter to get the 500 inspectors required by the Department of Agriculture to carry out the provisions of the meat inspection law. Only eight out of every hundred of those taking the civil service examination so far have passed.

About 3,600 took the examination. The returns so far cover only the Eastern States. Should the proportion of successful applicants from the West be no larger, only about 288 of the required number will have qualified, but a better showing is expected from that section of the country.

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:46 PM in Politics

July 31, 2006

Socialism debated c. 1906

In an editorial from the July 31, 1906 NYT:

[D]elegate Reid made this contribution to the debate:

The Socialists have never done anything but talk. Socialism has existed as long as Christianity, and it has done nothing. Every time a man is dissatisfied or has a dispute with his wife he becomes a Socialist. The Socialists are abusing everybody except themselves, and according to them every man is a crook or a faker who is not a Socialist.

Little(?) did Mr. Reid realize that within twenty years Socialism and Socialists would act decisively and would most assuredly abuse themselves along with everyone who stood in their way.

The writer goes on to define a Socialist in the following way:

Mr. Reid might have added that every man who loathes work and wants the State to support him has the primary qualification of a Socialist; that all who covet their neighbor's property are on the high road that leads to the temple of Socialism' that whoso is destitute of a backbone and so lacks the self-reliance which that important articulation imparts to its possessors is by predisposition a Socialist; that all who are envious of the accumulations of industry and capacity and are forever railing at capital would find themselves quite at home in a Socialistic meeting place.

Amen, brother.

Posted by Craig Depken at 05:33 PM in Politics

July 25, 2006

Lies, D@#$ Lies, and Statistics

Charles Murray takes on NCLB.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:48 AM in Politics

July 23, 2006

Immigration Reform c. 1906

From a letter to the editor in the July 23, 1906 NYT:

[t]here seems to be no occasion whatever for the enactment of any additional restrictive immigration laws. The existing law is restrictive enough. It very properly prohibits the landing of criminals, dependents, habitual paupers, women of bad character, those afflicted with contagious or other incurable diseases, and other undesirable classes of immigrants. It does all in the way of selection that should be done, and is even more restrictive than it should be. It seems, if any legislation is needed, it would be a modification of existing law rather than its amplification.

That sounds familiar.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:51 PM in Politics

July 13, 2006

"Age of the Empirical"

I expect that this article by John McGinnis (Northwestern U. law school) in the current Policy Review will warm the hearts of most, if not all, loyal readers of this blog. Here's the abstract:

"This brief essay argues that that the trend to empiricism in the social sciences is a long run force for consensus in a democratic society. Because of the continuing computer revolution, this trend will become only more powerful in the future. Thus, although many pundits suggest we live in an intensely partisan age, the essay suggests that powerful forces will restrain partisanship and constrain even interest groups to focus on what works to achieve broadly shared objectives, like economic prosperity and improved education. The essay offers some examples of how empiricism has helped foster consensus in the past. The essay discusses how the rise of blogs and information markets help reinforce a culture of empiricism. It ends with suggestions about how public policy can support empiricism and thus itself promote consensus."

Posted by Mike DeBow at 12:40 PM in Politics

July 11, 2006

Politicians + Ignorance = Bad Policy

Perhaps the Ignorance term is superfluous?

This has been floating around for a few days, but no one else on DOL has mentioned it. Last week Ted Stephens, senator from Alaska, gave a speech explaining why he was voting against the then-pending net neutrality legislation. In that speech he gave what is likely to become a legendary explanation of what the Internet is - can someone cross check with Al Gore?:

I just the other day got, an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

A longer version of this blather is available at wired.com. Perhaps Sen. Stephens is technically correct in that the Internet backbone is comprised of fiber-optic cables, and so forth. However, the rambling suggests that he has only a faint idea of what is going on with the Internet - it's not a truck?

Now, I am not sure where I come down on the net neutrality issue, and I am not even sure I understand it all. It sounds like there is a conflict between the "common carrier" notion of the Internet service provider and the ISPs desire/ability to price discriminate across end-users or intermediate good providers such as Google Gmail, etc.

Perhaps the issue is more complicated. And while it is not difficult to understand the government wanting/itching to get its hands on the net even more than it has thus far - even while the net is a grand example of how things can work with limited government intervention - with folks like Ted Stephens (with such deep understanding of the issue) writing/passing legislation, perhaps it is best to leave well enough alone.

Moreover, perhaps we should seriously reconsider the capabilities of our elected officials.

Here are some humorous comments about Sen. Stephens comments.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:37 AM in Politics

July 09, 2006

Congressional Politics roundup

1. Former House Speaker Tom DeLay is still the GOP candidate on the November ballot for his old district in Texas. DeLay established residence in Virginia in an attempt to disqualify himself for the ballot. (Article I Section 2: "No person shall be a Representative ... who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of the State in which he shall be chosen.") Texas Democrats sued, and a federal district judge ruled last Thursday that DeLay remains the on the ballot. Texas GOP is appealing the ruling to the 5th Circuit. The Democratic candidate is Nick Lampson, a former pol whose district was partially swallowed by DeLay's infamous 2003 gerrymander, which was recently upheld by SCOTUS. Saturday's Houston Chronicle ran a front page story in which DeLay hinted he might just run.

2. Meanwhile, the GOP's party infighting continues, largely over the Abramoff thing. Seems Dem's should be getting more traction out of this, but the current outlook for a change in party control isn't great. From the American-Statesman story.

Nathan Gonzales, a political analyst for The Rothenberg Political Report, said Democrats are in position to gain eight to 12 of the 15 seats they need to win back control of the House, in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut.

3. An old friend, Eric Schansberg, is running as the Libertarian candidate in a close race in southern Indiana. The incumbent is a freshman GOPer, and the DEM is the 2004 loser trying to get his old seat back. Eric is a full professor at Indiana-Southeast where he's won several teaching awards, an adjunct scholar at the Acton Institute, and the author of several books including, Legislate Justice Not Morality, and Poor Policy: How Government Harms the Poor (sort of a newer Losing Ground and a great supplement for an applied public finance course). Eric was getting his Ph.D. from Texas A&M at the time I was an undergrad there. Along with Edgar Browning, Eric was my main mentor in undergraduate. I took two classes from him, and we spent many an hour gulping IHOP coffee while debating politics, economics, religion, sports, you name it. Eric is one of the persons of highest integrity that I personally know, despite the fact that he's running for Congress! :-). Beneath the fold is an email from Eric announcing his bid. I wish him all the best.

Read More »

On 7/1/06, eric schansberg wrote:
I'm running as the Libertarian candidate in the 9th District of Indiana against the Republican incumbent, Mike Sodrel, and his Democratic challenger, former Rep. Baron Hill. It is expected to be a very close race and has already garnered national media attention.

Primarily, I am running as the only fiscal conservative in the race AND as the strongest defender of the working poor and middle class ("from womb to tomb"-- on abortion, education, payroll taxes, and Social Security). Of course, there are other important issues, but these are the most relevant issues that lay out key differences between me and the other two.

Fortunately, I am running in a race where few people are big fans of either man. And many times, people are simply voting against one party or the other. Beyond the perception of "the lesser of two evils", I hope to give voters a positive alternative.

I have more experience in thinking, teaching, and writing about federal public policy than my two opponents combined. With my experience in public policy, relatively active campaigning, and my contacts throughout the District, I will have a platform to talk about important issues they would otherwise ignore. And if things go well, I will make a big splash at the polls-- and might even win the race!

To increase my effectiveness, I could use your support:
-Prayer: Pray that I would represent God well; that my words and actions would bring honor to His name; and that I would be able to forward the interests of Justice and Truth.
-Contacts: If you know other individuals who would be interested in my campaign or groups in the District that would like to hear me speak, please forward this email to them or send us their contact info.
-Money: Your donations would be greatly appreciated. The maximum contribution is $2100 per individual. Donations of $300 or so can buy a whole range of things-- from 600 bumper stickers to a direct mail piece targeted at 1000 voters. But anything would help; even $10 can buy a radio spot in a small market.
-Volunteer: We need some people within the District who can help with everything from distributing bumper stickers and yard signs-- to joining me at County Fairs as I campaign. We need others to do some research and we can use a bunch of people on Election Day at the polling places.

For more information about my campaign, including the information we need from donors and volunteers, see my website:
http://www.SchansbergForCongress.com/ or http://www.EricForCongress.com/

Take my pop quiz and see how you do:
http://www.SchansbergForCongress.com/popquiz.html

You can also see our three biggest media hits so far at:
http://www.SchansbergForCongress.com/news.html

Thanks for your time and consideration! eric

« Close It

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 11:19 AM in Politics

July 04, 2006

Happy 230th birthday U.S.A.

Many insist that the U.S. is "too young" to understand how the world works. Perhaps, if the way the world works is to rely on various forms of authoritarianism. The system comprised by the Founding Fathers - ensuring, to the greatest extent ever tried, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - has had an amazing track record in its short history. Sure, there are several demerits on the tally sheet of the U.S., but compared to the rest of the history of the world, it really isn't a stretch to suggest that no other system is its equal.

I argue that it is our liberty which, in part, explains why many of the problems of the past are also the problems of the present. The moment we see many of the problems of yesterday solved by the government programs of today, take the pulse of liberty.

More here

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:33 PM in Politics

July 03, 2006

Political rhetoric c. 1906

File this in the "things don't change" drawer? From the July 3, 1906 NYT:

In a statement made for the Democratic minority makes a comparison of the expenditures provided for by this Congress of $880,183,301, with the expenditures of 1898, the first year of President McKinley's Administration, when the figures were $528,735,079, a difference of $351,448,22. Commenting on this showing, he says:

"This growth in appropriations sustains the contention that the Republican Party stands for extravagance in public expenditures in order to us that extravagance as a cloak for their more objectionable purpose of maintaining a high protectionist tariff to favor the trust combinations of manufacturers of the country.

"A reduction of expenditures, they well know, wold compel a commensurate reduction in taxation, and to that extent a lowering of the Chinese wall of protection that now surrounds the great body of consumers, who constitute the larger portion of our population and compel tribute from them to the favored classes.

"Much of this extravagance grows out of the practice prevailing with the present Administration of appointing commissions to do what Congress ought to do and what Congressmen are elected for and paid for, thus delegating the powers constitutionally belonging to Congress to others who have no particular relations with or responsibilities to the public, and not render an accounting to the taxpayers of this country.

The level reported Federal expenditures reported in this story differs from numbers reported on previous days. Nevertheless, except for the words "protective tariff" and "trust combinations" this statement could easily have come from Sen. Reid or Boxer. What does this suggest? Perhaps the relative nature of the parties hasn't changed over the past 100 years. Perhaps government is always spending more and the party in charge spends it differently than the party not in charge. Therefore, the party not in charge has formulaic rhetoric to suggest that the spending by one is less effective than the spending that would have been determined by the other.

Perhaps the majority of people have rather low opinions of Congress because the rhetoric hasn't changed in 100 years?

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:05 AM in Politics

June 23, 2006

Right Diagnosis, Wrong Cure

In the recent Senate debate on increasing the minimum wage, Senator Kennedy sputtered:

"Thirty thousand dollars we've increased our salaries, and nine years, we've refused to provide an increase [in the minimum wage] to the men and women who are working on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. That is obscene."

He's right, but not about the need to increase the minimum wage. It is indeed obscene that Kennedy and his senatorial colleagues are running off with another $30k of taxpayer dollars. So I say cut Senate pay; don't increase the minimum wage.

Greg Mankiw, whose relatively new blog is high on my reading list, has some "convincingly" good fun with Clinton hack Gene Sperling's take on the minimum wage. He also quotes Krugman on the minimum wage's job-killing effects.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:34 AM in Politics

June 16, 2006

Libertarian Professors...

Comprehensive Listing of Libertarian Professors

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:07 AM in Politics

June 13, 2006

Presidential campaigns. c. 1906

From the "things never change" file, the June 13, 1906 NYT (as well as the NYTs from several days earlier) report on the Democrat party's debate on who will run for president in 1908. The early straw polls and state party resolutions have W. J. Bryan in the lead with several other names being bandied about.

From the June 13, 1906 NYT:

TEXANS HOLD OFF ON BRYAN
Austin, Texas - A resolution indorsing (sic) W. J. Bryan for President was offered at the meeting of the State Democratic Executive Committee here last night, but was withdrawn after a heated discussion.

Those who opposed its adoption declared that Senator J. W. Bailey stood a good chance of being a candidate for President, and that in view of this position Bryan should not be indorsed (sic).

My point is that it seems it has never been "too early" to start the next presidential cycle.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:33 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Presidential travel c. 1906

From the "things do change" file is this editorial comment from the June 13, 1906 NYT:

There is nothing indirect or underhand in the way President Roosevelt takes to secure an annual appropriation for himself and his successors to meet expenses incurred in travelling....The travel for which this appropriation of $25,000 [$541,000 in 2005 CPI adjusted dollars] a year is asked is not that of a private gentleman, but that of the President and his special guests. While it cannot be said to be strictly necessary in the performance of specific duties imposed by law, it is, nevertheless, a public function, for the certain and substantial advantage of the whole people, tending to foster the spirit of nationality and to form in the mind and heart of the public that sense of personal knowledge of the head of the common Government which counts in the creation of intelligent patriotism.

That was from the first two paragraphs. The world and the nation was arguably very different one hundred years ago, and the evidence lies in the language with which the editorial continues:

The essence of the office of President is its National character. The President is the sole representative of all the people. His duty is to all and, in due proportion, to each. He is the one official of whom every citizen, no matter where he dwells, no matter to what party he belongs, or what his origin may be, can say: "He is mine." To see and hear this singular representative unquestionably deepens the sense of National unity, of solidarity, as nothing else can. If he makes his journeys as President, at the public expense, his public function is emphasized and its influence is made more definite. It seems to us almost too plain for argument that this change in our arrangements for the President is entirely proper.

In many ways the editorial applies today, although there are a considerable number of people who adamantly refuse to admit that the current president (now or recent past) is/was their president. Perhaps the closest Pres. Bush came to the national unity/solidarity ideal was immediately after 9-11? If this is true, does this suggest that national unity is not inspired by a person or a party but by the very ideas that underlie the grand experiment?

Something to think about.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:28 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Vietnam Iraq

John Derbyshire at NR writes about the war in Iraq,

One reason I supported the initial attack, and the destruction of the Saddam regime, was that I hoped it would serve as an example, deliver a psychic shock to the whole region. It would have done, if we’d just rubbled the place then left. As it is, the shock value has all been frittered away. Far from being seen as a nation willing to act resolutely, a nation that knows how to punish our enemies, a nation that can smash one of those ramshackle Mideast despotisms with one blow from our mailed fist, a nation to be feared and respected, we are perceived as a soft and foolish nation, that squanders its victories and permits its mighty military power to be held to standoff by teenagers with homemade bombs—that lets crooks and bandits tie it down, Gulliver-like, with a thousand little threads of blackmail, trickery, lies, and petty violence.

I agree a lot with this. But how naive is he? Sheesh.

All along I was against the invasion--simply because I figured we'd get stuck there and would face massive unintended consequences. To be clear, I had no problem in principle with invading Iraq. They deserved it. My objections have always been prudential.

It's a tired (and not entirely apt) comparison but it looks like we've gotten ourselves into another Vietnam. The military conflict is very different of course but the politics is very similar. Now that we're there, what do we do now? It looks like we can't win and heck we can't even define what it means to win.

Meanwhile our troops bleed, we fritter away scarce resources, and back home we re-energize the radical "anti-war" left.

[HT: Paul G.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:53 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 03, 2006

Nude Campaigning?

Ed recently posted on a particularly nasty bit of negative campaigning. I wonder if this item from today's Rome News-Tribune amounts to nude campaigning:

Carlie Edna Steadman, 65, address listed as 1012 Avenue B, was arrested by Rome police Thursday evening on a misdemeanor public indecency charge. Callers had alerted authorities that Steadman had been sitting on her front porch in the nude, according to reports. She allegedly dressed herself and was taken to the Floyd County Jail, where she again stripped while in the booking room. Steadman is running as a Republican County Commission candidate against GOP incumbent John Mayes.

Although some say there's no such thing as bad publicity, I think John Mayes's re-election just got a bit easier.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:36 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 02, 2006

Negative Political Ads

I'm never impressed/persuaded when (just about every election cycle) I hear/read that political advertising has reached a new low. But this one raised an eyebrow:

If elected, my opponent will probably just die on you.

That mailer from Modesto Republican and Assembly hopeful Bill Conrad -- suggesting his opponent and heart-transplant recipient Tom Berryhill might reject his new organ before serving out his term -- struck many observers as a new low in ``going negative.''

Story here.

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 12:33 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 31, 2006

Interesting visual

J-Walk blog has an interesting link to a data-to-visual site looking at the State of the Union speeches over time.

Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge used the words "should" and "ought" a lot, while Pres. Bush's SOTU speeches include a lot of instances of the word "applause"?

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:23 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 30, 2006

Kudos to the Capital CRs

Campaigns and Elections Magazine has just named Capital University College Republicans as one of the TOP 5 Republicans Clubs in the nation. The magazine ran an article that featured the best Republican and Democrat clubs in America, and the Capital CRs made the top 5 list! (Click here to see the article.)

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:02 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 23, 2006

On immigration patterns

I came across The Migration Information Source which has loads of immigration data for the U.S. and the rest of the world. One telling graph is one which compares net migration levels between the U.S. and other "select" countries.

Not surprising, the U.S. strongly dominates other countries. I think the reasons for this are fairly obvious - both demand-side and supply-side influences combine to make the U.S. the choice destination of the world.

The site also includes data on the percentage change in foreign born population from 1990 to 2000 by state. I threw those numbers into STATA and gathered the the economic freedom scores for the various states from The Fraser Institute (thanks Robert Larson of DOL).

I calculated the average economic freedom score amongst the states from 1989 through 2000 and plotted percentage change in foreign-born population from 1990-2000 against the average economic freedom:

What's going on? Perhaps, just as the U.S. likely attracts more immigrants because it is relatively more free compared to other countries, states attract foreign-born immigrants, in part, by differences in economic freedom.

To formalize the relationship depicted above, I regressed percentage change in foreign born population on the average economic freedom of the state, average economic freedom squared, a BORDER variable that takes a value of one if the state shares a Mexican border, and a SOUTH variable that takes a value of one if the state was a member of the Confederacy.

. reg perchange efiaveb efiaveb2 south border,r

Regression with robust standard errors                 Number of obs =      50

                                                       F(  4,    45) =    6.01

                                                       Prob > F      =  0.0006

                                                       R-squared     =  0.3053

                                                       Root MSE      =  52.611

                             Robust

   perchange |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

      efiave |   349.9555   173.7281     2.01   0.050     .0491525    699.8619

     efiave2 |  -23.46284   12.54747    -1.87   0.068    -48.73474    1.809065

       south |   56.80823   23.40067     2.43   0.019     9.676869    103.9396

      border |  -6.236955   22.77956    -0.27   0.785    -52.11735    39.64344

       _cons |  -1215.791    594.182    -2.05   0.047    -2412.534   -19.04658

The results indicate the first-order effect of economic freedom on the percentage change in foreign-born population is positive but the second-order effect is negative. As anticipated, the SOUTH variable is positive and statistically significant but the BORDER variable is not (interesting).

Perhaps economic freedom is positively correlated with economic opportunity, which would attract domestic and foreign immigrants alike. Perhaps economic freedom is negatively correlated with state and federal law enforcement which might correlate with illegal immigration - yet the data reflect legal immigration. Therefore, there are likely two positive influences of improved econoimc freedom on immigration rates. On the other hand, less economic freedom tends to correlate with less opportunity but with more government (welfare and enforcement). The reduced form results suggest that the attractiveness from more economic freedom/less government outweighs the attractiveness of less economic freedom/bigger government (although the relative magnitudes of enforcement and opporunity are not identified).

My point is not to suggest making any particular state less free in order to dissuade immigrants from locating there. Rather that immigrants seem to be attracted more to opportunity states than welfare state(s). Whether increased foreign-born population correlates with reductions in economic freedom over time is actually an interesting question (anyone know of evidence testing this? My initial take below the fold).

[STATA Data File]

Read More »

With my cross sectional data it is not easy to test the dynamic impact of immigration on economic freedom, but I regressed the change in economic freedom from 1989 to 2000 against the percentage change in foreign-born population. The results:

. reg diffefi perchange,r


Regression with robust standard errors                 Number of obs =      50

                                                       F(  1,    48) =    1.85

                                                       Prob > F      =  0.1799

                                                       R-squared     =  0.0426

                                                       Root MSE      =  .33136

                             Robust

     diffefi |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

   perchange |    .001144   .0008405     1.36   0.180     -.000546     .002834

       _cons |   .0085029   .0913761     0.09   0.926     -.175221    .1922268

Doesn't look like there's much there.

« Close It

Posted by Craig Depken at 08:52 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 22, 2006

Dean Smith Endorsement Kerfuffle

From the AJC:

RALEIGH, N.C. — It had the makings of quite the endorsement: former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith cheering lawyer Rachel Lea Hunter on to victory in her race for a seat on the state Supreme Court.

"As a loyal Democrat to another loyal Democrat. Win Rachel! Win!'" read the quote from Smith on Hunter's Web site, posted above a picture of the pair at last week's North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame banquet.

But there's a problem: Smith doesn't remember saying it. "I never really met her," he said Monday. "They just took our picture."

Ms. Hunter does, however, appear quite skilled at legalistic hair-splitting:

In a statement, she pointed out the Web site didn't specifically say Smith endorsed her.

"The statement said that I had met Dean Smith. I did. ... I did not say that he endorsed me," she said.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:19 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 12, 2006

Will on McCain's contradictory doctrine

George Will, perhaps channeling our fellow blogger Brad Smith, neatly summarizes the self-contradictory doctrine of Senator John McCain:

Proof that incumbent politicians are highly susceptible to corruption is the fact that the government they control is shot through with it. Yet that government should be regarded as a disinterested arbiter, untainted by politics and therefore qualified to regulate the content, quantity and timing of speech in campaigns that determine who controls the government. In the language of McCain's Imus appearance, the government is very much not "clean," but it is so clean it can be trusted to regulate speech about itself.

Hat tip: Sheldon Richman at Liberty and Power.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 10:59 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 11, 2006

Government 101

Step 1: Create a problem.

President Clinton issued an Executive Order June 12 extending the current moratorium on the leasing of oil drilling sites on the outer continental shelf of the United States to June 30, 2012.

[Story.]

Step 2: "Fix" a problem.

WASHINGTON -- Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes reaching millions of dollars, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

[Story.] HT: Dave Reed.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:14 AM in Economics ~ in Politics ~ in Science  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 10, 2006

Bush, Polls, and Gas Prices

From the NYT:

Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices ...

Just 13 percent approved of Mr. Bush's handling of rising gasoline prices.

The poll might as well ask about how he handles gravity or the rotation of the earth--presdents don't "handle" gas prices. It is true that President Bush has muttered some dopey stuff about oil "addiction" and wants to kill more people by mandating smaller cars (i.e., hiking the CAFE standards), but I doubt this is what the 87% of people who disapprove of his "handling" of gas prices have in mind.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:32 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 09, 2006

The Enemy

From the NYT today:

"We've never had a more difficult melding of both houses' ideas," said Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

ATSRTWT

Made me think of the old joke: Two House Democrats, one senior and one a freshman, talking strategy in the hallway. A senior House Republican walks by, and the freshman say, mostly joking, "Uh oh, careful, there goes the enemy!"

The senior Democrat immediately admonishes the tyro. "NO! No, now that's wrong. The Republicans are the opposition. The enemy...well, the enemy is the Senate."

Genius or good luck, the inherent and Constitutionally created conflict between House and Senate frustrates people who want to "get things done" in government.

For me, it seems like whenever those guys "get 'er done" it ends "doing" me, right up the doodie chute.

Posted by Michael Munger at 09:04 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Must Love Dogs

"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session," goes an old saying. But now and then a legislature does something right, even if it is only correcting something the legislature did before.

The Florida legislature closed out its session last week by passing legislation allowing dogs to join their owners in outdoor seating at restaurants. The law had formerly prohibited their presence, even in these outdoor areas. Yeah! One thing I always liked about living in Ecuador many years ago was the ability to take my dog into restaurants. This is the kind of thing that really has little to do with public health, and that the market is perfectly good at regulating. This small step to increase freedom will make the lives of thousands of Floridians just a little bit more enjoyable.

And note, too, that the legislature also did away with a per drink tax on alcoholic beverages, and named a state pie - the former being an objectively good thing, the latter a better use of time than many other things they could have done. They provided for voter registration at bait shops and gun shops, which for some reason the St. Pete Times doesn't like - presumably, the paper is all for easier registration, just not of gun toting, fishing yahoos.

On bigger things, the legislature's record was mixed. But allowing dogs into restaurants - well, I'm thinking of moving south.

Posted by Brad Smith at 01:44 PM in Culture ~ in Funny Stuff ~ in Law ~ in Misc. ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 08, 2006

2008--A Good Year for Libertarians?

Mike Munger's campaign announcement and Craig's comment on voting "L" instead of "R" and "D" remind me of something I've been thinking about over the past few months--Is 2008 a good opportunity for libertarians? (Perhaps I should make that capital L Libertarians.)

The current dissatisfaction with the two ("state-run" as Mike deftly says in his declaration speech) parties--Dumb and Dumber--certainly suggests 2008 is an opportunity for a significant third-party vote to emerge. It seems to me, however, that there is little sentiment for smaller government and more liberty. Although there is outrage over some of the pork barrel projects (the ____ to nowhere projects), there seems to be little desire for smaller government. There is also little desire for a live and let live (die might be more appropriate) approach to issues* like smoking and obesity; instead there is strong support for the nanny-state. Unfortunate, I think the public mood is quite hostile to libertarian thought. I hope I'm wrong--comments are open.

[*In a truly free society, smoking and obesity wouldn't even be considered "issues."]

My analysis, of course, is not meant to discourage Mike Munger's candidacy for governor of my home state. Indeed, I'm so thrilled to see a Libertarian candidate who is not a nutjob and who might change the Star Trek convention reputation of the LP (the nutjob/Star Trek references are to this post by co-blogger Bob) that I'm making the first public pledge of a campaign contribution. Mike, just tell me where to send the check.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:55 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (2)  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 07, 2006

For what it's worth

Friends:

I have chosen this forum, among friends, to announce my candidacy for the office of Governor of North Carolina, on the Libertarian Party ticket.

The election is in 2008, but I need to get started NOW!

This is NOT a solicitation for contributions, or help, or anything other than an announcement.

Well...to be fair, it might very well be a warning that in fact I will soon be asking for contributions and help. But that is different from the asking itself.

