Don't Tread On Me

Is This Really Where Our Passion Goes?

2012-02-05T09:13:00.004-05:00

How many of you, like me, no longer identify yourself with one of the two major political parties? How many of you who don't identify yourself as Democrat or Republican have partisan friends of both persuasions? How many of those of you who don't identify yourself as either Democrat or Republican and have partisan friends of both persuasions use a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter?

Those you who can answer yes to all of the above have probably had an experience similar to mine regarding the decision (and subsequent reversal) of the Susan G. Komen foundation (SGK), a charitable organisation dedicated to fighting breast cancer, to end its grant to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening. In the 3+ years I have been on Facebook, I have never seen anything like the passion generated by this decision (well, except for maybe outrage over the Casey Anthony verdict). I am a practicing Catholic and get Facebook posts from some Catholic Church sites which praised SGK for standing up for unborn children (in addition to breast cancer screening and contraception, Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider) and enouraged Catholics to donate to SGK. Meanwhile, my Democrat friends where scathing in their condemnation of SGK, promising to withhold donations and calling them cowards for succumbing to right-wing sex bullies (in reality they succumbed to no one, the new VP of SGK is an opponent of abortion rights and campaigned for Congress on a platform that included cutting federal funding of Planned Parenthood). At their most charitable, my Democrat friends shamed SGK for placing politics ahead of women's health (a fair point to be sure). Clearly SGK realised that they stood to lose more donours than they would gain from Catholics and Conservative Christians. When they reversed their decision, the Catholic sites were outraged at the betrayal, as were many of my Protestant conservative friends, and started encouraging people NOT to donate to SGK. My Democrat friends celebrated the "power of the people," and warned that this battle with SGK and other foes of Planned Parenthood is just beginning.

On one level, it is refreshing to see people that are engaged rather than apathetic. But why is this the issue that gets everyone's dander up? In truth, it isn't really an issue at all. SGK is a private charitable organisation, as is Planned Parenthood. Individuals are free to donate to each, or not, depending on their assessment of the goals of the organisation (and, of course, individuals are free to criticize the organisations for their decisions and change their minds to donate or not based on the organisation's actions). Nor, is there really a significant women's health issue here. The SGK grants accounted for less than 5% of the breast cancer screening provided by Planned Parenthood and it is hard to believe that Planned Parenthood couldn't have found alternative funding for that small number of screenings. And yet, this is what people get excited about.

In Syria, Iran, and Yemen, social media is critical for getting out news about the atrocities of dictators and coordinating resistance. In the United States, we are subject to increasingly more invasive searches at airports; our government can initiate eavesdropping of cell phone calls made overseas without a warrant; under the PATRIOT Act our government can monitor what we borrow from the library and Lord only knows how much our internet activity is monitored; thousands of enemy combatants are held indefinitely (and sometimes erroneously) without charges or access to counsel and one month ago the President of the United States signed into law a new National Defense Authorization Act which redefines U.S. soil as a battlefield in the war on terrorism and removes the constitutional protections that would prevent this same treatment for U.S. citizens apprehended on U.S. soil for suspected terrorism; and the government maintains a program of targeted assassination of American citizens suspected of terrorism, without due process, and recently has used this program to murder an American citizen (Anwar Al-Awlaki) and his 16-year-old son (fortunately the Supreme Court recently ruled that the Administration's claims that it doesn't need a warrant to track American citizens using the GPS on their mobile phones is a bridge too far). But no one seems terribly upset about this systematic bipartisan assault on civil liberties in the name of, "making us safer." Everyone seems to feel if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Despite the history of detention of innocent Americans indefinitely during the Civil War and World War II, Americans seem oddly complacent that our leaders today are more benign and would only do this to "the bad guys." The actions of Susan G. Komen threaten no one's rights. Their decisions neither deprive unborn children of the right to life nor deprive women of access to contraceptives or abortions. But people are upset about this and not about the government's assault on their civil liberties.

Social issues like abortion, contraception, school prayer, and gay rights are called wedge issues for a reason. They are used to divide Americans into partisan groups for the purpose of the politicians who stoke the flames of public opinion over them to motivate people to vote. Indeed, there is probably no more reliable indicator of whether someone is likely to vote Republican or Democrat than one's opinion on abortion. They are a diversion from the real issues that threaten our nation, a sideshow by the great Wizards of Oz that rule in Washington to divert our attention from the man behind the curtain. My friends, we have bigger fish to fry than this. In the words of one of my favourite bands, Pendragon, "Is this really where our passion goes? Is this really where our energy flows?"

The Voice of Reason - Ron Smith 1941-2011

2011-12-25T07:35:00.004-05:00

Six days ago, Baltimore radio talk show host Ron Smith died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He had announced his retirement in November when he publicly disclosed he had the disease and subsequently announced he was foregoing chemotherapy after a bad reaction to his initial treatment and with the knowledge there was little to be gained.

Ron Smith was known on the air under the moniker, "The Voice of Reason," (or alternatively, "Talk Show Man"). I take the time to post some thoughts about him because he consistently gave voice to the principles of limited government. For 26 years, his show was a wonderful blend of commentary and interviews that was always entertaining and always informative. Ron's guests weren't always politicians parsing every word, but rather he spoke to authors and policy wonks and provided in-depth analysis of complicated issues that was far more educational than the talking points and platitudes spewed by nationally syndicated talk radio hosts. Even if you didn't agree with Ron Smith, you could learn a lot from his show. For a time he had a big government liberal political science professor from UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Tom Schaller, co-host with him on Friday afternoons to give an opposing view and liberal Democrat activist Frank DeFilippo was a regular guest on Monday afternoons. So respected was Ron Smith that even local Democrat politicians such as Baltimore mayor and later Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Senator Ben Cardin have regularly appeared and taken questions from listeners (Senator Cardin deserves a gold star for venturing into the lion's den as often as he did) and the statist-leaning Baltimore Sun newspaper invited him to contribute an opposing view column every week. Blair Lee IV and Towson University Professor of Rhetoric, Rick Vats were also frequent guests. Blair Lee is an almanac of Maryland politics and Professor Vats often gave interesting insight on major speeches, such as State of the Union addresses. At 4 PM every day, financial planner Jonathan Murray would join Ron for the closing bell report. Murray and Ron shared a commitment to free markets and Murray often provided sunny optimism to contrast Ron's pessimism. But, the respect and friendship they felt for each other was obvious on the air. At the holidays, Ron would be joined on the air by his wife, June, and lighter topics would be covered. Mrs. Reason also has an engaging on-air friendliness and could've been a successful radio personality in her own right.

I have lived in Maryland most of my life, other than four years in Virginia. I listened to the Ron Smith show infrequently before I moved to Virginia, but I became an avid listener after I moved back (at least until the bone-headed WBAL moved him from my afternoon commute home to 9 AM in the morning while I was at work....). Ron Smith was a true libertarian and non-partisan. He regularly challenged the orthodoxy of both political parties. One of his favourite quips was that one party was stupid and the other evil (he was always deliberately vague about which was which) and therefore any bipartisan legislation was guaranteed to be both stupid and evil. He lost a lot of conservative listeners when he lambasted the Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq. I, however, was happy to find a voice in the wilderness echoing what I felt - that it didn't make one a "liberal" (i.e. leftist) to oppose an immoral and unnecessary war. We in Maryland were very lucky to have a local show of this quality and a local talent this great.

Ron Smith was an amazing radio talent and a tireless defender of liberty. His passing is a great loss to the Maryland community and he will be greatly missed.

Ron Paul and Race

2011-12-22T19:41:00.004-05:00

It saddens me to have to write this. Earlier this year, I endorsed Ron Paul for President. Now that he has risen in the polls and taken the lead in Iowa, his campaign has come under more scrutiny and has been buffeted by negative attacks from both main stream media and neo-con talk radio. A recent column in the Wall Street Journal grossly distorted Congressman Paul's views on foreign policy (a more accurate view can be gleaned here).

But, the most concerning attack is one resurrected from his campaign four years ago when the New Republic reported on newsletters (links to the actual newsletters are in the New Republic piece) published under his name in the late 1980's and early 1990's that included racist and anti-Semitic views. Four years ago, Congressman Paul addressed these newsletters stating that he did not write them, disavowed their content, and that he should have been more careful and provided more oversight to what was being published under his name. In a recent interview with Gloria Borger, he was clearly annoyed at having to address this again when he has answered these questions before.

The question is, are his answers satisfactory? Does Ron Paul harbor racism or was he ignorant of the garbage that was being published under his name while he was out of Congress and practicing obstetrics? I think it is safe to say that the answer is yes, his answers are satisfactory and he was ignorant of what was being published under his name. Nothing in Congressman Paul's public career suggests support for policies that are racist or anti-Semitic. In the 198o's he defended Israel when they bombed an Iraqi nuclear plant, even though members of his own party were critical of the action (at the time, Iraq was an ally of the U.S. against Iran). He has been consistently opposed to the drug war and cites as part of his opposition that African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated. Similarly, he changed his view (the man who never changes his views) on capital punishment and now opposes it because it is disproportionately applied to African-Americans. I think it is pretty clear from his record that Ron Paul is not a racist and didn't write those newsletters. In fact, because of his positions on the drug war and capital punishment, Ron Paul actually polls better with minority voters than any of the other GOP candidates.

It is ridiculous to have to state the obvious about a man dedicated to equality, liberty and peace. But I will state it anyway - the newsletters are nonsense, he didn't write them and they don't reflect his views in any way. The truth is out there and expanded upon in more detail in the Daily Paul. I stand by my endorsement of Congressman Ron Paul for President of the United States as he represents our best hope for real change.

It's No Fun, Being an Illegal Alien...

2011-11-27T10:24:00.003-05:00

In a recent GOP debate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich proposed a "draft board" to deal with illegal immigrants on a case by case basis. His point was that some illegal immigrants who may have been here for decades, have children and family that are U.S. citizens, have been working and in many cases have been paying taxes, probably don't need to be forcibly separated from their families and deported. Alternatively, someone who is recently here illegally with minimal ties or roots to the country probably should be told to go home and get back in line to come legally.

While this position is no different from that of either the last Republican president or the last Republican nominee for president, it has created political trouble for the Speaker's campaign. Rivals for the nomination from "also rans" like Michele Bachmann to Gov. Mitt Romney have accused Speaker Gingrich of advocating "amnesty," (although the Speaker has been clear that he doesn't advocate a path to citizenship for anyone here illegally). It appears that the GOP has a new litmus test and that there is a zero tolerance policy regarding any policy seen to favour illegal immigrants. Gov. Rick Perry's decline in the polls began before his brain freeze in the debate in which he couldn't remember his own talking points. It began when he defended a law he signed in Texas that would grant in-state tuition rates at public universities to the children of illegal immigrants (after all, it was their parents that actually broke the law, not the children), a position he actually shares with former Republican governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee.

Speaker Gingrich's support in the polls has already started to weaken as a result of his position on this issue, just as he has emerged as the chief rival to Mitt Romney for the nomination. While I have many issues with the Speaker and have endorsed a rival of his for the nomination, I would suggest that Gingrich is one of the few people in the GOP who has an adult view of this issue. There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. If none of them are going to granted some sort of legal status, using criteria similar to those laid out by Speaker Gingrich, and U.S. laws are going to be enforced, then the U.S. government is obligated to literally round up all 11 million people and deport them to their countries of origin. Not only would this disrupt families in the cases of those who have children who are U.S. citizens, but it should strike anyone that such a task is impossible. It would require devoting almost all resources of the federal government to this task at the exclusion of all else. Furthermore, it would require endowing the federal government with incredible police powers that would ultimately threaten the liberty of every American. Speaker Gingrich has done nothing more than acknowledge the obvious: some portion of these 11 million people are going to remain in the United States. Shouldn't the U.S. government have a policy that brings them out of the shadows and criteria for deciding who of those 11 million are going to remain?

Notes on the Consumption Tax

2011-11-19T19:26:00.006-05:00

GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain has stirred up debate by proposing sweeping reform of the tax code. Under his 9-9-9 plan, there would be a 9% flat federal income tax, a 9% flat federal corporate tax, and a 9% federal sales tax instead of the current system. He has been, predictably, attacked from both sides of the political spectrum. The left have criticized the flat income tax and the sales tax as regressive. But, even the right have attacked him for creating a new revenue stream for the federal government in the form of a consumption tax, even though his plan calls for income taxes and corporate taxes to be much lower than current rates (although many pay less because of deductions and exemptions that would not exist in Mr. Cain's plan, the lowest marginal income tax rate currently is 10%).

However, there is a long tradition of support for a consumption tax in conservative politics. In 1994 Rep. Bill Archer (R-TX), then chair of the House Ways and Means committee began advocating for a national retail sales tax to replace the federal income tax. In 1996, Representatives Dan Schaefer (R-CO) and Billy Tauzin (R-LA) introduced legislation proposing such a tax. John Linder (R-GA) introduced the Fair Tax Act (H.R. 2525) calling for a 23% national sales tax to replace the federal income tax. Linder popularized the act in a 2005 book co-authored by conservative radio talk show host Neal Boortz entitled The Fair Tax Book. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK) made the Fair Tax the centerpiece of his 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination for President. Granted, these proposals all sought to replace the federal income tax completely and not add a consumption tax to an income tax, albeit at a lower income tax rate.

Although the size and scope of government should probably be much smaller than it currently is, there is a legitimate role for government (see previous post).

Since government, as Jefferson put it, is a necessary evil, it needs to have revenue to accomplish those tasks. There is no other way for government to obtain revenue other than taxation. Therefore, there will always be taxes and the notion that we can live in a nation without taxes is the the right's version of the what Milton Friedman called the great myth of government - that everyone can live at everyone else's expense. Although the size and scope of government should probably be much smaller than it currently is, there is still going to be a need for some government and therefore a need for some taxation.

If there has to be taxation, there are many reasons to prefer a consumption tax. First of all, it is less coercive than an income tax as you can always choose to do without or not to buy the goods and service being taxed (granted you don't have that choice if it is being levied on food...), or at least to limit your tax liability by limiting your consumption. You have no such recourse for an income tax. A consumption tax you pay only when you choose to spend, and you have chosen to spend money anyway - it simply raises the price of the good or service you have chosen to purchase. An income tax takes your money before you even see it and does so even if you are trying to save your earnings. The second reason to favour a consumption tax is related: when you tax something you get less of it. We tax savings in this country and thus the savings rate is abysmal. As a consequence, our central bank creates credit out of thin air to encourage economic growth because there is no pool of saved capital for banks to lend. This creates economic bubbles and further discourages savings because they do so through an artificially low interest rate. As a consequence many Americans are overleveraged and our economic growth is never sustainable (furthermore the lack of savings has everyone turning to government for their retirement, which further compounds the problem). If we taxed consumption we would encourage savings and have growth that actually stems from real accumulated capital... Thirdly, the consumption tax is economically neutral. It is applied across the board, equally and to everyone and is therefore less hampering to economic growth. It does not discourage job creation by taxing job creators at a higher rate. Fourth, it is a more efficient tax. At a lower rate it can collect more revenue because it is much harder to avoid or defraud and it collects tax from a lot of people who currently don't pay taxes. Furthermore it collects this tax in a way that is fair and behaviour neutral rather than taxing one group more or less than another depending on their willingness to jump through certain behavioural hoops (like buying a house or putting in green light bulbs...). Fifthly it, it is a tax that favours American manufacturing. As it is levied on imports and taken off on exports, it makes imported goods less competitive on the domestic market and our exports more competitive overseas.

Progressives argue that a consumption tax is regressive and will put the pinch on working class families by making their food, clothing, and shelter more expensive. This is largely a straw man however because no one is talking about adding a consumption tax to the current income tax. If the consumption tax either replaces the income tax or allows for a lower income tax, the burden isn't necessarily higher. It is, however, more transparent. The cost of goods and services wouldn't necessarily be higher if a consumption tax either replaced or allowed for lower income and corporate taxes. You don't notice that the fact that you as a consumer have to pay your share of the corporate tax on everything you buy as it gets added into the cost of production. You would be very aware of paying the consumption tax, but it would replace a lot of invisible taxation. Although it is preferable to tax all things at the same rate, for the reasons given above, there are ways to minimize its regressivity, such as a prebate for lower income families or exempting grocery items from the tax (as the state of Maryland does with its sales tax).

Keynesians (and, scandalously, some Republican candidates for President) oppose the sales tax because it discourages spending. This presumes that all spending is good and all economic growth is a result of spending. That view of economics has landed us where we are today, a debtor nation with almost no savings rate. Prolific spending can produce impressive economic growth - a boom, but that will be followed by a bust because it is not sustainable. On the other hand, if more saving was encouraged the accumulation of capital would be the market force that drives interest rates down and encourage lending out of capital that already exists rather than lending out of artificially created capital. As the interest rate came down from the encouragement of savings, people would start saving less, which would then force interest rates up again to encourage savings again. The market could set the interest rate, rather than a central bank making up how large the money supply would be - and by inflating the currency to encourage "growth" making us all poorer. That would be the path to sustainable economic growth, rather than Keynesian boom and bust.

Furthermore, experience doesn't bare out the canard that consumption taxes hamper economic growth. First and foremost, people are still going to consume and their consumption habits aren't going to change that much (particularly since the net effect on cost might not be that much once the invisible taxes are removed). Secondly, the tax is applied equally across all sectors of the economy, so the net effect on economic activity is zero - it doesn't favour one type of economic behaviour over another (other than favouring saving, which in the long run is probably a good thing) and it doesn't distort economic activity. Contrast that with the current federal income tax and corporate tax structure which actually discourages savings, investment, and hiring and ask your self which is more detrimental to economic growth (not to even get into the distortions in the market place created by all the different loopholes, exemptions, and deductions). Texas has only a consumption tax and a rather high one (if memory serves, 8.25%), but has had incredible economic growth and is one of the few states whose economy is still growing in this recession. Canada enjoyed unprecedented economic growth in the the 1990's and 2000's after initiating a federal sales tax - if the consumption tax is so detrimental to the economy, why wasn't Canada left behind when the rest of the world was booming? The combination of the more efficient consumption tax and massive cuts in government spending allowed Canada to get its debt under control (Canadian debt was 80% of GDP in the early 90's, which is where U.S. debt is now), limit inflation, and eventually even cut income tax rates. As a consequence, Canada has fared much better in the current recession, hasn't needed to bail out a single bank (although they did help bail out Chrysler and GM) and the Canadian dollar went from being equal to about 70 cents USD to being essentially equal to the U.S. dollar. Most Canadians (certainly all of my relatives in Canada) hate the tax because it is visible and the Conservative government that passed it was decimated in the next election, but it is really hard to argue that it hasn't served Canada well.

Although it would be preferable to replace the federal income tax with a consumption tax, the Canadian experience suggests that simply having a consumption tax and lower income tax and corporate tax rates would be much better than the current system.

No You Can't

2011-10-16T15:32:00.008-04:00

Publius' statist physician colleague, Herodotus, brought to his attention an article in Slate by Eliot Spitzer that called supporters of state auto insurance mandates who opposed the federal health insurance mandate hypocrites. Publius pointed out that there were important differences between state insurance mandates and federal mandates and important differences between auto insurance and health insurance (the Spitzer piece ignores the former and oversimplifies the latter). Herodotus responded by arguing that a federal mandate is necessary because we all bear the cost of the uninsured when they are treated in the emergency room or hospitals; people die from lack of health insurance and it is more important to have a health insurance mandate because although you can choose not to drive, you can't "opt out" of needing healthcare; the auto insurance mandate is essentially federal because all 50 states have it; it is hypocritical for South Carolina (the state discussed in the Spitzer piece) to fine citizens that don't have auto insurance but then oppose a federal law that would require the same of health insurance; and that making the federal health insurance mandate a states' rights issue is a, "shameful avoidance tactic." Publius responds:

My dear Herodotus, first of all, of course I understand what happens to uninsured patients in the system. You and I work at the same hospital and we have both cared for a lot of uninsured patients. Our hospital uses the amount of indigent care it provides to negotiate higher bed fees with the state (which regulates what hospitals can charge per night) to make up the difference from the insured patients, so yes we all pay. Hopefully you have not misconstrued my comments to mean that I support the fact that some people don’t have health insurance. But, supporting a goal of universal coverage and supporting an individual mandate to buy health insurance from a private insurance company is most assuredly not the same thing. There are other ways to increase coverage (or even provide universal coverage by expanding Medicare a la Canada style and as Howard Dean has proposed) without necessarily having a mandate that everyone buy a product from a private company that is more interested in its profits than your health. This is what Candidate Obama argued for. The reason for his backtrack is insurance companies lobbied that they couldn’t afford the new rules on pre-existing conditions unless all of those young and healthy people (and yes, I realize they could need catastrophic coverage and really shouldn’t be going without coverage even though many choose to) who are low risk were made to buy policies too to defray the cost of insuring higher risk people with pre-existing conditions. So the individual mandate is nothing more than a give away to big insurance companies and I think there is some hypocrisy in a President promoting a policy he previously said himself was unconstitutional and rhetorically railing against health insurance companies to promote it, when all the while he was really doing their bidding….

Nor is making this a federalism issue an avoidance tactic. A federal mandate for everyone to buy a particular product is unprecedented and 50 state mandates for auto insurance are NOT the same thing when each was a separate act of 50 different state legislatures. Like it or not, we have a federal system. The states have powers and the federal government has powers. Federal powers are enumerated in the constitution and everything else, according the tenth amendment is state authority. The tenth amendment has been watered down by the 14th. While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it was the 14th that made sure that similar infringements to liberty aren’t protected by states rights again with the equal protection clause. This amendment paved the way for the Civil Rights Act 100 years later, which would’ve been unconstitutional without the 14th amendment. Because this amendment broadens federal authority and we have lived in that era, I think we sometimes forget that there are limits on federal authority and states are sovereign over some things. States still do retain the authority to regulate medical practice, for example. You and I are licensed by the state and even though there is now a standardized licensing exam, rather than 50 exams, it is still the state the sets our CME requirements and it is a state panel that reviews allegations about our professionalism, etc. There are state standards for our professionalism and if a license needs to be revoked, the state does it. Oregon is the only state in union with an assisted suicide law, again it is their right to do so because states regulate medical practice and it would be wrong to ban that at the federal level (school curriculum, police and fire services, and most road-building are other examples of primarily state functions). What I find hypocritical about Republicans is not that they can support a state insurance mandate and not a federal one, but rather that they only use the states rights card when it suits them. This supposedly states rights party under Attorney General Ashcroft used the Controlled Substances Act (itself of dubious constitutionality) to prosecute physicians in Oregon who used narcotics to help people die and aggressively prosecuted medical marijuana clinics that were in compliance with their state laws. Under the Bush administration they intervened shamefully in the Terri Schiavo case and set federal education standards in No Child Left Behind. These are all things Republicans should be against if they believe in state sovereignty. But similarly state sovereignty by definition under the tenth amendment would give states the authority to impose any sort of insurance mandate whereas the federal government does not retain that authority. The real issue here in the legal sense is what grants the federal government the power to do this? The Obama administration has argued two things: first that the revenue raising measures qualify the bill as a tax and that it is constitutional because the federal government is granted the power to tax in the constitution. Talk about rank hypocrisy! He insisted there were no taxes in the bill when he sold it to the American people and now he says it’s constitutional because it’s a tax! The second argument is that the interstate commerce clause is broad enough to include this. The problem with that view is that the health insurance industry is also something that historically has been regulated by states (which again makes the federal mandate an unprecedented thing). Each state has its own laws regarding what must be covered, etc. and in some states there are lots of plans that meet requirements and in others the regulations limit to just a few providers. In most states it is illegal to buy health insurance across state lines because most states don’t want you to evade their minimum standards by buying a plan in a different state that does not have the same standards (that’s the official reason, the real reason is health insurance companies have lobbied for that to limit their own competition). So it’s hard to justify the mandate in terms of the interstate commerce clause, particularly since the only measure that would have made it interstate commerce, a provision to allow people to buy insurance across state lines, was stripped from the bill.

In my view, the checks and balances between federal and state authority are as important a guarantor of liberty as the checks and balances between branches of the federal government. Is this system of government perfect? No. It makes mistakes. Sometimes the checks prevent bad policy from happening, but sometimes they prevent good policy too. Clearly state sovereignty protected slavery for many years, which is the classic example of states rights gone awry. However medical marijuana laws are the modern example of a heavy-handed federal law restricting liberty in individual states… On balance I think it is important to have these checks and if we decide that health insurance reform is one of those issues that the checks get in the way of the solution then the answer is not to ignore the checks, but rather to find a constitutional way to do something or amend the constitution. Taking short cuts around a small part of the constitution for altruistic purposes only sets the precedent for making similar dodges around more important parts of the constitution (like protections on free speech for example). I hate to sound like a lawyer here and I know it’s frustrating when technicalities get in the way of good policy, but I think it is a more dangerous precedent in the long term for us to get in the practice of ignoring our own rules…

Furthermore, there are fundamental differences between health insurance and auto insurance. One of them you mentioned, which is you can choose not to drive. That was the point you made that I was most impressed by, simply because in my libertarian echo chamber I had never thought of it quite the way you do and I am always grateful when someone gives me an alternate way of looking at things. As a libertarian I have always thought that an auto insurance mandate is different from a health insurance one, even on the state level, because if I don’t want to purchase auto insurance, I can choose not to drive. I can live close enough to work to bike or walk. I can take mass transit, etc. On the other hand, the only way I could avoid a health insurance mandate if I didn’t want to to buy health insurance is to choose not to breathe…. Your point that the other way of looking at that is I can change my situation so that I don’t need auto insurance but can’t opt out of a need for health care is clever. But, I would still point out that having health insurance is not the same as receiving health care. You and I provide health care and have both provided it to plenty of people without insurance. Likewise the insured has to find providers that accept his or her insurance and may have care denied by their insurance company….

But there is a second important difference between auto insurance and health insurance. Auto insurance is catastrophic insurance. You use it for accidents or expensive work on your car. You don’t use it to rotate your tires, change your oil, put gas in your car or do other routine maintenance (whereas you use your health insurance for well visits, routine blood work, etc.) – even though the routine maintenance can help prevent a major problem down the road (no pun intended). The purpose of a state auto insurance mandate is precisely the point you make about uninsured patients – it costs everyone when an uninsured driver causes an accident and can’t pay (or at best the person not responsible for the accident would be stuck with the bill). In medicine this is the uninsured patient who gets into a car accident or walks into the ER with an MI, or is diagnosed unexpectedly and young with cancer. So there is certainly some rationale for a health insurance mandate (particularly a state one which would be constitutional), but neither the Obamacare mandate nor the Romneycare mandate are mandates for catastrophic coverage only, they are mandates for full coverage when merely catastrophic coverage would solve the moral hazard problem of the uninsured. So using the auto insurance analogy is like comparing apples to oranges (or at best oranges to grapefruits).

Unlike your thoughtful response, my dear Herodotus, the Spitzer piece largely glossed over these important distinctions and was nothing more than an amalgam of Democrat-party pro-Obama care talking points. It is the type of intellectual laziness I would expect from Republicans (whom I have already pointed out are generally for state rights until they oppose the policy of a particular state, then they want the feds to control it) and far beneath the usual standards of Slate (although I have to admit the only person I actually ever read in Slate is Christopher Hitchens, who I think is the most brilliant writer of our times, even though I disagree with him at least half the time). I have to say, however, that I was unaware that South Carolina makes you buy car insurance even if you don’t drive and if that was in the Spitzer piece and I missed it then I owe a small apology to the former Governor. Again, although the apple that is a state car insurance mandate has little bearing on the orange that is a federal health insurance mandate, for all the reasons detailed above. I must confess that I had no idea SC required people to buy car insurance whether or not they drive. I agree that is completely ridiculous and I don’t know how any sane person of any party can support forcing someone who doesn’t drive to buy auto insurance. GEICO must be a big donor…

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

2011-10-02T09:44:00.002-04:00

Yesterday the United States killed an American citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen with alleged ties to Al Qaeda who had fled the United States and was hiding in Yemen. He was killed by a drone attack yesterday after being targeted under an assassination program maintained by the Obama administration that I have mentioned in a previous post and that does not exempt U.S. citizens from being targeted. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that no American, "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This means a trial in which the government proves its case against you to a jury of your peers beyond a reasonable doubt. Awlaki was an American citizen and therefore, under the law, supposedly protected by the Fifth Amendment. But Awlaki was killed by the U.S. government without having formal charges leveled, without having a trial, without evidence being presented, and without an impartial judge and jury weighing evidence and deciding on his guilt. Although the fact that Awlaki has been in Yemen, a country with which we have no extradition treaty, and has no plans to return to the United States changes circumstances from those of an American citizen living within U.S. borders, he was still an American citizen and when asked by Jake Tapper, the administration made no effort to share publicly even a shred of evidence they have against Awlaki. In the other words, the administration simply decided he was a threat and eliminated him. If they had credible evidence that Awlaki represented a threat to the U.S., or committed crimes against the U.S., why not share with the American people some of the evidence for this action or publicly set standards for when targeted assassination of American citizens overseas can be resorted to? There is no evidence that Awlaki met any of the legal criteria for forfeiture of his citizenship by publicly swearing allegiance to a foreign government or joining a foreign military. In the age of global terrorism, this definition of forfeiture may need to be revisited to include joining terrorist organizations opposed to the United States, but to date they have not. If the United States government can secretly decide that Awlaki, an American citizen living overseas and still entitled to Constitutional protections whether we like it or not, is a threat and can take his life without making public any evidence for doing so or any standards by which such targeted assassinations can take place, what is to stop it from doing this to any American citizen overseas?

Awlaki's assassination was discussed on the Fox News Sunday round table this morning. All of the panelists agreed with the administration's action. However, Juan Williams did at least ask that the administration put forth publicly some sort of standards or criteria for when targeted assassinations will be used. In his rebuttal to Mr. Williams' reticence, Britt Hume labeled Awlaki an, "enemy combatant," with, "no rights," who has joined an organization with which we have de facto, "declared war."

Nothing could be more absurd than Mr. Hume's comments. The last time the United States declared war on anyone it was Germany and Japan in 1941. There is no declaration of war to justify the government using wartime measures against U.S. citizens. Awlaki also was never accused of being a combatant and participating personally in acts of violence against the U.S. and he was not killed on a battlefield. He was accused of inciting others to violence against the U.S. His crime was treason, but even accused traitors are entitled to a trial and due process of law.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a bad man who probably got what he deserved. But, his execution sets a precedent that threatens the liberty of American citizens for generations to come. If we accept that our government can kill an American citizen overseas without due process of law or without establishing some sort of objective criteria to apply to when such extreme measures are warranted and sharing publicly with the American people some of the evidence against that person, then what is to stop our government from doing that to any of us?

The Fallacy of Regulations

2011-09-03T18:57:00.002-04:00

While nearly everyone wants to be successful, make lots of money, and become wealthy; no one likes to prospect of people becoming wealthy at others expense. To the extent that a wealthy person has made his or her money by cheating taxpayers or gouging consumers, aggregated wealth invites enmity and class warfare. Conventional wisdom suggests rules are needed to prevent unfair business practices and protect consumers. It's OK to make a lot of money if you play by the rules, but not if you cheat.

The problem is that these rules and ostensible consumer protections are written by a government which everyone has a constitutional right to petition. It is intuitive that those with more money are better positioned to petition the government than those with less. Therefore the regulations written will be influenced the most by the very people that they are to regulate. Simply holding the position that it is the job of government to regulate the economy is an open invitation for moneyed interests to influence those regulations to benefit them, rather than the consumer they are ostensibly meant to protect. Such regulations end up protecting entrenched business interests from competition at the expense of consumers. Even if campaigns were completely publicly funded, moneyed interests would still prevail due to their increased ability to hire lobbyists and fund advertising campaigns. The very notion that government should regulate the market rather than allow the alleged excesses of the free market guarantees, regardless of which party is in power, that the worst sort of crony capitalism (called crapitalism in a previous post) will occur. The only way to avoid subsidies, bailouts, tax breaks, and other backroom deals that transfer wealth from the less affluent to the wealthy is to subject business to all the risks of loss they would experience from bad business practices in a truly free and competitive market.

2012 Endorsement: Ron Paul

2011-06-17T15:16:00.009-04:00

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog before that I am endorsing Ron Paul for President in 2012. In a political climate in which buzz words like "hope," and "change" are so casually tossed around as to be meaningless, Congressman Paul offers our nation the only hope for real change. Our nation is mired in three foreign wars that Dr. Paul warned against, remains in the midst of an economic collapse that Dr. Paul predicted, and our liberties are continuously being eroded by an enlarging security apparatus that Dr. Paul opposed. The ever expanding welfare/warfare state that Dr. Paul has consistently opposed and that mainstream politicians in both major political parties have enlarged now faces a debt crisis that can only be corrected by returning federal government to its constitutionally defined roles. These are the key issues of the 2012 campaign and no candidate in either party offers credible (or even fantastical) solutions to address them other than Ron Paul. While Rome burns, the Neros in both political parties are fiddling away with their tired and empty rhetoric about what tax rates should be and who should pay them and completely ignore the root causes of our current predicament. If the United States is to emerge from our current woes as a stronger and more prosperous nation, the status quo must be rejected and the only candidate challenging the status quo is Congressman Ron Paul.

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR RON PAUL

In the fall of 2008, the 2008 election suddenly became a referendum on the economy when the housing bubble collapsed and banks with bad debt started to fail. The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, enjoyed a slight lead in the polls, even after Sarah Palin's gaffes, until the stock market crashed less than a week after Senator McCain proclaimed, "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." McCain followed this with the second gaffe of suspending his campaign to rush to Washington to, "do something," about a financial crisis he didn't even see on the horizon a week earlier. Saddled with these gaffes and being the candidate of the party presiding over the collapse, McCain's lead vanished and Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States.

Ron Paul had been warning about a collapse in the housing bubble since 2002. Easy credit, fueled by the Federal Reserve maintaining artificially low interest rates and risky lending encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act, greed and subprime lending, and securitization of bad debt by quasi-government lenders, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, led to the creation of a lot of bad debt and skyrocketing real estate prices from increasing demand. None of this was sustainable and when the U.S. dollar began to weaken from the Fed's expansion of the money supply, the bubble burst. What has been the response of politicians on both sides of the aisle? They have tried to re-inflate the bubble with bail outs, TARP and continued low interest rates. Candidate Bill Clinton once reminded us that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Yet politicians on both sides of the aisle have responded to our current recession with the same policies that got us in to it. The other candidates for President, on both sides of the aisle, propose only additional Keynesianism to get us out: either tax cuts or stimulus spending. Congressman Paul also recognizes the moral hazard of government securitizing bad loans. When investors reap all the profits, but taxpayers will take all the losses, risky lending is encouraged.

Establishment politicians and mainstream media paint Ron Paul's economic ideas as extreme by focusing on his desire to return to the gold standard and his call to end the Federal Reserve. Clearly neither is likely to happen in a Ron Paul administration as both would require acts of Congress to achieve. But, the salient economic point here is that Dr. Paul recognizes that one source of our economic woes is the weakening of our dollar. This is caused by printing and borrowing to cover excessive government spending and lowering interest rates which sends signals that there is a surplus of capital available for borrowing, when in reality there is not (which fuels borrowing against artificial wealth instead of true accumulated capital). The surplus of printed dollars devalues the savings of every American and particularly reduces the buying power of those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. A commodity backed currency (i.e. the gold standard) is not readily inflatable and it is the Federal Reserve that carries out this policy of printing dollars and lowering interest rates. While a return to a commodity currency and abolishing the Federal Reserve may not be practical, clearly our current monetary policy which creates economic bubbles and robs us all of wealth needs to change. In the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire last week, Congressman Paul was the only candidate who discussed the importance of a change in monetary policy to address the structural problems in our economy. Canada, despite also having a fiat currency, has developed the strongest currency in the western hemisphere, if not the world, through sounder monetary policy. Ron Paul's proposals to allow commodity currency to compete openly with Federal Reserve notes and to give Congress greater autonomy to audit the Federal Reserve may go a long way toward achieving a sounder U.S. dollar, even if his ideals of a gold standard and abolishing the Federal Reserve are neither achievable nor desirable.