In answer to your questions:
1. Yes, I am totally serious.
2. I have no idea if I can win. I am going to try.
3. My platform will be somewhat different from some of the statements of principle laid out in both the NC state platform and the national LP platform. But I am still working on platform items, and am counting from help from friends to put this together.
4. Yes, really, I'm totally serious.

Here is a link to my speech at the NCLP state convention, May 6.

Posted by Michael Munger at 07:45 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 01, 2006

McCain: "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected"

Yup, that's what Senator McCain actually said, last Friday on Imus. Here is the full quote:

"[T]alking about campaign finance reform....I know that money corrupts....I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

You can listen to the full exchange here.

I wonder if he knows that, as President, he'll have to take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Anyway, at least he admits that McCain-Feingold hasn't worked: "we didn't complete the job."

Posted by Brad Smith at 12:52 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 27, 2006

Political Gasbags

Jacob Weisberg in Slate:

Few topics seem to addle the collective brain of Washington like high gas prices. Politicians who raise this issue can generally be assumed to be partisan, cynical, demagogic, and dishonest. But one must not discount the possibility that something about the subject actually makes them stupid.

Weisberg is spot on--at least for this part of his column. The standards for pols are appropriately low, but nothing brings out their foolishness like high gas prices.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:00 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 24, 2006

Putting the Freedom in Free Enterprise

For years, liberals have urged corporations to be "socially responsible," meaning, "do what we want with your shareholders money." Over the past couple of decades, "socially responsible" mutual funds have become a popular option with TIAA/Cref and other bodies. Coupled with union pension funds, these institutional investors are becoming a growing force to push corporations to promote anti-market, pro-big government initiatives.

Now, along comes the Free Enterprise Action Fund, which has, among its investment objectives, "promote the American system of free enterprise." The Fund made a splash in the Wall Street Journal last month when it showed up at the annual shareholders' meeting for Goldman Sachs, and took its CEO to task for indulging his pet environmental causes with shareholders money. They've also been whacking at BP, for devoting about $100 million to an ad campaign on the dangers of global warming, rather than spending the money to maintain its facilities.

The Fund's investments are managed by Steve Milloy, publisher of the blog junkscience.com and author of Junk Science Judo.

This is not investment advice. But if you're into the idea of investing for a cause, you may want to check it out.

Posted by Brad Smith at 01:25 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 19, 2006

The Income Tax Debate - Solidified in 1906?

As I mentioned earlier, in April 1906, Pres. Roosevelt had floated a proposed inheritance tax. This opinion from the Buffalo Evening Times, printed in the April 19, 1906 NYT, suggests that today's "sides" in the "debate" over the income tax were solidified long ago (so much for free will?):

It [the tax] will not be indorsed (sic) by the leaders of the Republican Party, who are bent to the will of the multi-millionaire heads of the giant trusts. But the common people who are suffering in order that the trusts may accumulate more dishonest millions for their proprietors will regard it with favor.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:07 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

More immigration opinion c. 1906

From the April 19, 1906 NYT:

[T]he slightest knowledge of conditions at this port ought to convince anyone that the inspection service is hopelessly undermanned. The officers are working from twelve to fourteen hours a day, and are not able to keep near up with their task. Some sixteen thousand immigrant passengers slept aboard ship on Tuesday night awaiting attention; some of them had already been detained two days, and were not likely to pass for two more...It ought to be plain to Congress that the enforcement and administration of the present system should be made as perfect as possible before we proceed to change it, and especially before we extend it.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:04 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 16, 2006

Immigration concerns c. 1906

From the April 17, 1906 NYT:

Certainly the two facts here alluded to are of immense importance in connection with the question of immigration - the need of the country for increased population of the right sort and the marked, the marvelous advance in the character of the second generation after immigration. These are not the only facts to be considered, but they can never safely be forgotten in acting on the matter. Another point of extreme importance is the obvious necessity of enforcing thoroughly and intelligently the restrictions now placed on immigration before we proceed to increase them. Neither the amount nor kind of provision for enforcement is adequate. We should have a larger and better organized system of inspection at our ports, and we should extend that system more widely and make it more efficient abroad, before we undertake radically to change the conditions of admission to the country [emphasis added].

This falls in the "more things change" category, which is either reassuring - in the sense that if things haven't changed in 100 years, perhaps they don't need to change - or potentially troubling given the recent shift in geopolitics and the nature of war.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:35 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 12, 2006

Missed Opportunity c. 1906

From the April 12, 1906 NYT:

ALBANY - The Barber Board of Examiners is now but one stage removed from extinction. Only the Governor's approval of the Brackett bill legislating the commission out of office is needed. The measure passed the House to-day - 104 to 8.

Of course, barbers & beauticians are still regulated - can't have unregulated manicures provided in the land of the free. Here's a list of the appropriate agencies in the various states.

New York, specifically, still regulates barbers (of course!) in the guise of the " Division of Licensing Services." The first link from a search of "barber" at the NY Department of State yields the decision of the "DIVISION OF LICENSING SERVICES -against- DAVID RYLES" in which Mr. Ryles violated the law and was ordered to pay a $300 fine for hiring more than one apprentice in his barber shop. In an economy supposedly full of jobs Americans aren't willing to do, the irony of fining an employer for giving young budding barbers a job is sweet.

Admittedly, it isn't clear whether the Barber Board was ultimately discontinued in 1906 and the bureaucrats and laws simply shifted to another part of the state government - similar to the "killing" of the Interstate Commerce Commission back in the mid 1990s. Future reports might confirm the "Barber Board is Dead!! Long live the Barber Board!!" but my cynical side recommends against holding one's breath. Was killing off Leviathan any easier one hundred years ago?

Yet, it is the aggregation of missed opportunities such as this that, IMHO, contributes to a "culture of regulation" which eventually leads to a "culture of corruption," whether that is 1906 USA, 2006 USA, or 1984 USSR.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:14 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 05, 2006

We've come a long way

From the April 6, 1906 NYT:

PROVIDENCE, R.I., April 5 - The Woman's Suffrage bill, providing that women as well as men may participate in the election of Presidential Electors, was passed to-day by the Rhode Island State Senate, by a vote of 20 to 7. The Senate gallery was filled with women during the consideration of the measure.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:17 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

April 04, 2006

The Market Saves the Homeland

I am at the APEE convention and this morning I attended a presentation by Veronique DeRugy. With an uncanny double threat of vigor and rigor (plus wit!), Veronique demonstrates the innumerable absurdities that emerge out of Homeland Security spending. From an email she sent me this afternoon, here are just a few examples:

In 2004, DHS handed out about $153 million to programs offering food and shelter for the poor, a significant increase from the previous year’s budget.

In September 2004, the Senate attached $2.9 billion to the FY2005 Homeland Security bill for disaster aid to farm states plagued by droughts, floods, and freezes.

The infamous $190 billion farm bill, renamed the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002.

Congress loaded the FY2006 Homeland Security bill with earmark projects such as:

$2,389,000 for forensic and related support for investigations of missing and exploited children; $5,500,000 for investigations of missing and exploited children; $102,000 to promote public awareness of the child pornography tipline; $203,000 for Project Alert, a school-based drug prevention program for middle grade youth; $15,770,000 to enforce laws against forced child labor; and $500,000 to continue steel tariff training.

Some of the misuses of federal funds by state and local governments include:

$63,000 spent on a decontamination unit now stored in a warehouse in rural Washington State because the state does not have a HAZMAT team to use it; $350,000 spent by a small volunteer fire department in Virginia on a custom-made fireboat; $1.5 million spent by Grand Forks County, ND (pop. 70,000) to buy more biochemical suits than there are police officers, two trailers equipped with gear to respond to weapons of mass destruction, decontamination tents, and a semi-armored van; $500,000 spent by Outagamie County, WI (pop. 165,000) to buy chemical suits, generators, rescue saws, disaster-response trailers, emergency lighting, escape hood, and a bomb disposal vehicle; and $557,400 spent by North Pole, AK (pop. 1,570) on homeland security rescue and communications equipment.

These examples and the great many that you can find in Veronique's articles, give the overall sense that the DHS is wasting valuable resources without making us any safer. Great stuff! I told Veronique after the session that she is the best argument for human cloning that I have ever seen. If only there were 100 more doing work like hers. I hope she is training her staffers at AEI to emulate her methods and enthusiasm.

However, I also mentioned that it would be very beneficial to generalize from her work toward recommending reforms. Here is my idea for such.

Generalizing from Veronique's work, we can point to systematic problems with the current system. First, the allocation of DHS resources is constrained/controlled by a congressional calculus, which results in politicized decisions where and how to spend. Second, local units approach DMH funding as a fiscal commons; this results in an overall greater DHS budget than otherwise and reinforces the misallocation problem. Third, as a consequence, DHS does not allocate resources to the highest valued uses—where security risks and potential losses are greatest, or where increased preparedness is most
needed—and as a result does not increase security (at least not as much as possible on a per dollar basis). In a nutshell, DMH is dominated by pork barrel politics.

All of this and more would be solved if we moved to a system of tradable security bills (similar to marketable pollution permits). Consider denominating federal security resources in terms of dollars of DHS spending, perhaps a $1 DHS bill or a $1,000 DHS bill. The denomination doesn't really matter to the argument. For simplicity, let's think in terms of $1DHS bills. The owner of a such a bill is entitled to a claim on one dollar worth of DHS spending.

First, allocate an equal number of DHS bills to local first-responder agencies (municipalities, county governments, et al.) on a per-capita, per square mile, of population. Adjustments can be made for places like Las Vegas and Manhattan, where large numbers of people far in excess of resident population regularly gather. In fact, the allocation of dollars could even stick to the current congressional pork-barrel formula. As I'll argue, since the DHS bills would be tradable, the initial allocation doesn't matter to the argument. The key is that the
allocation system satisfy those same political preferences at the congressional level that plague our current system.

Second, restrict DHS bills to projects that are related to security and response. Here we can implement a Buchanan-like filtering mechanism. For a project to be funded with DHS bills, it must be no more than some small number (2 or 3) of orders of separation from a known mechanism for increasing security or response. This will be a sticking point, and is the aspect of the system most vulnerable, especially to politicization. However, it is also the most crucial
aspect because a DHS bill must be substantively distinguishable from non-DHS federal spending. If this can be worked out, the rest would work easily.

Third, allow local first-responder agencies (mayors, sheriffs, et al) to buy and sell DHS bills on an open market (e.g., Chicago Board of Trade). Now each local agency becomes a stakeholder in its own security and response. In fact, this forces local policymakers to evaluate the importance of security spending relative to non-security (e.g., pork barrel) spending. The mayor of a medium-sized city may perceive a moderate threat, such that $1 of security spending would be about as valuable to his or her community as $1 more in the general
fund. In contrast, policymakers in big cities with conspicuous targets may perceive a greater security threat, and will place a higher value on the same $1 DHS bill. Let these folks trade with each other. The market forces of supply and demand will ensure that DHS resources are channeled to high-risk areas, ensuring the maximum return on each dollar of DHS spending.

The system would have several significant improvements for our society compared to the current pork barrel system. First, Congress and DHS are happy because they can still play politics but don't have to do the risk-assessment themselves (a rare political win-win). Second, local policymakers have increased flexibility for making fiscal decisions that are truly valuable to their communities, whether as security or other types of public spending (local policymakers are also more accountable). Third, local agencies no longer have to jostle for position to get a teat at the DHS sow, which is another way of saying that rent seeking costs will be lower. Fourth, the global value of DHS will be reflected in the aggregate market value of DHS bills. If the average price of a $1 DHS bill exceeds $1, we know the Department is generally doing things right. If it's less than $1, this will be a strong signal for renewed vigor in congressional oversight (the Treasury Department could buy and sell DHS bills as well), which is another way of saying let's rein in them bureaucrats.

Finally, and most importantly, tradable security bills would make sure that our resources are going to the greatest security and response needs—not to the kinds of things that infuriate Veronique's readers, but to real gains in national security.

Should we give it a try? Let's work out the details. Comments...?

Posted by Edward J. Lopez at 04:26 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (2)

March 23, 2006

Lessons from Studying Abroad

One of my students is currently studying for a semester in England. He sent me an e-mail the other day and I quote here with permission.

I've found that "liberal" can be a dirty word in Europe. The students here from Europe surely love their welfare states. I am trying to point out that the French and German versions are crumbling, but I'm not making much headway. Everything in general seems to be more politicized in general as well. Fair trade merchandise is everywhere; global warming talk (that takes global warming to be a presupposed bad) is a constant hum in the background, and I shouldn't dare to buy eggs from caged chickens in public lest I risk communal shame.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:44 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

March 07, 2006

Politics c. 1906

An interesting tidbit from the March 7, 1906 NYT:

FRANKFORT, KY - Representative Simmons of Kenton County today called attention to the fact that the original and all printed copies of his bill to suppress poolrooms have been stolen from the records of the State Senate.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:49 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

March 04, 2006

Something to think about

I'm working my way through a few older books sitting on my shelf and came across this little gem, from Chapter 6 "Imperialism" in The Trouble with Marx by David McCord Wright (1967):

Successful democracy is not just a matter of nose counting. One does not automatically save a nation by holding elections. For the political ballot technique to work with reasonable wisdom and success, the voters must have a whole set of attitudes and a knowledge of political history and experience that cannot be acquired overnight. The wealth and the democracy of Western Europe and the United States are, alike, the product of a thousand years of slowly maturing political experience. We can certainly help this knowledge develop if we pass on a realistic appraisal of our own. But it is no sign of exploitation, imperialism, or colonialism if primitive peoples are not instantly granted the economy, wealth, and self government, such as they are, of London, Paris or New York.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:43 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

March 02, 2006

Act Now to Keep Internet Political Discussion Unregulated

Word is that H.R. 1606, the On Line Free Speech Act, will brought to the House for a vote next Thursday.

This bill preserves an exemption for most internet communications - including group blogs such as this one - from regulation under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. The exemption was originally adopted by the Federal Election Commission after McCain-Feingold passed four years ago, but last fall a federal judge, at Senator McCain's urging, held that this was an impermissible interpretation of the statute, and ordered the FEC to write new rules regulating the internet. So all H.R. 1606 attempts to do is preserve the status quo from efforts to regulate more (yeah, that's the problem with politics today - too many people blogging and sending emails around!).

Last fall the bill came before the House and got a majority of the votes, 225-182, but because it was brought up under a special rule, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. This time, a bare majority will do, the "reformers" are working overtime to kill it, with a variety of misrepresentations, as former FEC lawyer Allison Hayward notes here. If it passes the House, it looks good in the Senate - both Harry Reid and Bill Frist have endorsed it.

This bill deserves the support of anyone and everyone who cares about free political speech on the web. But a major scare campaign is underway from the campaign finance "reform" community (to which I respond here). Congressmen and Senators need to hear from folks - especially here in Ohio. Last time out, six Ohio Republicans voted against the bill: Hobson, Schmitt, LaTourette, Turner, Regula and Gilmore. Only 35 Republicans voted no overall.

Posted by Brad Smith at 03:13 PM in Law ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 28, 2006

Port Controversy

A friend's comment on the ports kerfuffle:

"Dick Cheney's behind this. The UAE company will be booted out, and Halliburton will take over."

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:11 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 24, 2006

FEC Showdown on Internet Regulation Set for March 16

The Federal Election Commission will take up proposed new rules to regulate political activity over the internet on March 16. This is an issue in which I have some interest. Typically, campaign finance "reformers" are dissembling - this post at Red State has links to the basic background you need if you want to understand what is at stake in this effort.

Posted by Brad Smith at 03:37 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 23, 2006

Dershowitz on Summers

From a Boston Globe opinion piece concerning Larry Summers:

Summers could do no right in the eyes of his radical critics, who could never forgive him for his perceived original sins and who saw an opportunity to build wider coalitions every time Summers took actions that alienated other groups, as a president -- especially an activist and sometimes abrasive president -- will inevitably do. Some less ideological critics of Summers's leadership style then joined the radicals in a cacophony of strange bedfellows, but the core of the opposition always remained the hard left.

It was arrogant in the extreme for a plurality of a single faculty to purport to speak for the entire university, especially when that plurality is out of synch with the mainstream of Harvard. It was dangerous for the corporation to listen primarily to that faculty, without widely consulting other professors, students, and alumni who supported Summers. Now that this plurality of one faculty has succeeded in ousting the president, the most radical elements of Harvard will be emboldened to seek to mold all of Harvard in its image. If they succeed, Harvard will become a less diverse and less interesting institution of learning governed by political-correctness cops of the hard left. This is what happened in many European universities after the violent student protests of the late 1960s. It should not be allowed to happen at Harvard in the wake of the coup d'etat engineered by some in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:33 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 21, 2006

Harvard Faculty get their man

What a shame:

HARVARD UNIVERSITY'S EMBATTLED PRESIDENT, Lawrence H. Summers, resigned this afternoon and will be replaced, on an interim basis, by Derek C. Bok, who was president of Harvard from 1970 to 1990. Mr. Bok would be expected to "clean up the mess and make conditions right for the next president," according to a senior professor with knowledge of the tumultuous events of today in Cambridge, Mass.

The lesson to be learned? There are certain things that simply cannot be hypothesized.

More here

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:31 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Medical Schools: Conservatives Need Not Apply

Below is an excerpt of an email from a former student describing his interview for medical school at a highly-regarded East Coast university:

Not a particularly friendly interview overall. The discussion transitioned to health care funding. I [the student] noted some severe inefficiencies of the current billing model and that changes must be made for the system to be sustainable. He [the interviewer--a physician] said that nationalized health care solved all those issues nicely, didn't I agree? I (probably winced a bit and) responded that though NHS did solve some funding issues it introduced many other problems and inefficiencies, as demostrated by various studies and also personal anecdotes from my recent 5 months work in London. He responded that Canada's system worked much better, with which I also differed. Trying to conclude, I said that the kind of federal intervention that was needed was standardization of electronic record formats, codes, security procedures, and so forth, and that in fact there is a presidential appointee (David Brailer) and commission working on those things at the moment.

His response: "So do you think George Bush thinks?"
He'd been pushy, I was tired of if, and that's a pretty ludicrous question.

Me: "Well, I think he's a rational individual, based on his principles and presuppositions, just like everybody else. And while I disagree with many of his decisions, I do agree that freedom and democracy are good."

Him: "Maybe, but you can't force them on people. That will never work"

Me: "Worked out pretty well with Japan, didn't it?"

Him: "Good luck with your application, that will be all."

I cannot understand what a question about whether George Bush thinks has to do with a student's fitness for medical school.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:04 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

On lobbying and campaign finance reform

Steve Hoersting, Executive Director of the Center for Competitive Politics, and I have this piece up on National Review Online. We note that as part of "lobbying reform," Congress appears poised to place restrictions on "grassroots lobbying," i.e. "call your congressman" type stuff aimed at stimulating voter to legislator contact. We think this is exactly the wrong way to go. The op-ed is adopted from this longer primer released by the Center. By the way, the Center is a new 501(c)(3) organization; you'll see the website substantially upgraded soon.

I've been a busy boy of late, also writing these three posts on campaign finance reform for the popular political blog Redstate. My basic argument: Republicans are stupid, and in their myopic desire to regulate George Soros funded "527" organizations they are a) shooting themselves in the foot, and b) squandering an opportunity to repeal at least portions of McCain-Feingold.

Posted by Brad Smith at 09:21 AM in Law ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 20, 2006

The Party Identification Project at Capital University

The College Republicans at Capital University have released the results of their Party Identification Project:

An extensive study conducted by the Capital University College Republicans has revealed a large crevasse between the number of registered Democrats and Republicans within the university faculty. The organization found 72 percent of Capital University faculty and deans are Democrats and only 28 percent are Republicans.

The lopsided numbers expand further in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education, Professional Studies and Social Work, where Republicans are outnumbered 4 to 1.

Eight departments have no registered Republicans, including the Political Science department. Only one of the university’s 15 departments has more registered Republicans than Democrats.

Link to Dan Klein's work on this issue.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:06 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2006

Anti-Beijing Duck

Mallard Fillmore, the comic-strip duck I thought was a traditionalist conservative (he’s certainly a cultural conservative), declares himself to be a libertarian.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 03:18 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 13, 2006

Alarming headlines c. 1906

From the Feb. 13, 1906 NYT:

OUR TROOPS MAY INVADE CHINA IN THE SUMMER

Administration Regards the Situation with Grave Anxiety

TO SEND ANOTHER REGIMENT

Transports to be Ready at Manilla - United States May Have to Assume the Burden

Evidently there was the possibility of "an outbreak in China which will necessitate our armed intervention." However, there were concerns stateside that any intervention could be pulled off: "[t]he main difficulty of the War Department in making adequate preparation for such a campaign is a lack of money. The refusal of Congress to grant the $100,000 asked for by Secretary Taft...has left the department crippled."

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:10 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 11, 2006

McChesney on the Abramoff Scandal

Fred McChesney's take on the Abramoff scandal is a must read. A teaser:

The real solution? Consider that both rent seeking and rent extraction are functions of the ability of government to create and extract rents. If governments did not arrogate to themselves the right to outlaw or regulate gambling, there would be no need for government lobbyists. There are no Jack Abramoff's needed to persuade government to allow you to open a grocery store, or me to start a law office. Why? Because, for the most part, government has no ability to stop us from doing so. If government did not have the ability to siphon off tribal revenues by taxation, lobbyists would have no work in that area, either.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:29 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 09, 2006

Conspiracies and Elections

When I was young, and modern liberalism dominated American politics, I recall periodically running across voting conspiracy kooks, usually conservatives, who were absolutely convinced that American elections were rigged. This type never completely goes away, but their numbers can rise and fall.

Of late, conspiracy theories about voting have been getting out of hand. A major problem is that a large element of the American political left has embarked on a campaign to convince Americans that their elections are fraudulently manipulated at the most fundamental level, and many people in positions of responsibility have been unwilling to throw water on the fire, thinking somehow that they can harness that energy for electoral victory.

A good example of this left-wing election paranoia is found at a site called, sadly enough, The Brad Blog. This particular post was published shortly after November's election, when Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected a package of four proposed amendments to the Ohio Constitution, placed on the ballot by a coalition of left wing called "Reform Ohio Now." Brad Blog (relying heavily on the "analysis" of Bob Fritrakis, a leftwing Columbus political gadfly for many years) finds obvious fraud in the fact that the results did not comport with - indeed were vastly different than - the results of the Columbus Dispatch mail poll, a poll which traditionally is quite accurate. Furthermore, notes Brad Blog, it was accurate with regard to a 5th issue on the ballot, a state bond issue.

But as usual, there are in fact very average, normal reasons why the pre-election poll was so off the final results. The Dispatch poll (subscription required) was taken over a very long time, from Oct. 24 through Nov. 3, with election day falling several days further out, on November 8, always a potential problem. Other issues, identified by the Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal (a Democrat, for what it's worth), may also have contributed to the poor performance of the Dispatch poll. These include changes in the Dispatch methodolgy from past polls, including adding an "undecided" option; the fact that the Dispatch had not previously done an off-year poll featuring only ballot issues; the fact that the Dispatch poll itself showed support trending downward as its responses came closer to election day; a substantially lower response rate than in the past; the length of the ballot issues, which were not reproduced in full in the poll; and the fact that the Dispatch poll has always been least accurate at predicting statewide ballot issues.

Now Democratic pollster Celinda Lake (Lake Research Partners) has released a report on why voters in Ohio (and California) rejected redistricting and other initiatives, and it should (but surely won't) put the final nails in this little leftist conspiracy theory. You can link to a pdf file of the Lake report here.

Among other findings, Lake found that 75% of Ohio voters made up their minds close to election day (see Table 24), and 73% of them voted "no" on the redistricting reforms. Also, newspapers were the single most important source of information on the intiatives for Ohio voters, and especially for voters deciding in the last week (79%). This is relevant because eighty one of 104 Ohio newspaper editorials on the intitiatives urged a "no" vote.

We are living in bizarre times, indeed, when so many people insist that, though there is no direct evidence of fraud, the fact that exit polls and pre-election polls did produce corresponding results conclusively demonstrates that the actual election day results are invalid. But as usual, and as we see in the Ohio vote, there is an easy explanation.

Posted by Brad Smith at 08:20 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

McCain, Obama & Me

To add a few thoughts to Frank Stephenson's comments on the big McCain-Obama flap...

I've had minor contact with both the principles.

Obama and I were in Law School together - he was a year behind me.
Continued below the fold

Read More »

It would be a mistake to say we knew one another - I vaguely recall meeting him once in a group, but I don't recall that we ever had a conversation. But I knew who he was. Obama was definitely a campus leader, and it was clear that his advice and judgement was highly valued by the campus's left wing activists. Since his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last summer, Obama has been touted as a future star with the ability to reach across the aisle, and he has made at least some noises, as a Senator, that this is a role he would like to play. Now McCain rather tartly expresses his displeasure that Obama is unwilling to work on a bi-partisan lobby reform bill.

What is worth noting, however, is that there is really nothing in Obama's background (at least that I know of) to suggest that he will be a bipartisan coalition builder. Looking for clips about his career in the Illinois legislature, I find nothing to suggest that he was anything more than a doctrinaire liberal during his time there - smarter than most, more obviously a comer, but with a voting record and pattern that would, without exception, pretty much fit any liberal Democrat. Similarly, in the hotbed of minor league politics that was Harvard Law School, Obama was smart, good looking, articulate, and a leader on the left, but he did not reach across ideological divides. I don't recall him ever taking a position that was anything less than the standard liberal line; to my knowledge (which could be wrong) he had few if any close, or even casual, friends among the campus's conservatives. Despite his obvious gifts and brilliance, in his first year in the Senate, I've seen little to suggest that 3 years from now he will be considered anything more than another version of John Kerry (or pick your liberal Democratic senator).

As for John McCain, that he can get away with this letter is indicative of the free pass that the press gives him. Yes, such a snarky letter is fun to read, but is it really what our Senators ought to be writing, how they ought to be behaving? Is this really a man we want in the White House? And is there any doubt that if Bill Frist had sent someone such a letter, the press would be all over him?

Admittedly, I don't think much of Senator McCain. As a young man, in very trying circumstances, he sacrificed much, and showed much courage, in the service of his country. Sadly, his career since has not lived up to that promise. After returning from Vietnam, McCain divorced his wife (acknowledging the breakup was due to his infidelity) and married a wealthy young heiress. First elected to Congress in 1982, he did little of distinction for several years, and by 1990 was best known as a member of the "Keating 5," a group of 5 senators subjected to disciplinary action in the Senate for unethical behavior. In McCain's case, beyond the behavior for which he was brought before the Senate Ethics Committee, he accepted a number of trips on Keating's private jet to Keating's resort in the Bahamas.

After the Keating 5, McCain "found religion" as it were, becoming the ardent campaign finance reformer. He had opposed campaign finance "reform" previously, but embraced it as scandal protection in his 1992 re-election campaign. The rest, as they say, is history. But it has always been more of a "do as I say, not as I do" type of reform. Senator McCain's leadership PAC, Straight Talk America, is one of the largest, yet gives very little money to other candidates, preferring to spend it flying Senator McCain around the country, and paying "consultants." Then there is the "Reform Institute," which Senator McCain chairs and which some have called merely a sham McCain campaign front. Senator McCain has solicited some major bucks for the Reform Institute from people with business before his Senate committee. And I have noted publicly, on many occasions, that Senator McCain's power probably benefited from the substance of the McCain-Feingold reform bill more than that of any other politician, with the possible exceptions of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.

I've never had a conversation with Senator McCain - see below for my best efforts - but our paths have also crossed. Senator McCain has, on multiple occasions on national television, called me "corrupt," though without attempting to identify any "corrupt" behavior other than disagreements with him. (My wife tells me I'm the worst "corrupt" public official she's heard of: "Where are the fancy clothes, the vacations?" she asks). He has accused me of doing or saying things I have not, sometimes in such a way as to suggest that my behavior may have been illegal, and then repeated the allegations after public corrections were made by others (whether because he doesn't know or doesn't care, I don't know). He has always refused to meet with me. Finally, in 2004, I caught up with Senator McCain at a Senate hearing. When I approached and said, "Senator?" he instinctively took my hand, but when he saw it was me, he yanked his hand from mine (scroll to bottom for witness account), and proceeded to call me a "bully," a "coward," "corrupt," and someone with "no respect for the Constitution." He refused to allow me to speak at all.

Senator McCain's experience in Vietnam appears to have given him wisdom on that issue, a sense of judgement and proportionality. He has been willing to tell some veterans' groups things that they did not want to hear (to wit, that it is probably not true that American servicemen remain in captivity in North Vietnam); from his arrival in Congress, he has called for better relations with North Vietnam. But from his experience as a member of the Keating 5, he seems to have drawn all the wrong lessons. He has adopted foolish, unthinking "campaign finance reform" measures that he clearly does not understand; he has considered all opposition to his position to be personal and dishonorable, and has refused even to hear other views presented to him. He has engaged in regular name calling against those who disagree with him, not just me (for example, he has dubbed Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub "corrupt" and "an apparatchik" for failing to do his bidding at all times), even while he goes on the Tonight Show to preach political civility. He has been disingenuous - claiming to support a free, unregulated internet while supporting a lawsuit to regulate the internet.

Perhaps, to play amateur psychiatrist, the difference is that Senator McCain is confident that he behaved honorably in Vietnam, but not confident that he behaved honorably in the Keating 5 affair. If so, it is good that the Keating 5 affair was a wake-up call for him to be a better man, but it is unfortunate that he has so let it cloud his judgement, perspective, and personal relationships on questions of campaign finance and government ethics.

I see that Senators McCain and Obama have made up - which of these two talented, ambitious men benefits more from the photo op, I can't say. Perhaps there is some shrewdness in McCain's letter to Obama, appealing to Republican voters he will need in the 2008 primaries (I've noticed an instinctive dislike for Senator Obama in many Republicans - I do not share that dislike, but I've seen it in others). On the other hand, Senator McCain does have a vicious temper, and one often gets the sense that he needs a couple staffers with the guts to call him back and make him calm down. I am not thrilled at the thought of a man of Senator McCain's temperment and self-righteousness occupying the oval office, but there is a good chance that he will do so in 2009.

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:52 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 07, 2006

McCain vs. Obama

It looks like Barack Obama will be joining co-blogger Brad Smith in John McCain's doghouse. An excerpt from McCain's snarky letter to Obama:

"I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. . . . "I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss . . . "I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness."

Perhaps an instance of a broken watch getting the right time twice a day?

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 05:18 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 06, 2006

Writers on the Take

Tom Giovanetti, President of the Institute for Policy Innovation, has a column up today at National Review Online which defends conservative and libertarian writers, including Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrera, for writing "pay for play" op-eds.

I agree. In fact, I find the flap a bit ridiculous. These columns were, after all, op-eds. The authors made no pretense to being impartial - that's what "opinion/editorial" means. I recently wrote a column for the Ripon Society magazine because they called me up and asked, "will you write a column arguing that McCain-Feingold has not been successful? We'll pay you X." I've written many times for USA Today - they always call up and ask, "We're running an editorial that says Y. We need an opposition column. Would you be interested in writing a column taking Position Z." And they pay me to do it. Would it really be different if someone else called me up and offered to pay me to write an editorial saying McCain-Feingold was a failure, and they would try to place it in a magazine or on the op-ed page of USA Today?

Giovanetti is right, I think. Bandow et al. were not posing as impartial researchers. And there is no evidence that they wrote anything they disagreed with. This is just another effort by the left to silence those on the right.

Posted by Brad Smith at 05:32 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

$7.2B vs. $2.7T

The AP reports on the proposed federal budget for the next year. In what is becoming a little too predictable, the federal government's overall spending increases while the Repubs claim they are fiscally responsible and the Dems claim people will be dying in the streets if proposed spending cuts or reduced increases are not met. From today's Star-Telegram:

President Bush is sending Congress a $2.7 trillion spending plan that provides big increases for the military and homeland security but squeezes many other government programs in an effort to get soaring deficits under control....Even before the documents were released, Democrats were attacking the plan's call for $36 billion in Medicare cuts over five years. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that Bush's budget was "filled with pages of giveaways to special interests and cuts to those who can least afford it."

And giving free drugs and health care to those over 62 years old isn't a giveaway to a special interest? Arguing over $36 billion over five years, when the government plans to spend $2.7 TRILLION!?!?

The folks in Washington are fairly good politiicians, by definition, and therefore likely know how to spin the argument for their own benefit. Reid and his side can latch onto the supposed cuts in an entitlement program that seems, to this casual observer, more dangerous to my bank account than Social Security, and in the process terrify grandma and solidify votes.

But the $36B over five years is chump change compared to $2.7T. The politicians argue over the small stuff because it works at the ballot box. I suppose this is because most people find it easier to focus on the (gasp) cut to Medicare, which is unlikely to be a true cut in the end, and find in near impossible to contemplate 2.7 trillion of anything.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:30 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

February 01, 2006

Jonathan Wilde on the CLW

An impressive contemplation of Libertarianism's rather lint-filled navel.

Elections are won with money, and money is given in return for favors of special privilege - the exact opposite of libertarian policy prescriptions. It’s not a contradiction that a country with so many people who define themselves as “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” has no libertarians in major political offices. That isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate the efforts of libertarians to enact political change. I just hope they realize the magnitude of the odds stacked against us in the political arena....

The belief that liberty has to be respected for it’s own sake (libertarian morality) for people to prefer it. Liberty merely has to be in people’s self-interests. Not everyone finds the moral argument against taxation convincing, but make it easy and profitable to evade taxes, and nearly everyone will take advantage of it.

I'm not so sure about that second one. Yikes.

Anyway, ATSRTWT

Posted by Michael Munger at 11:08 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 23, 2006

Cause vs. Effect

From Congressional Quarterly (reg req'd) comes one way to view partisanship on Capitol Hill. It is clear that partisanship, as measured by unanimous votes from one side or the other have become more numerous. Is this the result of redistricting, in which the majority of house seats are essentially locked into one party or the other?

However, a couple of points. Bush was able to work with Democrats here in Texas while governor. Admittedly, it is possible that Texas Democrats are closer to national-Republicans than national-Democrats, but given some of the recent antics of the Democrats here in Texas I wonder.

I wonder if any readers can point me to recent research on the question of causation in partisanship. It is a classic identification problem which good econometrics should be able to flesh out, but every instrument I think might help seems doomed.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:34 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Alito and the Unitary Executive

One of the more curious lines of questioning during the Alito hearings was on the "Unitary Executive." Some Democrats seemed to think that this was the equivalent of a secret handshake among conservatives out to destroy the constitution.

Exhibit A of this conspiratorial mindset is an article by Jeffrey Rosen in the New Republic. (Unfortunately, the full piece is subscription only). I single out Rosen because he is generally smart and fair, and the New Republic equally so - making the attacks all the more curious.

Analysis below the fold...

Read More »

Take this:

In his confirmation hearings, Alito said he had never read [Professor John] Yoo's writings or those of "anyone else" who had defended the broad theory of unitary executive power during wartime. Given the prominence of these arguments, Alito's claim seems surprising at best.

Is this really surprising? I would be surprised if a busy Court of Appeals judge had read Yoo's writings. Sad but true - people in policy positions don't read law review articles. Heck, John Yoo is a friend of mine, and I've not read his wrigints on such a theory of the Unitary Executive. And for what it's worth - while I might think Alito would be more knowledgeable than I - Until this recent little flap about Alito's alleged hidden agenda, I'd never heard the unitary executive used as Rosen uses it. Rather, like Alito, I understood it to be a theory about control of independent agencies. And if we take Alito at his word, that that is what he means, then it is surely a good thing, I think, that he believes in the unitary executive. To me, this is one of the biggest pluses for Alito. Independent agencies, such as the FEC, I think ought to be abolished. They are unaccountable to either Congress or the President, and hence fundamentally undemocratic and unconstitutional. Rosen, OTOH, adopts classic conspiracy theory reasoning - if Alito says "no, what you say is not what I meant," it's proof he means "yes."

In other words, Alito claims to understand the theory as a way of asserting the president's ultimate ability to control or to fire executive branch officials. When Senator Richard Durbin asked Alito if he agreed with Thomas's view that a wartime president has inherent powers beyond those explicitly given to him by Congress, Alito replied, "I don't think that the unitary executive has anything to do with that."
Alito was either confused or being less than candid.

Why? That's my understanding. Look, I go to lots of these Federalist Society events, and I guarantee you that when people speak of the unitary executive, they speak of it as Alito is. I suppose there may be those who interpret as Rosen does, but I've not heard them. Perhaps it is Rosen who is confused, or less than candid (I think the former).

Asked by Durbin whether he agreed with Thomas's dissent, Alito's memory again failed him. "I don't recall that Justice Thomas uses the term 'unitary executive' in his dissent," Alito said. "It doesn't stick out in my mind that he did. If he did, he's using it there in a sense that's different from the sense in which I was using the term." Once again, either Alito was ill-prepared or he was being deliberately evasive.

Really? It's "ill prepared" not to recall that that Thomas does use the term (all of twice, both times with no elaboration) in Hamdi? Or is it "evasive" to suggest that Thomas was "using it there in a sense that's different from the sense in which I was using the term."? Maybe it's just the truth. By the way, you can find Thomas's use of the term at 542 U.S. 580. Read it and tell me if Thomas is using it quite as Rosen says. Yes, Thomas's opinion is more or less as Rosen says, but the "unitary executive" seems to have little to do with it. It is a descriptive label more than a theory. Thomas begins by defending executive power, and then argues that this is good because of the advantages of a "unitary executive" in foreign affairs. I would be a bit surprised, frankly, if anyone disagreed with Thomas on this, even though they could and would still disagree on the ensuing extent of presidential power. That is, a good liberal could take the paragraph in which Thomas mentions the "unitary executive," and begin the next paragraph, "Nevertheless... " and write a very different opinion.

Alito said he was merely discussing "theoretical problems," adding, "I don't see any connection between the concept of the unitary executive and the weight that is--that should be given to signing statements in interpreting statutes."

Bingo! Indeed, it seems to me that Rosen is the one being disingenuous, in suggesting that the weight a justice might give to a presidential signing statement relates to the content of the statement. I mean, I suppose it does in the sense that a good signing statement would be more persuasive than a bad one, but as a theoretical matter it makes no difference.

Rosen ends by noting that another believer in the unitary executive, Judge Luttig, does not interpret it in the sweeping way Rosen interprets it. Hardly a convincing case, then.

It may be that Alito would give a strong interpretation to executive power, but Rosen's conspiracy theory weakens, not strengthens, his case. Sort of like old Birchers railing against the Tri-lateral Commission.

It might have been very useful to have the Senators grilling Alito on his views of presidential power in wartime. But this "unitary executive" line of assault was just sort of wierd. My little hypotheses: 1) some bright legal staffer, two years out of an elite law school, came up with it and thought he really had something, and Democratic Senators, being generally unprepared and intellectually baffled, just read the questions; or 2) Democrats inherently realized that whatever we might think, the public was likely to side with the President on this (as we see, for example, that most people are non-plussed about wiretapping); hence best not to attack the actual events, but to try to put an obscure, and thus vaguely scary, conspiratorial name on it.

Rosen is a smart guy, and he raises a very important issue, but his attack misses the mark. Whether that is because it was a poorly launched assault, or because he's just wrong, or both, I'll leave you to judge.

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Posted by Brad Smith at 09:21 AM in Law ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 20, 2006

When a regression isn't necessary

Over at the Club for Growth Andy Roth posts a damning picture about laws passed by Congress over the past few years:

'Nuff said.

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:15 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Green chocolate?

Thank Gaia that New Orleans' anti-environmental homes got washed away! There is a push now for "Green Building" in the Big Easy. In typically nonbiased fashion, the article mentions only benefits of green construction but no costs. Energy savings, indoor air quality, and the like, but no mention of whether the initial construction costs are comparable to traditional construction. Sure, if I installed a nuclear toaster in my house that saved 2% on my energy bill every month that would be great, even if it cost me $1 million to buy and install.

One Patti Cox, an environmental consultant, says "Buildings -- they are the gas guzzlers." Since we have HOV lanes on highways, maybe we can get HOBs. Or hybrid buildings that recharge whenever employees' weight presses down on stairs. The rest of you in your sport utility buildings ought to be ashamed.

In a similar story, CNN has "'Dream Team' to plan Katrina rebuilding." I didn't see any mention of Magic or Larry Bird, but we will get the next best thing with urban planners and "thinkers." (Wouldn't you love to have your business card say "Art Vandelay--Thinker.") Of course, the Green Chocolate City will be rebuilt according to "new urbanism," the form of city planning whose superiority is evident by the fact that no one likes to live in cities planned that way. Who needs spontaneous order anyway when thinkers are on the case?

P.S. I just found the perfect mascot for a rebuilt New Orleans.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 01:07 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

The Man Who Would Be King

Alex Tabarrok at MR asks himself, "Would I be a Good Dictator?" (Alex, if you have the humility to ask the question, you probably would make a good dictator.)

His post reminded me of the classic film, The Man Who Would Be King (1975) based on Kipling's short story, directed by John Huston, and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

If you haven't seen it or haven't seen it in a while, I recommend it. Among other things the cinematography is awesome for any era much less 1975.

In the film Sean Connery's character, an British ex-soldier in India, is made the god-like king of the land of Kafiristan (think Afghanistan). He goes power crazy and in fact doesn't escape with his life.

There also a great scene in which Connery orders all the villages to give 10 percent of their harvest to him so that he can use it to help villages who have had bad harvests. A welfare state in the making!

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:30 AM in Culture ~ in Economics ~ in Politics

The Age of Reagan turns 25

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President. Drink a toast to the Gipper!

Posted by Brad Smith at 01:52 AM in Misc. ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 19, 2006

Government of the Government, By the Government, For the Government

Bob Bauer, a prominent Democratic Party lawyer in Washington, has a great little commentary on demands for lobbying reform, here.

There is no question that some reform is needed - the question is, who will be restrained - members of Congress, who have created this mess by handing out favors left and right, spending beyond all reason (Ted Stevens' "bridge to nowhere" comes to mind, though it may have shown that at some level even Congress has its limits), and generally presuming there are no limits on their powers, or average citizens, who want to expose congressional wrongdoing, contact their congressmen, and defend themselves from predatory legislation?

It appears that Washington is planning on the latter. Already, Straight-Talking Senator John "Keating Five" McCain has proposed a bill that would place limits on, “any attempt to influence the general public, or segments thereof, to engage in lobbying contacts whether or not those contacts were made on behalf of a client.” You know - "Call your congressman" type stuff, as the Skeptic notes.

What is going on is an effort to define all "influence" as illegitimate. But "influencing" government is what you and I and our neighbor do, or try to do. It is not illegit for us to try to influence government.

And as Bauer's post skillfully illustrates, when all the sources of "influence" are gone, there will still be those with the ability to "influence" Washington. But they will be a small, select group. Who will they be? Who will be allowed into the inner circle? Well, I don't know for sure, but I'll tell you this, Mr. Average Citizen - as the Former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, with a 501(3) foundation , some Washington contacts, and knowledge of these increasingly complex laws on trying to speak out in public, it might be me, but I guarantee you that it won't be you.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:46 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 18, 2006

I was....wrong?

I have thought all along this "NSA spying" thing would just blow over. No one really cares.

But it appears the administration has actually made people really mad. Even some people who have been supportive.

Now, I'm a libertarian on this question all the way. Unauthorized spying, bad, always. But I didn't think anyone else cared.

And having Al Gore chirp about libertarian themes...well, it makes me sad when Gore is clearly right and Bush is so clearly wrong. (That doesn't mean that Gore is not still evil incarnate, of course....)

Posted by Michael Munger at 09:31 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 15, 2006

Foreign policy advice c. 1906

From the Jan. 15, 1906 NYT is a letter to the editor arguing against the Monroe Doctrine. Given the events since 9/11, to many the Monroe Doctrine might be a welcome respite from global interventions.

The letter writer suggests the following as a guide for foreign relations:

Two rules ought to guide us as a member of the family of nations, and those are, first, the "Golden Rule," and, secondly, "mind your own business."

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:56 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 12, 2006

Senator Kennedy

From yesterday's "Best of the Web Today," here's a description of part of the Alito hearings:

The Democrats, eager to smear Judge Alito, have alighted on his membership in a group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. This afternoon Ted Kennedy was interrogating Alito about his reading habits, demanding to know if Alito had read an article expressing some noxious views that appeared in a CAP magazine more than two decades ago.

Interestingly the senator thinks it's ok to question a Supreme Court nominee about his reading habits but thinks that investigating the reading habits of possible terrorists is not ok. To wit:

On July 31, 2003, Senator Feingold (D-WI), joined by Senators Bingaman (D-NM), Kennedy (D-MA), Cantwell (D-WA), Durbin (D-IL), Wyden (D-OR), Corzine (D-NJ), Akaka (D-HI), and Jeffords (I-VT), introduced the Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act as a companion bil to Rep. Bernie Sanders' Freedom to Read Protection Act. The bill would amend the PATRIOT Act to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans and set reasonable limits on the federal government's access to library, bookseller, medical, and other sensitive, personal information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related foreign intelligence authority.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:48 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 11, 2006

Intellectural Diversity on Campus

I'd be interested to hear more from Josh about why he finds Dan Klein's work on the political identifcation of college faculty to be improper.

A recent missive from the AAC&U on "Academic Freedom and Educational Responsibility" includes the following:

Intellectual Diversity and the Indispensable Role of Liberal Education

In any education of quality, students encounter an abundance of intellectual diversity—new knowledge, different perspectives, competing ideas, and alternative claims of truth.

If this is true, then wouldn't colleges want to measure the actual extent of intellectual diversity among the faculty? If colleges really believe in this, then Dan's works shows that they ought to be ashamed at a the gross imbalances in political views among the faculty. Dan is trying, so far as I can see, simply to shame colleges and universities into living up to their own claims of intellectual diversity. I don't think Dan is calling for any kind of legal or policy remedy like affirmative action for conservative/libertarian professors ala David Horowitz's ridiculous Academic Bill of Rights.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:34 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 10, 2006

Will on House Republicans

George Will is spot on about the Abramoff scandal. An excerpt:

The national pastime is no longer baseball, it is rent-seeking -- bending public power for private advantage. There are two reasons why rent-seeking has become so lurid, but those reasons for today's dystopian politics are reasons why most suggested cures seem utopian.

The first reason is big government -- the regulatory state. This year Washington will disperse $2.6 trillion, which is a small portion of Washington's economic consequences, considering the costs and benefits distributed by incessant fiddling with the tax code, and by government's regulatory fidgets.

Second, House Republicans, after 40 years in the minority, have, since 1994, wallowed in the pleasures of power. They have practiced DeLayism, or ``K Street conservatism.'' This involves exuberantly serving rent-seekers, who hire K Street lobbyists as helpers. For House Republicans the aim of the game is to build political support. But Republicans shed their conservatism in the process of securing their seats in the service, they say, of conservatism.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:58 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Election reform c. 1906

Things haven't changed much in a hundred years in the area of campaign financing. The latest "scandal" in D.C. is just another episode of rent seeking.
From the Jan. 11, 1906 NYT:

...a bill to amend the corporation law to provide that every corporation shall make affidavit, ten days after election, that the corporation has not made, directly or indirectly, any campaign contributions [emphasis added].

But why would such a law be needed?

"It is believed that over considerable areas, as many as 50 per cent. of the voters expect to be paid in some way for their vote."

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:10 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 09, 2006

Campaign Finance: Unintended Consequences

I have written a couple of pieces on BCRA, the campaign finance deform legislation lately.

Over on THE END, I did a little dash-off piece.

The essay on EconLib is a little more serious.

Thanks to THE DOOR and THE CLUB for kind links.

Posted by Michael Munger at 03:39 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 08, 2006

A Nutjob in Every Byte

Nancy Pelosi:
"For years, at the expense of the American people, the House Republicans have enabled and benefited from the Republican culture of corruption engineered by Tom DeLay," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. "The culture of corruption is so pervasive in the Republican conference that a single person stepping down is not nearly enough to clean up the Republican Congress."

Harry Reid:
"Tom DeLay bears much of the responsibility for the culture of corruption Republicans have created in Washington, D.C., but his removal from House leadership alone will not end the pervasive cronyism and corruption that he and Washington Republicans created."

Remember the candy bar commercials: "Peanuts in every bite?" No matter how small a bite you take, you'll get peanuts. Both of these "quotes" are designed so that, no matter how small the sound "byte", you will get "Republicans" and some bad stuff.

But when you quote the whole thing, sounds pretty dumb. Read the Pelosi quote, especially. Sounds like it was written by someone for whom English is not a first language.

Posted by Michael Munger at 04:46 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Proceed Without Delay

Tom Delay is no longer just down, but now also out.

There will be a new Majority Leader in the House.

Delay's resig letter to Speaker Hastert included the following:

"The job of majority leader and the mandate of the Republican majority are too important to be hamstrung, even for a few months, by personal distractions"

Oops, too late for that. We have had months of delay, and wishful thinking. You can say that the case against further Delay is shaky, and political, but that's enough to make a Majority leader useless. The Hammer will beat no more.

Succesors?
Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind
Rep Mike Rogers, R-Mich
Rep Jerry Lewis, R-Cal

in that order. Blunt wins, unless something happens.

Economic consequence? Even less ability to control pigs at the pork barrel trough. The next transportation bill could well be an orgy of "special" provisions. Ick.

Update: This is cute. Check the listing, if it is still up.

Posted by Michael Munger at 08:44 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 06, 2006

Unsolicited Abramoff Scandal Control Advice for Republicans

The Abramoff scandal is the talk of Washington. Republicans are unsure of what to do - some are whistling past the graveyard, others running for the tall grass, and a few more ducking for cover behind John McCain's lobbying "reform" bill. (I bought of bunch of used metaphors at a garage sale recently and need to use them up). Senator McCain's bill, by the way, would regulate not just lobbyists, but, “any attempt to influence the general public, or segments thereof, to engage in lobbying contacts [i.e. "call your congressman" - Ed.] whether or not those contacts were made on behalf of a client.” If Senator McCain's disdain for the First Amendment wasn't obvious to everyone before, it should be now.

But there is a better alternative: play offense. I don't mean accuse Democrats of being just as sleazy. No, I mean use this scandal to cut the size of government. Go forward and make the case: "This, dear people, is what big government is. It is favors for special interests, unrestrained pork barrell spending, and a government so big you, dear voter, can't begin to keep an eye on all parts of it. It is lobbyists and money and corruption. Lobbyists lobby because government is giving out favors and subsidies, writing exemptions into the tax code, regulating most things you do and claiming the right to regulate everything else. The solution is not more regulation. It is smaller government. Take the power away from the politicians."

Whenever there is a scandal, there are elements of the left that use it to expand the size and scope of government, or, as in the case of Senator McCain's new lobbying law, to try to stifle political competition and criticism. But because scandals can rock the faith Americans put in government, they are also an opportunity to make meaningful reductions in the size and scope of government.

Posted by Brad Smith at 10:00 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 05, 2006

More Hypocrisy

Writing at Tompaine.com (and the abuse of the name of Tom Paine - author of "Common Sense" and "The Crisis," and lover of liberty, by a left wing site devoted to stripping us of our liberties never ceases to irk me), James Sample of the Brennan Center (another group devoted to stripping us of our liberties, and hence one more appropriately named) is upset about new Federal Election Commissioners, not to mention Jack Abramoff.

Now, I promise not to turn Division of Labour into Campaign Finance Whack-a-mole Central. Still, this was too good to pass up.

More by clicking below...

Read More »

Where to begin? Let's start with the first sentence of Samples' article:

Last night, with lobbyist Jack Abramoff having entered his second guilty plea in as many days, was a moment begging for integrity in government.

Ah, Jack Abramoff, the gift that keeps on giving. What, pray tell, does Jack Abramoff entering a guilty plea have to do with FEC appointments - or even the views of FEC appointees? Well, it is a scandal, of course, and where's there's a scandal, there's an excuse for the campaign finance lobby to swing into gear.

Instead, Congress and the White House colluded to deny the American people a public confirmation process for the individuals charged with regulating federal elections. Their action was shameless and straightforward: they used the president’s recess appointment power to sneak through a slate of politically cozy Federal Election Commissioners who will further weaken the already toothless FEC.

We documented here yesterday the disingenuity of the "reform" lobby in this argument, but we do note that at least Brennan isn't caught with its pants down - unlike the Campaign Legal Center, they weren't lobbying for recess appointments to the FEC in 2002. Of course, there are a lot of assumptions, a lot of assertions, and very little enlightenment, in this short paragraph.

The indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay; the metastasizing investigation into the web-spinning of lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and the revelation that Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham accepted over $2.4 million in bribes from a defense contractor all tended in favor of strengthening the FEC...

Of course, none of these events have to do with even alleged violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act. Mr. Sample may as well have written, "the mine disaster in West Virginia; Hurricane Katrina, and Texas's exciting victory over USC all tended in favor of strengthening the FEC." Then at least the humor and cynicism would be more obvious.

Further down:

few things unite Republicans and Democrats like incumbency,

From the brief (page I-49) signed by the Brennan Center in McConnell v. FEC: "[D]eference... deserves particular weight in the context of campaign finance reform, an area in which Congress has a peculiar expertise. Each Member of Congress brings substantial personal experience to this issue.... etc. etc."

So let me get this straight: Congress gets great deference in passing the law, because of course they would never use it to entrench themselves as incumbents - but on the other hand, because "few things unite [Congress] like incumbency," we should be very suspicious of anyone selected for the FEC.