THE FISCAL CASE FOR RON PAUL

Our federal debt has reached over $14 trillion USD. This is about 90% of GDP and the federal debt is projected to exceed 100% of GDP by the end of this fiscal year (Greek debt was about 125% of GDP when their fiscal crisis came to a head). An ever growing percentage of the federal budget is devoted to paying interest on this debt to our creditors (including China), which diverts resources away from other functions of government. Added to the burden of accumulated federal debt is the underfunded liability of entitlement programs. Both Medicare and Social Security are funded by taxing current workers to pay the benefits of current retirees, and not out of some sort of trust fund that allowed your contributions to grow into your benefits. They are Ponzi schemes that become unsustainable as the ratio of workers to retirees dwindles. That day of reckoning is soon as retirees are living longer and the baby boomer generation (the largest generation in U.S. history) is leaving the work force and joining the ranks of retirees. Escalation of health care costs (which, contrary to rhetoric, the "Obama-care," health insurance reform did nothing to address) make the solvency of Medicare particularly precarious and the both the Bush and Obama administrations saw fit to burden the taxpayer with additional health care entitlements.

Dealing with the debt crisis is the most important issue that the next President will face and of the field, it is Ron Paul who offers long term solutions. President Obama has demonstrated that nothing will curtail his penchant for spending and offers only tax increases. Other Republican candidates offer some modest spending cuts, pay lip service to modest entitlement reform (raising retirement ages, means testing benefits...), and insist that lower taxes will generate economic growth and greater revenue. The only other Republican (who is not running) who offers a credible plan to deal with entitlement programs is Congressman Paul Ryan (WI). However the Ryan plan ignores defense spending, which amounts to substituting a warfare state for a welfare state. Ron Paul understands that it is inflatable currency that allows government to pay (at least temporarily) for expanding social programs and perpetual war. Step one in slowing growth of our debt is sounder monetary policy. Step two is realizing that the Constitution sets limits on federal government and only reducing its scope to those levels is going to bring our debt under control. Step three involves cutting military spending by ending unnecessary and immoral wars overseas and using those savings to sure up federal programs for the transition to a more constitutionally limited government while not abandoning current beneficiaries who rely on those programs. President Obama is not talking about any significant cuts in federal spending and no Republican seems willing to entertain cuts in military spending. Congressman Paul supports both as the only path out of the budgetary abyss. Only after structural spending liability is addressed and after the role of government is adjusted can a meaningful conversation about taxes (what kind of tax should we have?, who should be taxed and at what rate, etc.) occur.

THE CIVIL LIBERTIES CASE FOR RON PAUL

Excessive military spending is not only a drain on our economy, but it is also a threat to our liberty at home. Governments always assume more power and curtail liberty in time of war, but the war on terror is perpetual. In the name of security, we have accepted ever expanding encroachments on our liberty. The PATRIOT Act allows the federal government to review your library records. After illegally eavesdropping on mobile phone calls placed overseas, President Bush signed (and Barack Obama voted for) an expansion of federal wiretapping authority that makes a mockery of the FISA courts. Terror suspects are held indefinitely in offshore prisons outside the rule of law. Federal investigations use, "enhanced interrogation techniques." Airport screenings have become increasingly invasive. Of the GOP candidates for President, only Ron Paul and Gary Johnson have called for rolling back these measures. President Obama has embraced this new federal power. Gitmo remains open and indefinite detentions continue. Routine use of water boarding may have stopped, but President Obama retains his prerogative to authorize it in select cases. Iraq and Afghanistan remain occupied and the U.S. is now involved militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress whatsoever. Not only did Senator Obama vote to expand federal wiretapping authority, but President Obama has maintained a federal program of targeted assassination of terror suspects, even if those suspects are U.S. citizens. Ron Paul has opposed all of these measures in specific and interventionist foreign policy in general. For anyone concerned about the erosion of civil liberties since 9/11, Ron Paul is the clear candidate.

THE ELECTABILITY CASE FOR RON PAUL

Why Ron Paul and not Gary Johnson? What Gary Johnson brings to the table is his experience. He was a successful two-term governor who actually did a lot of the things other Republicans only talk about in terms of shrinking government. I favour Ron Paul over Gary Johnson for two reasons, one ideological and the other practical. The ideological is that Ron Paul is a better defender of the Constitution. While Johnson is good at pointing out how and why government schemes don't or won't work, he is a self-described empiricist and if presented with data that a certain program is accomplishing a desired goal (without other unintended detrimental consequences) he could be persuaded to support it, even if it is not a proper role for federal government. I, on the other hand, believe the Constitution forbids the federal government from being involved in certain things, even if such intervention might be advantageous. The practical is, I actually do think Ron Paul is more electable. He has national organization, better name recognition, and solid fund raising. Furthermore, Paul and Johnson illustrate the libertarian divide on abortion. Unlike Gary Johnson, Ron Paul is firmly anti-abortion, which makes him more electable in a GOP primary and might go a long way to helping more socially conservative voters over look his position on drug legalization.

Because of some of his libertarian positions that are not accepted by social conservatives, establishment politicians and mainstream media (as well as many of my friends) have labeled him unelectable. In truth he is only unelectable if we continue to believe it so. With the addition of Bachmann, Gingrich, and Romney to the field; Ron Paul is no longer polling second in the GOP race. However he, Cain, Gingrich and Bachmann are polling within the margin of error of one another and Ron Paul still polls better in a head-to-head match up with Barack Obama than any GOP contender other than Mitt Romney. While Romney may seem electable, he probably is not. Not only is "Romney-care," an albatross around his neck in the GOP primary, but the truth is nothing Mitt Romney says can be believed. He has changed his positions so many times to suit the prevailing breeze, n0 one can comfortably vote for him and predict how he might govern. After two successive Presidents who said one thing and did another, it is time to elect someone with a voting record that matches his rhetoric, like Ron Paul. Only Ron Paul can credibly challenge Barack Obama on issues of civil liberties. The New Hampshire electorate is rather libertarian and increasing numbers of libertarians have moved there as part of the Free-State movement. Although Romney, who governed a neighbouring state and has a residence in New Hampshire, will almost certainly win the nation's first primary (of course we thought that in 2008 too, didn't we?); the libertarian electorate and New Hampshire's open primary, which will allow Democrats and Independents who support Ron Paul's civil liberties agenda and have no Democrat race to vote in to crossover and vote for Ron Paul, gives Ron Paul a good chance to emerge from the New Hampshire primary in the top three. Ron Paul is electable if more of us choose to believe he is and rather than holding our noses and voting for the lesser of evils instead of, "throwing away our vote," vote our conscience.

Congressman Ron Paul is the only electable candidate whose actions match his rhetoric, who is committed to ending the status quo and putting America on a different path, who will make government live within its means, address our weak economy and devalued dollar, and protect our civil liberties. For these reasons, I wholeheartedly endorse Ron Paul for President of the United States in 2012.

Crapitalism

2011-04-17T17:40:00.004-04:00

Crapitalism is a contraction for crony capitalism. It is a system of economics and governance that is antithetical to true capitalism and threatening to a free society. Crapitalists seek profits not by producing quality products at reasonable prices and out-competing other producers of similar products, but rather by getting special tax-breaks and subsidies from government or special rules and regulations that regulate their competitors out of business. Examples include protective tariffs; subsidies for oil, ethanol, sugar, and wool; tax breaks for a specific company to come to a specific state and out compete other businesses in that state that have to pay the taxes (usually done in the name of job creation); publicly funded sports stadia; and other regulations that favour one company over its competitors. In other words, all the shenanigans that Michael Moore complains about and inappropriately labels as capitalism. Unlike the true capitalist, the crapitalist makes his profits at taxpayer expense. Crony capitalists, rather than seeking ways to produce more efficiently than their competition, hire lobbyists to go to Washington (or state capitals) and lobby for tax breaks, subsidies, and regulations that hurt their competitors. What follows is a particularly disgusting example.

In 1989 the United States signed the Montreal Protocol, an agreement to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that have been implicated in the depletion of the ozone layer. The 1990 Clean Air Act empowered to EPA to ban the use of CFCs and begin the elimination of aerosols and refrigerants that contain CFCs. Inhalers for asthma attacks contained CFCs, but the law allows exemptions for essential uses of CFCs and the FDA had labeled such inhalers as medically necessary to allow their continued use.

The most commonly prescribed inhaler for acute asthma attacks is albuterol. In 1995, the patent for albuterol expired and generic albuterol inhalers became available at lower cost than brand name. In 1996, Schering-Plough introduced an albuterol inhaler (brand name Proventil) that uses hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) as a propellant, instead of CFCs (http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070819/27asthma_2.htm). HFA does not deplete ozone. Currently, there are only four available HFA-inhalers (http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm048245.pdf). In addition to Proventil, there is Ventolin (manufactured by Glaxo-Smith-Kline), ProAir (manufactured by Teva), and Xopenex (manufactured by Sepracor). There are no generic HFA albuterol inhalers (http://asthma.emedtv.com/albuterol-inhaler/generic-albuterol-inhaler.html) and the brand name HFA inhalers cost about three times as much as generic, CFC-containing, inhalers. Acute asthma attacks can also be treated with epinephrine inhalers. Epinephrine is available generically and over-the-counter (Primatene Mist). Initially there were concerns that the epinephrine inhaler might not be as effective, nor as safe, as an albuterol inhaler, but a small study in 2005 suggested that there may be similar safety and efficacy with epinephrine compared to albuterol (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16400891). In 2003, the FDA removed the essential use exemption from CFC containing albuterol inhalers because a non-ozone depleting alternative was available and all CFC containing albuterol inhalers (i.e. all generic inhalers) were removed from the market by December 31, 2008 (http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm048245.pdf). In 2007, the FDA followed suit with epinephrine inhalers that contain CFCs, removing the essential use exemption. Epinephrine inhalers will become unavailable as of December 31, 2011 (http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/cd0813.pdf).

Ostensibly, this has been done to protect the environment. However, CFCs from asthma inhalers were a very small component of total CFC emissions (http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070819/27asthma_2.htm and http://blogs.webmd.com/allergies-and-asthma/2006/03/primatene-mist-or-albuterol.html). Certainly this move is of no benefit to patients with asthma as it takes cheaper and equally effective medications off the market. It is easy to see, however, who benefits from these regulations. Schering-Plough, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Teva, and Sepracor have had their less expensive competitors regulated out of existence and people suffering from asthma are now forced to purchase their more expensive alternatives. Indeed, in a statement to USA Today, the FDA nearly admitted as much stating that it took action because sales of the environmentally friendly inhalers were lagging behind the less expensive generic inhalers containing CFCs, "This regulation is necessary because private markets are very unlikely to preserve levels of stratospheric ozone sufficient to protect the public health." (http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070819/27asthma_2.htm). One could argue that the FDA's hands were tied with regard to albuterol because once there was a non-ozone depleting alternative they could no longer grant an essential use exemption to albuterol inhalers. But if so, why didn't the FDA take action as soon as an HFA-albuterol inhaler was available rather than wait years and only take action after it was apparent that expensive HFA inhalers couldn't compete against cheaper generic inhalers that contained CFCs? And what about epinephrine? There is no HFA-inhaler version of epinephrine. Therefore, despite demonstrated efficacy, the FDA is essentially saying you can't use a medication that we know works as an alternative to albuterol. It seems clear that the FDA has taken these actions purely for the benefit of powerful pharmaceutical interests.

Using the Woodward and Bernstein principle of identifying who benefits and following the money, it seems almost certain that big Pharma lobbied for these rule changes to eliminate their competition form the market place. In fact, two patient advocacy groups petitioned the FDA in 2003 to remove the the essential use exemption from CFC containing albuterol inhalers. The Allergy and Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics launched a campaign to lift the exemption sponsored by Sepracor (and the President and Founder of this group has owned Sepracor stock) and the American Lung Association took $1 million from Teva to promote the CFC withdrawal (http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070819/27asthma_2.htm). It stretch credulity to suggest that big Pharma money isn't behind the regulatory change for epinephrine inhalers as well. Under the guise of protecting the environment and with the lobbying of big pharmaceutical companies, the federal government has regulated competitors of the big pharmaceutical companies out of the market and caused millions of Americans to pay more to treat their asthma. Teva, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Sepracor, Schering-Plough, all get to increase their profits at taxpayer expense, not by producing a better or more affordable product in a competitive market, but by having their competition eliminated by regulatory fiat.

This type of crony capitalism, or crapitalism, has no connection to true capitalism. In true capitalism the consumer is king because the only way competitors are eliminated from the market is when they cannot produce a product as well or as efficiently and cheaply as their competitors. In a truly capitalist society a company can only corner a market by producing the best product at the best price and in an openly competitive economy if anyone else develops a way to produce that product better or cheaper then that company will no longer corner the market. Either way, the consumer benefits. In crapitalism business interests lobby government to regulate their competitors out of existence and the consumer is then stuck with either and inferior product, or a more expensive one, or both. These anti-competitive regulations, subsidies, tariff protections, and tax breaks need to be abolished. Profits should be earned, not transferred from average Americans to influential interests by legislative or regulatory fiat.

You Say You Want a Revolution

2011-03-13T16:07:00.005-04:00

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire to protest policies of the Tunisian government. That desperate act of defiance has been the spark that ignited a powder keg of revolutions in the Middle East. From Tunisia, protest spread to Egypt where the 3o-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarek was peacefully toppled. From Egypt, protests have spread to Bahrain and Lebanon. Iran's Green Revolution has been rekindled. Now, as civil war rages in Libya and the Arab League has called for Colonel Qadhafi to step down, the United States is left to wonder what to make of this and what role should it play.

The first question is what is the ultimate goal of these revolutionaries? Are they interested in individual liberty and economic freedom? Or, are these revolutions fueled by reactionary Islamist or jihadist elements bent on establishing theocracies in place of the secular autocracies? In short, are these revolutions more similar to the one in Tehran in 1979 or to the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989? Several features suggest the latter. First the protests, particularly in Egypt, have not been coupled with overt anti-American or anti-Western rhetoric (the burning of American flags, etc.). In fact, many on the street interviewed by western journalists have talked about how they would like to have the type of democracy enjoyed in the U.S. Secondly, the root causes of these protests have been economic. Third, in the case of Iran, it hardly seems likely that protest against an Islamic theocracy is aimed at establishing an Islamic theocracy. Although some have worried about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it should be recognized that Egypt is not a resource rich nation (i.e. not an oil producing nation) that can economically afford difficult political relations with the West. On the contrary, Egypt's largest industry is tourism and one would hope that the economic interest of Egyptians would favour stability and continued cordial relations with the West. In Libya, Colonel Qadhafi has tried to persuade his people that Al Qaeda is behind the insurgency in an effort to discredit the insurgency and dissuade Libyans from joining it. If Qadhafi thinks that associating the insurgency with Al Qaeda discredits it in the eyes of the Libyan people, then it is unlikely the Libyan people are interested in jihad.

However, the good intentions of the protesters is no guarantee of a positive outcome. History is full of examples of failed democratic revolutions in which the best of intentions produce horrendous results or the ensuing chaos and power vacuum degenerates into tyranny. The French First Republic and the Wiemar Republic provide European examples. Hugo Chavez became an autocrat by democratic means, as did Vladmir Putin. There is no guarantee that democratic revolutions will remain democratic. Many factors, discussed in two previous posts (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange-revolution.html and http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran.html) are important for successful liberal democracy, including limits on government power; a concept of rule of law; private property rights; dispersal of power amongst national and local governments, public and private institutions, and between different branches of government; and independent civil and governing institutions. Simply voting and having majority rule guarantees none of these things and can be a recipe for mob rule. Capital and private property rights are important in the development of liberty. The production of wealth (and therefore a tax base for government) requires private ownership, which requires personal property rights, which then requires codification of the protection of those rights. Commerce requires freedom to travel, free speech to advertise, and therefore the codification of these freedoms. Based on this relationship between capitalism and freedom, Fareed Zakaria has observed in his wonderful book, The Future of Freedom, that successful liberal democracies tend to take hold in countries with a per capita GDP of $6,000 USD. Based on this analysis, Egypt, Libya, and Iran would not seem like fertile ground for successful democracies (in fact, Zakaria points out that resource-rich states like Iran have greater impediment because no government in Iran would be beholden to free and productive citizenry to create wealth). In the midst of all this uncertainty, surely a militant jihadist group could play on the fears of the people and their desire for stability and hijack a revolution that may have started as a democratic one.

This uncertainty is a quandary for the United States. There is great fear that these revolutions may lead to instability and the rise of more terrorist states in an already volatile region (and a region that the world depends on for oil). Furthermore, with Libya and Iran as exceptions, often the protesters are revolting against governments allied with the U.S. (such as Mubarek in Egypt and the monarchy in Bahrain). Should the United States be supporting its allies even if they do not have the support of their own people. Should we intervene to help topple dictators like Qadhafi and Ahmadinejad? Would U.S. support for insurgents undermine their legitimacy? Would U.S. involvement allow jihadists to paint these movements as American backed frauds and ride anti-western sentiment into power? Would our involvement, militarily, foment the very radicalization of these movements that we hope to avoid?

If we truly believe that it is a self-evident truth that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then we must not continue to prop up dictators in a region where our history of doing so in the past in the name of, "stability," has damaged our reputation and created the type of anger that contributes to the recruitment of terrorists. We may fear possible outcomes of these revolutions, but we have no choice but to let them play out and let the brave people of these nations chart their own destinies. They may not choose the same style of governance as ours, but we must acknowledge that the choice is theirs and not ours.

Whether or not to intervene in Libya is a more difficult question. Rebel forces seem locked in a stalemate with Colonel Qadhafi's forces and many Libyans will die before this is over. It is tempting to consider establishing a no-fly zone and perhaps even sending in ground troops to help the Libyan people get rid of an evil dictator. After all, where would the U.S. be today without the intervention of France in our revolution? However, U.S. troops in Libya, or U.S. planes over Libya would involve the U.S. in yet another middle eastern quagmire and serve as yet another example of foreign conquest to our detractors in the region. The key difference between the American Revolution and the Libyan one is the Continental Congress sent Benjamin Franklin to Paris to ask the King of France for help. While we should stand ready to provide any assistance the Libyan people ask us for (preferably in the context of a multinational effort), we must continue to understand that the fate of Libya is for Libyans to decide.

Ultimately these movements are not about the United States or our interests. We should stop talking about these revolutions as if it is up to the U.S. to decide how to manage their outcomes. It was the Athenian penchant for toppling tyrants in favour of democracies that stirred the ire of Sparta. Democratic movements and regime change have legitimacy when the arise from within, not when they are imposed from without.

Ask and Tell

2010-12-24T10:19:00.009-05:00

Kudos to Congress and President Obama for repealing the military's policy of, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opening the way for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces.