Further down:

As if to underscore Washington’s current culture of corruption, one of the Republican appointees, Hans von Spakovsky, played a critical role in upholding DeLay’s controversial Texas redistricting plan. Along with other Bush appointees at the Department of Justice, Von Spakovsky overruled the unanimous opinions of DOJ’s staff attorneys who concluded that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act.

Well, there may be many arguments against a political official actually exercising the authority given to him, and it may well be that Spakovsky (and others - apparently this was not his decision alone) was wrong. But corrupt? A symptom of a "culture of corruption?" A little stretch, perhaps? Anyway, we continue further down:

Questions of federal election law are complex and important.

Indeed they are. Wouldn't it be nice to help the the public to understand them, rather than conflating them with Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Voting Rights Decisions, and the indictment of Tom DeLay.

The FEC requires qualified, committed commissioners, not cronies who place politics ahead of principle.

At least the Brennan Center has something nice to say about me, even if they won't say it. Thank you.

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 02:45 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

January 04, 2006

Hypocrisy in Action

Yesterday President Bush made three recess appointments to the Federal Election Commission. Two of the three were appointed to seats occupied by Commissioners whose terms have expired, but who continue to serve as "acting." The third seat has been vacant since August, when I resigned from the Commission.

The so-called “reform” community – the foundation-funded groups that dominate editorial coverage on the issue of campaign finance – was disappointed by the President’s choices, as it usually is, and has been going beserk since before Christmas, when the President announced his intention to nominate the three new commissioners. The nature of this attack, however, merely points out how bankrupt this “reform” community has become.

More below the fold:

Read More »

Exhibit A is a statement by Trevor Potter, President of the Campaign Legal Center and sometime counsel to Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Mr. Potter specifically attacks both the President and Democratic Congressional Leadership for not reappointing Democratic Commissioner Scott Thomas. He calls this, “a shabby way to treat a Democratic commissioner who fought alongside the President in the battle against rogue 527 organizations in last year's presidential election,” and adds, “Thomas was one of only two commissioners to fight for appropriate regulation of soft-money 527s that intervened in last year's federal election, and the White House announcement means that both of them will soon be gone from the FEC.”

The Center accuses the White House of “rush[ing]” the nominations in order to have new Commissioners in place before the FEC votes on rules implementing the McCain-Feingold bill in January. It complains that,

“The Administration and congressional leadership would now replace several commissioners who have been dealing with these complex issues for years with new people with little familiarity with the law - and, in some cases, no apparent experience in campaign finance law.

“The apparent intention to push these nominees through as recess appointments, without debate or an up-or-down vote, would deny the public the right to give these nominees serious scrutiny. And the background of the nominees themselves raises serious questions about whether they would firmly enforce campaign finance law, or continue the agency's "business as usual" tendency to protect powerful political interests, rather than the public interest in clean elections.”

Finally, the Center, through Mr. Potter, ads:

“It would be a serious mistake to replace sitting commissioners with new ones in the middle of a complex rulemaking process for BCRA. And in any event, it would be a serious abuse of process to bypass the Senate and install them through recess nominations.”

Now remember back to the fall of 2002. Senator McCain had put a hold on judicial nominees in order to force the President to make a recess appointment to the FEC, even though - in fact because - the FEC was in the middle of complex rule making. The appointment would replace a commissioner who had been dealing with the complex issues for years with a new person whose background was not primarily in campaign finance law. The apparent intention was to push the nominee through as a recess appointment, without debate or an up-or-down vote, denying the public the right to give the nominee serious scrutiny.

Indeed, in December 2002, the Campaign Legal Center thought an immediate recess appointment was so important that it placed on its web site articles critical of President Bush for not pushing through the recess appointment of Ellen Weintraub. A CLC press release (scroll down to third item) quoted Mr. Potter:

"There is every indication that the Commission's anti-reform leadership rushed through consideration of the coordination rulemaking to beat the new Commissioner's recess appointment to the FEC. This coincides with the apparently deliberate delay by the White House of the promised recess appointment until it was too late for Ms. Weintraub to participate in the coordination rulemaking.”

Of course, Ms. Weintraub would disappoint the CLC – she joined the Commission's bi-partisan majority in refusing to "battle against rogue 527s," – or perhaps concluded that the 527s at issue weren't "rogue," at all, but legitimately operating within the law. Perhaps there should be some skepticism of CLC's claim that such regulation was "appropriate."

Meanwhile, for those who care about factual accuracy, it is not true that the two commissioners who voted for 527 regulation will be gone from the Commission - Commissioner Michael Toner, along with Commissioner Thomas, voted for regulation. Departing Commissioner Danny Lee McDonald, renominated Commissioner David Mason, Commissioner Weintraub and I formed the bi-partisan majority that voted against regulation as "inappropriate."

The Campaign Legal Center has no members; its allegedly impartial expertise seems to vary depending on its immediate political needs, and it can't even get basic facts right in its press releases. But like the rest of the so-called reform lobby, it is flush with cash from the Pew Charitable Trust. The question is this: Other than Pew money, what does the so-called “reform” community bring to the debate?

« Close It

Posted by Brad Smith at 09:31 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)  ·  TrackBack (0)

Stranger in a Strange Land

Is the Jack Abramoff story big news in your community? It's not in mine, even though our community is represented in Congress by Bob Ney, one of the Congressmen most connected to the spreading scandal. I mean, it's in the newspaper, even on the front page, and the local TV news reports on it. But it's not something people talk about, and it's not something they see much affecting their lives.

But here in Washington, it is everywhere, and on everyone's lips. Just something that leaped out at me as I returned to visit my old haunts.

Posted by Brad Smith at 06:34 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 31, 2005

Presidential pursuits c. 1905

This being the last day of 2005, I would be remiss if I didn't convey some of the information in the Dec. 31, 1905 NYT. My habit of reading the paper from 100 years ago has provided me with a much greater history lesson than I initially anticipated - I haven't been told to stop, so I will continue to post interesting tidbits in 2006.

Today's (2005) FW Start-Telegarm had an article about Pres. Bush's brush-clearing at his ranch down the road in Crawford. And the J-walk blog seems to poke fun at the president's habit of taking a machete to ever-encroaching nature. However, things could be considerably worse.

From the Dec. 31, 1905 NYT is an article about President T. Roosevelt's pursuits:

The President enjoyed a fine hunt this morning at Pine Know...His bag as (sic) the close of the expedition was one wild turkey, half a dozen quail, two rabbits, and some snow birds. Surgeon General Rixey, Kermit, and Archie when in a direction different from that taken by the President and were not nearly so successful.

How more sensitive, both politically and culturally, we are today. It isn't too hard to imagine the outrage if Pres. Bush shot a deer or a wild turkey on his property.

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:03 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 26, 2005

Durkdurkistan President celebrates 20th anniversary in power

Sorry, I meant Turkmenistan, the ex-Soviet state just north of Iran, where President-for-life (so declared since 1999) Saparmurat Niyazov rivals North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il for megalomania and iron-fisted control. It would be comic if it weren’t so real. The Washington Post reported last week:

Festivities to mark his two decades in power began Tuesday in Niyazov's home Akhal region where citizens were offered shows, concerts, sports competitions and food. […]

Niyazov, who turns 66 in February, has banned all opposition in the nation of 6 million people and controls all branches of government and the media.

Golden statues and busts of Niyazov are scattered across the country, and his portrait is on every banknote and coin.

The BBC reported a few years ago that he had his likeness woven into “what is probably the world's largest handmade carpet.” It also noted that “the most spectacular of [his statues] is the 12-metre revolving image of him atop a 23-metre high tower in the city's central square.” Meanwhile, “Schoolchildren have to recite oaths of allegiance to their leader every day.”

His current banknote portrait (the same on every denomination) can be seen here. A new design (different portrait) can be seen here on the Turkmenistan government’s official site. Note that the 50 manat may be the world's only currency showing a horse's ass on both sides of the note! Coin portrait here.

Niyazov calls himself “Turkmenbashi,” leader of all Turkmens. Some other evidence for what is politely called his “personality cult”:

The town of Turkmenbashi is named in his honor. At least one district in all Turkmen regions is also named for the leader, and there is a street bearing his name in virtually every settlement.

In 2002, Niyazov renamed January Turkmenbashi.

That’s right, he renamed a month of the calendar after himself.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 05:56 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 20, 2005

"The Central Role of Economic Freedom in Democracy"

By Ian Vásquez, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Global Economic Liberty, and a term member, Council on Foreign Relations

Of the cherished liberties of a free society—economic, political, and civil—economic freedom holds a special place. It is not only an end in itself; economic freedom gives sustenance to the other freedoms. When personal choice, voluntary exchange, and the protection of private property are not secure, it is difficult to imagine how political freedom or civil liberties can meaningfully be exercised.

[Whole thing.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 01:18 PM in Economics ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 19, 2005

Insurgency c. 1905

In today's environment, the term "insurgency" is thrown around in dire terms - to the point, it seems, that some want us out of Iraq now because we cannot win. Perhaps some perspective (always in short supply it seems) would be useful?

During the Fall of 1905 there has been considerable unrest in Russia, which has spilled over into Poland and now into the Baltic republics. In what lays the seeds for the 1917 revolution, the Czar has been trying to both placate the revolutionists/insurgents while at the same time maintaining power.

From the Dec. 19, 1905 NYT is the following description of an insurgency that was "winning" (at least at the time):

MITAU - The troops, in order to avoid annihilation at the hands of the insurgents, have been forced to abandon the country districts and to concentrate at Riga, Mitau, and Libau, where they actually are standing on the defensive, unable to make head against the insurgents.

Several detachments have been defeated. The insurgents, who form great bands, have a regular military organization and are well armed with military rifles and bayonets...

The soldiers retreated in confusion leaving their dead. The latter were horribly mutilated by the insurgents, who gouged out their eyes and cut off their ears and hands.

In another story from the same issue:

ST. PETERSBURG - The War Department is concentrating two army corps to suppress the revolt in the Baltic provinces. According to the Government's information 60,000 Letts are under arms...The insurgents of Livonia derailed on Dec. 14, near Stockmansof, a military train which was carrying reinforcements from Vilna to Riga. They then attacked the survivors of the wreck...Half the troops on board the train surrendered to the insurgents...the remainder of the troops held out for four days. Their position when last heard from was desperate.

Perhaps some would claim this description partly fits what the U.S. military is experiencing in the Iraqi insurgence, but I don't see it that way. If our military did face potential "annihilation" we would be out of there faster than even most anti-war folks could imagine.

On the other hand, perhaps the Iraqi insurgency of today is, in some loosely defined "real terms," as bad as what happened in the Baltics/Russia in 1905.

[An aside: There are numerous reports of thousands of Jews being killed across Russia. These reports have been met with millions of dollars of private relief, especially in the form of evacuation, from around the world. There have also been a few private offers of arms with which the Jewish minority could defend themselves. The descriptions of massacres are stomach-turning in today's world, but were evidently not enough to terribly excite the national governments of the world. One gets the feeling that the world in 1905 was used to strife, killing, and political/social turmoil that is, today, not something the Western world is comfortable/experienced with (that is just my impression, however).]

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:28 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Can we imagine this today?

From the Dec. 19, 1905 NYT:

Washington [D.C.] to-day celebrate[s] the centennial of the establishment of the public schools of the District of Columbia...the President [Teddy Roosevelt] said: "It has been my good fortune that all of my children have received, or are receiving, a portion of their education in the public schools of this District, in this city, and I feel that the advantage to them is incalculable.

I don't have any statistics, but I wonder how many Senators, Representatives, Presidents, and Justices, are sending their children to DC public schools for the "incalculable" advantage. I think I remember the number today being in the single digits, but I can't remember when/where I heard this (perhaps during one of the presidential campaigns - 2000 maybe?).

Posted by Craig Depken at 02:13 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 18, 2005

Especially if it's broke, don't fix it?

From the Dec. 18, 1905 NYT, a letter to the editor that could have been written today:

We have had one contested Presidential election. It menaced the Republic with the renewal of civil war. It was settled by means which every one recognized to be extra-Constitutional, and which great numbers of American people regarded as unconstitutional, and as bringing about an illegal and unjust result. Only eight years later we had a Presidential election turning on a plurality in this State which the change of a few hundred votes would have destroyed...Those classes which, heretofore, have been relied on to maintain and defend these [democratic] principles are, at the present moment, demoralized by recent exposures. Other exposures may await us and a greater demoralization.

In December 1905 there is a contested mayoral election outcome in New York City, and there are several allegations of election fraud, ballot confusion, and so forth. Perhaps it is not possible to truly "fix" the problem of elections - the human element will always befuddle reform efforts - however, our sophistication and technology haven't brought us too far from what this letter writer has to say.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:41 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 17, 2005

Private vs. Public Education c. 1905

In a small article from the Dec. 17, 1905 NYT:

The Committee on High Schools of the Jersey City Board of Education has notified Mgr. Shepard, Vicar General of the Newark Diocese, that rectors of the Catholic churches will be heard this week...on their petition for admission of parochial school graduates, on certificate, to the City High School [emphasis added].

Mayor Fagan is said to be favorable to the application, and there is a belief in many quarters that the Board of Education will yield.

Rather than fighting to keep students in the public education system, as they do today, it seems that in the early 1900s the public education system fought to keep church-educated students out.

In an equally bizarre twist, the church educators wanted to get students into the public education system in the early 1900s but today want to get students out of the public education system.

One would have thought that students appealing to get into the public education establishment would not have been denied, if only because more students in the public schools would increase the political/economic power of the public education establishment (which would yield more rents). Perhaps at this time church education wasn't on par with the government education. which would have increased the work burden of public school teachers and therefore provided an incentive to deny the students access? Hmmm....

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:50 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 14, 2005

If Only He Was Serious

Recently, Oregon Rep Earl Blumenauer remarked, "It has drug millions of Americans into a tax that was never, never, never intended to apply to them." (Source here.)

Now this sounds like a Democrat I might just like. He must, after all, have been talking about the monstrosity known as the federal income tax. The U.S. income tax was enacted in 1913, had marginal rates ranging from 1 to 7 percent, and had large enough personal exemptions that returns amounted to less than 0.5% of the population. (Data source: Slemrod and Bakija, Taxing Ourselves, pp. 23-24) If any tax has "drug millions of Americans into a tax that was never, never, never intended to apply to them" it is the federal income tax.

Alas, a Dummycrat could never say such a thing about leviathan's cash cow. Instead, Blumenauer was referring to the alternative minimum tax which blue-staters have suddenly come to dislike because it will mostly whack their citizens. Of course the inept Republicans are not shrewd enough to leverage the Dems' dislike of the AMT into a deal to, say, permanently reduce dividend and capital gains rates.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:30 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

"It's all so tawdry"

Jonah Goldberg's argument that "American conservatism is overdue for a reformation" is spot on. I especially liked these paragraphs:

But abdication of constitutional responsibilities is the order of the day. State attorneys general, led by New York's Elliot Spitzer, form unconstitutional compacts between the states without the required consent of Congress. Congress passes laws without a moment's concern about their constitutionality, on the novel but deeply held popular conviction that if the Supreme Court doesn't object, it must be OK. Once upon a time, whole bills were thrown out because some senator or congressmen objected that the proposed legislation, however well-intentioned, simply exceeded constitutional authority. Today we legislate by curveball, write whatever laws we like in the hope that the squinty-eyed umpires of the court don't call a strike.

Presidents have been just as bad, including George W. Bush. He campaigned against the proposed McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" in the 2000 election. At the time Bush argued, rightly, that the legislation violated numerous constitutional principles. When the bill wound up his desk, however, in a more egregious form than the earlier versions, Bush signed it. If his erstwhile "serious constitutional concerns" had been justified, the president explained, then, heck, "the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions." But when the law went before the Supreme Court, Bush's Justice Department defended it and the justices in turn upheld it, out of deference to the "government." It's all so tawdry.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:43 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 12, 2005

Smith v. McCain

An edited version of Brad Smith's lecture that he gave for my campus lecture series is now on-line at Reasonfor free. Still you'll need to go to the print/pay version to see that deliciously nasty picture of John McCain.

Smith is a former Federal Election Commission and current law prof at Capital University. (And I'm lobbying him hard to join DoL as a blogger.)

Posted by Robert Lawson at 04:57 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Dear Osama...

Randolph Brandt writes:

Dear Osama, Tell you what, we'll go back to being the last, best hope of earth - leading by example rather than force - and you can go back to living in a ruined system from the 14th century, and we'll see who wins in the long run.

[ATSRTWT]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 01:29 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 08, 2005

How to bring down a government?

Make false hotel reservations? So says a CIA "handbook" for destabilizing the Nicaraguan government. Flickr archive here. I don't know, this seems a little far-fetched - nevertheless, it is somewhat humourous.

Would falsely made hotel reservations really bring down a Marxist government?

Posted by Craig Depken at 06:40 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

December 01, 2005

Don't like the weather gas prices? Call your Congressman!

A friend passes along this funny little piece of junk voice mail (.wav audio).

Is it just me or do I detect an Asian accent? They wouldn't have outsourced this recording would they?

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:40 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 30, 2005

FIRE lobbies Phi Beta Kappa

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is lobbying Phi Beta Kappa with this letter to enlist its support in fighting against campus speech codes.

Uh. Good luck with that.

In related news at my shop:

Today, John Lott (of More Guns, Less Crime fame) is speaking at the Capital University Law School and on the main campus. Rather than engage in a debate about his ideas, there is in fact a concerted effort to organize a boycott among faculty and students of the event. Fair enough I guess but hardly in the spirit of open engagement that universities are supposed to be about.

There have been some rumblings that one of the flyers used to publicize the event is "offensive to Catholics". (I think it's funny!) To my knowlege there has been no complaint filed using our speech code, but this illustrates exactly the type of chilling effect (to use a term that used to be popular with the left) that such speech codes can engender.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:51 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Don’t $#@! with my cable TV

The AP reports on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's statement yesterday to the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on cable and satellite TV "indecency":

If providers don't find a way to police smut on television, Martin said, federal decency standards should be considered.

``You can always turn the television off and of course block the channels you don't want,'' he said, ``but why should you have to?''

One rhetorical question, so many answers. How about: You should have to because you’re a free individual who subscribed to cable or satellite TV in the first place -- it isn't beamed onto your TV screen without your permission. You should have to because it follows from respecting your adult neighbors’ liberty to choose the TV channels they want. You should have to because if you don’t, some cluster of politicians of bureaucrats will treat you and your neighbors like children.

Senator Inouye (D-Hawaii) told the cable and satellite executives at the hearing: “If you don’t come up with an answer, we will.” The power of dictating what TV other adults should watch is never so dangerous as in the hands of those who presume themselves qualified to exercise it.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 10:12 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 27, 2005

Public admiration of Congress c. 1905

Today we are concerned that people show their "admiration" for members of Congress by providing gifts/cash/contributions in return for "assistance" in certain matters, such as Casino licenses and so forth. Such "admiration" is not new, nor is it really practical to try to stop it in all of its forms. A radical idea that is almost guaranteed to work (and is therefore almost guaranteed not to be implemented) would be to remove the motivation for such "admiration," that is, deny the federal government (read: Representatives and Senators) the ability to distribute rents to the chosen/connected. The inability to distribute rents would dramatically reduce the number of people who offer their "admiration."

In light of recent events, the Nov. 27, 1905 NYT presents a problem that today might not seem bad:

Two years ago, after Speaker Cannon was sworn in, an attempt was made to bring in large floral pieces and place them upon the desks of members, but the Speaker issued positive orders to stop the proceeding...A standing resolution of the Senate was adopted during the last session of Congress barring flowers from the Senate chamber...Rivalry of admirers of members of the two houses reached a stage where half the desks were buried in flowers, and the persons they were meant to compliment were completely hidden. This condition led to the ban on them.

House and Senate members being hidden/buried in flowers? That might be an improvement over the ways they seek attention nowadays.

Posted by Craig Depken at 04:34 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 16, 2005

No Bridges to Nowhere?

From a Sierra Club press release (with HT to Drudge):

The Senate Appropriations Committee removed earmarks for two controversial "bridges to nowhere" in Alaska: the Gravina bridge, which would connect Ketchikan to an island of 50 people, and the Knik Arm bridge, which would link Anchorage to a sparsely populated area. The projects have been the subject of strong criticism because of the general backlog of existing roads and bridges in desperate need of repair, especially those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita....

The issue has been particularly controversial for Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) who has served as a strong advocate for the Gravina bridge despite the fact that her family owns 33-acres of undeveloped land 3/4 of a mile from the point where the bridge would touch down. Since the State would now decide how the money would be spent, her father, Governor Frank Murkowski, would now face the same ethical scrutiny.

What a stinky little bit of self-dealing--for some reason I had missed this angle in previous reports on the infamous bridges.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:49 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

President Bush gets it right,

or at least his speechwriter does:

As South Korea began opening itself up to world markets, it found that economic freedom fed the just demands of its citizens for greater political freedom. The economic wealth that South Korea created at home helped nurture a thriving middle class that eventually demanded free elections and a democratic government that would be accountable to the people.

[full text]

I am often asked about what I call the "Singapore" problem. How can a country score so high on "economic freedom" yet score so low on "political freedom"? It is odd. There is a pretty solid positive correlation between the "two freedoms". But there are outliers like Singapore.

My standard reply echoes the President's above. Economic freedom creates weath, and in the long run (and the long run can take a long time to develop) this wealth will generate a demand for greater political freedom. I usually cite South Korea, Taiwan and Chile as examples. I'm still waiting for Singapore (and eventually and hopefully China) to follow the same pattern.

I remain skeptical about the ability to go the other way. That is, there isn't a lot of evidence that political freedom will lead to economic freedom. India is trying but the jury's still out.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:16 AM in Economics ~ in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 15, 2005

Cato's Doug Bandow to talk at OSU

“Should a Free Society Draft its Citizens?”
November 17, 2005
7:30 p.m., Faculty Club Main Dining Room
RSVP to: 614-688-3206, ext. 4 or nov17@jgippm.ohio-state.edu

A debate featuring Lt. General Josiah Bunting, President of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Doug Bandow of the CATO Institute. Moderated by William H. Woods, Esq.

Co-sponsored by the Speech and Debate Team at the Ohio State University and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:20 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 06, 2005

Is the Alito nomination part of a "Constitution in Exile" movement?

In the New York Times, John M. Broder links the Alito nomination to a supposed wider movement to return to pre-FDR jurisprudence, aka the “Constitution in Exile”:

Conservative activists and scholars have expressed the hope that Justice Roberts and Judge Alito, if confirmed, will bring back what they call the authentic Constitution from the exile to which it has been consigned by justices appointed by presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.

Really? Which conserative activists and scholars would that be? Broder continues:

For some liberal legal scholars, that prospect is a fear, not a hope. "Nothing is certain," said Bruce Ackerman, a professor at Yale Law School, "but the confirmation of Samuel Alito carries a clear and present danger of a constitutional revolution on a very broad front, well beyond Roe v. Wade."

Broder fails to mention it, but Randy Barnett, author of Restoring the Lost Constitution, has vigorously protested (in a debate with left-of-center legal scholar Cass Sunstein) that the existence of a “Constitution in Exile” movement is a myth, a bogeyman conjured up by liberals for rhetorical purposes. How curious that Broder doesn’t quote or even name any "conservative activist or scholar" making the “exile” argument he attributes to them; he only quotes a liberal opponent. (Barnett, by the way, is a libertarian, not a conservative.)

I’m beginning to think that Barnett has a legitimate beef.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 11:18 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 03, 2005

Brad Smith was right!

Last year my friend and colleague Brad Smith, then chairman of the Federal Election Commission, took a lot of heat for raising alarm bells about the prospect that bloggers would be subject to campaign finance regulations.

Well he was right:

Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:23 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

November 02, 2005

Bummer

Colorado residents have voted to suspend their Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, the strictest government spending limit in the nation, and give up more than $3 billion in tax refunds to help the state bounce back from a recession.

The approval of the Colorado referendum allows the state to keep an estimated $3.7 billion over five years that otherwise would have been refunded to taxpayers.

A second statewide ballot measure meant to let the state borrow up to $2.1 billion for roads, school maintenance, pensions and other projects narrowly lost.

Full story here. Colorado's suspension of TABOR probably makes it more difficult for other states, including GA, to enact tax and expenditure limitations.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:46 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 31, 2005

Hubris or revenge?

From Townhall.com via The Club for Growth's Blog:

The Budget Reconciliation package (PDF) contains $71.4 billion in new savings but it also spends $32.4 billion. Portions of that new spending were intended to be Katrina relief funds, but it seems Alaskan interests have once again succeeded in redirecting funds (PDF) to the state which has become famous for its "Bridge to Nowhere."

This comes on the heels of attempts by Tom Coburn to kill funding for the famous Bridge to Nowhere. Amazing.

Posted by Craig Depken at 09:03 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 28, 2005

It's high Noonan for the U.S.

In her latest column for OpinionJournal, Peggy Noonan seems to sound like everyone's cranky old uncle, but maybe a little more eloquent:

I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.

She focuses principally on the growing number of problems President face, and thus can't face. But, the presidency is only one manifestation of what I interpret as her fear that the US, and maybe the world, is going to be swallowed up into a big pit. You really have to read it to see how far goes her despair.

Certainly not a Virginia Postrel or a Michael Cox. Why is it that the "dismal" scientists seem to be the most optimistic about the future? I suppose when you see data of rising per capita GDP and lifespans, of falling infant mortality and disease rates, all around the world except in dictatorships, and you know WHY these trends occur, it tends to make one's glasses more rose-colored. In fact, why is it that only those who seem to seek political solutions to every problem are the ones most pessimistic about the future? I suppose if the taxpayers think the world is going to end because of bird flu, high gas prices, Scooter Libby, global warming, then they won't care about paying half their income to Uncle Sam. You can't take it with you, anyway.

So, what comes to my mind that should engender feelings of optimism?
1) Kelo v. New London. Okay, a terrible ruling, but did any of you seriously foresee the large backlash among average Americans against this ruling? A CNN.com quickvote the day after showed a large majority disagreeing with the ruling. 9 judges made the wrong decision, but I'd argue several million properly understand why the decision was wrong, which is heartening to proponents of private property rights.
2) Hurricanes. Okay, lots of damage and horrible behavior by a very small subset of society. As with 9-11, though, the number of volunteers outweighed by huge magnitudes the number of victims. Donors were turned away at shelters because they couldn't handle the quantity of donations.
3) Rosa Parks. Someone should have told her that times are bad now and waited to see how many minutes she laughed.
4) After my hockey game last night, I'm down to 170 pounds.
Of course, the problems associated with items 1-3 are arguably due to government meddling or manipulation. SCOTUS, FEMA, Jim Crow. Do I feel pessimistic about the future because of the private sector? New Coke? Hollywood's lame choices of new movies to present to us? Perhaps, but then again I am not forced to abide by private sector blunders.

We all have more control over our own lives than we think. How does it improve your life being pessimistic? You'd think Ms. Noonan, who wrote a book on John Paul II, would follow his spirit of hopefulness.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 04:53 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 21, 2005

Hey, Senator, is that a threat or a promise?

When I was a child, my mother would respond to my tantrums ("Mom if I can't _____ then I'm going to run away from home!") by asking "Is that a threat or a promise?"

I was reminded of my mother's query (and, no, she didn't really want me to run away) by Alaska Senator Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens in this excerpt from the WaPo:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a staunch opponent of pork barrel spending, tried to block $453 million for two Alaska bridges that had been tucked into the recent highway bill. Coburn wanted to redirect the money to the Interstate 10 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, a major thoroughfare that was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. Ted Stevens, the veteran Alaska Republican, was dramatic in his response. "I don't kid people," Stevens roared. "If the Senate decides to discriminate against our state . . . I will resign from this body."

Of course, there'd just be some other porker elected to replace him; only 15 senators supported Coburn's proposal.

BTW, the bridge to nowhere costs some $4m for each of the 50 residents of the Alaskan island it would serve. Before building the bridge, let's offer them $1m to move. I bet most would take it and we taxpayers would save some $150m.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:41 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 20, 2005

Pre- post-Wilma

Let's hope that Florida dodges a bullet and Hurricane Wilma passes by with minimal damage. Does anyone question that if Naples, Florida (the predicted target) is not so lucky, in the dominant news coverage afterwards there will be far less concern for the victims of this hurricane than for Katrina? This hypothesis rests on the following:

--median household income in New Orleans=$27,133
--median household income in Naples=$65,641
--percent in New Orleans below the poverty line=27.9
--percent in Naples below the poverty line=5.9

If Wilma causes damage in Florida, what sins are the people of Naples committing? Oh, right, now I know.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 04:08 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 14, 2005

Ouch!

Victor Davis Hanson on Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Aside from the unintended irony that the classical historian Arnold Toynbee himself was not always “adroit,” but wrong in most of his determinist conclusions, and that such criticism comes from a high official of an administration that witnessed on its watch the Iranian-hostage debacle, the disastrous rescue mission, the tragicomic odyssey of the terminally ill shah, the first and last Western Olympic boycott, oil hikes even higher in real dollars than the present spikes, Communist infiltration into Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian holocaust, a gloomy acceptance that perpetual parity with the Soviet Union was the hope of the day, the realism that cemented our ties with corrupt autocracies in the Middle East (Orwellian sales of F-15 warplanes to the Saudis minus their extras), and the hard-to-achieve simultaneous high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates, Mr. Brzezinski is at least a valuable barometer of the current pessimism over events such as September 11.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 04:31 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 07, 2005

As the most anarcho blogger here: Hopefully this will NOT change soon.

From the CIA World Factbook's entry on Iraq, last updated on Sept. 25, 2005:

Government type: none

:-)

UPDATE: See also, Somalia

Government type: no permanent national government

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:52 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 06, 2005

Hopefully this will change soon

From the CIA World Factbook's entry on Iraq, last updated on Sept. 25, 2005:

Government type: none

Yeah, about that.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:58 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Asbestos Compensation Fund

Congress is about to establish a victim compensation fund for asbestos injuries.

The Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act establishes a $140 billion privately financed trust fund that would compensate asbestos claimants who agree to give up their right to sue. Asbestos claims have already driven scores of U.S. companies into bankruptcy.

This follows victim compensation funds for 9/11. Katrina and Rita. Apparently, Congress has stumbled on a new way for giving away our money to buy votes. They get two votes for each victim compensated, one from the victim and one from the company relieved of liability.

Posted by at 09:17 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 05, 2005

Rafael Palmeiro - Anecdote Spinner

The FDA contemplates banning the use of celebrity spokespeople for pharmaceutical drugs.

“Such approaches plainly do not reflect a data-oriented approach to promotion and may not be recognized by consumers as anecdotes,” the agency wrote. “FDA is interested in whether and how techniques mislead consumers about the risk-benefit tradeoffs of prescription or restricted medical products.”

Hmmm....Every industry has a "data-oriented approach to promotion." Market research "data" show beer ads with lizards and frogs sell beer, and car ads with beautiful women ogling an aging, balding, bulging man driving a convertible sells more convertibles. The drug companies are using similar data to orient their promotion.

I know, "data-oriented approach" really means that Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertisements are supposed to be rooted in the science of the drug and not the glamour, such as it is, of the drug spokesperson. How many Madison Avenue geniuses can make the science of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) come across in a way that doesn't make everyone sick? None. Which is why Kelsey Grammer tells us about IBS - heck it's Frasier, and if he can get someone to look up IBS on WebMD or some other site, then so much the better.

The FDA doesn't seem worried about celebrity spokespeople for over-the-counter drugs, so what gives? Discussion with colleague Mike Ward brought out a couple of points/questions. First, are doctors and health care activists behind the move to ban celebrity spokespeople? Perhaps doctors are tired of consumers demanding this drug or asking about that drug, and therefore the docs lobby the government to ban DTC advertising and problem will go way. Right? Not likely, but why would docs be allowed this avoidance of consumer interaction but not tire, car, or electronics dealers? This would explain why OTC spokespeople are off the hook - you don't need a doctor to purchase/use/misuse an OTC drug.

Second, competition between drugs will motivate drug makers to provide information about quality/risks to consumers. DTC ads often discuss relative success rates compared to other drugs, and reveal sometimes vivid warnings (the Cialis warning comes to mind) just like car manufacturers tell us about 5 star crash ratings (but alas not too often about 1 star crash ratings) and that four-out-of-five dentists (but never economists) agree. How much competition must there be for this information to be forthcoming? I bet it only takes two or three players in a given drug market, but I haven't seen direct evidence on this point.

I wonder how many people go to their doctor and demand the "purple pill" without having any clue about what the drug is for, it's intended effects, it's potential side effects, etc? I am sure there are a few, but I bet it is a minority. The increased information/knowledge on the consumer's part might prove frustrating and time consuming for the docs, but I have littlle sympathy. I would much rather discuss econometrics with a student who has at least read the book, searched Google, or done anything to try to understand what is going on.

On a different front, it is a shame that needy celebrity drug spokespeople, such as Rob Lowe, Dorothy Hamill, B.B. King, Wilfrid Bromley, Kelsey Grammer, Rafeal Palmeiro and Bob Dole might have to find other ways to make money. How will these people put their children through college?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:02 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 04, 2005

The think tank balance of trade

I worry about a persistent deficit in the balance of trade. No, not in the current account between the US economy and the rest of the world’s economies; that will sort itself out. I mean between the Cato Institute and some other DC institutions. I just got a flier for Cato’s annual monetary conference, scheduled for November 3. Participants include economists from the Fed, the IMF, and the Institute for International Economics (a center-left think tank). Previous conferences have included speakers affiliated with the centrist Brookings Institution. Yet I never see any of these institutions inviting Cato-affiliated speakers to their conferences.

For example, the IIE held a conference on IMF reform ten days ago. The IMF, the AEI, and several central banks were represented on the program, but nobody from Cato.

Searching via Google on [conference site:federalreserve.gov] turns up plenty of Fed conferences. Adding [Cato] to the search turns up many presentations by Fed officials at Cato, but zero cases of a Cato affiliate presenting on a panel at a Fed conference. Ditto for the IMF. Ditto for Brookings (although I did find one instance of a Cato person in a large roundtable discussion at Brookings in 1999.) If I’ve overlooked some pertinent cases, please let me know: comments are open.

The American Enterprise Institute, to its credit, has had Cato speakers at its conference on pension reform and a couple of others in the past few years. So trade between those two institutions seems to be more or less balanced.

Cato might want to think about how much longer it wants to give a platform to institutions that don’t reciprocate.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 10:43 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (3)  ·  TrackBack (0)

October 03, 2005

Statism and Environmentalism

Pictures from Chernobyl [56K warning!] There are some "before" pictures on page two of the comments. There are more eerie pictures here. Part of New Orlean's recent experience can be laid at the feet of a statist philosophy. Hopefully the city will experience a different ultimate fate than that of Chernobyl (adjusted for the magnitude of the disaster).

Even with almost twenty years of decay and neglect, one can imagine what the buildings/infrastructure of Chernobyl looked like. Both seem a far cry from what I remember in the United States growing up in the 1980s. Hopefully we won't see similar pictures of NO in twenty years.

Chernobyl is a glaring example of how statism and environmentalism simply don't mix. Notwithstanding all of the things for which Pres. Bush can be faulted, he did have one good statement in the 2000 debates when he said, in essence, "if it's your land, every day is Earth Day."

Suggested reading: A great book on the other environmental disasters in the former Soviet Union: Ecocide in the U.S.S.R. by Murray Feshbach and Alftan Friendly, Jr.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:35 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

A Tax-Expenditure Limitation for Georgia

The Georgia legislature is considering putting a constitutional amendment limiting government spending on the ballot in November 2006. I have written a paper (drawing heavily on the work of Bob, Josh, and their co-authors' study for an Ohio TEL--thanks guys) supporting the iniative for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. A shorter version of the study has appeared in several Georgia papers including yesteday's AJC (albeit with some chopping and editing). I'll be presenting my paper and some additional material at a legislative hearing next week.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:31 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 29, 2005

"Those hurricanes do say that God is real"

Aha! So it really wasn't global warming, 30-year weather cycles, and the like. The reason hurricanes hit where they did is because of "gambling, sin and wickedness." Of course, everyone knows that Lake Charles, LA and Galveston, TX are the national homes of wickedness and gambling, respectively.

Erwin said the catastrophic storms are part of a pattern evident in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claiming God has removed an umbrella of protection from America due to an increase in abortion, pornography and prostitution.

I wonder if the guy in the grocery cart stole the umbrella of protection.

If God wanted to punish gambling, sin, and wickedness, don't you think he would go after much easier targets? I'm sure you'd find more such behavior per square foot in the state capitals and Congress than in New Orleans or Vegas.

Hat tip to Boortz again. Oh, and BTW, I'm Catholic so don't worry about the destination of my soul, dear readers. I really don't see how statements like the good Senator's are effective in bringing people to Christ. They do seem pretty successful at making us Christians look like boobs.

P.S. Rumor has it that the AWOL New Orleans cops never existed except on the forms directing federal law enforcement money to the city. So who was cashing their paychecks?...

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:00 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 27, 2005

Give me some aloe for this Reich

I just finished watching Stephen Moore and Robert Reich on Kudlow & Company on CNBC, and after both agreeing that the highway and energy bills should be stripped of their pork, the two disagreed about cutting taxes on income, dividends and capital gains, and dying (the estate tax; I didn't know how to end that sentence).

Moore of course was for cutting all, but Reich countered that cutting taxes would be absolutely the wrong move right now. He mentioned the Conference Board's report recently that consumer sentiment dropped sharply in September and that the U of M Survey of Consumers also dropped in August. He then said what I figured he'd say (paraphrasing): "when consumers and the poor are upset the last thing we want to do is enact policies that only help the rich."

Reich, now an econ professor, obviously knows what I know and what I tell my students, that pessimistic expectations can reduce GDP. Of course, it doesn't help when an economics professor on national TV begs the question. Perhaps the poor in New Orleans would not approve of the tax cuts because YOU, Prof. Reich, told them on TV that cuts in dividend taxes, etc., will only help the rich and not them, without any evidence whatsoever to back up your claim. Certainly the poor (or anyone) will interpret news in innumerable ways, but it seems disingenuous to conclude, as a supposed outside observer, that they will loudly disapprove of a policy whose empirical effects you actively distort to a general audience.

Since he's relatively out of politics now, you'd think Reich would have ground all of his axes and could return to the world of impartiality. For you non-economist readers of DoL, please note that only a few of us in the profession are this dismal.

Maybe it's Reich's beard, but I'm reminded of my earlier post about Marx. Why are some people so actively involved in the business of wealth-destruction and regression (philosophically speaking, not OLS)?

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 06:21 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 22, 2005

Gasbag Alert

Governors Seek Gas Price Gouging Probe

Note: The article focuses on eight Democrat governors, but several Republican govs (including Perdue of GA and Blunt of MO) have been huffing and puffing about so-called price gouging.

HT: Lynne Kiesling

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:00 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 20, 2005

Republican Spending/Club for Growth Suit

Brendan Miniter wonders: "Republicans have abandoned small government. Why shouldn't voters abandon them?"

An excerpt:

The conservative Congress has brought back the welfare state.

This isn't all Katrina's fault. Republicans have been kidding themselves for years that they are still the stewards of fiscal conservatism and limited government. The Medicare prescription drug plan is just one example. Run down the list of the some 80 federal entitlements--including Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, Pell Grants and so much more--and it becomes clear that little has been done to take these massive programs off of spending autopilot. Welfare reform and Freedom to Farm in the 1990s were nice, but what has the GOP done lately? In many cases Republicans have ramped up spending and then bragged about it.

What we're seeing in the wake of Katrina is that despite all the winks and assurances to the contrary as they passed the energy and transportation bills, Republicans in Congress don't know how to control spending and are at a loss as to why they even should. That's one way to govern. But if Republicans no longer believe in smaller government, why not put the Democrats back in charge?

Meanwhile, the FEC has filed a lawsuit against the Club for Growth, one of the few true advocates of limited government and the most effective organization at persuading Republicans (and the occasional Democrat) to stick to their limited government principles. Of course there's more at stake than one's tax bill--like McCain-Feingold and other so-called campaign finance reform, the suit also endangers political free speech. Here's hoping the club prevails.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:59 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 18, 2005

On government employment c. 1905

From Page 6 of the Sept. 18, 1905 NYT :

Service under the Federal Government is not an occupation to which we should recommend capable and energetic young men. For the brighter ones the South must afford many opportunities for a better career, a career more profitable and more useful. Not that service of the Nation is necessarily unworthy of the best ability; but as a matter of fact under existing conditions it is apt to be depressing and demoralizing. In the lower ranks the pay is decidedly easier that in business life, and that is, for most men, a benumbing combination. It is true that Government service leaves a man leisure which, if he wish, he may put to excellent use; but those who wish to do so are exceptional.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:57 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 15, 2005

(UN)Constitution Day Bleg

My university is planning a series of events next week in celebration of Constitution Day. A new federal law requires schools receiving federal funding to "implement an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution ...." A summary of the law can be found here (.pdf).

Leaving aside the desirability or (un)constitutionality of this mandate I have a question to ask of the academics out there: (1) Can you tell me what if anything your school has planned for this event? (2) Specifically have any schools out there cancelled any classes to encourage attendance at a particular event?

Comments are open--or e-mail me at rlawson at capital dot edu.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:47 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (5)  ·  TrackBack (0)

Tonight's speech

The President will likely 'apologize" in his speech tonight. He will apologize for the hurricane, the damage, for owning the Texas Rangers baseball team at one time, and for various other sins, real and imagined. It might be nice if he would apologize for declaring roughly the entire country a disaster area.

From FEMA's press release page it is apparent that the so-called "disaster" or "state of emergency" status is a new way to distribute money from the federal treasury to the various states. Lord Keynes must smiling somewhere.

Which state is not in a state of emergency and how do I, personally, get rich off the deal?

Emergency Declaration Ordered for North Carolina, Sep 15
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Montana, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Massachusetts, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Wisconsin, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Ohio, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Nevada, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For North Dakota, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Nebraska, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Minnesota, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Maryland, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Connecticut, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For California, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Idaho, Sep 14
Alabama Disaster Aid Soars to $41 million; Nearly 48,000 Apply, Sep 14
Disaster Assistance To New Yorkers Nears $35 Million, Sep 14
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Virginia, Sep 13
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Arizona, Sep 12
President Approves Emergency Declaration For South Dakota, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For South Carolina, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Alabama, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Pennsylvania, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Missouri, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Kentucky, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Kansas, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Indiana, Sep 10
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Iowa, Sep 10
President signs order declaring Washington disaster relief area, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Washington, D.C., Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Washington, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Oregon, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For New Mexico, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Michigan, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Illinois, Sep 7
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Tennessee, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For North Carolina, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Georgia, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Oklahoma, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Florida, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Utah, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Colorado, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For West Virginia, Sep 5
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Texas, Sep 3
President Approves Emergency Declaration For Arkansas, Sep 3

And that's just for the month of September!!

Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were declared to be states of emergency in August.

Posted by Craig Depken at 08:50 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 14, 2005

I bet the trains run on time in Singapore too.

I've long thought that Thomas Friedman is the best (i.e., least bad) liberal (in the modern corrupted sense of the word) columnist in the MSM. His recent NYT aritcle (registration required) is about the U.S.'s inept handling of Katrina with comparisons to Singapore's efficient government. Here are the final two paragraphs from his column:

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

Ahem, did he say "starved of resources"? Horse pucky! No one can seriously claim, especially in comparison to low tax Singapore, that the U.S. government is "starved of resources." No one. No one.

Inept, yes; corrupt, maybe; starved of resources; no way.

There is much to like about Singapore and much not to like. I find myself having to defend Singapore's high ranking in the economic freedom index all the time in fact. But I would take our inept and possibly corrupt democracy over an efficient and honest dictatorship any day. Holding up dictatorships (even high functioning ones like Singapore's) as examples for the world to follow is dangerous business and Friedman of all people should know better.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:50 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Give me a knife

A news item:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

No, sir, Republicans have passed a series of bloated budgets and presided over an orgy of pork barrel ranging from bridges to nowhere in Alaska to flowers for the Ronald Reagan freeway in California. To suggest otherwise is to reveal yourself as being disconnected from reality.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 12:53 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 12, 2005

Ugly politics department

Bumper sticker seen today: "SHOOT the LOOTERS: Halliburton, KRB, Exxon, Shell"

So, just the executives, or all the employees? The shareholders too?

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 12:35 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 04, 2005

Government Priorities?

The four [reality TV stars visiting a local school] were paid $1,700 apiece for their half-days at the school — from a Smaller Learning Communities grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education. [Story.]

Uh, how many bottles of water can you buy with $6,800?

Posted by Robert Lawson at 07:52 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 03, 2005

History repeats itself?

From the Sept. 3, 1905 NYT, is a story about refugees in the South, fleeing this time Yelow Fever.

Friar's Point, Miss., with a population of 1,500 has been reduced to less than 300 by the flight of refugrees to Memphis and further North. The City of Natchez lost about 30 per cent. by departures, and Vicksburg about 20 per cent.

The story focuses on a "new" form of graft that had developed during the Yellow Fever outbreak and subsequent quarantines - selling health certificates, which were required to leave one town and enter another. Descriptions of scenes eerily similar to what is happening in New Orleans:

Refugees and the general public are suffering. Mothers with babes in their arms have been foced to remain in detention camps at the Arkansas end of the [Memphis] bridge, in some instances for six days, before being allowed to continue through Arkansas.

It seems that, no matter how sophisticated we think we are (what with Starbucks lattes and BMW's and DVDs) in times of crisis there is almost never a complete or well executed plan in place.

There are a lot of people blaming Washington, the President, and Congress, for what seems to be a slow response. I tend to sympathize with the argument that something could have been done before yesterday - after all, wouldn't Bill Gates or Ross Perot be able to make a phone call and have water/food delivered within hours? - but if one sits back and thinks about it for a second, to have a reasonable response in place in less than a week is actually quite impressive.

The lessons to be learned. First, get out if you can. Second, you need five to seven days of food and water. Five to seven days is simply the amount of time it will take to engage the logistics of the plan to get help to any disaster-struck large city.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:31 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

September 02, 2005

Do You Shoot Looters?

Economics is the study of choice. It can also be thought of as the study of consequences. Through the mass media pundits can call for policies without ever having to confront the consequences. The latest policy suggestion from the chattering heads is that the government should have had a zero tolerance policy on looting.

How do you enforce a zero tolerance policy on looting in either Baghdad or New Orleans? You don’t have the resources to arrest and detain looters during an emergency. The only viable means of stopping looting is to shoot looters. Unless you are willing to mount that credible threat, waving guns and issuing warnings will have no effect. Marauding looters scurry past burly cops waving shotguns without a thought. Any attempt to stop the looting is simply a charade for the MSM. Both the cops and the looters know that the use of deadly force will land the cop in jail and the police chief in front of a congressional commission.

There may be times when civic order may be exchanged for a few lives, especially when it saves more lives in the long run. But this is not an easy decision. Looters liberating milk for their babies may be difficult to distinguish from those stealing drugs. In any case, it is the demonstration of force and not who is shot that restores civic order. Those who criticize the government for not having a zero tolerance policy on looting should be forced to confront the consequences. Will they also propose shooting looters?

Posted by at 10:12 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (1)  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 31, 2005

Randy Barnett, Tory Guru?

The Observer reveals that British politician David Davis, considered a front-runner to take over leadership of the Conservative Party, has been favorably impressed by Volokh Conspirator Randy Barnett’s arguments for liberty and the rule of law. Although not the part about liberty to use cannabis.

Pet peeve: I wish newspapers would stop describing libertarian and classical-liberal views, like Barnett’s and the IEA’s, as “right wing” and “conservative”.

Hat Tip: Stephan Kirchner at Institutional Economics.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 02:01 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 30, 2005

Oh Boo Hoo

The military transport plane carrying Senators Lugar and Obama is delayed three hours by Russian border police. International incident ensues. Russia apologizes. [Story.]

I meanwhile miss the last flight to Columbus from Boston last week in no small part because of the American border police. This causes me a 13 hour delay in getting home. Where's my freakin' apology?

Posted by Robert Lawson at 03:15 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 26, 2005

GDP as political football?

This CBO Report, which I haven't read in its entirety, provides the following table of projections:

If this projection is at all accurate does GDP become less of an issue in future national political campaigns? JFK's arguments that the U.S. economy was in the garbage heap fell flat last time around. In the future, do the Dems and Repubs figure out that when the economy is 16 trillion dollars - 19 trillion dollars it will be harder to argue that the economy is in the "worst shape in fifty years" and so forth while keeping a straight face?

Posted by Craig Depken at 03:57 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 19, 2005

New London Strikes Back

The secondary effects of the SCOTUS ruling keep coming in.
First, several state governments seem to be scrambling to enact anti-eminent domain legislation. Score one for the good guys.
Second, though, it appears that New London is getting even more brash. The Fairfield County Weekly reports that the city of New London:
a) claims that, thanks to the ruling vindicating the city's condemnation of their land, the homeowners have been living on city property and thus owe the city back rent,
b) claims that said homeowners have been living on city property ever since the city condemned their property back in 2000, and
c) therefore the city owes the homeowners "just compensation" according to the fair market value of the homes. But the fair market value in 2000, not today.

So, not only do these homeowners get kicked off their property for no good reason, not only do they not receive just compensation, but they also owe several thousands of dollars in back rent.

An interview in Reason discusses the problem of senility among members of the Court, and whether there should be an age limit. Interestingly, the oldest is Stevens at 85, who is younger than the 87-year-old woman whom he helped get kicked out of her childhood New London home.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:05 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 11, 2005

Sadly, This Is No Surprise

"The federal government used hurricane aid money to pay funeral expenses for at least 203 Floridians whose deaths were not caused by last year's storms, the state's coroners have concluded.

The deaths include a Palm Beach Gardens millionaire recovering from heart surgery who died two days before Hurricane Frances; a Miami baby not yet born when the storm arrived; and a Port Charlotte man who died of cirrhosis and heart failure five months after Hurricane Charley."

Full story here.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:39 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2005

The Kamehameha Schools case

May a private, nonsectarian, commercially operated school, which receives no federal funds, purposefully exclude a student qualified for admission solely because he is not of pure or part aboriginal blood?

So asked Judge Bybee in his majority opinion in Doe v. Kamehameha Schools. In a 2-1 decision handed down last week, a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said no, the school may not exclude students on grounds of ancestry. The schools are appealing the decision. The Kamehameha Schools were established with a bequest from the Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Paki Bishop (1831-1884).

Some 15,000 Hawaiians took to the streets of Honolulu on Saturday to protest the decision. Governor Linda Lingle was among the speakers denouncing the court decision.

I personally don’t like the idea of race- or ancestry-based admissions, no matter which way the preferences cut, but hey, it’s not my school. Seems to me that admission policy should be totally at the discretion of the owners or trustees of any privately funded school.

I hope some of the bright lawyers at the Volokh Conspiracy will weigh in on the legal issues involved in this case.

An interesting sidenote I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere: the founding trust documents for the Kamehameha Schools – the wills and codicils of Bernice Pauahi Paki Bishop -- are available online. The will does not specify admissions preference for students of Hawaiian ancestry. But it does specify that school faculty must be Protestants:

I also direct that the teachers of said schools shall forever be persons of the Protestant religion, but I do not intend that the choice should be restricted to persons of any particular sect of Protestants.

I can’t find any information on the schools' site as to whether the trustees still carry out or defend that preference.

Comments are open.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 12:49 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)  ·  TrackBack (0)

Unions' Anti-Wal-Mart Stunts

In today's WSJ, Alan Murray writes on two unions anti-Wal-Mart publicity stunts.

My favorite part:

"To date, there is no sign this strategy is hurting Wal-Mart's sales. Wake-Up Wal-Mart boasts 68,000 registered members -- roughly the same number of people who walk into a Wal-Mart every five minutes."

Lots of people voting with their feet and their wallets.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 11:24 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

August 06, 2005

Florida State Wombats?

A little news item for your "political correctness" file:

NCAA Bans Indian Mascots, Nicknames From Postseason Events

Are they going to stop the FSU fans from doing the warchant too? I'd like to see the NCAA try that.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 03:59 PM in Politics ~ in Sports  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 29, 2005

Rational Voter Sighting

From politicsphilly.com (scroll down):

A short blurb about election day hijinks in the August 1st edition of Business Week:

An Philadelphia they're calling it "The Cheese Caper." A Deputy City Commissioner asked the District Attorney's office to investigate who passed out flyers on primary election day -- May 17 -- promising free cheese to voters for particular candidates. The flyers are topped by a handwritten scrawl, "Come Out + Vote," adding below, "For Who Ever." In type, they say "Free Cheese." The flyers list two candidates, both Democrats, running in an area dominated by the 300-plus-unit Hill Creek housing project. "This guy comes to the polls, votes, and asks us for his free cheese," says Eileen Kleindienst, a Republican judge of elections. Geraldine Hacker, the Republican official who sent Kleindienst's complaint to the DA, thought the food might be from a government nutrition program.

The woman who wrote the flyers, Hill Creek tenant council President Gerri Robinson, doesn't think she did anything wrong. "The people around here, you can't get them to come out and do nothing unless you're giving them something," she says. Besides, she adds, the flyers worked: The two cases of cottage cheese were gone by day's end.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 03:19 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 27, 2005

Those who can, do. Those who can't, can't do it alone.