As a Roman Catholic, my church teaches that homosexual behaviour is sinful, but having a gay or lesbian sexual orientation is not (so yes, the Catholic Church would ask gays to remain celibate if they are to practice the faith). The distinction is that one chooses one's behaviour, but one does not choose one's innate orientation. However, such a discussion of the private morality of homosexual behaviour is irrelevant to a discussion of federal public policy in a nation with a constitutional guarantee not to respect the establishment of a particular religion. After all, who is to say that the Roman Catholic view or fundamentalist Protestant view of homosexuality should prevail over the Episcopalian view (our country's state church before the Revolution) that does not deem homosexual behaviour sinful? One (or multiple) church's view should not be the basis for public policy. For the devoutly faithful who view homosexual behaviour as sinful, the answer is quite simple: don't engage in it and leave everyone else alone.

Perhaps the intent of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was an effort to separate behaviour from orientation. Being gay didn't disqualify you from service, simply being openly gay. Independent of whether or not the military, as a federal institution, should regulate personal and private morality (and conceding that the military has an interest in enforcing a code of conduct that would not otherwise apply in civilian life), this policy isn't simply about behaviour because simply stating one's sexual orientation is grounds for discharge under this policy. What we have asked gay men and women to do in order to serve their country is to lie, or at least be less than honest, about who they are. How is that compatible with a professional military that would other wise promote values of personal honour and integrity? It's not. The truth is, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was never good policy. It was simply the best achievable result, politically, 17 years ago but in the end doesn't really satisfy gay patriots who wish to serve or those who wish to exclude them. Times have changed and this policy has outlived its limited usefulness.

The arguments for continuing, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," are mind-boggling in their naked bigotry. Senator McCain, the marine commandant, and apparently marine units have argued that including people who are openly gay will damage unit cohesion and diminish combat readiness. So the argument is that a gay patriot who is willing to fight and die for his country has to deny who he is to do so because his comrades in arms may be too bigoted or too unprofessional to handle to him being, "out of the closet?" Not only does this suggest that American service men and women are bigoted, but is also suggests that they are less professional than their British, Canadian, or Israeli counterparts who seem to have been able to accept openly gay comrades in arms. There will still be a military code of conduct that will apply to gay service men and women as well, including rules for fraternization. The integration of gay men and women into a service of trained and competent professionals should no more disrupt combat readiness than the introduction of women to an all male service did.

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying that the only purpose of the military is to, "kill people and break their stuff." Ironically he uses this as an argument against allowing gays to serve openly because he maintains that the military should, therefore, not be a vehicle for experiments in social justice. But, on the contrary, it is an argument for greater inclusion. The military should not exclude competent, capable people who can help achieve its mission on the basis of arbitrary characteristics. As Milton Friedman teaches us in Capitalism and Freedom (pp.109-110), "...an entrepreneur who expresses preferences in his business activities that are not related to productive efficiency is at a competitive disadvantage to other individuals who do not. Such an individual is in effect imposing higher costs on himself than are other individuals who do not have such preferences." Granted, the military is not a business. However excluding competent capable people for reasons unrelated to their effectiveness will still have have the effect of making the military less efficient. Furthermore, since the military does not have economic competitors its short-sightedness will not drive it out of business, but rather will perpetuate its inefficiencies. Therefore, the President and Congress needed to act.

Last March, a former Air Force chief of staff, Merrill McPeak, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in favour of, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05mcpeak.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all). In addition to denigrating the professionalism of men and women in uniform by making the, "unit cohesion," argument, General McPeak points out that there are many reasons for the military to exclude people from service that would be unacceptable in the civilian sector:

The services exclude, without challenge, many categories of prospective entrants. People cannot serve in uniform if they are too old or too young, too fat or too thin, too tall or too short, disabled, not sufficiently educated and so on. This, too, might be illegal in the civil sector. So why should exclusion of gay people rise to the status of a civil-rights issue, when denying entry to, say, unmarried individuals with sole custody of dependents under 18, does not?

The issue of an unmarried individual with sole custody of dependents under the age of 18 putting him or herself in harms way is a special case. However, the rest of General McPeak's other examples all pertain to issues of fitness for duty. Exclusion of gay people represents the exclusion of people independent of their capability or competence. The argument is particularly absurd when the same individual would be allowed to serve so long as no one knows that he or she is gay. Sixty or seventy years ago that last sentence could have read, "blacks," instead of, "gay people." I am sure "unit cohesion" arguments were made then too. The arguments were just as wrong then as they are now. One has as much ability to choose one's sexual orientation as one has the ability to choose one's skin colour.

Perhaps Barry Goldwater summed it up the best in a Larry King Live interview fifteen or more years ago when he argued that you didn't have be straight to serve in the military, you just needed to be able to shoot straight.

Is Social Security Reform Too Much to Hope For?

2010-10-24T20:32:00.003-04:00

Most mature observers of American government know that the United States is facing a looming entitlement crisis. Social Security and Medicare account for nearly 60% of the federal budget and the cost of each is spiraling out of control. The cost of Medicare escalates with the rising cost of health care in general and the recently passed health insurance reform, while expanding coverage, does not address health care costs in any meaningful way. Both programs face a demographic crisis. Baby boomers are retiring and there is a dwindling number of workers paying in to the system to cover the new retirees. The dirty little secret in Washington is that the current system is unsustainable.

In a previous post (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2010/04/end-it-dont-mend-it.html), I outlined a case for eliminating Social Security, on both moral and economic grounds. Although no plan for the elimination of the program should affect current retirees or those nearing retirement who have planned on Social Security, I understand that the argument I presented is not politically practical. Current retirees will always fear that the changes will affect them; demagoguery about individuals losing their retirement nest egg in private, stock-based, accounts is too easy; and a straight retirement welfare program for the working poor, which is what I think should replace Social Security, is unpopular because people who have been paying in to the program want their money back. For these reasons, Social Security has long been known as the "third rail," of American politics. Touch it, and you die. Barry Goldwater campaigned on Social Security reform in 1964 and lost. Paul Tsongas suffered a similar fate in the 1992 Democratic Presidential primary, losing to Bill Clinton when he raised issues of Social Security solvency and declared, "there is no Santa Claus." President Reagan had to appoint a commission to give elected officials political coverage to make some necessary changes in the 1980's that bought the last couple of decades of solvency.

However, an increasing number of Americans, having watched the Greek welfare state collapse, seem to have noticed the writing on the wall and there are signs that maybe the old political rules about Social Security are changing. Although President Bush did not accomplish Social Security reform and faced bitter opposition and demagoguery, he did win two elections (2000 and 2004) despite campaigning on the issue. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member on the House Budget committee, has been at the forefront of discussing the looming entitlement crisis and has proposed a road map for reform (http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/). Despite the predictable demagogic attacks on this plan, Congressman Ryan's reelection in 2010 is considered safe. More interestingly, at least three candidates for Senate - Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) - have endorsed specific reforms to Social Security on the campaign trail. All have addressed the question on Fox News Sunday. On March 28, 2010, Speaker Rubio endorsed Congressman Ryan's road map, including the possibility that retirement ages may need to be raised or cost-of-living adjustments decreased to keep the program solvent. On October 3, 2010, Dr. Paul similarly endorsed the notion that retirement ages may need to be raised. Earlier today (October 24, 2010), Mr. Toomey discussed the demographic challenges to Social Security and allowing younger workers to opt out and in to private or partially private retirement accounts, with regulations about the amount of risk (ratio of stocks to less volatile investments) the portfolio can have based on the proximity of the account holder to retirement. All three of these candidates are currently leading in their races. In the latest polls, Mr. Toomey leads Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak 46% to 43%. Dr. Paul leads over Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) 48% to 43%. Stunningly, in Florida (a state full of retirees), Speaker Rubio has opened up a commanding lead in the three way race with former Governor Charlie Crist (I) and Congressman Kendrick Meek (D): Rubio 41%, Crist 26%, and Meek 20%! (see Real Clear Politics for the latest polls: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/senate/)

The election of Congressmen and Senators who are unafraid to at least discuss Social Security reform and willing to go on record advocating specific changes in the midst of an election campaign (and in the case of Dr. Paul and Mr. Toomey, in tight races) would represent a huge step forward for the possibility of desperately needed entitlement reform. The only questions that remain are: 1) can these brave souls stand up to the demagoguery and the organized special-interest attacks to bring the rest of their party (and the President) along? and 2) can Republicans, who created new entitlements and doubled the national debt under George W. Bush really be trusted to do this?

Personal Reflections on the 2010 Maryland Gubernatorial Campaign

2010-10-17T12:51:00.005-04:00

My apologies to out of state readers, but as this is a mid-term election, all races are local. I hope the following has enough connection to national issues and national trends to be of interest to the general reader - Publius

My church participates in an organization called P.A.T.H., which stands for People Acting Together in Howard County. It is an interdenominational, faith-based, community advocacy organization that seeks to provide a voice for the needy in Howard County (Maryland). My impression is that it is fairly non-partisan and certainly its recently accomplished policy goals have been, in my view, fairly non-controversial. The first is the establishment of the Healthy Howard program (http://www.healthyhowardplan.org), a privately run county government initiative to provide health care to the uninsured in Howard County and the second is legislation to help mobile home owners if the land they are renting is sold (http://www.path-iaf.org/media/20100617.pdf). So, when they announced at my church that P.A.T.H. was looking for people to attend a candidates forum last Thursday (October 14, 2010), which the current Maryland Governor, Martin O'Malley (D) had already agreed to attend and which his challenger, former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich (R) had been invited to attend (but had not yet confirmed) and that was billed as a non-partisan event and a chance to see the candidates unscripted, I jumped at the chance, even though I had not previously been active in P.A.T.H.

In reality the event was not unscripted (candidates were given the issues to be discussed and the questions to be asked ahead of time) and hardly non-partisan. Although technically not a partisan event, it turns out that P.A.T.H. is part of the Maryland I.A.F. (Industrial Areas Foundation), which also includes A.I.M. (Action In Montgomery County) and B.U.I.L.D. (Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development). The MD-I.A.F. is a chapter of the national I.A.F., a Chicago based entity for community organizing with a very leftist agenda (their website has a link to an article in The Nation about how the Democrats are not far enough to the left: http://www.industrialareasfoundation.org/). Far from being an open forum for voters to hear from the candidates, the event was a politically charged gathering at which Gov. O'Malley was welcomed as a hero and which Gov. Ehrlich, wisely, chose not to attend, opting instead to meet with MD-I.A.F. leadership privately the next day. The purpose of the meeting was to advance the following agenda, crafted by MD-I.A.F.:

1) Jobs: The Maryland I.A.F. stated that putting Maryland back to work was its number 1 priority and it's solution was to ask the next Maryland Governor to organize the National Governor's Association to call on President Obama to create a New Deal style public works program.

2) Move our Money to Create Jobs and Stop Usury: MD-I.A.F. called on the next Governor to move state assets from, "usurious large banks," to community banks that, "do not charge [interest rates] above Maryland's state usury laws." They also called for the creation of a Maryland state bank.

3) Fully Fund Education: In 2002, the Maryland General Assembly passed what is known as the Thornton legislation, which mandates increases in state spending on education, but does not provide a funding source for these increases. The MD-I.A.F. called on the next Governor to keep these commitments and invest a minimum of $250 million each year for school construction.

4) In-state tuition rates for all Maryland high-school graduates: regardless of immigration status

5) Affordable Health-Care: MD-I.A.F. called on the next Governor to work under the auspices of the federal Affordable Care Act to create a non-profit health insurance co-op in Maryland to provide affordable health insurance who currently do not have insurance, cannot afford insurance, and will be forced to buy insurance under the new federal law. It turns out that those covered under the Healthy Howard program in my county do not count under the new federal law because they still haven't bought health insurance, even though they have access the health care...

Governor O'Malley, of course, agreed to this agenda almost without reservation: although he did prudently stop short of promising something he couldn't deliver (a federal public works program or being able to move the National Association of Governors on an issue) and said he needed to study how the federal health care legislation affects Maryland and Marylanders before figuring out how to proceed on that issue. I do not know how Governor Ehrlich responded to these issues in his private meeting the following day. I do know that both candidates are committed to fully funding the Thornton education legislation and merely differ on how they would pay for it.

Both of Maryland's gubernatorial candidates for 2010 agree on the education position, and I will concede that it is the job of the next Governor to figure out how to implement the federal health care legislation in the state, assuming it survives court challenges and attempts at repeal (although it is ironic that the upshot of the Affordable Care Act is to mandate that impoverished Marylanders purchase health insurance that they cannot afford...). The rest of the agenda, however, is quite leftist and much of it is divorced from economic reality.

The in-state tuition proposal is a difficult issue. It ignores the salient fact that tuition is cheaper for state residents because they, or their families, subsidize the state colleges and universities by paying taxes. It's a break on tuition for those that pay taxes in the state, not for those who don't. On the other hand, it is hard to oppose creating opportunity for those who have risked a lot to come to this country to work hard and build a better life for themselves. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) made a compelling case in 2008 Presidential debate defending his signing of similar legislation in Arkansas, when he said he was not about to hold children (the students) responsible for the sins of their parents (that came to the U.S. illegally) because, "we're a better country than that."

However, it is clear that the Maryland-I.A.F. doesn't understand interest rates. As a Maryland tax payer, I certainly want the state to keep its money wherever it can get the highest rate of return, regardless of whether that bank charges high interest rates for loans or credit cards. The Maryland-I.A.F. is particularly incensed by credit cards that charge more than 10% interest (which, I think, is pretty much ALL of them), but this ignores the fact that one pays no interest at all if you don't keep a balance. The purpose of the high interest rate is twofold: first to make a profit for the bank or credit card company and secondly to be high enough to encourage you to actually, eventually, pay the bill. A rate that is set artificially low may not allow banks to profitably provide this service or may encourage reckless spending by providing too easy credit. Didn't we learn this lesson when artificially low interest rates fueled a housing bubble? Interest rates are better set by market forces than by fiat. An interest rate is nothing more than the price of borrowing money and it should be based on the length of the loan, the risk of the borrower, and the availability of capital. Interest rates should rise when savings rates are low to encourage saving and send a signal that there is little capital available for lending (thereby making loans riskier) and fall when the banks are flush with cash, signaling that there is plenty of capital available to borrow. An artificially low interest rate sends signals that there is capital available to borrow, when there isn't. Credit card interest rates are much higher than other loans because they are short term borrowing at higher risk. To set such rates artificially low by fiat would introduce entirely too much risk that would ultimately prove detrimental to the bank and to the credit card holder. And create a state bank? I suppose we should do that because the Federal Reserve has worked out so well...

Maryland I.A.F.'s jobs agenda is laughable. Ignoring the fact that the New Deal was an abysmal failure at putting Americans back to work (unemployment never fell below 13% before World War II and there was a double-dip in 1937 despite the WPA), Maryland-I.A.F.'s answer to joblessness in Maryland is to ask the federal government for money that it doesn't have. This position blissfully ignores the implications of increasing federal spending. If such spending isn't funded by a higher tax burden, then the federal government will have to either print the money or borrow it. Printing, of course, would devalue the dollar further and robs all of us of wealth as each dollar in our savings account suddenly becomes worth less. Borrowing increases the federal debt. Each year, a percentage of the federal budget is money to pay interest on the national debts (to the holders of that debt). In 2009, that amounted to 5% of the federal budget, but as the debt rises, so too will that number to the point were it becomes large enough that money isn't available to spend on other things, such as defense or social security, or education. If we continue on the current spending course, we can either collapse, like Greece, as investors start viewing holding U.S. debt as a bad risk, or reach a point at which it becomes impossible for the government to fund its most basic services. Either way, we pass a huge economic burden to future generations. The proposal also ignores the real issues with regard to job creation in Maryland. Governor O'Malley has worked to create a vibrant biotechnology community in Maryland, offering incentives for biotech companies to complement the academic resources at University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda; for which he was named, "BIO Governor of the Year," in 2010 (http://www.governor.maryland.gov/pressreleases/100503.asp). However, other than biotechnology, Maryland has not been a business friendly state. Many potential jobs were denied from Maryland's Eastern Shore when Walmart decided to cancel it's plans to build a big facility there after the Maryland legislature, controlled by Gov. O'Malley's party, passed a bill that essentially targeted only Walmart with fines for not providing enough health benefits for employees. Gov. O'Malley increased the Maryland state sales tax by 20% (from 5% to 6%). Not only does this create an unfriendly retail environment in Maryland, but it is a regressive tax that is hardest on middle class and lower income Marylanders (although at least state sales tax in Maryland exempts groceries). The business climate in Maryland is so unfriendly that when Tim Kaine (D) was Governor in Virginia, he ran commercials encouraging businesses to come there (http://www.youtube.com/user/VirginiaEconomicDev), and he's in the same party as Governor O'Malley! Repealing the sales tax increase, easing regulations, offering tax incentives for businesses other than biotech could all help ease the pain of recession for Marylanders and create private sector job growth in Maryland, and all make more sense than federal make-work projects that the federal government can ill afford.

Maryland-I.A.F. is, of course, entitled to have and promote its agenda. I just wish I had understood that this was to be an agenda driven event, rather than an open forum for voters to assess the candidates, before I ended up at what was essentially an O'Malley pep rally to promote an agenda that I, for the most part, disagree with.

The Needle in the Haystack

2010-09-26T00:11:00.004-04:00

In a follow-up to a previous post on airport security measures (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/find-terrorist.html), I'd like to share another anecdote:

Three weeks ago, my wife and I met a friend and his nine year-old son in St. Louis to go to a Cardinals game. My friend has taken his son to several different major league baseball parks and buys him one of those small souvenir bats at every ball park. Our flights home left at about the same time, so we all went to the airport together. Because it was only a weekend trip, none of us had checked bags. As our carry-on bags are being x-rayed, the TSA agent decides that the long cylindrical object in my friend's bag (the souvenir bat) could be a weapon and can't go on the plane. My friend is told he must go check that bag before coming through security. His son passed through and waited for him with my wife and I.

After several minutes, he returned with the bag. They did an open bag search just before checking it (a different TSA agent) and found nothing suspicious. They found nothing, because the bat was in his son's bag and after x-raying the bags, the TSA agent picked up the wrong one for him to check and handed the bag with the "suspicious object" back to his son and let him through the security checkpoint!

The story is absurd on two levels. First, the notion that a nine year-old boy can't take a small souvenir bat in a carry on bag is absurd (and would be eliminated by screening for terrorists instead of for weapons). Secondly, even if the object in question had been a weapon, the TSA agent subsequently handed the bag with the "weapon" back to be carried through security and pulled the wrong bag to be checked. If you thought the TSA was making you safer, think again.