I was listening to Rush on the drive to lunch, and a caller who was a teacher expressed support for the No Child Left Behind Act because, and I'm paraphrasing, "it makes parents more accountable for their child's education. We teachers can't do it alone."

Now, I'm all for accountability in general, and in your child's education in particular. But it made me wonder why we so readily accept that type of statement as an excuse for the demonstrably horrible service from the bureaucracy providing this "public" good.

Have you ever heard the following:

Mailman: "You know, you really should take this letter and deliver it yourself. It's just across town. We mailmen can't do this job by ourselves."

Dogcatcher: "Sorry sir, but you have to be more responsible for the stray dogs in your own neighborhood."

Military: "You all really need to start taking more responsibility for protecting your own country. We can't do it alone."

So why do we let public school gov't employees get away with it?

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 01:55 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 25, 2005

I am Not a Federalist!

The Demoncrats are conducting a witch hunt. Soon every lawyer and judge will be dragged in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and asked. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Federalist Society?”

According to the New York Times.

The status of Judge Roberts in relation to the conservative Federalist Society also remained unclear. "He has no memory of ever joining or paying dues to the Federalist Society," Mr. McClellan said, while conceding that the nominee had taken part in events sponsored by the society.

There have been conflicting news reports over the past few days as to the extent of Judge Roberts's association with the society, formed two decades ago by conservative judges and lawyers hoping to counter what they saw as growing liberalism in the courts.

Judge Roberts declined to answer questions on the topic today on Capitol Hill, which he visited for a fourth day of get-acquainted meetings with senators. He conferred with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

To “Bottle-opener” Senator Ted Kennedy we can only ask, “Have you no decency, Sir?”

Possible substitutions
Federalist = Communist
"Bottle-opener" Ted Kennedy = "Tail-gunner" Joe McCarthy

Update from the Washington Post, Roberts may have been a card carrying member of the Society.

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly said that he has no memory of belonging to the Federalist Society, but his name appears in the influential, conservative legal organization's 1997-1998 leadership directory.

Posted by at 05:36 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 19, 2005

One economist's prediction

Whomever Pres. Bush nominates for the Supreme Court this evening, the Democrats will protest and howl that they want a uniter not a divider, that they don't want extremists on the court, and therefore it is unfortunately necessary for the Senate Democrats to invoke the judicial filibuster.

The Republican response will be interesting. Do they pull the trigger on the "constitutional option" or do they try to buy off the Democrats with something/someone else?

What if Bush nominated someone who doesn't have a law degree? I know it won't happen but that too would be interesting.

Posted by Craig Depken at 07:34 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 15, 2005

Prison and Radical Islamism

Mona Charen points out that prisons are breeding grounds for radical Islamism. It is especially appealing to violent and disaffected young men, many of whom are serving sentences for drug convictions. Is this another unintended consequence of the war on drugs? Would you rather live next to a druggie or a radical terrorist? I prefer the individual who is more directed at killing himself, rather than others. Maybe it is time for Huxley’s soma dream.

Posted by at 11:06 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 14, 2005

Take Back The Memorial Petition

To Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation:

We, the undersigned, believe that the World Trade Center Memorial should stand as a solemn remembrance of those who died on September 11th, 2001, and not as a journey of history's "failures" or as a debate about domestic and foreign policy in the post-9/11 world. Political discussions have no place at the World Trade Center September 11th memorial, and the International Freedom Center honors no one by making excuses for the perpetrators of this heinous crime. The memorial should be about what happened that day, about the brave heroes who risked their lives so selflessly, and about the innocent lives that were lost... nothing more.

Sign Petition

Posted by at 09:02 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Hillary Clinton channels Tipper Gore

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart gave a hard time to author Bernard Goldberg about his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, on the grounds that Goldberg was ragging on “mostly powerless” celebrities who are merely contributing to cultural crassness and shrillness. Goldberg’s real targets, Stewart advised, should be people in government with real power over our lives.

Although it’s always easy to fault an author for not writing a different and more important book, Stewart has a point. What we really need to worry about are people like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, who is threatening legislation to keep violent video games like Grand Theft Auto out of teenagers’ hands. Wrote Clinton to the Federal Trade Commission today:

There is no doubting the fact that the widespread availability of sexually explicit and graphically violent video games makes the challenge of parenting much harder. I will be exploring legislation to help parents with this challenge when it comes to purchasing video games soon and I hope you will work with me to ensure that the ratings system - the best tool parents have to filter this material - is meaningful.

The games ratings system is currently non-governmental, run by an industry group. Clinton is advocating that the federal government forcibly take over the system. Carjack it, you might say.

I’m willing to grant that Grand Theft Auto – where the objective is to steal cars and kill people who get in your way – is morally corrupting. But as a parent, I found it fairly easy to keep such junk out of my young childrens’ hands: I didn’t buy them a video game system. Even the most benign video games are typically mind-numbing and develop only the trigger finger. Get your kids a mind-exercising PC instead, and filter the internet as you deem appropriate.

I wonder whether the Daily Show will give a hard time to Senator Clinton’s proposal. Btw, the show's studio guest tonight will be the generally sensible Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (which I recommend).

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 03:47 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 13, 2005

No pork for Boise

In the course of a fairly sensible op-ed about homeland security, former Senator (D-Missouri) Tom Eagleton comes clean about having been a pork-barrel spender in office:

Even Boise, Idaho - not exactly high on al-Qaida's list - is getting antiterrorism money. In other words, we are treating homeland security money like pork-barrel spending, and pork goes where pork-loving senators - as I was and Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond is - guide it.

Now that he’s out of office, of course, he’s against pork. Or at least against some pork. Note the curious clause that begins the next sentence:

Pork-barrel spending may have its place in politics, but not when it comes to fighting terrorism, which is literally a life-or-death matter.

Applying the “life-or-death matter” criterion, I infer that pork likewise has no place in spending on: national defense, VA hospitals, medical research, highway safety, water projects …

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 07:10 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

Welfare: The Root Cause of Terrorism

We will soon find out more about the terrorists (yes MSM, this is the correct term) that attacked London. It is likely that all of these characters have probably spent a considerable amount of time on the dole. You might want to recall this article from 2001 in Slate by Mickey Kraus that documented the link between welfare payments and terrorism. The logic is pretty straight forward. If you are looking for a job to feed your family, you don’t have time to read terrorist literature, mope around the mosque, or build bombs.

Kraus doesn’t include the US and UN subsidies to Palestinian refugee camps or government subsidies to student terrorists. Only a wealthy society like ours can support terrorism in the style it has become accustomed to. We like to blame the Saudis for supporting terrorism, but they are pikers compared to the Western governments. If we include all transfer payments in support of terrorism, the likelihood that a terrorist has received some government support is no doubt close to 100 percent.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the French North African charged with conspiracy in connection with the 9/11 attack, became an Islamic radical living in London "while drawing welfare benefits and studying economics," Newsday reports.

Update via Charles Krauthammer on the killer of Theo van Gogh

A modest beginning might be removing the likes of Sheik Omar -- and Bouyeri -- from the teat of the infidel taxpayer: "He [Bouyeri] had the time to plan this," van Gogh's mother told the court, "because for three years he was on unemployment benefits." Decadence is defined not by a civilization's art or music but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.

Update: I told you so.

TWO fugitive London bombers have been living in Britain on state benefits, it emerged last night.
Somalian Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, received £23,000 in housing benefit over six years while living at a flat in Southgate, North London, which was raided yesterday.

Flatmate Muktar Said-Ibrahim tried to bomb a bus.

Posted by at 09:42 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

July 02, 2005

Nixon to Bangladesh: Drop dead

Recently declassified Nixon White House tapes show Tricky Dick to have been even more of an inhumane power-abuser than previously realized. While (West) Pakistan’s military slaughtered an estimated 3 million civilians in trying to put down the secession of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Nixon and Henry Kissinger continued to aid and support Pakistan’s military dictator General Yahya Kahn, apparently because (1) Nixon didn’t like India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi, who favored Bangladeshi independence, and (2) Nixon had “special feelings” for General Khan, who was one of Nixon’s communication links to Red China.

Most incredibly, Nixon and Kissinger were willing to risk a superpower confrontation to stop the government of India (being flooded with Bangladeshi refugees) from sending troops over the border to help Bangladesh win its independence. (India eventually did, Pakistan quickly surrendered, and Bangladesh became independent.) In the words of Asia Times reporter Debasish Roy Chowdhury, Nixon

to put India in a spot, even went to the extent of pleading with the Chinese to initiate troop movements toward the Indian border in coordination with Pakistan, and assured it support in case the Soviet Union jumped into the fray. Near the end of the war, in a highly secret meeting on December 10, 1971, Kissinger pitched the idea to Chinese ambassador to the UN, Huang Ha. The declassified documents reveal that China took a couple of days to think about it and finally said it was not game, much to Kissinger's disappointment.

When the US consul general on the scene protested that the US should be denouncing the Pakistani atrocities, Nixon cabled back: "Don't squeeze Yahya at this time." And Nixon wasn’t just limited to talk:

The US government supplied military equipment worth $3.8 million to the Pakistani dictatorship after the genocide started, even after telling Congress that all shipments to the regime had ceased. Throughout the war, the US government tried everything in its power to hinder India. The US policy included support of Pakistan in the United Nations, where it branded India as the aggressor, and putting pressure on the Soviets to discourage India, with the threat that the US-Soviet detente would be in jeopardy if Moscow did not play ball. When war broke out, Nixon promptly cut off economic aid to India, and at one point dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to "intimidate" India. When nothing worked, it pleaded [with] China to join the war to scare off India.

Incredible. Thank goodness the US government has stopped playing geopolitical power games in Asia. Oh, wait ...

HT: William Marina at Liberty and Power.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 04:34 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

June 30, 2005

Here's dirt in your eye

Hat tip to Boortz again: one of his reading assignments includes this link to a blog site: "Let’s throw some serious sand into the gears of the government machine. They have asked for real property, so let us send it to them," and provides addresses of the five Justices and some of the New London bad guys to which you can send dirt from your own property. I'm thinking of shipping off some Louisiana soil myself to Justice Bow Tie.

Also, I was immensely relieved to hear this morning on NPR's "Morning Edition" that officials ruled Roy's (of Siegfried and Roy) tiger to be innocent in his mauling. Not very exciting, but click on the "listen" button, and at the 20-second point, hear the dismissal of another possible reason for the tiger attack (prior to dismissing "a scheme by animal rights activists"). I guess W talking about the "Streak of Evil" would just confuse people.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 09:24 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2005

This is too good to be true, but wouldn't it be great!?

Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land. [Press Release.]

[HT: Brad Smith]

BTW, Craig is right (see below). That Google Earth thing is seriously cool. I just took a birdseye tour of the Grand Canyon including the hiking route I'm planning for April '06.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 05:45 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

Who was John T. Flynn you ask?

My good friend, former DoL blogger, and Ashland University history professor John Moser, has a new book out titled Right Turn: John T. Flynn And The Transformation Of American Liberalism. I just bought a copy. Get yours while you can!

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:48 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

June 27, 2005

Iraq War Casualties

This is an interesting depiction of Iraqi War casualties from March 2003 through June 2005. It is apparent that the "insurgency" is mainly concentrated in the so-called Sunni triangle - with lots of activity in Bagdhad, obviously.

There seem to be many in the government that are talking down our military. This is not terribly surprising because the "war" isn't a galvanizing war such as WWI, and especially WWII. It is not clear that any war we might be involved in would be as "galvanizing" as previous conflicts. Whether sitting members of Congress made a habit of stating that "we are losing" in WWI, or WWII, I don't doubt that it happened. I know that there was continual bickering during the Civil War - but it is still bad form in my opinion.

At a 2000 Liberty Fund conference I argued that the U.S. didn't have the stomach for D-Day style tactics and casualties. Our capital intensive military, which became necessary after the draft was ended, had basically reduced the casualty count to such an extent that it would be difficult to imagine the U.S. population "accepting" 4,000 dead in a day.

I wonder if we wil see more calls for our extrication from Iraq given the female casualties we suffered last week. This was the center of another discussion between myself and a few others at the Liberty Fund conference - whether the U.S. military should place women in combat situations. My claim was that sufficiently high female casualties would turn popular support against any war (rather than against withdrawing female soldiers and marines), which if known by our potential enemies would make our military a less effective deterrent.

If female casualties mount in Iraq, it will be interesting to see if those who insisted on women having equal access to military MOS's and enemy fire are the first to insist that we must withdrawl because of female casualties.

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:43 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2005

Has Tom Cruise been reading Tom Szasz?

Shades of "The Myth of Mental Illness": The star of War of the Worlds challenges psychiatry and its methods, in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show. Cruise had recently criticized Brooke Shields for revealing that she had taken an anti-depressant drug for her post-partum depression, and Lauer asks him to explain:

Cruise: I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed with psychiatry. And when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn't believe in psychology.

And as far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think, here's a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo science.

Lauer: But Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressants or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn't that enough?

Cruise: Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Aderol is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?

[...]

Lauer: I'm just saying. But aren't there examples where it works?

Cruise: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even — you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?

ADDENDUM: I didn't mean to suggest more of an overlap between Szasz and Scientology than really exists. As is clearly explained here, while the religion of Scientology shares some "anti-psychiatry" conclusions with the libertarian Szasz, their arguments are quite distinct.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 12:42 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 23, 2005

Who cares about property rights? American Idol is on!

Sigh. I'm sure I won't be the first on this site to express anger/sadness at this decision today.
I should have looked more closely at house prices in Nassau last year at the APEE conference.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:21 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (4)

June 19, 2005

Fahrenheit 451

With our own politicians comparing U.S. prisons to the Soviet gulag it is sobering to hear from someone like Pavel Litvinov who was there. It is also sad to know that Fahrenheit 451 (not 911) is real.

The man took Sinyavsky to the furnace room, where a group of people were squatting in the dark recesses. In the light of the furnace flame, one of the men got up and started to recite the biblical passages by heart. When he stopped, the stoker, an old man, said: "And now you, Fyodor, continue." Fyodor got up and recited from the next chapter. The whole text of the Bible was distributed among these prisoners, ordinary Russians who were spending 10 to 25 years in the gulag for their religious beliefs. They knew the texts by heart and met regularly to repeat them so that they would not forget. And this happened in 1967, when the gulag had become smaller and the Soviet regime milder than it had been under Stalin.

Posted by at 10:31 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

June 16, 2005

Hamilton Naki

The Economist has the 'rest of the story' (with apologies to Paul Harvey) about the famed first heart transplant by South African doctor Christiaan Barnard in 1967. The heart was taken from the donor body (a white woman) by -- gasp! --a black man, Mr. Hamilton Naki. Later Dr. Barnard transplanted it into the recipient to the acclaim of the world.

Naki was a highly skilled surgeon but because he was black he was not allowed to operate on whites in Apartheid South Africa. The hospital skirted this law by hiring (and paying) him as a gardner. Naki just died at the age of 78.

But get this. Mr. Naki would not be allowed to operate in the United States either--not because he is black of course, but because...

Read More »

he never went to medical school or even college! It turns out he worked his way up the ranks at the medical center by first assisting with operations on animals and then on people. He was so skilled that he eventually trained a good portion of the white doctors on the intricacies of heart and liver transplantation.

« Close It

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:32 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

June 15, 2005

Welcome to Flavor Country

Our local dog trainer reports this morning that our governor's plan to boost teacher (including professor) salaries through a cigarette tax fell through. It was a legislative bill proposed by Blanco, but she couldn't muster the votes and thus withdrew the plan. I guess we won't get to see whether we could be taxed into prosperity.
Ho hum, except that (and I hope I'm not airing dirty laundry) we here at LSUS had been "persuaded" by higher-ups to support the cigarette tax since it would "free funds from the operating budget for faculty salaries." Among the documents included in the persuasive email were some criticizing Louisiana's high number of smokers, some citing studies showing fewer teenagers starting smoking when prices rise, and then some arguing that the tax would help bring Louisiana education spending more in line with neighboring states.
While I hope the contradiction in simultaneously wanting less smoking but more smoking tax revenues is obvious to most thinking people, I sent an email to the rest of the business faculty asking if I should start smoking now, since it would increase the chance that I got a raise. My buddy in marketing then asked how we could make money off of alcoholism.
Also, an unrelated story today about a local firm's protection of their property rights. Hehe, I love these kinds of stories.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:27 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (17)

June 07, 2005

Bush/Kerry College Grades

Well, well--dumb George made fewer Ds than smart John. Overall, their grade point averages were similar.

Story here; ht Drudge.

Of course, Bush and Kerry went to college before the heydey of grade inflation. For more see gradeinflation.com; scroll down for a chart of GPAs 1967-2002.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:41 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (36)

June 06, 2005

Oinky, Oinky, Oinky

Yesterday's Rome News-Tribune reports (sorry no link) that Floyd County (home of Rome and Berry College) will get $299,400 in homeland security funds from the state of GA. File this one away for next time the crowd under the gold dome in Atlanta start pleading poverty and pitching tax increases.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:10 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (31)

June 03, 2005

History 101

Here's an interesting interview with University of Dayton historian, Larry Schweikart about his new (co-authored) book, A Patriot's History of the United States

[Hat tip: Ann Reed]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 02:20 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (31)

June 02, 2005

The Anti-Wal-Mart Jihad Continues

From today's AJC:

Union organizers, lawmakers and community activists Wednesday accused retail giant Wal-Mart of failing to provide affordable health care coverage to its low-wage workers and leaving a $13 million-a-year bill for Georgia taxpayers.

"In state after state, Wal-Mart is directly shifting its health care costs and responsibilities to the taxpayers," said Steve Lomax, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1996. "It's wrong, and it needs to stop."

I've dealth with this one before--see here.

And for today's F in economics we have this paragraph:

Richard Ray, president of Georgia State AFL-CIO, said many Wal-Mart employees earn $17,000 to $18,000 a year and can't afford to pay 10 percent of their salary for health care under the company plan.

If union busybodies succeed in mandating that Wal-Mart include "health care" as part of its compensation package those folks making $18k per year in cash would make less, probably about 10% less. Repeat after me, incidence depends on the elasticities of supply and demand ...

Another snippet:

It's based on a Georgia Department of Community Health survey, showing 10,261 of the 166,000 children covered by Georgia's PeachCare for Kids health insurance in September 2002 had a parent working for Wal-Mart Stores — far more than the state's other large employers.

If unionists and "community activists" really care about workers (rather than sticking it to Wal-Mart) they'd actually encourage more employers to pay cash, offer few medical benefits, and have workers get health coverage from taxpayers (who are probably higher income and pay higher taxes than do Wal-Mart employees). That way workers would have $18k in pay plus medical coverage.

Hmmm... I wonder if I should start a Wal-Mart category. Maybe I should stop gnawing on this old bone.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:48 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (3)

Flat Tax Hypocrisy

This paragraph appears in the USA Today article quoting Prof. Gwartney:

"But Social Security can be a tough tax to dodge because it is a pure flat tax, skimmed off the top before deductions. It applies to all income earned for services rendered, so its reach is extremely broad, covering endorsements and bonuses."

This seems to suggest that applying a pure flat tax to wealthy folks incomes would be a good thing because it is a tough tax to dodge. How come we never hear this argument in discussions of switching from the current tax montrosity to a flat tax? If soak the rich types think making SS taxes difficult for wealthy to dodge then why shouldn't they make the same argument for reforming the income tax? Methinks the goal here is simply to raise or eliminate the SS earnings ceiling.

ADDENDUM: Nice posts Josh--the Mellencamp one is especially good.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:53 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

May 31, 2005

So Deep Throat wasn't Pat Buchanan after all!

Story here.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:57 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

May 27, 2005

Viagra: It's Not Just for New York and Florida Sex Offenders

As Tyler Cowen of MR posted recently, Medicaid has paid for FL and NY sex offenders to receive Viagra. Today's Atlanta rag reports that Georgia has also done so.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:56 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

May 25, 2005

It's a Dynamic World

Yesterday the House passed a bill calling for the use of embryos created for IVF but never implanted to be used for stem cell research. The underlying idea is that these "excess embryos" would be discarded so they might as well be used for research purposes. Well here's one (of perhaps many) reason not to do so--it's a dynamic world. Using so-called excess embryos for research might create an incentive to produce more IVF embryos thereby leading to more embryos being destroyed.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:19 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (3)

May 21, 2005

The costs of Iraq

Because I’ve repeatedly criticized Paul Krugman’s columns on Social Security, I should note for the sake of fairness that I think his recent column on Iraq is basically right. Saddam was a bad guy, but not a threat to the United States (neither via WMDs, nor via terrorism). The invasion and occupation have been very costly. The sensible course is to get out sooner rather than later.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 12:12 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

May 16, 2005

Haven't heard this interpretation 2

Re: Newsweek retraction of Koran-flushing story.
Again, liberals seemed to enjoy publicizing the possibly fake story that American interrogators flushed a Koran (CNN says Quran, not sure when the spelling changed) down a toilet; conservatives seem to enjoy flushing another seemingly-biased journalist from the MSM underbrush, and are rightly upset that the story apparently sparked anti-US backlash that led to riots and death in parts of the Muslim world. Michael Savage today said that Newsweek should fire the reporter and the victims who died in the rioting should sue the reporter.
I've yet to hear anyone in the media place the blame for the riots and deaths on, oh I don't know, the rioters themselves? Do we go on the assumption that a specific type of story is inevitably going to lead trigger-happy Muslims to kill people around them, and thus blame the writer or publisher of the story? It's tragic that people lost their lives, but the only harm Newsweek should suffer is loss of readership and prestige as another example of the growing line of discredited Dan Rathers, Jayson Blairs, etc. It always annoys me when people search far and wide for guilty parties (liberal media, capitalists, whatever) and never blame the actual criminals for their crimes.
You'd think someone at Newsweek would have had their eyebrows raised at the mechanics of flushing a Quran down a toilet. My house has low flow toilets (you're welcome, earth) and I don't think I could flush a whole Koran down it even after putting it in a blender.
Comments are open again.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:42 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (1)

Haven't heard this interpretation 1

Re: Republican anger over Democratic Senators filibustering judicial appointments.
I always get a little curious whenever I seem to interpret news stories differently from both the liberals on NPR and the conservatives on our AM stations. You'd think as a libertarian I'd be used to it. Liberals argue that Bush's nominees are radical right-wingers and that the Senate has a duty to prevent such types from being appointed to federal benches, and are simply using their well-known power to filibuster. Conservatives argue that this is the first time in history that judicial nominees who already enjoy support from a simple majority in the Senate have been stymied by a minority of the other party.
I skimmed through Article I, and didn't see anything in the Constitution about the Senate having the power to filibuster, but Jimmy Stewart couldn't have been wrong. How can conservatives, who generally argue for a strict interpretation of the Constitution, be upset at Senate Democrats exercising their well-known power to filibuster? Further, conservatives usually defend the non-filibuster practice by pointing to historical precedent of up-or-down votes on judicial nominees. But, they also criticize Democrats who support the status quo on Social Security and argue that historical precedent shouldn't override the need to fix the system.
I haven't researched the nominees much, but I think the filibuster threat is stupid because the nominees seem to be more akin to Scalia than Pats Robertson or Buchanan; the Dems just seem to be throwing a temper tantrum since they lost two Presidential elections in a row.
I'll leave comments open for people better versed in Constitutional law than I.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 11:27 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (1)

May 11, 2005

The need for a secular political philosophy

Jonah Goldberg on NRO:

In other words, while Christianity may be a complete philosophy of life, it is only at best a partial philosophy of government. [...] I don’t mind at all a president who has a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s just that I don’t think Jesus is going to have useful advice about how to fix Social Security.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 05:53 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (21)

May 10, 2005

"I love freedom more than I hate cigarette smoke"

Those are the admirable words of my state senator Preston Smith. Alas he was in the minority; the legislature passed and the governor signed a state ban (with a few loopholes) on smoking in public places. Kudos to Senator Smith for the good fight.

Better news--GA has repealed its requirement that one give a fingerprint when getting a drivers license. Better yet would be abolishing drivers licenses.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:37 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (25)

May 09, 2005

Lobbyists are Constitutionalists?

On the way to kung fu class on Friday I was listening to NPR (either that or Paul Harvey, what would you pick?) and heard a story on lobbyist Jack Abramoff who apparently is another fuff in the Tom DeLay kerfuffle. Inevitably, this story was followed by a "commentary" by one Jay Bryant who argued that lobbyists protect the only part of the first amendment that never gets any rousing support. Sure, we all want to protect freedom of religion, speech, the press, and assembly, but who protects the right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances?" Why, lobbyists do, of course.
Apparently "grievances" are felt by tobacco and other farmers, and they all need agriculture subsidies to redress the harm. Not sure exactly what the grievance might be. And here I thought lobbyists were better described by Bastiat (paraphrasing from memory here): "where everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else." Thanks NPR! Those "commentaries" of yours certainly never display bias. Only Fox News does that.

Posted by Tim Shaughnessy at 12:59 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (25)

April 25, 2005

Libertarianism 101

Got 5 minutes to spare? Check out this seriously cool Flash animation introduction to the libertarian philosophy courtesy of ISIL.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:51 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (5)

April 20, 2005

Viva il Papa!

As soon as Cardinal Ratzinger appeared on the balcony at St. Peter’s, the media began a trashing of the new pope. An excellent article on the new pope that cuts through the liberal smoke screen has been posted on NRO by Michael Novak. Pope Benedict XVI is no reactionary cretin. As seen from the Left, his major fault is that he opposes totalitarian leftist movements that attempt to eliminate debate.

In today’s liberal democracies, Ratzinger has observed, the move to atheism is not, as it was in the 19th century, a move toward the objective world of the scientific rationalist. That was the “modern” way, and it is now being rejected, in favor of a new “post-modern” way. The new way is not toward objectivity, but toward subjectivism; not toward truth as its criterion, but toward power. This, Ratzinger fears, is a move back toward the justification of murder in the name of “tolerance” and subjective choice.

The new pope’s first battles may be closer to home than most people expect. We need only observe what is going on at Catholic universities to see that moral relativism is a significant challenge to those who favor democracy

Posted by at 04:30 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (78)

April 19, 2005

Think Tank's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew

The WaPo reports,

For years, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized the autocratic rule of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, denouncing his anti-Semitism, his jailing of political opponents and his "anti-free market currency controls." Then, late in the summer of 2001, the conservative nonprofit Washington think tank began to change its assessment...

ATSRTWT

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:59 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (24)

April 17, 2005

Free speech or fund raising?

Speakers with highly politicized and biased points of view currently bounce from campus to campus receiving large publicly subsidized lecture fees. These rote speeches remain the same throughout the entire lecture circuit. Moreover, the speeches are widely reported in the press so that there is little new information to be gained at any of these gatherings. The purpose of these lectures is to politicize; it is not to inform. The effect is to channel public money into causes that the majority of voters may find reprehensible.