President Obama is Right, For Once.

2010-09-11T07:03:00.004-04:00

Today is the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the news is filled with the "controversy" of plans to build a mosque and Islamic center in Manhattan close to Ground Zero.

There should be no controversy here. The land in question is privately owned. The first amendment protects the right of citizens of all faiths to worship freely. The Muslims planning to build this mosque are exercising one of the most fundamental human rights, a right that our nation cherishes and our Constitution protects. No one should be trying to interfere with their plans and no level of government has the authority to.

It is understandable that some, particularly those that lost loved ones on that black day nine years ago, are upset. It is easy to understand how a mosque close to the site where thousands lost their lives at the hands of Muslims that claimed to carry out Allah's will open old wounds. However, it is critically important that we overlook these concerns and uphold our cherished principle of religious freedom, lest we sink to the level of intolerance of those that perpetrated this attack and sacrifice some of the liberty we ask our brave soldiers to defend. On March 5, 1770, British troops opened fire on unarmed Americans in Boston. Whether they were provoked or not (and they probably were) is beside the point. Americans were outraged. Yet, these British soldiers were successfully defended by no less an American Patriot than John Adams. From the dawn of our nation we have shown that we cherish our principles of liberty more than our emotional desires. In that spirit, British soldiers who fired on Americans were given the trial and defense to which they were entitled. It should be no different with the building of this mosque, recognizing that the Muslims who will worship there had nothing to do with the attacks nearby nine years ago. Al Qaida is no more representative of Islam than the I.R.A. is of Catholicism....

President Obama is right to defend the Constitutionally protected right of free worship of the Muslims building this mosque. He is right to say that the 1st amendment means, "if you can build a church there, if you can build a synagogue there, if you can build a Hindu temple there, then you can build a mosque..." Mr. Obama should be applauded for defending this Constitutional principle despite the unpopularity of doing so. He has alluded to the notion perhaps this site is not the best choice for a mosque nor where he would choose to build a mosque because of the passions it inflames. However, he is right to largely avoid statements of whether or not he thinks a mosque should be built there or not. It is frankly irrelevant what the President or anyone else thinks should be done.

Finally, there is no moral equivalence between the building of this mosque and Terry Jones' plan to publicly burn copies of the Koran (which may or may not happen today?). Granted that the copies of the Koran are privately owned and the 1st amendment protects Mr. Jones freedom of speech and expression in burning them, however this act is far more deliberately offensive than the building of a house of worship to the same God of Abraham worshiped by Christians and Jews. Mr. Jones plan may be protected, but it is simply spiteful and shallow. In a nation that protects religious freedom, it matters not that Mr. Jones is fervently convinced that the Koran is "full of lies." As Mr. Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom [1777], "...to restrain the propagation of principles on the supposition of their ill tendency is a grave and dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty.... Truth is great and will triumph if left to herself."

Christians secure in their faith have nothing to fear from the Koran and Americans have nothing to fear from a mosque in Manhattan. We have everything to fear from becoming a nation that would seek to block the building of a house of worship of any particular faith.

Dangers of Perpetual War

2010-05-24T18:05:00.013-04:00

Dialogue between Publius and his war hawk friend, Mithras. Mithras argued that the projection of American power abroad has nothing to do with limiting government power at home and poses no threat to American liberty. Mithras asserted that the projection of military might abroad was necessary to meet the threat of militant Islam and that he failed to see any logical contradiction between that and limiting government power domestically. Mithras also argued that limited government was not a desirable end in and of itself, but rather necessary only because human beings (and governments comprised of human beings) are corruptible, " If men were omniscient, not corruptible and innately good, I would want the biggest government possible." Publius responds:

“If men where omniscient, not corruptible and innately good, I would want the biggest government possible." Reminiscent of Plato and Orwell (FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH). I would argue that such a government would still be immoral as it would have the power to subjugate an individual’s reason and an individual’s will to some other notion of the common good or the individual’s good. In fact, a government that is both omniscient and innately good would be required to do so whenever any individual acted, in accordance with his or her personal desires, in ways that may not be in his or her long term best interest (such as smoking a cigarette or eating a Big Mac, for example). A gilded cage is still a cage. Besides if men were innately beneficent, we wouldn’t need government for, as Mr. Jefferson put it, “It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.” (or as James Madison put it in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”).

I agree that we need to maintain a strong national defense and reserve the right to take action when our interests and security our threatened. As much of a mess as it is now, I supported the invasion of Afghanistan to get those that attacked us (although we only partially succeeded in that objective and it is hard to see what our continued national security interest is there....). But, the Founding Fathers never envisioned this sort of global empire with military bases all over the world. Washington and Jefferson, on opposite ends of the political spectrum for most things, both eschewed entangling alliances.

Most of the Founders were distrustful of even having a standing army as in and of itself a threat to domestic liberty. Madison wrote in Federalist 46, “To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”

So while I agree with maintaining a strong defense and taking action when it is, regrettably, necessary; I think it is critically important to limit and narrow our projection of military power overseas to really what is absolutely necessary. But, the real question here is, is there a threat to our domestic liberty posed by remaining perpetually at war? If you have not read Orwell's wonderful novel (1984), please do so. If you have, I think you have missed the salient point: Oceania is kept perpetually at war in the novel as a way for the government to control the people (WAR IS PEACE). There are several indirect threats posed to our liberty by remaining perpetually at war. The government can manipulate public opinion by fear-mongering at election time (raising the terror threat level before elections) and corrals opposition into, "free speech zones," (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2009/12/newspeak-in-21st-century.html). But the more insidious threat to liberty and prosperity by perpetual war (or empire maintenance) is the fact that such overseas military adventurism is incredibly costly. It has to be paid for. It can only be paid for one of three ways: 1) taxation, and if you ask me Americans are taxed excessively as it is, 2) borrowing, and we are already the world's largest debtor nation, in danger of collapse, Greece-style or 3) printing money which inflates the currency and robs us all of wealth.

More direct threats stem from the fact that we accept, and our Constitution provides, expanded powers for government during time of war. President Lincoln went as far as suspending habeas corpus (without an act of Congress), sending federal troops to prevent the meeting of a state legislature in a state that had not yet seceded (Maryland), and imprisoning pro-Southern journalists without trial. FDR rounded up American citizens of Japanese descent into camps. Many, but not all, historians give President Lincoln a pass and argue that his actions were justified by the national emergency of secession. Most historians feel FDR may have gone too far in his treatment of Japanese-Americans. Regardless, however, these infringements on American domestic liberty were temporary because both the Civil War and World War II had definitive end points. In an open ended war, Americans will accept infringements on their liberty in the name of national security that will end up being permanent because the war will never be over. There will always be terrorists. Always.

In the current climate, we have accepted a number of infringements. We accept ever invasive airport screening, by a new federal police service (the Transportation Security Authority), that probably doesn't make us safer and failed horrendously on Christmas Day 2009 (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/find-terrorist.html). We have the PATRIOT Act (which has some good provisions and some ridiculous ones, like allowing the government to monitor what books people check out of the library), a carbon copy of Bill Clinton's 1995 anti-terrorism bill that Republicans opposed and defeated on the grounds that it threatened civil liberties. When the Bush administration began, illegally, listening to cell phone calls made overseas they simply admitted to it and President Bush said he did it because he would do anything to keep Americans safe. So, rather than be impeached or prosecuted, Congress simply said, "how would you like us to change the law to make it easier for you to spy on people?" and did so with the vote of then-Senator Obama (http://www.slate.com/id/2194254/pagenum/all/). You may argue all you want that you're not a foreign terrorist, so why should you care? The problem is, there is nothing to stop the U.S. Government from using such powers to investigate U.S. citizens. More disturbing is the tampering with the presumption of innocence that is currently in vogue in this perpetual war on terror. The U.S. Constitution mandates that no citizen should be deprived of, "life, liberty or property," without due process of law (Amendment 5) and yet we are now talking about further curtailing the Miranda rights of U.S. citizens charged with terrorism, solely based on the fact that they were charged (not that anything was proven) and preemptively stripping terror suspects that are U.S. citizens apprehended in the U.S. of their citizenship prior to trial to circumvent such due process! (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAz5HTbaFcgiGhmbogdxlE2QCDzQD9FJFQLO0). So what of cases of mistaken identity? What if your name or appearance is similar to the real perpetrator? Do you then preemptively lose your rights as an American citizen because the government thinks, but hasn't proven, it has the right person? If so, why should an American citizen that practices Islam, most of whom do so peacefully, have less rights than a practicing Christian, Jew, or atheist? What is to stop the definition of terrorist from expanding from jihadist, to right-wing militia, to opposition party? More chilling is that the Obama administration reserves the right to be judge, jury, and executioner for American citizens that it believes (again hasn't proven) are involved with terrorism (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief-us-american-terrorist/story?id=9740491&page=1). Talk about circumventing the fifth amendment! Talk about the danger of a mistaken identity and a government that isn't required to meet a burden of proof before sentencing.

These are the threats to American liberty that have accrued over the last eight and a half years fighting a "war on terror." As the war goes on, there will be more. Since the war has no end in sight, I see no end in sight to the erosion of American liberty. Sure, our troops are, "over there" but the permanent war footing has ramifications for domestic policy at home. In October 2002, when Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced a resolution for Congress to actually declare war on Iraq, Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) opposed the measure stating, "...we have got to contemplate that it [declaring war] is going to have the effect of transferring power, conferring power to the President and Attorney General and to the Pentagon that they cannot otherwise exercise. One of those powers is going to be the power to wiretap, notwithstanding what we do here in Congress, once there is a declaration of war, they are automatically going to be able to wiretap." He was right about the danger war poses to domestic liberty, but as we have seen, the Bush administration was already wiretapping and Congressman Royce was, in reality, arguing in favour of Congress abdicating power to the executive by not exercising its role in deciding when we do and do not go to war. How can you fail to see that fighting a war indefinitely threatens our liberty at home? Our liberty has been eroding for eight and a half years and will continue to erode for as long as we remain at war.

An Example of the Dumbing Down of American Politics

2010-05-22T13:32:00.009-04:00

A friend sent me this link to Rand Paul's interview with Rachel Maddow after his primary victory in Kentucky: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908//vp/37244354#37244354. This is, of course, the famous interview about Dr. Paul's comments on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Earlier, I had read a transcript of this interview (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_telling_the_truth.html). I find it unfortunate that Dr. Paul may crucified for intellectual honesty. His argument is that private property is private and the owners of the property have the right to set the rules on their property - and if a business owner wants to put himself at a competitive disadvantage by turning away business to his competition because of his own bigotry, let him do it and let his business suffer for it. Goldwater made the same argument when he chose not to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and it is not really wrong. It may offend our sensibilities, but it is not really wrong.

Both Paul and Goldwater were always quite clear in their opposition to such bigotry. Dr. Paul treats patients without regard to race, religion, or creed. Dr. Paul was also quite clear in the interview that such bigotry on public property is unacceptable and that he had no contention whatsoever with 90% of the Civil Rights Act. What he is arguing about is where the authority for government to control what happens on private property ends. In the era of abuses of eminent domain it remains a relevant question. Most of us would not draw the line where Dr. Paul drew it, I would not draw the line where Dr. Paul drew it, but it is important to realize that we draw that line on a slippery slope.

What I find disturbing is that Dr. Paul will be branded as a racist for making a philosphically cogent argument born, not out of bigotry, but out of a healthy respect for private ownership. Such is the dumb-downed nature of our politics. Chris Matthews had an interesting take on it (http://hardblogger.msnbc.msn.com/) pointing out that politics is often the realm of compromise between philosphical principle and pragmatism and successful politicians are often not the intellectually pure. Moreover, as a political neophyte, Dr. Paul has not come to terms with what his governing philosophy means in the context of established law. It is uncomfortable, perhaps, to watch him sort through these issues in the public arena when a more practiced pol would've already worked out why the 1964 Civil Rights Act is an, "exception to the rule," that should be protected. Dr. Paul did wrestle in the Maddow interview with the practicial issue of what does one do if you oppose one provision of a bill of which you mostly approve. As a Senator he'll face that dilemna a lot and although he couldn't seem to work it out during the interview on the Civil Rights Act, he did overnight and issued a statement opposing the repeal of the Civil Rights Act (http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/05/20/rand-paul-comes-out-against-repealing-the-civil-rights-act.aspx).

End It, Don't Mend It.

2010-04-02T10:42:00.009-04:00

On Sunday, March 28, 2010, Florida State Governor Charlie Crist debated Speaker of the House Marco Rubio on Fox News Sunday. Both are running in a GOP primary for the U.S. Senate. One of the more interesting moments in the debate occurred when Chris Wallace explored differences in opinion between the 53-year-old Crist and the 39-year-old Rubio on Social Security. Governor Crist gave the standard answer of, “we have to preserve Social Security,” meaning no changes can be made in the program even though it is about to implode. However, with rare candor, Speaker Rubio endorsed the position that Social Security, as it exists, is not sustainable and that reform is necessary. In his discussion, Speaker Rubio included the possibility that retirement ages may need to be raised and/or cost of living adjustments decreased to make Social Security solvent. He endorsed Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI), “road map” for Social Security reform, which also includes allowing younger workers to opt out of Social Security and in to personal retirement accounts. Congressman Ryan appeared the previous Thursday (March 26, 2010) on Fox Business Channel’s Stossel as part of a discussion about the growing threat of federal entitlements. Currently, spending on Medicare and Social Security account for 50% of the federal budget and that percentage will continue to rise if reforms (and cuts) are not made. Without serious alterations to the programs, the spending obligations will become unsustainable (and squeeze out federal spending for anything else). For too long, most Americans have viewed the federal debt as, “just a number,” but the debt crisis in Greece should remind us all that there is a breaking point. Arguing for the status quo and stating that these programs (Social Security and Medicare) have to be preserved for future generations, was a representative of the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). Of course, maintaining the status quo essentially guarantees that these programs will not be there for future generations.

Like Speaker Rubio, Congressman Ryan (age 40) is also a member of Generation X. The generational divide on this issue is stunning, with the AARP and the grey-haired Governor Crist arguing for, “preservation,” of Social Security as it is and the younger generation that sees the proverbial writing on the wall and knowing that, without significant changes, the program is unsustainable. Speaker Rubio and Congressman Ryan argue for serious reforms to make Social Security solvent for future generations and these reforms would fundamentally change how we think about Social Security. Although Medicare faces larger looming short falls and represents a greater burden on future federal spending, it is harder to argue that some measure to provide health insurance for elderly persons who may be too high an insurance risk to obtain it privately. On the other hand, for most Americans, government help in retirement planning is both unnecessary and provides a lower return on the money, “invested,” than one could achieve investing the same sum on his or her own. Furthermore, the payment structure of Social Security is unsound economically and the funding source for Social Security is immoral. Speaker Rubio and Congressman Ryan have it wrong. Social Security should not be mended, it should be ended.

THE ECONOMIC CASE AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY

When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, the program was designed not to be a welfare program for those who could not afford to plan their own retirement, but rather as an entitlement for all Americans, regardless of means, to assist with their retirement. Ostensibly money is taken from your paycheck, which your employer matches (just like with your 401K), it is placed into some sort of trust fund, retirement account, or, as Vice President Gore might say, “lock box,” for you until you retire and receive benefits upon retirement. That sounds nice. It is a program for working Americans, not welfare. They benefits paid out to you in retirement are from the money you paid in while working. It is not a government give-away, but rather something the individual has earned.

Unfortunately, Social Security does not actually work that way. The revenue from Social Security taxes (both the employee payroll tax and the employer matching) go into a general fund. That fund is not invested or put into a savings account somewhere, but rather it is used to pay current retirees Social Security benefits. In other words, the money that is taken from you as a worker in the payroll tax is given to someone who is currently retired, not put away and saved for you. When there has been surplus in the Social Security revenues (more is taken in by the payroll tax than is needed to pay retiree benefits), that money has not been saved or invested to bolster the solvency of the program. Rather, it has been applied to the general revenue as a way of lowering the federal budget deficit (or to be spent on other things). In fact, of the years in the mid 1990’s when the federal budget was balanced or ran a surplus, there would have been a deficit in all of them except one had the Social Security surplus money not been applied to the general budget revenue.

Such a system can be sustained for as long as there are more workers than retirees. However, the number of retirees is increasing. The largest generation in the history of the United States, the baby boomers, is now hitting retirement age. Taxpayers are eligible for full retirement benefits at the age of 65 (now 67 for those born after 1960), but can collect reduced benefits as early as age 62. The average life expectancy in 1935, when the Social Security Act was passed, was 62. The average life expectancy is now 78. Not only are the ranks of the retirees about to swell with new retirees, but the current retirees are living longer. In 1935, many people did not live to collect Social Security and those that did only collected it for only a few years. Now most retirees collect Social Security for at least ten or fifteen years and some for as long as twenty. During the period of Social Security surpluses in the mid 1990’s, there were five workers for every retiree (and of course all of the baby boomers were in the work force then). That number is now three and shrinking. It is apparent why such a payment structure is economically unsustainable: since revenue from current workers is required to pay current benefits, the ability to pay promised benefits disappears as the number of workers per retiree dwindles (and this year, for the first time, Social Security is taking in less money than it is obligated to pay out). There is a term for taking money from one group and using it to pay profits or benefits to another group rather than investing it for the benefit of the person the money came from. It is called a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff went to jail for doing exactly what the federal government is doing with your Social Security contributions.

THE MORAL CASE AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY

Aside from the inherent immorality of a Ponzi scheme, Social Security is financed with an immoral revenue system. Social Security is a paid for by a payroll tax (yes, your employer matches what you pay, but who really believes this does not come out of what you could be making?). The payroll tax is a flat tax of 7%. It is interesting that the political left was adamantly opposed to a payroll tax holiday as an economic stimulus and yet equally adamantly opposes a similar tax for the federal income tax. You cannot have a flat income tax rate, they argue. It is unfair and regressive. It is a greater burden to those that have less and those that make more should share a larger percentage of their income with the public (pay a higher tax rate) because that still leaves them with plenty. Yet, this is exactly how we pay for Social Security. The billionaire pays the payroll tax on his own earnings at the same flat rate as the person making $20,000 per year. However, the Social Security tax is even less fair than a flat income tax. One could argue a flat income tax is fair because everyone pays the same proportion of his or her income. But the payroll tax is only levied on wages and salary. Income from investments (interest earnings, stock dividends, etc.) is completely exempt from the payroll tax. It is not a true flat tax, but rather it is the Steve Forbes flat tax (Forbes ran for President in 1996 on the flat tax and was accused of serving his own interest as a wealthy person because his flat tax also exempted income from investments and applied only to wages and salary). So, the hypothetical wage earner making $20,000 pays 7% of his entire income in Social Security tax, whereas someone who makes $50,000 in salary and another $50,000 from investment income pays only 3.5% of his or her earnings in Social Security tax. This further shifts the burden of the tax to poorer individuals. Furthermore, the payroll tax is only levied on the first $109,000 of salary. This means someone who has a salary of $1 million per year pays only about 0.7% of his or her income in Social Security tax (and considerably less if that person has other investment income). Social Security is paid for by an unfair, regressive tax, which is far more burdensome to those of low and middle incomes than it is to the wealthy.

Ostensibly, Social Security exists to help those who have limited means have more security in their retirement. However, when the program was created there was concern that the public might not support another program of welfare for the impoverished and therefore it was created as an entitlement for everyone, to insure everyone’s retirement security. For this reason, it was sold as a retirement account that you pay into and reap benefits from latter as if your money was being invested for you or kept for you. As noted above, this is not the case. However, to maintain this charade, Social Security benefit payments are proportional to the amount one pays in while working. Therefore, the benefit payments are higher for people who made more money while working and lower for those who had lower incomes. Anyone making $109,000 per year (provided that all of the initial $109,000 is wage earning) or more receives maximum benefit payments in retirement, but the person making $20,000 per year will get a much smaller Social Security cheque. Furthermore, the wealthy can and will, on average, retire at an earlier age and therefore collect Social Security for longer. A lower income person may not be able to afford to retire at the age of 65, may have to work for longer, and therefore will not start collecting his or her Social Security until later.

Putting the tax and benefits structures together, what we have is a tax that is born mostly by those of lower incomes to pay benefits that go in greater proportion to those of higher incomes. The Social Security entitlement represents an immoral transfer of wealth from the working poor to the more affluent.

CONCLUSION

Social Security has often been called the, “third rail,” of American politics and the suggestion that is should be reformed, changed, or abolished is often the death knell for a political candidate’s campaign (i.e. Barry Goldwater, Paul Tsongas). However, on close inspection, the program is unjustifiable. It is a Ponzi scheme that is about to become insolvent and represents a transfer of wealth from the poor to the affluent. Furthermore, it does not even represent a good investment. One could do as well with a savings account or purchasing a life insurance policy. One could do better, easily, with a modest investment portfolio. Despite recent volatility in the stock market, it represents a sound strategy for long term (decade or multi-decade) investments that can be converted to safer investments closer to retirement age. If workers could invest the 7% of their income taken in the payroll tax, they could have a much higher return on their investment (particularly if they also got paid the 7% of their income their employer matches in the payroll tax). Finally, there is simply no justification for the federal government to aid in providing retirement benefits for people who have the means to plan for their own retirement.

There are a number of proposals, opposed by demagogues committed to maintaining the unsustainable status quo in a cynical (and usually successful) ploy to garner votes in the short-term, to restore the solvency of Social Security and make it sustainable. These include ideas like raising the retirement age (to match the increase in life expectancy), means testing benefits (which would minimize the transfer of money to the wealthy), raising the amount of income that is taxed by the payroll tax, and reducing benefits (such as reducing the amount of inflation-triggered cost of living adjustments). Any or all of these might improve some of the problems identified above, but none of them change the fundamentally immoral nature of the program, or guarantee it will remain solvent in the long-term, as it will remain a Ponzi scheme.

Social Security should not be tweaked or mended. It should be eliminated. A welfare program to assist with the retirement needs of the working poor and a separate program of federal disability insurance can rise from its ashes, but these should be paid for from the general tax revenue and remain on budget, not paid for by some sort of trust fund chimera. Social Security commitments to current retirees and individuals nearing retirement (say 55 and older) should be kept, but younger workers with the means to save should be made to plan for their own retirement. The program should be replaced with personal retirement accounts that each individual owns. His or her own investments, grown over time, will then provide for his or her retirement. If there are concerns that such a strategy is “too risky,” or, “people won’t do it,” then contributions to such accounts could be mandatory and the federal government could regulate the accounts, setting standards for safer investment strategies (although, personally, I would favour allowing more individual freedom). There are better ways to assist Americans with retirement planning than this unworkable relic of the New Deal.

Bayh-Partisanship

2010-03-16T15:30:00.008-04:00

One month ago, centrist Democrat Indiana Senator (and former Indiana Governor) Evan Bayh announced he would not seek re-election for a third term in the U.S. Senate. In his remarks, Senator Bayh stated he was leaving because there was too little bipartisanship in Washington and the Congress was unable to do the work with which it is tasked because of partisan battles. Citing the failure to establish a debt commission and the failure of a jobs bill, Senator Bayh said Washington was dysfunctional, "For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is too much partisanship and not enough progress -- too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the peoples’ business is not being done." (http://bayh.senate.gov/news/press/release/?id=2bb190de-ed11-4920-a3bb-fea51fcde0dc).

The notion that, "Washington is broken," has become conventional wisdom. The pundits tell us that the American people just want results and the Democrats seem to have staked their political future on this notion as they try to pass a health insurance reform bill by any means necessary to show they can "get it done," despite the fact that the bill continues to not poll very well(http://www.gallup.com/poll/126521/Favor-Oppose-Obama-Healthcare-Plan.aspx). All decry the lack of bipartisanship in the health care debate. But, are things really different now?

Certainly there have been times when there has been broad bipartisan support for sweeping legislation: Social Security, Medicare, Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act, etc. Each of these bills occured in a time that was ripe for them and therefore had broad consensus of support. The current health care legislation, however, is being proposed while on one hand, the federal budget deficit is growing out of control, two overseas wars are still being waged, economic growth remains sluggish, and a very large percentage of Americans remain out of work; yet on the other hand 85% of Americans have health insurance and like their current coverage. Under this set of circumstances it is no wonder the public are split on the bill (although most polls do show only minority support) and that, according to a recent Gallup poll, only 20% view health care as the most important issue, while 55% say it is jobs or the economy (http://www.gallup.com/poll/126614/Americans-Say-Jobs-Top-Problem-Deficit-Future.aspx). Our legislative system is designed to make it difficult to pass sweeping legislation precisely so that slim majorities cannot arbitrarily force their will on the minority. A bill must pass two houses of Congress, often requiring a supermajority to end debate in the Senate (for those who complain about this rule, recall that before it a single Senator could delay a vote for as long as he or she could hold the floor and keep talking...), then the bill must be reconciled between the two houses and the final version pass in each house. It still only becomes law when the President signs it (unless there is a supermajority to override a veto). Although the past two Presidents have enjoyed their own party in control of Congress, this has actually been an anomaly for most of the last 40 years and therefore there are a lot of hurdles, by design, to passing legislation. However, bills can pass easily, with bipartisan support, when there is broad consensus. Such consensus does not currently exist for health care reform. The purpose of the high bar for passing sweeping legislation is to make sure there is broad consensus before such major changes are enacted. Perhaps, therefore, this stall on health insurance reform is not an example of a system broken, but rather a system working.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee that just because there is broad bipartisan consensus that the bill is good. Baltimore talk radio host Ron Smith likes to point out that if one party is evil and the other is stupid (take your pick which is which), then anything bipartisan is guaranteed to be both stupid and evil. The invasion of Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, No Child Left Behind, and TARP (and I would argue Social Security) are all examples of bad policy that passed with broad, bipartisan support. Perhaps our problem is really too much bipartisanship. In addition to these public examples of bipartisanship is the more subtle and insidious bipartisanship of both sides promoting the same policies regardless of the public political posturing. When Republicans were in control, an expensive health care entitlement (Medicare D) that we could not afford was passed in the midst of a recession, two overseas wars were started, a program of eavesdropping on cell phone calls made overseas without proper FISA Court warrants was initiated, much of the financial insurance industry was effectively nationalized, a trillion dollar stimulus/bailout bill was passed (the latter after Democrats had regained congressional control), and the size of the national debt doubled. Now that Democrats are in control, they are trying to pass an even more expensive health care entitlement during a recession that we cannot afford, we have passed a second nearly trillion dollar stimulus/bailout bill, two-thirds of the auto industry has been effectively nationalized, the national debt is projected to double again, we are still involved in two overseas wars, and the current administration admits to a program of targeting U.S. citizens for assassination if they are suspected of terrorist activities (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief-us-american-terrorist/story?id=9740491). There seems to be plenty of bipartisanship at the expense of the liberty and prosperity of the American people.

Despite the Republican's hypocrisy of supporting the unprecedented expansion of federal government into our lives for eight years before suddenly becoming opposed to, "Obama's socialist agenda," if an unpopular health care bill that was attacked for partisan motives gives the American people, for one brief shining moment at least, a choice between alternate policy views, maybe that is not such a bad thing.

Find the Terrorist

2010-01-24T15:25:00.002-05:00

One month ago, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab boarded a plane in Amsterdam, bound for Detroit, with a bomb sewn into his underwear. Only the failure of his detonator to function properly and the quick action of passengers prevented Mutallab from detonating the bomb, destroying the plane, and killing the 350 people on board in the skies over Detroit. Mutallab is now in custody, but since his apprehension, we have learned that he was supported by Al Qaeda in Yemen, that his father warned U.S. officials in Nigeria of his jihadist tendency, and that he was on a terror watch list. Just today, Osama Bin Laden claimed responsibility, on behalf of Al Qaeda, for the attack.

The incident has sparked renewed debate about combating terrorism and security measures at airports. Although Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano initially asserted that, "the system worked," on the Sunday talk shows following the attacks, that assertion was clearly absurd. A terror plot that was thwarted by passengers on the plane is an example of system failure. In analyzing the Mutallab affair, most of the media have focused on the "warning signs" that he was a terrorist: namely his father's warning to the U.S. government and the presence of his name on a large (500,000 names) terror persons of interest list, but not the smaller no-fly list. The media have tried to ascertain why the warning of his father wasn't communicated effectively through governmental channels in a way that would move Mutallab's name to the no-fly list and prevent him from getting on the plane. Wasn't the purpose of establishing a Department of Homeland Security and a new Director of National Intelligence to facilitate communication of intelligence through government?

While this type of systems analysis is important, it, to some extent, misses the point. The security measures implemented at airports are supposed to prevent terrorists from boarding the plane in the first place. The Mutallab case is different in the sense that he boarded at a foreign airport, but as we all remember the 9-11 hijackers boarded domestic flights. We are all painfully aware of the measures taken at domestic airports in the wake of 9-11: the extra searches, the x-raying of shoes, the restrictions about what can be taken into the cabin and what needs to be in checked bags, etc... We accept such minor infringements on our liberty because we believe they make us safer and ultimately preserve our greater liberty by preserving our lives. But the Mutallab case raises an awkward question: do these measures really make us safer?

The Mutallab case illustrates the uncomfortable truth that our airport security measures are doomed to failure. I can recall seeing an interview with an Israeli government official on one of the Sunday talk shows not long after 9-11. He was discussing security at Israeli airports. There has never been a successful attack on an Israeli flight, so clearly they are doing something right. This Israeli official said something interesting. He said in Israel airport security is aimed at finding the terrorist, while in the U.S., security measures are aimed at finding the weapon. Hence we x-ray everything; we remove our shoes and jackets; we have to through away bottles of liquid larger than 4 ounces; and we can't take pocket knives, razors, or knitting needles; on the plane. The argument made by the Israeli official is that searching for any and all possible weapons is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack and, since many everyday items can be turned into weapons and many potential weapons can be ingeniously concealed, ultimately futile. To make our flights safer, we need to identify potential terrorists, people boarding the plane with intent to harm, and keep them off the plane.

Trying to identify potential terrorists instead of screening everyone equally (or selecting people randomly for extra screening) raises uncomfortable questions about racial profiling. As a nation, we are appropriately squeamish about pulling aside middle easterners for extra screening. However, there are big differences between trying to identify potential terrorists in an airport and racial profiling in law enforcement. The innocent black citizen who is unfortunately pulled over for, "driving while black," gains nothing from the experience. He is harassed, threatened with arrest if he isn't cooperative, and if in the end left to continue on his way, has lost precious time and gained nothing. However, the innocent middle eastern man getting on an airplane is threatened with no worse than being denied a seat on the plane and has an equally vested interest in the safety of the flight as everyone else that is getting on board. What he gains from the harassment is the knowledge that measures are being taken to make sure he arrives at his destination safely. I have a friend from Syria who told me a story about flying shortly after 9-11. He was about 30 at the time and flying without his family. The TSA agents were randomly selecting people for extra screening and pulled aside and elderly caucasian couple and passed him, a 30-year-old middle eastern man traveling alone, through. He was upset that he wasn't screened because he knew the grandparents in front of him were no threat to the plane, but for all the TSA knew, he could've been. Time was wasted on people who were clearly no threat, diverting resources away from potential threats.

However, shifting focus from finding weapons to finding terrorists really isn't about any kind of racial or ethnic profiling. It is about behavioural profiling. In 2003, flying back to the U.S. from Scotland, my wife and I experienced such profiling. We had flown in to London-Heathrow a week prior, spent a few days in London, a few in York, and ended the week with my wife's uncle in Scotland. Apparently, flying in to one airport and out of another raised a red flag and we were pulled aside. We were asked how we got from London to Scotland (even asked to produce train tickets when we said we had taken the train) and had the bags we were checking searched in our presence. From our subsequent behaviour and our answers, it was evident we were what we claimed, American tourists returning home, and that was the end of it. We had done only one thing suspicious and since there was nothing else suspicious about us, we were allowed to board the plane. Mutallab, on the other hand, acted very suspiciously. He paid cash for his ticket at the last minute; he was traveling alone; he had no checked bags; he was flying to Detroit, in December, without a coat. These behaviours should have identified him as someone who needed a closer look and that closer look could, and probably would, have found the bomb he was smuggling onto the plane. Sure terrorists may respond by trying to recruit people that don't fit the profile (but, realistically, is a middle aged English businessman named Simon Fletcher from Suffolk really going to be recruited in to blowing himself up for Allah?) and train them to avoid such suspicious behaviour, but we really need to force them to change their game. The Mutallab attack was amateurish and yet should have succeeded. That is unacceptable.

If we want to fly safer, the answer is not to invade our privacy further with whole body scans and more invasive searches. The answer is not to try to keep everything and anything that can potentially be used as a weapon off the plane. The answer is not to mandate where you can put your hands for the last hour of the flight. If we want to fly safer, we need to adopt airport screening protocols that attempt to identify the people that represent a potential threat to the flight, based on their behaviour, and keep them off the plane. We need to find the terrorist, rather than trying to find the weapon.

NEWSPEAK IN THE 21st CENTURY

2009-12-26T16:51:00.010-05:00

I originally wrote this on August 14, 2004, just after the Democrat Party National Convention just before the 2004 Presidential election. I was prompted to post it by this similar essay on the Campaign for Liberty website: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=461. -Publius.

Last weekend I read a syndicated column in the Baltimore Sun written by a chap named James Bovard (“Protests Pre-Empted”, August 6, 2004). He is author of a book entitled, The Bush Betrayal, and at first glance, perhaps not someone with whom I would have much common political ground (until I learned reading the blurb of his book in Barnes and Nobles today that his book is a criticism of G.W. Bush from the right, and from that direction there is plenty of room to criticize…). But his column got me thinking. He was talking about the designated protest areas at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I must admit when I first saw the news reports of these fenced off areas for protesters, I was a little concerned. But it was the Democrats, and the party itself was not complaining about the security or calling the Dept. of Homeland Security heavy-handed. The news reporters were nonplussed in their coverage of it and I let it go by as an unfortunate but necessary measure in a post-9/11 world…

It wasn’t until I read Mr. Bovard’s column that I began to re-think the issue. I learned from Mr. Bovard that the areas were called “free speech zones.” More than the existence of these extra security measures for the first post-9/11 political conventions (I think everyone acknowledges that finding the right balance between liberty and security after 9/11 is going to be a process of trial and error), I was upset by the name. How can they call a fenced in area, the sole purpose of which is to restrict protest a “free speech zone?” This reeks of Orwellian Newspeak. Orwell understood well the importance of language control in thought control and in 1984, introduced us to the principle of Newspeak. In Orwell’s totalitarian regime, WAR IS PEACE, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. Many words mean their opposite: The War Department is the Ministry of Peace. The secret police that enforce, through suppression and torture, the political orthodoxy work for the Ministry of Love. In Boston last month, zones restricting protest were called, “free speech zones,” and instead of having an anti-terrorism bill after 9/11, we have a PATRIOT Act, implying that criticism is unpatriotic (On the surface, I think the bill is a responsible one. Some of the provisions make good common sense, like issuing wiretap warrants for individuals, not specific land-lines. Most of the provisions are identical to ones proposed by President Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. Further, taking the UK example, the provisions expire, so that provisions that are ineffective, or oppressive will be up for review by Congress. It is a responsible bill, but irresponsibly named).

At the end of Orwell’s novel there is an appendix explaining Newspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium
of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to
devotees of IngSoc [English Socialism], but to make all other
modes of thought impossible.

Orwell further explains that, “This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words…” In other words the goal of Newspeak is to indirectly control thought by controlling the medium through which thoughts are expressed. This is done insidiously, not by restricting access to airwaves or publishing (although in the novel Big Brother did that too), but by restricting the actual language that is used for expression. In the end, “the expression of unorthodox opinions…was…impossible…” Such opinions, “…could not have been sustained by a reasoned argument, because the necessary words were not available.” Orwell further describes how all words, other than those devoid of political meaning, developed orthodox political connotations.

In our society, for the last two decades, Newspeak has been the tool of the political left to win debate by shaping its expression. It is called political correctness. Of course this expression itself conveys the oppressive nature of the movement. If something is politically correct (orthodox), something else is by definition politically incorrect (unorthodox) and therefore wrong. Political correctness seeks to promote use of language aimed at promoting this acceptable point (goodthinkful in Orwell’s language) of view and limiting the conventional use of language that would express a contrasting point of view which is by implication politically wrong (crimethink). Fortunately for the left, since the term political correctness carries with it the implication of thought control, it has it’s own politically correct word – cultural sensitivity.