Were these lecture fees set in a private market I would have no problem with them. However, these fees are mainly set by agents who are not accountable to the public. I find it difficult to justify a lecture fee of $20,000, or even $5,000, for a persuasive speech, when similar expression can be found on C-span at minimal cost. One way of getting a more diverse platform of speakers is to limit publicly supported fees to travel plus $1,000. Is there a problem with this proposal?

Posted by at 04:14 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)  ·  TrackBack (33)

April 14, 2005

Those in glass houses?

Here is a partial(?) list of congress-people with relatives on the payroll. Tom DeLay is the latest Republican to be on the hot seat, but seems to have done little more than what others have done (not a great excuse, but hey it's Washington) - what DeLay has really done is get the statists to hate him. I don't have much love for the Republicans, but you would think they would get tired of being "forced" out because the statists used the political/media machine to grind them up.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:51 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (62)

April 13, 2005

Andrea Dworkin, RIP

The vitriolic lesbian feminist author and censorship advocate Andrea Dworkin has died at age 58. Her views were mind-boggling, including what was very nearly the view that all sex is rape. In one book she described sex as “the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women.” Perhaps the most remarkable quote from Dworkin reported in her obituaries is this one, from the Times Online, quoting her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women.

The book maintained that “Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.”

Sure. And Sports Illustrated exists because men despise sports.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 01:55 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (41)

April 12, 2005

"Economic Death Spiral"

Now that Robert Samuelson of the WaPo--one can't get more mainstream--has weighed in on the need for entitlement reform, perhaps the Democrats ostriches will get serious about restructuring the programs.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:07 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (28)

FEC Commissioner Brad Smith to Speak at Capital University

George H. Moor Chair Lecture

Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform

Bradley A. Smith
Commissioner, Federal Election Commission
Professor of Law (on leave), Capital University

Monday, April 18
5:30 p.m.
Bridge of Learning

Bradley A. Smith was nominated to the Federal Election Commission by President William Clinton on Feb. 9, 2000, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 24, 2000. He served as chairman of the Commission in 2004. Smith is on leave from Capital’s Law School, where he has taught Election Law, Comparative Election Law, Jurisprudence, Law & Economics, and Civil Procedure. Smith’s writings on campaign finance and other election issues have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Legislation, the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, and other academic journals. As a law professor, Smith was a much sought-after witness in Congress on matters of campaign finance reform, and also a frequent guest on radio and television and a contributor to popular publications such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. He is the author of Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform (Princeton University Press, 2001).

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the George H. Moor Chair and the Capital University School of Management. For more information, contact Robert A. Lawson, at 236-6138 or at rlawson@capital.edu

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:19 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (26)

April 11, 2005

The 65% Solution

From George Will:

"PHOENIX -- Patrick Byrne, a 42-year-old bear of a man who bristles with ideas that have made him rich and restless, has an idea that can provide a new desktop computer for every student in America without costing taxpayers a new nickel. Or it could provide 300,000 new $40,000-a-year teachers without any increase in taxes. His idea -- call it The 65 Percent Solution -- is politically delicious because it unites parents, taxpayers and teachers while, he hopes, sowing dissension in the ranks of the teachers unions, which he considers the principal institutional impediment to improving primary and secondary education.

The idea, which will face its first referendum in Arizona, is to require that 65 percent of every school district's education operational budget be spent on classroom instruction. On, that is, teachers and pupils, not bureaucracy.

Nationally, 61.5 percent of education operational budgets reach the classrooms. Why make a fuss about 3.5 percent? Because it amounts to $13 billion. Only four states (Utah, Tennessee, New York, Maine) spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in classrooms. Fifteen states spend less than 60 percent. The worst jurisdiction -- Washington, D.C., of course -- spends less than 50 percent."

Will later notes that in a "recent five-year period only 62 of California's 220,000 tenured teachers were dismissed." Here's an idea for improving teacher quality--adopt something like Jack Welch's policy of firing the worst performing 10% annually. Call it the 10% solution!

Of course, neither the 10% solution nor the 65% solution would be ideal because they ignore local knowledge and circumstances.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 02:21 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (19)

The Unbalanced Academy

Of the 341 professors registered to vote in Hanover, NH, Lebanon, NH, and Norwich, VT, 225 (66 percent) are Democrats and eighteen (5 percent) are Republicans. Ninety-eight (29 percent) did not register a party. Put another way, there are 12.5 registered Democrats for every registered Republican. [Story.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 09:34 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (22)

Future of TSA

This WaPo article from Friday reports the TSA's mission is shrinking its focus to airport screeners. A good start but why not ditch government screeners as well? While returning from the APEE meetings last week, I found myself in a lengthy line in the Orlando airport. From my line, I could view a screener in the adjacent line. I doubt looked at 50% of the items going by her xray machine. She'd occasionally look up at the screen and she'd sometimes pause the belt as though she was carefully examining a piece of luggage, but most of the time she simply stared down without paying attention to xrays of bags passing by. Yes, it's a tedious job so the screeners probably rotate positions every so often. And yes, there might also be a deterrence effect to having the possibility that a screener will be paying attention when a would-be terrorist is passing his bags through the xray machine. Nonetheless, the bumbling TSA (for more adjectives and a link to Penn Jillette's funny take on security screening, see Dan Alban's post here) seems to be exactly the sort of half-assed government bureaucracy that its opponents feared.

ADDENDUM: This is an excerpt from the WaPo article:

"TSA, at the end of the day, is going to look more like the Postal Service," said Paul C. Light, a public service professor at New York University and a Brookings Institution scholar who has tracked the agency since its birth in February 2002. Light calls the TSA "one of the federal government's greatest successes of the past half-century" and likens it to the creation in the late 1950s of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which was also born during great public excitement to serve an urgent national need.

Hmmm ... look more like the Postal Service ... success story like NASA? Yikes!

Hat tips: Dan Alban and Mini-Me.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:14 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (33)

April 08, 2005

Historic Bus Service

There are few things that get a libertarian like me more upset than border checks. "Who the $#%& are they to stop me from moving about peacefully?" I think.

Today, they opened "historic" bus service in the Kashmir region of India/Pakistan. Good for them.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:07 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

April 07, 2005

Hubris or Energy Policy?

CNN.com reports that a couple of congressmen are crafting legislation to extend day light savings time by two months - from March to November.

I am a big fan of daylight - especially when I get home from work - but does Congress really need to spend its time on this?

Does the issue satisfy marginal benefit = marginal cost?

The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

Such Congressional action will save .05% of daily oil consumption? I doubt it.

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:52 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

April 01, 2005

What does the UN Security Council Do?

From Global Policy Forum is this picture (which is really a pretty clever way to lie with statistics) depicting the vetoes of the permanent members of the UN security council:

Before the Soviet Union collapsed, there were an average of three to six vetoes per year. Since the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the average number of vetoes has dropped to less than three per year. Is this is simply a result of there only being one superpower at the moment or is there something else going on?

I would bet that once China considers itself able to go toe-to-toe with the U.S. the number of vetoes per year will once again increase.

Posted by Craig Depken at 07:57 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

March 31, 2005

Makes Me Want to Scream

Howard Dean is back in the news; here's his take on Rick Santorum:

Dean joked that Santorum should "stay in Virginia," although he added that the senator was "too much of a right-winger for Virginia. How about Venezuela?"

What a moron--Venezuela is run by the LEFTIST Hugo Chavez. From The Economist:

Mr Chávez, a former army officer, recently declared himself to be a Fidelista, a follower, that is, of Cuba's communist president, Fidel Castro, his closest ally.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:30 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

Schiavo Dies

Everybody will have heard by now that Terri Schiavo has died. I sure hope her husband was right and she didn't feel a thing, because dying of dehydration/starvation can not be the best way to go.

I haven't blogged on this because this is a very hard case. My knee doesn't jerk one way or the other on this one, and frankly I'm suspect of anyone who thinks this is an easy call. (Initially I leaned toward the husband's side of the argument but have been swayed by the family's side in the end. Still I don't know how I would decide if I were in charge.)

One thing really has bugged me though about the debate. I've heard many people who are statists (leftists, modern liberals or whatever you want to call them) criticize Congressional efforts to save her from this fate. On what basis can modern statists possibly say that Congress should not be involved in deciding whether this woman lives or dies? This is the same Congress that they applaud when it regulates every aspect of our freakin' lives. If they don't mind Congress deciding how much water we can use in our toilets, then jeez do they really have anything to complain about here?

Posted by Robert Lawson at 01:28 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (3)

March 29, 2005

Flickering FIRE?

I've been an admirer of (and small donor to) FIRE; I think it does good work combatting silliness such as campus speech codes. Thus, I was quite surprised to find that the current issue of FIRE Quarterly contains an article advocating external pressure by the NYCLU on Hamilton College for disinviting Ward "Little Eichmanns" Churchill to its campus. (Link here; scroll down to page 9.) The article is by FIRE board member Michael Myers; here's the salient part:

Initially, Hamilton College officials stood
by the invitation for Churchill to speak on
campus, although they had also insisted
on “balance” through a panel. But as censorial
pressures mounted from politicians,
media demagogues, and angry donors,
college officials folded and canceled the
event altogether, citing death threats that
had been called in. The NYCLU fell silent,
but even the New York Post, which had
itself been railing against Professor
Churchill and his scheduled talk, faulted
college officials for their cowardice for
using “crank calls” as the basis for punking
out on their pretense of support for
academic freedom and free speech.
The answer I got from my own call to the
NYCLU’s legal director as to why they had
said nothing in this episode was that they
had indeed been quiet about the
Churchill controversy—but they had now
gotten “an op-ed opportunity.” A free
speech organization need not await an
“op-ed opportunity” or even a client to
speak up for free speech—especially
when the governor of New York was pressuring
Hamilton College officials about
the speaking invitation to Churchill.

Hamilton College is a private institution; it can invite and disinvite anyone it pleases to speak on its campus. Other than rebuking NY politicians for hectoring Hamilton, the NYCLU should have no say in Hamilton's affairs. There are, after all, civil liberties other than freedom of speech (which only applies to government in any case); among the others is Hamilton College's freedom to associate with whomever it chooses.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 09:44 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (3)

March 28, 2005

Black Amish?

A pro-union Cleveland pol (is there any other kind in Cleveland?) is in hot water for building her house with non-union labor. Worse yet, the workers are apparently Amish--those notorious individualists renown for violating the labor standards near and dear to the hearts of unions everywhere.

The husband justifies the use of non-union labor by claiming the builder is black. Now I've heard of Black Irish, but Black Amish?

[Btw, the second picture in the article is of Scott Maag--the son of Capital University's Librarian, Al. Scott has become a regular freelancer for TIME.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:27 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

March 27, 2005

Christian Right

The MSM repeatedly explains the support for President Bush in terms of his standing with the Christian Right. I don’t know exactly who this group is supposed to include. I know a lot of people that support George Bush, but only about one or two to whom I would apply that label. I suspect that this term is meant to include groups that support a conservative political agenda because of their faith and not because of any rational or logical examination of the facts. The MSM and their fellow travelers in the academic community consider themselves the arbiters of intellectual thought. Therefore, anyone who does not agree with them must base their position on faith and not rational reasoning.

Consequently, I see the Left’s continual blathering about the Christian Right not so much as an attack on religion but rather as a defensive mechanism. There is no longer any cohesive philosophy holding the left together. Marxism is dead and no one seems to recognize what socialism is. Many others have come to the conclusion that the left is simply a grab bag of special interests groups that want to further their accumulations through takings from others. The Left depends on an illogical and irrational faith in big government. There is no Hayek on the left who can build a supporting logical lattice. The attack on the Christian Right becomes a diverting strategy that turns the public's attention away from the non-existing philosophy of the Left. It creates a fog that prevents a logical attack on the issues of the Left.

The underlying message of the MSM is, “Look at these silly people. They really don’t know what they're doing. They're doing what they're doing because the Good Book told them so. If you don’t want to be a hayseed or holy roller, or if you are a person of the mind, then you better distinguish yourself from this group.”

By labeling conservatives the Christian Right, the MSM is also able to avoid analyzing their arguments. If conservatives are against Roe v. Wade because of religious reasons rather than because of a federal encroachment on state’s rights, then there are no logical issues to be examined. This and other issues, like the ban on stem cell research, can be similarly explained and summarily dismissed as backward faith based beliefs that will eventually give way to an age of enlightenment.

Posted by at 02:03 PM in Culture ~ in Politics  ·  Comments (1)  ·  TrackBack (31)

Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum, UK style

If you're looking for an example to illustrate the idea that political parties gravitate toward the center to capture the median voter, look no further than the current UK election contest. Tony Blair's Labour party is projecting 3% real growth in government over the next six years; Michael Howard's Conservatives are (gasp) promising only 2% real growth. The difference, for 2011, amounts to £35 billion. Labour accuses the Conservatives of planning a £35b "cut" in vital social services. The Conservatives promise that they won't cut a thing, only eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse". Yawn.

Anyway, the big news here (I'm blogging from London this morning) this weekend was that a Conservative MP, Howard Flight, has been booted out of the Party by Michael Howard. Flight's crime: he hinted in a speech that further savings in public expenditure might be found once the Tories are in office, contradicting Howard's centrist line that the Tories have no secret agenda for cutting back on the growth of government. If Margaret Thatcher weren't still alive, she'd be spinning in her grave.

News story here.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 07:01 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (38)

March 25, 2005

Congress shall make no law...

A Columbus-area high school principal has banned students from wearing t-shirts in support of gay marriage. [Story.]

[Principal] Best told the supporters of same-sex marriage that he was concerned that other students might respond with shirts of their own and the debate would escalate.

Oooooooooh, we wouldn't want the debate to escalate would we?

Btw, this is from the Ohio Constitution: no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech, or of the press.

Posted by Robert Lawson at 10:37 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

Social Security Event

Yesterday I attended an event on Social Security reform in Atlanta. The event was largely intended to generate media publicity (apparently it got some newspaper coverage but no tv) and included both GA senators, HHS Secretary Leavitt, and Social Security guru Andrew Biggs. My main reason for attending is that my student Ted Crouse was invited to participate and got to pose a question to the panelists.

Although the event (and similar events across the country) are supposed to build support for Social Security reform, I am now more pessimistic about private accounts than I was 24 hours ago. The panelists did an ok job describing the mechanics of the private accounts plan and argued that the scheme would make the program solvent and earn better returns for people who choose private accounts.

To my mind, however, they did not adequately sell the most appealing part of the private accounts approach--it gives people property rights to their savings and allows them to transfer the funds or leave them for heirs. For example, what happens if I die when I'm age 60? Under the current scheme I'll have paid in years and years of taxes and have essentially nothing (except, perhaps, a small boost in my surviving wife's benefit). Under private accounts, I could pass the accumulated funds to my wife and son. This to me is a much more promising strategy than a green eyeshade discussion of making the program solvent or allowing people to earn a one or two percentage point higher rate of return than they would under the current system.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 05:56 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

March 23, 2005

OU President acting "like a 3-year-old"

For those of you who don't live in university settings this story will sound so strange. Consider the following events:

(1) Ohio University's Faculty Senate considers a policy change about some minor issue (something about the rules under which faculty can take courses at the university).

(2) A black professor who runs something called the Caucus of Educators and Staff of African Descent (COESAD) objects to the new policy on grounds few people can understand.

(3) The Faculty Senate considers the objection but nevertheless passes the new policy.

(4) OU President Roderick McDavis throws out the race card and walks out of the meeting. [NB: McDavis is black himself and has spent his whole career in the "diversity" biz.]

(5) Charges of institutional racism ensue....

Alas, for those of us working in universities, this is "dog bites man" stuff.

Initial story here. Follow up story here. A defensive letter to the editor here.

[Thanks to Dave for the pointer.]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 11:16 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (3)

March 22, 2005

Big Brother

I tend to poo-poo most worries about the erosion of privacy. I certainly don't care much about private databases such as credit agencies keeping track of me. And I really like it when I call Delta Airlines and they already know what flights I want because I'm looking at them on their website at the same time.

When it comes to government invasions of privacy I naturally get a bit more concerned. But even here modern technology seems to be more useful in helping us keep tabs on them (remember Rodney King) than in helping them watch us. When it comes to video surveilance in public places, I tend to think that if it would be ok for a cop to stand there and watch us, then it should be ok for a video camera to stand there and watch us. Similarly if a cop could issue a ticket, why not a camera?

Still, this kind of stuff just creeps me out. I suppose I'll get used to it though.

On a related note, when I was in South Africa, they have these video cameras all over. They send out tons of automated tickets for speeding and red-light violations. But hardly anybody pays them apparently! One worry I have is that these video camera gizmos may erode our respect for the rule of law even more.

[Thanks to Dave for the pointer!]

Posted by Robert Lawson at 08:47 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

Why, Why, Why?

From Yahoo News:

Wolfowitz Discusses World Bank Mission with Bono

Not one phone call, but evidently two lengthy phone calls. My take is that Bono is good at hawking I-Pods, but is he really qualified to discuss what the World Bank(!) ought to be doing? Perhaps talking to Mick Jager (Masters from the LSE) would make a little more sense.

From the article:

Wolfowitz adviser Kevin Kellems told Reuters the deputy U.S. defense secretary initiated the lengthy conversations with the lead singer of the rock group U2, whose name had been bandied about for the World Bank presidency.

Granted, I don't spend a lot of my time following the day-to-day operations of the World Bank, and I suspect the organization might do a bit better if more of us did, but I don't remember ever hearing Bono's name suggested to be the WB president. Perhaps I missed that issue of Parade Magazine.

Posted by Craig Depken at 01:58 PM in Politics

Enviro Roundup

1. The Bush administration has announced a cap-and-trade program for mercury. Although I'm familiar with the virtues of cap-and-trade schemes relative to across-the-board regulations, I'm uneasy calliing such programs "free market environmentalism." After all, the government establishes the number of permits that can be traded.

2. Wondering what ever happened to the "Baywatch" actresses? Alexandra Paul was arrested earlier this week for attempting to block GM's destruction of 70 unmarketable electric cars. Maybe she should switch her cause from environmentalism to tort reform--the article states GM turned down an offer of $1.9 million for the cars because it feared lawsuits that might be caused by a lack of spare parts.

3. My perspective on opening ANWR for drilling: My understanding is that the portion to be opened is about 2,000 acres--less than 10% the size of my college's campus, much less the 1.5 million acre area under consideration in Alaska. Even if the entire 2,000 acres or twice that much is trashed--and supposedly it won't be--I think it would be a small cost to bear in exchange for the billions of barrels of oil that are supposedly there. As Thomas Sowell says in "The Vision of the Anointed" there aren't solutions, just tradeoffs--this one appears reasonable to me.

On a related matter, Roy Cordato has a nice riff on "energy independence."

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:19 AM in Politics

Ft. Worth police get AR15s

John Lott probably has something to say about this idea. The Ft. Worth police force is going to have more than 200 cops on the street with AR15s by the end of the summer (for those unfamiliar, the AR15 is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military's M16 caribine.) The reason to give cops the guns? Because some of the bad guys have semi-automatic rifles and therefore the cops are outgunned.

Recent shootouts here in Texas have typically involved one or two bad guys and a bunch of cops. Each cop is armed with a nine millimeter or a .38 and so there is usually a lot of guns pointing in one direction and relatively few guns pointing in the other direction.

On the other hand, having a bunch of AR15s on the street will likely increase the number of bulllets flying in Cowtown.

The empirical question: will the good folks who live, work and visit in Ft. Worth be safer?

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:35 AM in Politics

March 10, 2005

Larry's biology made him do it?

Evidently, so says Richard Bradley in the Boston Magazine. I haven't read the article in depth, but after a discussion of Larry Summers's career and recent past, the last four paragraphs drop the hammer:

So great was the bewilderment over Summers's lack of social skills that some in the Harvard community wondered if there might be a clinical reason for his behavior: a neurobiological disorder called Asperger's syndrome. A form of autism, the disorder was first described by a Viennese physician named Hans Asperger in 1944.

So, Larry suggested testable hypotheses that led to awkward situations because of his biological and nuerological makeup? Hmmmm.

First off, the claim of autism is not one to be thrown around lightly. However, evidently some folks can get away with that while others can't (weren't some people castigated for suggested Bill Clinton might have some compulsive behaviors?)

Secondly, my take is that Larry Summers gets himself into awkward situations because he is an economist. People use the term "awkward," but that is really a cop-out. The situation is only awkward because of other people's feelings, something that Summers cannot control. If Larry Summers makes other people feel awkward by his thoughts, provocations, and hypotheses, that sounds less like Larry's biology and more like other folks' limitations.

Something to print out for tonight...

Posted by Craig Depken at 12:01 PM in Politics

March 09, 2005

A Politically Correct Bake Sale

In 2003 the college Republicans at the University of Washington sponsored an Affirmative Action Bake sale that generated a significant reaction from campus liberals. In their words,

“We priced the cookies according to the same categories the University of Washington uses in its admission application. With a little flour, sugar and a dash of street comedy, we set out to show the campus that Affirmative Action, which judges people based solely on their skin color, is inherently racist.”

The campus police refused to protect the young Republicans from marauding leftist who tore down their tent and trashed their cookies. Rather than defending their right to free speech, these aspiring Betty Crookers were accused of creating an unsafe environment by university officials.

Well, what’s good for the gander is good for the goose.

A women’s group is now sponsoring a Pay Equity Bake Sale. This is the announcement for the sale.

“What's a Pay-Equity Bake Sale, you say?

Well, in reality there is still not equal pay between men, women & minorities. Research shows that if you're a woman, a minority, or (Heaven forbid!) a minority woman, you're probably just not going to make as much money on the dollar as a white male (no offense to all you white males out there - I'm sure you're all very talented, hard-working people).

To help drive this point home, you get to spin a wheel-o-fun to be assigned an identity for the day. Whatever identity you get (let's say Native American woman) will dictate how much you have to pay for your cookies. Because your salary doesn't go as far (in that you make $0.60 on the dollar), you pay a smidgen more to truly experience how much more valuable each portion of your salary is.

And no, this is not trickery to get everyone to pay more for their cookies. This is an effort to give you some first hand knowledge about the reality of disparity in pay in the world today.”

I am pleased to observe that price discrimination will not be used to enhance profits and lessen competition.

Posted by at 07:57 PM in Politics  ·  Comments (2)  ·  TrackBack (25)

March 08, 2005

Hypocrisy?

Drudge links to this article about $200,000 of contributions from a cable company to a "tax-exempt group that touts McCain's views and has showcased him at events." Yup the McCain reference is to the holier-than-thou senator behind the McCain-Feingold abomination.

Of course, it's a good thing I got this posting up now--Bob's Capital colleague-turned FEC commissioner Brad Smith predicts a coming crackdown on bloggers.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 10:22 AM in Politics

Tax Exporting

Georgia's governor wants to establish a kiosk in the Atlanta airport to sell lottery tickets to travelers. Apparently the airport has some concerns that the kiosk will divert sales (of which the airport gets a share) from other vendors. If only one heard these reservations as part of the economic impact studies for new stadia etc.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 08:59 AM in Politics

March 07, 2005

Should Philosophers Take a Pro-Union Stand?

Some members of the American Philosophical Association have petitioned the Association to move its upcoming Pacific Division annual meetings from San Francisco, where the meeting hotel (the Westin St. Francis) is one of 14 hotels currently in negotiation with the Hotel and Restaurant workers’ union. The San Franciso Chronicle reports that the Organization of American Historians chose to move its meetings to San Jose to avoid the SF labor dispute. The paper adds:

As a pressure tactic on the negotiations, the unions are calling groups headed for San Francisco, warning them of labor strife and asking them to remove their business from the hotels in the dispute.

The St. Francis has promised the APA “that no lock-out is planned and that the hotel is at the bargaining table.”

The APA has been surveying its participants as to their preference for relocating the APA - Pacific meetings to San Jose, should it be feasible. The survey adds:

Please also answer the following question: if moving the meeting from San Francisco proves infeasible or undesirable for participants, would you like the meeting organizers to arrange voluntary ways for you to support the union while you are in San Francisco?

Here’s a thoughtful reply to the survey from Neera Badhwar (Department of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma), reproduced here by permission:

Since, as you say, "we have obtained a written commitment from the St. Francis management that no lock-out is planned and that the hotel is at the bargaining table," there is no strike, and "the parties are at the table bargaining," I see no reason to move. The question, however, is whether they will be at the bargaining table when we get there. Is it possible to make a conditional agreement with a hotel in San Jose in case the situation at St. Francis deteriorates?

My answer regarding the issue of supporting the Union is negative for the following reason: there is no moral obligation on any employer to raise salaries every time its profit margin goes up. After all, it doesn't lower salaries every time its profit margin goes down. Profits are used for many purposes other than the salaries or benefits of current employees: for hiring new employees, for capital improvement, as a cushion against future losses, etc. I don't think we should be trying to influence the outcome of the negotiations between management and union by moving our meeting. I suspect that academics tend to automatically favor unions over management because of some notion of the moral superiority of unions as representatives of all workers (and the moral superiority of workers over managers). However, unions represent their own membership and not all workers. Indeed, they often favor their own membership at the cost of other workers or potential workers. In particular, they are opposed to immigrant workers who are willing to work for lower wages, and they are willing to use the coercive authority of government to prevent immigration -- as much so as businesses are willing to use the coercive authority of government to get subsidies or to have tariffs imposed on imports to protect their own (uncompetitive) profit margin.

For all these reasons, I see no reason for us to be taking a position in favor of the Union in this dispute. The parties involved should be left alone to reach their own conclusion.

I think a decision to move should be based entirely on evidence about the possible disruption of the meeting. Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 04:07 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (2)

The Dems Have it Backwards

Larry's post on Kennedy having it double backwards (shouldn't that equal forwards?) reminded me of an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for awhile.

The Dems claim to be (perhaps rightly so) the party that favors truly saving Social Security in something resembling its present form. It, therefore, seems to me that they should favor making Social Security's implicit liabilities explicit by issueing bonds and incurring the transition costs. (See this post from Larry about transition costs.) After all the govt is less likely to default on bonds than it is to enact legislation cutting future benefits. Moreover, such a change from implicit liabilities associated with a particular retirement program to explicit liabilities of the federal government as a whole would remove the impetus for cutting SS benefits. So why don't the Dems recognize this point? It seems to me that they favor scoring political points against GWB or are mighty scared of personal accounts rather than truly saving Social Security.

Posted by E. Frank Stephenson at 01:28 PM in Politics

Selective Free Speech

In a previous post, "Gringo American Studies," I pointed to the selective defense of free speech in Colorado. David Harsanyi at the Denver Post has now uncovered a similar case at CU. Read "A CU prof deserving of sympathy." I am sure there are many more incidents that are yet to be widely reported. We need only look at the Hans Hoppe situation to see the hypocrisy of the Left in their defense of free speech.