Political correctness is the spearhead of an atrocious assault on our language and an alarming assault on our liberty. In this world-view, policies favouring the expansion of government authority to address domestic problems is, “progressive.” Domestic problems become “crises” so large that only federal government can solve them (i.e. health-care crisis) and to oppose granting that authority is to be selfish or to be against some group that the proposal is supposed to benefit (the children, the elderly, the poor, etc…). It is all eerily reminiscent of James Madison’s warning that, “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant." Believing that the U.S. Constitution grants women the right to terminate a pregnancy is called being, “pro-choice.” But being for educational choice is being “against public education.” Diversity is defined as a group of men and women of different outward appearance and sexual orientation (but not different religious traditions) who share the same political view. Expressing a divergent political view is being against diversity, bigoted, or narrow-minded. Being black and expressing a divergent view is to be, “an Uncle Tom.” How close does that come to Orwell’s FREEDOM IS SLAVERY? At its most comical, the assault on language is reflected in Bill Clinton’s attempt to re-define “is” so he can explain how he didn’t perjure himself. At its most insidious, it designates hate as a crime. Hate crimes legislation imposes an extra penalty on a convict for his unorthodox world-view that motivated one to commit a crime. Homicide itself is a crime, but homicide with hatred is two crimes. How close is this to “crimethink?” How long before the hating becomes a crime without the associated act of violence?

But now, the right, through the vehicle of the Republican party, with George W. Bush as the standard-bearer, is in on the act. Expanding the role of federal government is “leaving no child behind,” and by implication opposing the bill is supporting leaving children behind. Opposing expanding the surveillance capacity of the federal government is unPATRIOTic. And speech is restricted in “free speech zones.” Of course the Democrats don’t oppose it, they have been doing it for two decades. Both parties now participate in the assault on liberty and language, and both see things through the same politically correct prism. Perhaps Ralph Nader is correct for the wrong reasons when he argues there isn’t any significant difference between the two parties.

Further, we finally have the final piece of the puzzle in Orwell’s recipe for tyranny. Orwell recognized that citizens will accept an expansion of governmental authority, even if it curtails some of their liberty, during time of war. Even our founding fathers, the gurus of limited government, acknowledged this and granted the Executive extra authority in wartime. Therefore, Orwell's novel, Oceania is perpetually at war. It is a war that continues day after day and year after year, a war with no end in sight, a war with an enemy that can never be completely defeated. We now have such a war, it is the “War on Terror.” Although (despite my opposition to invading Iraq), I fully acknowledge the necessity of taking measures to prevent future terrorist attacks on our soil and of taking the fight to the terrorists in the countries that harbor them (like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), what I find frightening is the knowledge that we will be perpetually at war. As such, we most certainly will accept encroachment on our liberty as “necessary.” My fear is, that we will accept too much encroachment. That we will, like I initially did, not notice such infringement on our liberty like the, “free speech zones."

Have I finally taken that step and become a full-fledged libertarian? Or am I just paranoid?

Climates Change

2009-12-13T16:30:00.027-05:00

This week, international leaders are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss what can be done to combat climate change. Since the Kyoto agreement of the mid 1990's, international cooperation on the issue has stalled. The United States Senate voted 95-0 not to ratify the Kyoto Accords and two of the largest producers of greenhouse gases, India and China, refused to sign on. Nearly fifteen years later, the political landscape has changed. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has won both an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for calling attention to the issue. Current U.S. President Barack Obama is more committed than his predecessor to address the issue, and his party controls Congress. Both the Chinese Premier and the Indian Prime Minister are attending the conference in Copenhagen. Despite this optimism amongst those anxious to do something about the problem, the conference occurs amidst controversy. A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090126_climate.html) suggests that global warming is essentially irreversible (the report suggests it would take 1,000 years for warming to begin to reverse after carbon dioxide levels are reduced to zero), raising questions about whether the actions proposed can even accomplish anything. And, on the eve of the conference, hacked e-mails between climate scientists were released suggesting that some of the scientists promoting the consensus view of climate science massaged their data to make it more compelling and worked to suppress the publication of contrary data (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml). In the United States the, "cap and trade," legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions has stalled in Congress over concerns that it will raise fuel prices and increase economic hardship in this time of recession. Subsequently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made an endangerment finding regarding green house gases, including carbon dioxide, stating that these gases, "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations." (emphasis added, please see: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html).

OVERVIEW OF CLIMATE SCIENCE:
Most of us are familiar with the basics of the consensus view of global warming. A well-known phenomenon called the greenhouse effect is responsible for trapping the heat of the Sun inside the Earth's atmosphere and heating the planet. To some extent, this is good because it makes life on Earth possible, but concerns have been raised that the planet is warming too much. Certain gases in the atmosphere increase this effect and are therefore called greenhouse gases. Many of these gases are produced as by product of the industrial activity of humans and carbon dioxide which is produced by, among other things, burning carbon containing fuels such as oil, gasoline, and coal, is one of the principle of the greenhouse gases. In the consensus view of climate science the warming of the planet may have catastrophic consequences. Most notably, it will cause rising sea levels as the polar ice cap melts, which may then produce coastal flooding and turn many into refugees. It must be halted or slowed to prevent this dire consequence and since it is caused mostly by human beings burning fossil fuels, we must curtail this activity to protect the planet.

The summary statement of consensus scientists is the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm). A few salient points should be noted about the consensus science. In the policymaker's summary of the most recent IPCC report (please see: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf for the following data), warming since 1850 has only amounted to 1.5 degrees F (or 1/1ooth of a degree per year) and the rise in sea level, presumed secondary to the warming and melting of the arctic ice cap, over this time period has only been 200 millimetres. Furthermore, the IPCC states that the sea level rise is only likely due to global warming and in their classification scheme, likely associations have a significant (33%) chance of not being related. Figure SPM-3 in the policymaker's summary shows a disconnect between warming and sea level rise (sea levels continued to rise even during decades when there was observed cooling) and the report concedes that the contribution of warming, glacier and ice cap melting, and Antarctic melting does not account for all of the observed rise in sea level. The IPCC summary also estimates only about half a metre (a little over eighteen inches) of sea level rise in the next century and that it will take a millenium to achieve the twenty-foot sea level rise predicted by alarmists. Although the IPCC predicts the possibility of as much as nine-degree F rise in temperature over the next century, their models suggest that with specific intervention but with simply a trend towards more balanced use of fossil and renewable fuels (the A1B scenario in the report) this can reduced considerably to 6 degrees F (please see table 10.4 in chapter 10 of the full report (temperatures in Celsius in the table: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf). In summary, the consensus science view, as expressed by the IPCC, is that global warming is real, it is cause by man (very likely in the IPCC report, a category they view as having a 90% chance of being correct), has already cause problems and will cause future difficulties; but it should be noted that the current negative effects of climate change are rather minimal and the future projections of the IPCC fairly modest.

Contrast that with the alarmist view. Climate alarmists, such as former Vice President Al Gore, argue a view that is widely divergent from the consensus science. Even many of the scientists involved in the IPCC report make claims outside of the report that are far more alarmist than the consensus statement (Chris Landsea left the IPCC when the lead author of the Observations chapter, to which he [Landsea] was to contribute made statement attributing increases in frequency and severity of hurricanes to global warming, a conclusion that the data does not support. Please see: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html) . They argue that global warming is not merely a problem to addressed (and balanced against other problems are also pressing), but rather that it is a crisis that requires the adoption of any and all measures to stop it. In his film, An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Pictures, 2006), Mr. Gore asserts that we have already seen horrific consequences of global warming. He states that the devastating hurricane season of 2005 was due to global warming and that both the number and severity of storms, like Katrina, that year were attributable to climate change. He also asserts and increasing number of droughts as a result of climate change. But, according to the consensus report of the IPCC, global warming is not expected to increase the frequency of hurricanes and, although they predict an increase in storm severity the report clearly states the severity of no one storm in 2005 can be clearly attributed to global warming. Furthermore, the IPCC report states that increasing droughts are only likely related to climate change, indicating a significant chance (33%) that they are not (please see policymaker's summary: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf). Climate change alarmists also argue that the arctic ice cap will soon disappear and that a catastrophic 20-foot rise is sea level is imminent. In his film, Mr. Gore states we should devote as many resources to protecting ourselves from this rise in sea level as we do in protecting ourselves from terrorist attacks. Also in the film, Mr. Gore asserts that the arctic ice cap will be gone in the summer within 50-70 years. In his book, An Assault on Reason, he revised this estimate to 34 years (New York: Penguin, 2007). In his public remarks upon learning he was to share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC, Al Gore asserted that summer arctic sea ice will be gone in 23 years (http://blog.algore.com/2007/10/i_am_deeply_honored.html) and in a recent interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell he estimated the life expectancy of summer arctic ice at no more than 10 years (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34345406/ns/politics-more_politics//). However, the IPCC consensus report estimates that late summer arctic sea ice will disappear toward the end of the next century [emphasis added] and a 20-foot rise in sea level would happen, incrementally, over the course of a millenium [emphasis added], not imminently causing widespread dislocation (please see both http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf and http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf).

Another view that diverges from the consensus view is the skeptical view. While some skeptics question weather warming is even occurring, most acknowledge the warming but question weather the observed warming is due man-made carbon emissions or other greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by industrial activity and the burning of fossil fuels and weather the consequences of the warming are necessarily catastrophic. These are important questions because if global warming is a natural phenomenon and not man-made, no action we could take will slow, stop, or reverse; and if the consequences of global warming will not be catastrophic then making large sacrifices and diverting resources from other priorities to combat it is inappropriate. A number of scientists are skeptical of the consensus view of global warming (Henrik Svensmark of Denmark, Russian Habibullo Abdussamatov, and Australian Ian Plimer, to name a few, can be added to four American skeptics interviewed by John Stossel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vpuslrB_cY). The skeptical view focuses on other, natural, drivers of warming, rather than man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Even the IPCC report discusses natural drivers of climate change such as changes in the Earth's orbit (historically the driver of ice ages and interglacial periods) and solar irradiation. Skeptical scientists believe these natural drivers of climate change are underestimated by the IPCC. There are several facts not accounted for by the consensus view of climate change. The IPCC admits in its report that their theory does not account for the lack of warming in the Antarctic (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf). As noted above, the correlation between warming and rising sea levels is also questionable. The IPCC discusses atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations as one of the prime drivers of global warming. In fact, they upgraded their certainty (from likely to very likely)that global warming was man-made based on the last ten years of data (prior to their 2007 report) showing the warmest decade on record and a sharp upswing in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to 379 parts-per-million (ppm), when pre-industrial highs are estimated at no more than 280-300 ppm. However, there is a clear disconnect between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. As the data in this figure from the NOAA show (see http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/sio-mlgr.gif), in recent decades there has been a linear rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. However, in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, global temperatures were decreasing despite increasing carbon dioxide levels, which lead some to be concerned at the time about global cooling (see this article in Newsweek from April 1975 for the temperature trend over those decades: http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf). Buried on page 13 of the most recent IPCC summary for policy makers (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf) is the following statement, "Warming tends to reduce land and ocean uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing the fraction of anthropogenic [man-made] emissions that remains in the atmosphere." In other words, the oceans release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they are warmer (gases are less soluble in warm water). In the IPCC report chapter on paleoclimate, this release of carbon dioxide from the oceans is described as the driver of rising carbon dioxide levels associated with pre-industrial periods of warming (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf). Paleological data suggest that some of these pre-industrial warming periods were quite significant and the IPCC policymaker's summary points out that polar regions were significantly warmer than present 125,000 years ago and at that time the arctic ice had completely melted, resulting in 4-6 metre rise in sea level. This data calls into question whether atmospheric carbon dioxide is a driver of global warming, or a result of global warming, or some combination of both; and whether the current warming trend might be a natural phenomenon as the one 125,000 years ago was. Finally, the consensus view that global warming is a man-made phenomenon offers no explanation for the parallel global warming occurring on Mars (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html and also Nature 446: 646-649).

Skeptics argue that this data supports the notion that the primary driver of climate change is natural, and presumably solar. Although the authors are clear that solar activity does not explain all of the observed warming, Figure 4 in this 1998 paper by Lean and Rind (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1998/1998_Lean_Rind.pdf) shows a striking correlation correlation between global temperature and sunspot number (including the aforementioned cooling period in the 195o's, 196o's, and 1970's). Figure 1 in this paper by Soon (http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0516/2005GL023429/2005GL023429.pdf) also demonstrates a correlation between solar irradiance and temperature, including a decrease in solar irradiance during the cooling between 1940 and 1980. Henrik Svensmark has argued that solar activity governs low cloud cover and this low cloud cover has a profound effect on temperature. When there is more low cloud cover, heat is reflected away from the Earth and the Earth cools. When there is less low cloud cover, the Earth warms. Low cloud cover is generated by cosmic rays and the effect of cosmic rays on the Earth is dampened by an increase in solar activity. Therefore, increases solar activity, decreased cosmic rays, decreased low cloud cover, and warming and vice versa with decreased solar activity. This influence on cosmic rays may amplify the solar effect and explain why other researchers have concluded that the magnitude of solar irradiance is insufficient to account for the warming. Although Svensmark theory is not widely endorsed in the scientific community, there is data to support it, he has been able to experimentally show in a laboratory how cosmic rays influence cloud cover, and his theory has the added bonus of predicting the lack of warming in the Antarctic (please see link to review article here: http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/svensmark_2007cosmoClimatology.pdf/view. Svensmark's plot of cosmic ray activity in Figure 5 is remarkable similar to the NASA-Goddard recorded temperatures plotted here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif).

THE DEBATE:
The above brief review of actual climate science demonstrates that while data supporting the consensus view that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, related to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, this data is by no means conclusive. Several observations are not explained by the consensus model and there is at least some data to support the notion that some, or even most, of climate change is a natural phenomenon. Even if the consensus view is correct regarding the cause of global warming, estimating its severity or impact remains difficult. As noted above, the IPCC projections are relatively modest, but still serious. Yet, such predictions are made from mathematical models at it is unclear from the discussion above whether the mechanism of climate change and relative importance of variables involved are understood well enough to create a valid model.

Scientific consensus is not a substitute for data. In fact, the mere fact that global warming is generally discussed in terms of scientific consensus is proof positive that the data, while compelling, is not conclusive. When data is conclusive, consensus is irrelevant. Although consensus opinion usually turns out to be correct, the history of science is full of examples of minority opinions (Copernican model of the solar system, Big-Bang Theory, infectious cause of stomach ulcers to name a few) were ultimately proven correct and overthrew the reigning consensus opinion. Therefore, the fact that there are still skeptical scientists and research data suggesting the possibility of an alternate view means that the science is not, "in," and the consensus view has not been proven.

Therefore, debate about what to do regarding global warming, if anything, is legitimate. The risk of global warming needs to be balanced against both the cost and likely effectiveness of the proposed remedy. Policy decisions need to incorporate this debate, not gloss over it. Demagogues like Al Gore and other climate alarmist seek to stifle debate through fear. They do not discuss the data and its limitations (as noted above, Mr. Gore has a penchant for ignoring or exaggerating the data), but rather state summarily that the issue has been settled (when we have seen above that it has not been) and that anything other than following their proposed remedy is evil. In An Inconvenient Truth, Mr. Gore asserts, "This is not a political issue so much as a moral issue. If we allow this [climate change] to happen, it is deeply unethical." Mr. Gore's rhetoric leaves no room for debate and is, in my opinion, deeply irresponsible.

Brushing aside such nonsense, what is the proper course? In his Sunday show on CNN on December 13, 2009, Fareed Zakaria presented a responsible consensus view. He argued that even if the chance of the catastrophic scenario is relatively small, it is real and perhaps some expense is justifiable as sort of an insurance policy against such a possibility. This is a very reasonable position, but this position then requires legitimate debate about what the appropriate cost for such an insurance policy should be. What climate change insurance premium would be reasonable? In his book, Physics for Future Presidents (W.W. Norton, New York, 2008), UCB Professor Richard Muller makes a similar argument and makes a compelling case that significant reductions in carbon emissions can be achieved with relatively modest interventions that he terms, "comfortable conservation."

Alternatively, the late Michael Crichton (http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html) and Swedish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/fareedzakaria/site/2009/12/13/gps.podcast.12.13.cnn) have argued that the science is too unsettled, the predictions too uncertain, and the utility of proposed interventions too unknown, to justify diversion of resources away from more pressing and immediate problems, such as global poverty. Standard of living in North America and Europe rose as a function of economic development. What developing nations need to escape poverty are cheap sources of energy. No renewable energy source even approaches the energy efficiency of gasoline (only butanolol, a potential biofuel, approaches gasoline in efficiency) and it is cheap, only about ten cents (U.S.) per kilowatt-hour. Coal is less efficient, but much cheaper at only a half-cent per kilowatt-hour. Contrast that with solar energy. The best solar cells are only 41% efficient, but these cost $100,000 USD per square yard. A reasonable commercially available solar cell is only 15% efficient and could power the electrical needs of a single family home for about $14,000 USD per cell. This means, the solar cell would have to last at least 22 years before requiring replacement for the buyer just to break even, assuming 2008 California power costs (Muller, Physics for Future Presidents, W.W. Norton, New York, 2008). With those costs in mind, it is clear that without the expansion of the use of fossil fuels in the developing world, billions will remain impoverished and millions will die as a result of that poverty. International cap and trade protocols that allow developed nations to pay underdeveloped countries to use less carbon fuels so that the developed nation can continue to use more will do nothing but ensure that impoverished nations remain impoverished.

CLIMATE POLICY IN A FREE SOCIETY:
This, then, is the debate. Are the consequences of doing nothing too dire to risk? Are the proposed solutions futile because climates change regardless of man's actions? Or, are the proposed solutions potentially effective, but not worth their costs? There are plenty of good arguments and all sides of this debate and in a free society policy is subsequently determined by vigorous debate of the issues amongst elected representatives expressing the will of the people. In a free society, demagoguery that glosses over controversy and labels one side as evil or immoral is unacceptable. By debating the actual data in support of and questioning man-made global warming, ultimately a political consensus may be reached that determines policy. Like it or not, in a free society the process of crafting policy is often slow as advocates attempt to persuade undecideds, through reason, that their position is correct.