Posted by at 11:26 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (0)  ·  TrackBack (3)

March 06, 2005

EconLog snippet

My essay on libertarianism will be posted tomorrow (Monday March 7) on Econ Log, at Liberty Fund.

A snippet, for those who want a preview:

At the Munger house, we snack high on the food chain. I don't know if God gave man dominion over the beasts of the field, but She certainly gave me an ATM card and big metal cart for cruising meats at Piggly Wiggly. That beats dominion.
A lot of the beasts of the field, and the forest, and the oceans, and the air.... they land on my stove, and then my plate, sacrifices to my enjoyment. I have a lot of friends who are vegetarians, and they have my greatest respect. They are (mostly) healthier than I am. Further, they are principled: they make a choice, and they stick to it, and they don't berate me when I get a 120 ounce Porterhouse. I likewise try to cater to vegetarian tastes, and make sure I only suggest restaurants with good vegetarian alternatives. At my house I serve vegetarian dishes to guests, without even asking.
This is how most big problems should be handled, locally and without resort to coercive force. We can try to persuade each, but eventually have to accept the fact that reasonable people can differ. That’s why there is no other solution to the abortion debate. Our insistence on trying to solve the problem with a system of law is not just logically doomed, but it is tearing communities apart. Personally, I think abortion is morally wrong, as well as imposing a psychological blot that the woman can never wash away.
I also think that that is my opinion, and I should keep it to myself. If you ask me, I'll tell you: Abortion is evil and harmful; don't do it. But if you don't ask, you'll never hear a peep. And I certainly wouldn't use the coercive powers of the state to force you or your partner to bear a child that isn't wanted.
Rather than try and reform the inescapably blunt and often disastrously implemented power of the state, a civilization has to realize that there are two other ways to solve the problem of actions we don’t like. The first is simple forebearance—putting up with disagreement and other points of view is the price of living in a society. The other is recognizing that the reliance on the state as the enforcer of morals and norms displaces real morals and real norms.
Instead of teaching our children to be moral, and to care about social opprobrium, parents and schools abdicate their roles as shapers of minds and rely on the state to punish misbehavior after the fact. Children naturally conclude that if there is no punishment from the state, there must have been no misbehavior. But the state cannot fulfill this function, for reasons of simple competence and resource constraint. And the state would fail to carry out the function correctly, even if it were competent, because power corrupts and breeds malevolence. The abuse and the thing are the same. The conviction that we can harness Leviathan is the most dangerous conceit of our age.

Thanks to Russ Roberts for the suggestions, and the editing. I was thinking about this, and wanted to ask: Do you know anyone else who is in the intersection of these three sets...(a) Excellent economist, (b) clear writer and speaker on economic matters, and (c) excellent editor of other people's prose? The intersection contains Russ Roberts, and not many others.

Posted by Michael Munger at 09:25 PM in Politics

A fascinating account of “the most audacious bank raid in British history”, and its political fallout

Andrew Anthony in The Sunday Guardian’s Observer Magazine spells out how the Northern Bank heist was pulled off, and interviews people knowledgeable about the IRA’s involvement. He also offers this persuasive bit of public choice analysis, from the mouth of ex-Sinn-Féiner Anthony McIntyre, explaining why Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams seems determined to throw monkey wrenches into the peace process:

‘At times,' he continued, 'Adams is the most popular politician in the south. Why? It's not due to his policies, they are no different to anyone else's down there. It's the result of the tremendous international public profile that the leader gets. If the peace process ends, the wind in the sails goes down rapidly. So the object of unionism is to bring the process to a conclusion, and the object of republicanism [in the sense Sinn Féin and the IRA] is to postpone the conclusion.'

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 03:59 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (1)

March 05, 2005

Bill Maher welcomes Ward Churchill and Janet Reno

Ward Churchill appeared live and in person on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher last night (no transcript is online yet).

Maher distanced himself from Churchill's infamous “little Eichmanns” comment, but otherwise suggested that Churchill had important insight to offer us into the question Maher likes to call “why they hate us”. Highlight of the segment was Maher bringing out Michael Faughnan, a man whose brother – a financial office worker – died in the World Trade Center attack. Faughnan called Churchill out on the “little Eichmanns” comment, arguing that it was insensitive and absurd to say that his brother was akin to the Nazi engineer of mass murder. Churchill, who had earlier told Maher that he exempted janitors from the Eichmann analogy, allowed as maybe he could make an exception for the brother. But, he asked in reply, would Faughnan claim that none of the WTC workers were culpable? Yes, came the reply; the people I knew in my brother’s office were all good people.

Of course, Churchill’s “argument” isn’t that the WTC workers were personally evil-minded. It’s that they were willing cogs in an evil machine. All WTC stockbrokers were (somehow) complicit in the US war machine. Let’s see if we can parse the logic … the Pentagon is financed by the US Treasury, the US Treasury runs on borrowed money, and stockbrokers work for firms that also have a hand in the buying and selling Treasury bonds? Couldn't be more obvious. But it’s not obvious how janitors escape the same guilt-by-association – they too facilitate the work of financial firms, which (according to Churchill) means that they aid and abet US military policies.

Later in the show, Maher’s panel included Janet Reno, who endorsed the recent Supreme Court decision banning the death sentence for under-18s. Nobody asked her whether her expressed view is consistent with her decisions as Attorney General that imposed a pre-emptive death sentence on the Branch Dravidian children in Waco.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 09:29 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (3)

March 04, 2005

Because I can...

I will release Pres. Bush's Saturday Morning Radio Address at 10:13 pm central time FRIDAY:

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. In the short time since I returned from my trip to Europe, the world has witnessed remarkable developments in the Middle East. In Lebanon, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in peaceful protest over the brutal assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri. For years, the Lebanese people have suffered from the aftermath of a horrific civil war and occupation by Syria. Lebanese citizens who have watched free elections in Iraq are now demanding the right to decide their own destiny, free of Syrian control and domination. Syria has been an occupying force in Lebanon for nearly three decades, and Syria's support for terrorism remains a key obstacle to peace in the broader Middle East.

I didn't hack into anything...the speech was in my e-mail box this evening.

Read More »

Today, America and Europe are standing together with the Lebanese people. The United States and France worked closely to pass U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. This resolution demands that Lebanon's sovereignty be respected, that all foreign forces be withdrawn, and that free and fair elections be conducted without foreign influence. The world is now speaking with one voice to ensure that democracy and freedom are given a chance to flourish in Lebanon.

French President Chirac, British Prime Minister Blair, and German Chancellor Schröder have all called on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. A Syrian withdrawal of all its military and intelligence personnel would help ensure that the Lebanese elections occur as scheduled in the spring, and that they will be free and fair.

At the same time, the Lebanese people were demonstrating against terrorism in Beirut, the elected leader of the Palestinian people, President Abbas, declared that his government is committed to chasing down and punishing those responsible for last weekend's terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. Such action is critical, because that attack is a reminder that there are still groups and individuals who will kill to prevent peace in the Middle East.

President Abbas made his remarks in London during an international meeting of world and Arab leaders, hosted by Prime Minister Blair. The leaders attending this meeting expressed their support for the Palestinians' efforts to reform their political institutions, their economy, and their security services. And the first reform must be the dismantling of terrorist organizations. Only by ending terrorism can we achieve our common goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and freedom.

Today, people in a long-troubled part of the world are standing up for their freedom. In the last five months, we have witnessed successful elections in Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territory and Iraq; peaceful demonstrations on the streets of Beirut; and steps toward democratic reform in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The trend is clear: In the Middle East and throughout the world, freedom is on the march. The road ahead will not be easy, and progress will sometimes be slow. But America, Europe and our Arab partners must all continue the hard work of defeating terrorism and supporting democratic reforms.

Freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul, and spreading freedom's blessings is the calling of our time. And when freedom and democracy take root in the Middle East, America and the world will be safer and more peaceful.

Thank you for listening.

END

« Close It

Posted by Craig Depken at 11:15 PM in Politics

Update on Sinn Féin and the Northern Bank raid

Police in the Republic of Ireland have now reportedly “confirmed the £2.3m and other money seized in Cork last week is from the Northern Bank raid.” Police seized the money from individuals linked to the IRA and its political front Sinn Féin.

I had earlier speculated that one reason for the IRA to resort to bank robbery is that their ability to raise funds in the US has been diminished since 9/11/2001. Now they seem to be caught in a vicious circle: the linkage of IRA and Sinn Féin to the bank robbery, and of the IRA to a recent slaying in Belfast, is further hurting their US fundraising. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has announced that on his visit to the US next week he will not be raising funds as previous planned.

Pete Baker at the blog Slugger O’Toole explains the change in plans: Sinn Féin has to apply for special visas when visiting the US for fund-raising, and they feared the embarrassment of being denied the visas. Denial was likely given that the Bush White House has, unlike the practice in previous years, pointedly declined to include Adams among those invited to the White House on St. Patrick’s Day.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 12:16 PM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (0)

March 03, 2005

Strange bedfellows

What do you get when MTV meets the AARP? You might think the answer I’m looking for is “VH-1”. No, what I have in mind is the strange alliance between Rock the Vote (founded by music industry people and heavily promoted by MTV) and the AARP in opposition to Social Security choice. At Rock the Vote’s homepage, you can buy a t-shirt that says “I [heart] Social Security”. (Wow. You can’t get much more rockin’ than that.)

The two organizations have jointly sponsored a "poll" on Social Security reform (together with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a liberal think-tank devoted to African-American concerns). According to the press release, they found that most Americans “oppose private accounts once they learn the likely consequences of putting the accounts into effect.” Translation: we found biased ways to frame our questions such that most of the people being polled chose the answers we preferred.

Most Americans in the 18 to 39 age group, for example, say that they would flat-out oppose the accounts if […] diverting some Social Security payroll taxes means "massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits" (63 percent say they would oppose).

The notion that diverting taxes to personal accounts means new federal debt is, I have pointed out before, false.

The key lessons of the AARP/RTV poll:

Political Director of Rock the Vote Hans Riemer said, "This poll shows that young people do not support changing Social Security if it means dismantling the basic safety net, cutting benefits dramatically, or massively increasing the national debt. They get all three at once under most private accounts plans. We hope the politicians who say they want to help younger generations are paying attention."

Curiously, the poll didn’t ask young people whether they support preserving Social Security through a massive increase in their taxes. Which is the only option left, once you rule out benefit cuts or dismantling. (Debt merely defers the tax increases.)

The AARP’s opposition to any Social Security reform is to be expected. Even though Bush promises not to touch benefits for anyone now over 55, his proposal to allow people to opt-out funds into personal retirement accounts might loosen future voter attachment to Social Security. Rock the Vote’s opposition to a reform that would benefit young workers is harder to figure, since Rock the Vote purports to represent young people (its main focus is, or used to be, registering young voters). But here’s a hypothesis: the real mission of Rock the Vote is actually not to promote the political interests of young people, but rather the political interests of liberals.

Read More »

The issue of Rock the Vote’s real mission is not new. Here is an exchange between the above-quoted Hans Riemer and the Capital Gang’s Al Hunt from 2003:

HUNT: You have enlisted in this effort the Dixie Chicks, who aroused controversy, as you know, with their criticisms of President Bush and the war. And critics say that rather than wanting to increase the young voter franchise, what you really want to do is to get more liberal young voters, and you wouldn't be pleased if it ended up turning out conservative voters. Is that a fair rap?

RIEMER: It's not a fair rap. We are definitely a non-partisan organization. We want young people to vote. We think the candidates should compete for young voters.

Note Riemer’s evasion. He was asked: don’t you have a liberal slant? And he answered: we’re non-partisan, meaning, we don’t officially endorse either political party.

« Close It

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 04:37 PM in Politics

February 10, 2005

Gringo American Studies

When considering how to handle the Weird Churchill matter, it might be instructive to see how the Colorado public university system dealt with a similar matter in 1997. Luis Chavez, an Hispanic faculty member at Pikes Peak Community College, wrote a satirical proposal for an academic program “Gringo American Studies.” Citing court papers, the Rocky Mountain News reported that the proposal "parodied academic minority studies programs and addressed racial/ethnic issues by applying the minority studies format to a study of 'Gringo American' culture."

Apparently the administrators at PP CC didn’t think it was too funny and penalized Mr. Chavez for his attempt at humor (or was it for attacking ethnic studies?) by suspending him without pay for 15 days. I guess freedom of expression doesn’t count for much in Colorado if you are on the wrong side of the issue.

Astonishingly, the chair of the history department, Katherine Sturdevant, came to his defense. She called it legitimate political satire. For this and apparently some other matters she had been outspoken on, Ms. Sturdevant was removed as chair. Ms. Studevant sued the college for violating her rights to free expression. The case was settled out of court with her reinstatement as chair.

See: Karen Abbott, "Springs College Settles Lawsuit," Rocky Mountain News, September 4, 2002 .

and

The Newsletter on Academic Freedom

Posted by at 02:50 PM in Politics

February 06, 2005

To the Barricades! M. Antoinette Lives...

The French are rioting against the idea of scarcity.

It seems they want to maintain the 35 hour work week. It was implemented, remarkably, to reduce unemployment. Comes from the old Marxist idea (actually, Ricardian, but Marx believed it) that there is a certain fixed amount of stuff to be done. If you reduce the maximum hours someone can work, then voila! More jobs.

Of course, things don't work that way. Workers in the U.S. are seeing their work weeks go up in hours, or at least there are pressures in that direction. Why?

Because in the U.S. (and even moreso in France) "jobs" are the unit of redistribution, through the back door means of mandating certain social goods must go along with jobs. Insurance, record-keeping on taxes, a variety of pension and other benefits, are essentially lump-sum payments: you pay one for each job. If you can get workers to work more, you are spreading these fixed costs over more hours.

Consequently, U.S. government policies are to blame for all sorts of contracting out, and laying off some workers so you can give the remaining workers more hours. You can pay for the additional hours, even with mandatory overtime, and still be ahead.

Incredibly, French workers blame capitalism, rather than their own foolish insistence on having their cake and eating it, too.

Posted by Michael Munger at 11:01 AM in Politics

January 22, 2005

Fascist CATO and Reforming the SS

(SS means Social Security. But you knew that).

I often miss things, I'll admit. Don't understand, don't quite get the point, that kind of thing.

But this....surely this is just incoherent babbling. (I'm saying that, this time, my lack of understanding is not really my fault, see).

There is some pretty strange stuff here, but check this:

The wealthy oligarchical families that had directed the Synarchist/Nazi movement from 1921-45—and were defeated by Roosevelt—saw in the Mont Pelerin Society the instrument to re-establish that program internationally. The Mont Pelerin Society's economics was no different than that of the Bank for International Settlements, Hitler, or Mussolini.

I'm pretty sure there are some differences, actually, between the MPS and Hitler. And there are certainly differences between CATO and Hitler. (Though...Boaz used to have that little mustache....Hmmmm).

LaRouche seems to have become a leftist (again), or else is just living on his own little plane of existence. (You might enjoy this)

On the other hand, it is true that one can make pretty good arguments against privatization of Social Security. To me, it comes down to two questions:

1. If someone takes their retirement funds, and squanders them on blue sky, get-rich-quick schemes, will we as a society let them starve? Or will we reward them for risk-taking behavior by giving them another stake to squander?

2. Which scheme gives government more power, and more ability to interfere with both markets and peoples' private lives? Social Security makes us all beholden to the SSA, and the funds can be used for redistributive purposes like the notorious "supplemental" Social Security activities of the 1980s. On the other hand, if everyone had money in the stock market, or bonds, or whatever, there would be irresistible political pressures to intervene to prop up security prices, or force interest rates down, or whatever.

I am cautiously in favor of increased privatization, but only cautiously. I don't think we can trust government not to reward extreme risk-taking, and I don't think we can trust ourselves not to force government to meddle in securities markets. While I might concede in principle that a thorough transformation to private ownership and management of pension funds is a good thing, the sort of 1/3 transformations being proposed might end up looking like power "deregulation" in California.

In other words, if we are not willing to try full-blown market solutions, it is by no means clear that we won't just make people skeptical about the market in temporizing "solutions" that are doomed to fail.

(nod to RP of SN)

Posted by Michael Munger at 10:50 AM in Politics

January 16, 2005

Partly empty, partly narrow

It seems to me that there are three broad classes of arguments that explain why human societies have governments (by which I mean something very close to Max Weber’s notion of “an organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.”) There are innumerable variants, of course, and advocates often mix the arguments, but the three justifications seem analytically distinct.

1. EFFICIENCY: Internal coordination problems—Groups of people face daunting obstacles in realizing gains from trade and cooperation. Resort to some form of hierarchical, third-party enforcement mechanism may be inevitable. Almost without exception, the form of this hierarchical organization we observe is government. Under this reasoning, then, governments exist to define and defend property rights, administer the production of public goods, and adjudicate disputes. To be successful, of course, proponents of this perspective have to do more than just show government is capable, in principle, of carrying out these functions. The question is whether government is, in practical terms, the best way to solve problems of coordination, free riding, and internalizing external effects of private action.

2. SECURITY: Protection from external aggression—It can clearly be argued that national (or for that matter, village) defense is simply another public good. But it is a different, and probably logically antecedent, public good. The capacity to ensure borders, and create confidence in security of rights and property, from outsiders, seems to be one of the first things that makes humans form “societies” (as opposed to governments) in the first place. Of course, to accomplish this guarantee of security, a society must be able to create, maintain, and direct an armed force powerful enough to deter attack, or defend against attacks. It seems, at least in practical terms, that if you take a society, add an army, and mix well, you get a government.

3. POWER: Preserve privileges—An important motivation for the actions of real governments is the protection, and rhetorical legitimization, of the rights and privileges of elites. The objective definition of “elites” is problematic, since over time it is government power, itself, that creates rights and privileges. Nonetheless, thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx and Wilhelm von Humboldt perceived the danger that the very creation of government, at least in the sense of an organized hierarchy capable of directing coercive force, may be based on protection of power or privilege.

The reason to go through this little exercise (i.e., wondering why we have governments in the first place) is that a misunderstanding about what government is can lead to bad prescriptions about what it should do. The three explanations I have offered, efficiency, security, and power, are very different; governments constituted primarily to achieve one of these goals may not respond well to demands to achieve the others. As the reader no doubt knows already, economists tend to take the first path, emphasizing efficiency, or justifying government based on “market failures.” Political scientists have often chosen the second path, emphasizing the role of the “state” and its military power in ensuring national security. Sociologists have gravitated toward the third rationale for government’s existence, investigating the structures of governance as institutions for maintaining and protecting power.

Here is what I want to know…why don’t we recognize that regardless of why we create governments, relying on them at the margin for more and more “solutions” runs afoul of an avoidable truth:
We must not overlook here one particular harmful consequence, since it so closely affects human development; and this is that the administration of political affairs itself becomes in time so full of complications that it requires an incredible number of persons to devote their time to its supervision, in order that it may not fall into utter confusion. Now, by far the greater portion of these have to deal with the mere symbols and formulas of things; and thus, not only are men of first-rate capacity withdrawn from anything which gives scope for thinking, and useful hands are diverted from real work, but their intellectual powers themselves suffer from this partly empty, partly narrow employment. (Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, pp. 29–30)

Posted by Michael Munger at 04:13 PM in Politics

January 05, 2005

Why Don't We Trust Government?

Why is it that Americans don't seem to trust government? We have less regulation than most countries, and the argument "private citizens know better than government what to do with their money" seems persuasive to many. Why? Why not shining, happy people?

The answer is very old, and it involves answering a question with a question, or maybe two: As Jouvenal, in his sixth satire, asked, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians?)." Plato, in the Republic, has Socrates and Glaucon give this exchange, "Surely the guardian is the last man in the world who should be allowed to get drunk and not to know where on earth he is!" "That would be ridiculous. A guardian to want a guardian himself!". My other question/answer, then is this: why is it that people on the left, and many people in other "developed" nations, DO trust government?

The answer is that the U.S. is different. The idea that the "guardian" would need no monitor was a conceit of Plato (and the French); it had no part in the framing of the U.S. system of government. The very foundations of our constitutional system of divided powers reflect a mistrust of government, or at the very least a mistrust of the governors.

Yet, after the election, the Democrats are piteously wondering aloud why people don't trust government. "Why don't they like us?" Since people don't now much about how government works, how come they don't like it? Ludwig von Mises gives an interesting reconciliation of the apparent contradiction. In Bureaucracy, von Mises notes:
Bureaus specialize in the supply of those services the value of which cannot be exchanged for money at a per unit rate..As a consequence of the above, bureaus cannot be managed by profit goals and "the economic calculus". In the absence of profit goals, bureaus must be centrally managed by the pervasive regulation an monitoring of the activities of subordinates. (pp. 47-49).

That is, it is tempting to try to reform government agencies, to revise organization charts and create new bureaucracies and scrap old ones. It is hard to understand what is going on, but it seems as if we could do better, if we could just get the right people in office to run things. People don't really understand what is wrong, it is true, but they are right to believe that something is wrong.

The conclusion one should draw from this is disturbing, as William Niskanen points out in Bureaucracy and Representative Government. If, as von Mises claims, bureaucracy is the sine qua non of the territorially extensive state, then criticism of bureaucracy is wrong-headed, and attempts to reform through reorganization may be disastrous. Bureaucracy cannot be improved, and its performance is simply not comparable with profit-seeking organizations, because the incentives and hierarchies in the two forms are fundamentally different.

Citizens may say, and believe, that the problem is unresponsive bureaucracy, or corruption, but these are the essential features of governments of large nations. The solution is a citizenry with an actual understanding of the economic and political forces that make government inherently incapable of carrying out the tasks we want to assign to it. But this is clearly beyond the reach of news media who themselves lack this basic understanding of economics.

What about the educational system? As Niskanen (Bureaucracy and Representative Government, 1971; 7-8) points out, von Mises concludes his discussion "with the hope, almost pathetic in retrospect, that a broader education in economics will reduce the popular support for large government and the consequent pervasive bureaucracy."

There isn't much hope in this direction, either. Education in economics is rare (I'm not counting the trade studies in business or marketing, or the applied mathematics often taught in undergraduate economics departments). So, citizens have no theoretical capacity to focus their accurate, but inchoate, perception that something is wrong. So, we reform away, appointing task forces and study groups.

But I have an answer for you. It comes from Edmund Burke, in his then-anonymous Vindication of Natural Society (1756):

"In vain you tell me that Artificial Government is good, but that I fall out only with the Abuse. The Thing! the Thing itself is the abuse!"

One cannot blame the FORM of government for its failings. Simply the existence of a pervasive, intrusive nanny state, doing the only things it can do, explains why people don't trust government. You can't blame a dog for eating out of the garbage. But you can put a lid on the garbage can. In the U.S., people are worried that the lid is coming off.

Posted by Michael Munger at 09:18 AM in Politics  ·  Comments (4)  ·  TrackBack (5)

October 30, 2004

Why I Shall Vote for George W. Bush

Bob Lawson has asked each of us to say for whom we will be voting on Tuesday, and why. Given how little I’ve contributed to this blog so far, I figured it’s the least I could do.

There’s no sense dancing around the issue—no classical liberal (let alone libertarian) is likely to look toward George W. Bush as a model president. The litany of sins, from massive increases in discretionary spending to new health care entitlements, is likely familiar to anyone reading this blog. And in any case, it is out of place in a statement that is intended to be an endorsement of the president’s reelection.

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It would have taken very little on the Democrats’ part to entice me into supporting a Democrat this year, or at the very least to sit things out, as I did in 1992 and 1996. But so consumed is the Democratic base with hatred for this president that they have chosen to nominate a candidate who is downright horrible. His Senate record is one of consistent support for bigger government and higher taxes. I admit that in terms of domestic policy Bush has done little to please classical liberals, but when it comes to those few issues where Bush has been right—namely taxes and the environment—and one in which he has been at least partially right—education—a Kerry presidency would seek to undo these entirely. For all his faults, this is a president who has been committed to cutting taxes and reducing environmental regulations. And while his education policy leaves much to be desired (his abandonment of vouchers to appease Ted Kennedy still rankles) let’s at least give him credit for setting some standards for accountability on the part of the public school system. Does anyone doubt that Kerry would seek to move precisely in the opposite direction on all of these matters?

Of course, assuming that both houses of Congress remain in GOP hands after Election Day—as it appears will happen—one might legitimately argue that the amount of harm Kerry might do is limited. Sure, he could—and no doubt would—tighten up environmental regulations, but his efforts to roll back the Bush tax cuts would go nowhere, and much the same could be said about the rest of Kerry’s domestic program.

Which leads us with the area where presidents still have considerable latitude—foreign policy. Cards on the table here: I supported the Iraq War, and continue to think it was the Right Thing to Do. Nevertheless, I understand the classical liberal/libertarian case for anti-interventionism, and while I do not agree with it, I respect it. I would fully understand if those who felt this way chose to throw their support behind some Democrat who promised to scale back the country’s overseas commitments. But of course that is not Kerry’s argument. His criticism of the Iraq War is not that it happened, but that it was carried out without the support of our “allies” (meaning France), and the permission of the United Nations. Whatever one might think of the president’s foreign policy, there is no doubt that he has acted consistently according to what he has seen as the national interest. I do not believe that this would be John Kerry’s guiding principle. If Kerry were to be elected, he would hold an international summit, and ask other countries to commit troops to Iraq. Once this failed, he would by necessity pursue a policy in Iraq that is fundamentally the same as that of the president. But consider this—Kerry’s preference for multilateralism runs the risk of more foreign interventions, not fewer. His foreign policy staff would consist largely of Clinton administration retreads who would not hesitate to embroil the country in places like Bosnia, with little thought of what is in the national interest. I cannot see how any classical liberal or libertarian could see this as an improvement.

Finally, I shall vote for George W. Bush because I know how a Kerry victory will be interpreted. It will be a signal to George Soros and his various front groups that their billions can buy an election. It will be a signal that the American people care what Hollywood actors like Sean Penn and Ben Affleck have to say about politics. It will be a signal that Michael Moore’s paranoid fantasies are to be treated as serious documentaries. It will be a signal that Americans are so naïve as to accept whatever fraudulent stories the mainstream media will circulate about National Guard records, an imminent return of the draft, and missing Iraqi explosives.

Most importantly, it will be interpreted as far more than a repudiation of George W. Bush. John Kerry is arguably the most liberal candidate ever nominated by one of the two major parties. If he wins, those on the right will not be able to console themselves with the fact that the new president is a moderate, as Clinton appeared to be Clinton was the model of a post-Reagan Democrat; Kerry truly represents the old party of George McGovern and Ted Kennedy. In short, if he wins the Reagan Revolution will have truly come to an end. I cannot stand idly by and watch this happen, nor do I believe that anyone concerned about American liberty can in good conscience do the same.

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Posted by at 10:09 AM in Politics  ·  TrackBack (172)