However, the Environmental Protection Agency has hijacked this issue. The Constitution intends that regulation of economic or social behaviour should be decided by elected representatives. Congress makes laws that regulate economic behaviour and the President signs them. The President negotiates treaties with other nations and the Senate must ratify them. But now it matters little whether cap and trade legislation is stalled in Congress or whether there are votes in the Senate to ratify an agreement reached in Copenhagen. Now an independent regulatory agency has declared power to regulate carbon dioxide (and therefore carbon-fuels, and therefore the economic activity of every citizen) because it is a pollutant. The idea that carbon dioxide, a harmless gas that is exhaled by every man, woman, and child on the planet threatens the health and welfare of current Americans is laughable to say the least and yet the EPA has seen fit to declare it so and assume broad powers to control it without the least bit of responsibility to voters. Regardless of where we might stand on the climate debate, we should all be able to agree that this is appalling. The principle of the ends justifying the means is not an appropriate governing principle for a free and democratic society. It is the governing principle of totalitarianism.

Currency Competition

2009-12-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

I wrote the following to my Congressman yesterday, urging him to support H.R. 4248, The Free Competition in Currency Act:

I am writing to ask you to support H.R. 4248, The Free Competition in Currency Act, introduced by Representative Ron Paul on December 9, 2009.

The act would do three things: 1) abolish federal legal tender laws, 2) end prohibition of privately operated mints, and 3) eliminate capital gains taxes on gold and silver.

Although this may seem like an obscure issue, I can assure that none is more important. The role of money in modern society is critical. Without it, an individual would be forced to produce his or her own food, clothing, and shelter, or barter for it, hoping that the person that has what one needs, needs what one has to trade. Money introduces a common medium of exchange to facilitate economic transaction.

Sound money is critical to the long-term health and well being of a society. Although consumer prices have remained relatively stable in recent years, there has been considerable inflation in the money supply. Regardless of your view on the necessity of the two economic stimulus packages (one passed at the end of President Bush’s term and one passed at the beginning of the President Obama’s term), the money for this largess in federal spending comes largely from newly borrowed and newly printed money. In other words, this spending further inflates the money supply and will ultimately devalue the U.S. dollar. In addition to economic stimulus and other government programs you may deem valuable, this readily inflatable money supply also provides a means to finance wars. It is hard to believe that President Bush could have prosecuted an unpopular war in Iraq for so long if he actually had to confiscate wealth from citizens to pay for it.

A year ago, we saw how dangerous dollar devaluation could be when rising fuel prices, related to a weakening dollar, put a real pinch on working Americans. Not only did fuel prices rise, but this caused a subsequent rise in food prices and played no small role in precipitating the collapse of the housing bubble as more and more Americans could no longer afford to put gas in their cars, food on their tables, and make their mortgage payments all at the same time.

Congressman Paul’s bill would not eliminate Federal Reserve notes as currency, nor would it change the authority of Congress in the coinage of money, nor would it return the United States to a “gold standard.” What it would do is allow individuals choice in what to use and accept for payment. It would allow contracts to be written in other media of exchange besides Federal Reserve notes (i.e. precious metals or other commodities) and, more importantly, it would allow more Americans worried about the loss of their accumulated wealth and the diminishing of their buying power, due to inflation and devaluation of the dollar, to choose to use gold or other commodities as a medium of exchange or to protect their savings.

The first provision of H.R. 4248 would end the federal government’s monopoly on currency and give the consumer choice in his or her medium of exchange. The second provision would allow private companies to manufacture gold and silver coins, making the use of commodity-based money practical by introducing easily portable and transferable commodity money. The third provision is, in my opinion, the most important. Currently investors in gold and silver pay capital gains tax when the price of their gold and silver goes up. However, the rise in price of gold and silver is usually caused by devaluation of the dollar. We simply have to stop penalizing Americans for trying to save their wealth in a more stable asset. Furthermore, without this repeal, individuals using commodity money would pay a tax just to use it every time the Federal Reserve dollar lost value.

In the course of this letter, I have pointed out some of the problems with the Federal Reserve fiat currency. However, if the current U.S. dollar is truly superior to commodity money, if people continue to have confidence in it, and if the federal government pursues policies that strengthen it, then the U.S. dollar has nothing to fear from competition. On the other hand, having choice in currency will allow working Americans to protect their savings, protect their buying power, and use currency that everyone can have confidence in. As debate rages about whether to allow government to compete with private health insurance companies, I urge you to support competition in currency as well. Americans should no longer be forced to use devalued Federal Reserve notes and should have the choice to use sound money that retains its value.

Thank you for your attention to this very important issue.

Trying Time

2009-11-15T15:41:00.008-05:00

Attorney General Eric Holder has made news this week announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the alleged planner (I refuse to use the word, "mastermind," to describe a thug who allegedly planned the murder of thousands) of the September 11 attacks will be tried in a U.S. civilian court in New York City, rather than by a military tribunal. Predictably on the Sunday morning talk shows this morning, Republicans lined up to label this as a bad idea that threatens our national security and Democrats lined up to praise the move. Opponents argue that KSM does not deserve the protections of the accused afforded a U.S. citizen in a criminal trial, that such a trial may publicly expose sensitive information about U.S. intelligence gathering that will hamper our efforts to defeat international terrorism, and that the criminal justice paradigm is not appropriate for foreign terrorists who have committed an act of war.

Whether a criminal or a war time paradigm is appropriate in dealing with terrorists is somewhat of a false choice. An attack by international terrorists is BOTH an act of war and a crime. Surely a wartime footing is appropriate in going after attackers overseas and gathering intelligence that may help thwart future attacks. It may often be appropriate to gather information in ways that would be inadmissible in a criminal court if it will prevent an attack. This does not preclude formal charges and criminal trials for those apprehended after an attack.

Deciding if, when, and to what degree civil liberties can be suspended in time of war in a free society is difficult enough. However, in conventional war between nation states (or even in the U.S. Civil War), it is understood that such measures are meant to be temporary and last only for the duration of the war. Jihadist terrorism is something that the United States is likely to remain at war with for the foreseeable future. Shouldn't we then be more selective in what, if any, civil liberties we suspend in the interest of national security when the perceived need for such measures is indefinite? What good is victory, after all, if we have to sacrifice the liberty we are fighting for in order to achieve it?

But, the case of KSM presents its own challenges. Unlike Timothy McVeigh, KSM is not a U.S. citizen and not, automatically, guaranteed the protections of our Constitution. Unlike Zacarias Moussaoui (the "20th hijacker"), he was not even arrested on U.S. soil as the result of a criminal investigation. Rather, KSM was taken on the field of battle in Afghanistan by U.S. soldiers as a prisoner of war. Why then should constitutional protections apply to him? Surely it is appropriate that he be tried, as a prisoner of war, by a military tribunal. Surely, his trial by a tribunal would in no way set any kind of precedent that erodes the rights if U.S. citizens. Some of the Republicans opposed to the move argued on the Sunday morning talk shows this morning that the public trials of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers made public information about American security measures that allowed Al Qaeda to plan a more successful attack. Whether this is true or not, certainly the possibility that KSM's public trial could make public sensitive information is an important consideration.

I don't know whether the criminal court or the military tribunal is the proper venue for the trial of KSM. What I do know, is that to be credible and just, the integrity of the process must be maintained. If there are valid reasons of national security why KSM should not be tried in a civilian criminal court, there is certainly appropriate legal grounds for not offering him that venue (he is not a U.S. citizen and therefore not protected by the Constitution and he was taken as a prisoner of war on the field of battle) then try him with a military tribunal. On the other hand, the United States should never be afraid to offer constitutional protections to non-citizens (as we would with any alien apprehended for a crime within our borders, like Zacarias Moussaoui). If we truly believe, as I do, that our principles of liberty are, "self-evident," and appropriate for all people world-wide then we should not shirk from proclaiming that to the world by offering such basic civil liberties even to our enemies.

But, the integrity of the process can only be maintained if the same procedure is followed for all terror detainees apprehended overseas. KSM is being offered a criminal trial, but other terror suspects are being tried by military tribunals. This approach smells of rigged outcomes. Attorney General Holder is certain he has met criminal burdens of evidence for KSM, so he gets a show trial in New York, but others in Guantanamo for whom evidence is not as solid will be railroaded through a military tribunal. The message this sends is that the process is irrelevant so long as we get the "right result." If we can't get you one way, we'll get you another (A supporter of the administration's plan to try KSM, Rep. Jack Reed (D-RI) went as far on Fox News Sunday today to suggest that even if KSM were acquitted he could and would still be held indefinitely because of the threat he represents!). If KSM deserves a criminal trial, then doesn't every non-citizen terror suspect apprehended overseas? If there are reasons why a prisoner of war paradigm for terror detainees is more appropriate than an indicted criminal paradigm, then shouldn't KSM also be tried by a military tribunal?

I have no problem offering KSM constitutional protections in a criminal trial, so long as these protections are offered to all apprehended terror suspects. I can live with the idea that terror suspects that are not U.S. citizens and were apprehended overseas can be tried by military tribunals, including KSM. What I find inappropriate and unacceptable is selective choice of venue. Justice can only truly exist when applied equally to everyone.

D.C. Tea Party

2009-09-13T20:42:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, I joined tens of thousands of people (perhaps as many as 1.5 million according to some estimates) at the Washington D.C. Tea Party rally to protest the rampant growth of government and runaway federal spending that we have seen over the last nine years.

There were certainly many demonstrators with signs bearing hate, vitriol, and personal attacks against the President (the "liar" epithet being the most common). I have little use for such least common denominator politics. As readers of this blog know (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/11/decision-2008.html), I consider the fact that someone like Barack Obama - a member of an ethnic minority, the son of an immigrant, and a child raised by a single parent, can rise to become President a testament to the greatness of this nation. I do not impugn the President's motives nor find him deliberately deceitful (in fact, he is often rather candid about the collectivist agenda he has for this country). Rather, I think he is simply wrong on a number of issues. The President views all issues through a philosophical mind set that it is best to, "spread the wealth around." Through this collectivist lens that insists justice is measured, not by equality of opportunity, but rather by equality of result, it is difficult to comprehend (and perhaps irrelevant), that his plans may come at great cost, both economically and in terms of individual liberty. In fact, it is impossible to have both equality of opportunity AND equality of result. Given equal opportunity, different people will achieve different things based on their different interests, different levels of motivation, and different skills and talents. Therefore, guaranteeing equality of result requires stifling one individual's freedom to achieve for himself (or herself) to benefit of someone else. It is the simple fact that this redistribution of accrued wealth is incompatible with the notion of a free society that the President cannot, or will not understand.

However vitriolic sign-carriers by no means represented the majority of protesters. Most were respectful and carried either Gadsden flags or more substantive, issue-oriented signs. Health Care reform, the skyrocketing deficit, and Cap and Trade were the most common issues and many of the signs were quite clever, pithy, and succinct - distilling an important philosophical point onto a placard. The best of these, in my opinion, was a sign that said, "Save Trees - Stop Printing Money." The demonstrators I spoke with were quite informed and knowledgeable (I had a very detailed and intelligent conversation with a gentleman from Indiana on health care). They were of all ages and all walks of life, including many veterans. One woman was visiting D.C. and didn't know of the event, but joined it when she heard about. I spoke with a few demonstrators, that like me were fed up with both parties for the nine year spending spree our nation has been on. Several had signs or buttons that suggested all incumbents, of both parties, should be tossed out in 2010. Several of the speakers also echoed this theme, that Republicans were equally to blame. The notion that these events are organized by Republican leadership for political purposes to discredit the President is utter nonsense. In fact, there was only one sitting Republican congressmen present (Tom Price, R-GA).

Which brings me to the real explanation behind the tea party phenomenon. This is not strictly partisan (I even talked with a libertarian group promoting and end to the war on drugs) as many of the protesters were fed up with both parties. Although for some the motivation may have been personal, for most it has noting to do with hate for the President. Furthermore, most of the protesters came of their own accord and at their own expense. Rather, this is the culmination of nine years of watching our nation head down the wrong track. For many of the protesters, this begins with the health care entitlement of the Bush administration (Medicare D), No Child Left Behind, the doubling of the national debt under President Bush, and the nearly trillion dollar bailout President Bush signed into law. The breaking point comes when President Obama, who campaigned on change, picks up right where President Bush left off - with an even bigger health care entitlement, another big bailout, government takeover of GM and Chrysler, and projections to double the national debt yet again. As individuals start saving again and as companies seek to cut losses in these difficult economic times, many wonder why our government in Washington shouldn't be doing the same. Aside from the threat to liberty that any expansion of government power poses, the fact that such runaway spending cannot possibly be sustainable is intuitively obvious.

Finally, as a I stood amongst the multitude and added my voice to theirs, I couldn't help but feel very grateful for a country that allowed such a large assembly, at the Capitol, to protest the policies of government and that such a large group could do so peacefully and respectfully. It was a reminder that ours is the greatest nation on Earth.

Health Scare

2009-08-08T16:31:00.024-04:00

With great trepidation I shall attempt to organize thoughts on health care reform while Congress is in recess, having not yet passed a bill. I have certainly had considerable evolution in my view of this issue over the last several years. In my college days, I advocated a single-payer national health insurance plan, similar to the Canadian model; a position antithetical to the stated purpose of this blog (the promotion of limited government). I was persuaded by the theoretical cost savings of covering everyone and preventing chronic disease from becoming more expensive to treat when not prevented or treated early. I also, at the time, agreed with the moral imperative to make sure every American had access to health care - nearly acknowledging that health care is a right. Observing the Canadian health care system by observing care my Canadian relatives have received, I do think it is a good system. However, there are serious limitations to it that should not be overlooked. What is missing from debate in Washington these days is any sort of serious discussions of pros and cons; rather each side would rather engage in hyperbolic rhetoric. The left pretends that reform will cost nothing, either in terms of financial cost or a loss of things that are good about the current U.S. system. The right pretends that this is, "socialized medicine," and that health care in Canada is similar to a third world country. Neither side is being honest with the American people. Honesty requires the left to make a case that there is a moral imperative to extend health insurance coverage to more (or all) Americans and not to allow one-sixth of the population to remain uncovered; but that that will come at certain costs. Honesty requires the right to admit that health care will be pretty good for all of us under a government plan, but to question whether covering the extra people is worth the losses in terms of innovation in health care and the proliferation of health care resources that prevents shortages and queues; and to ask whether there aren't better ways to expand coverage (if not quite providing universal coverage) without asking the 85% of Americans with coverage to give up some of what they have. Most importantly, honesty requires acknowledging that this debate is more about how to cover Americans than it is about controlling health care costs (something the administration claims is the reason a bill must be passed) and to recognize that this is a health insurance problem, not a health care crisis. If we persist in discussing this issue on the terms that it is not about a commodity called health insurance, but rather that it is about a right to health care, then there will be no room for honest debate.

IS HEALTH CARE A RIGHT?

As I have reflected about the nature of rights, I have changed my view since those college days. Rights are innate; they are things everyone possesses naturally. They can be taken away, forcibly, but without extrinsic force, an individual possesses them. life, liberty, free speech, freedom of conscience/religion are all clear examples of rights. Commodities are things one acquires and has a right to in as much as one has legitimately acquired them Hence the concept of property rights and ownership. It seems to me that health care, a service provided by practitioners in return for payment, therefore is a commodity. It is a very basic one, a very necessary one, and one in which it still might be reasonable to provide for all as a matter of public policy, but that does not make it a right. Calling it a right ends all debate. If it is a right, then there can be no argument over whether or not society needs to provide it to everyone. Not only that, if it is a right, everyone is entitled to an equal amount of it; just as everyone is has the same ability to speak freely, assemble freely, or worship freely. If health care is a right, physicians and nurses are obligated to provide it, with or without payment for services. We treat no other good or service this way. Even food and housing, more basic needs than health care, are commodities for which payment is expected and for which there is accepted disparity between what one person can afford compared to another. The wealthy person lives in a mansion and eats fillet mignon, the less well off person rents and apartment and brings home KFC. I think we can have a discussion about what role government can or should play in providing coverage for people or expanding access for people, but we have to understand that we are talking about the commodity of health insurance coverage, not a God-given right.

MODELS OF REFORM

Before proceeding, it is important to come to terms with what we are actually talking about. For the sake of simplicity I'd like to limit discussion to three different models that I have some familiarity with: 1) the United States, the country in which I live and practice medicine; 2) Canada, the country in which most of my extended family lives; and 3) the United Kingdom, the country where most of my wife's extended family lives. The models of health care delivery are quite different in these three countries. Since World War II, the United States has moved from a system of fee-for-service (doctors and hospitals charge patient's directly for the service they render) to a system of third party payers. For most, the third party payer is a private insurance company, for some (the very poor that get Medicaid, the elderly that receive Medicare, or congressmen) it is the government, and some are uninsured. Rationing of resources in this system is first by income (those who can afford coverage or have coverage as an employment benefit) and secondly by insurance companies, who are, for many Americans, the final arbiters of what is covered and what is not. Like the United States, Canada has a third party payer system. The difference is only a single third party payer, the government. Hospitals and doctors are still owned privately and collect fees for service, but reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals are set by the single payer, the government. The Canadian system is what the U.S. would be like if everyone had Medicare. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has a true system of socialized medicine. The government owns hospitals and health care resources and most physicians work for the government. Not only does the government regulate the payment of health care professionals, it also regulates how health care resources are distributed. The UK system, therefore, is analogous to the VA medical system in the U.S.

WHAT IS "OBAMA CARE?"

With that in mind, let's move on to what is actually being discussed in Washington. First of all, no one, and I mean no one, is promoting actual socialized medicine in the UK model in which the government would take complete, or near complete ownership, of the industry (as it has with the financial and automotive industries); employ the doctors and dictate to them how to practice; and directly ration the allocation of resources. You would never know it based on the rhetoric of some on the right, but such charges are deliberate scare tactics. Furthermore, many private insurance companies ration care to a far greater degree than government programs, such as Medicare.

Most on the left advocate a Canadian-style single payer system. This system has the advantage of providing a high level of health care to everyone (universal coverage). There are still legitimate reasons to be wary, however. First, it would represent a large expansion of federal government and a very expensive new entitlement. Secondly, it would amount to a government takeover of the health insurance industry which is of dubious constitutionality. Finally, the Canadian experience is a classic example of how government price setting creates shortages. Doctor's fees in Canada are set by the federal government and as a consequence, many doctors have left Canada. Canada ranks 24th out of 28 industrialized nations in doctors per 1,000 population (source: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=222287). Canada has 2.1 doctors per 1,000 population compared to 2.4 in the U.S. (source: http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_information/dissemination/echi/echi_18_en.pdf). At one point in the mid-90's, Canada was losing 400,000 doctors per year, about one in nine Canadian medical graduates leave the country and 80% of doctors that leave go to the United States (source: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2645159).

In the United States, by contrast, medicine is very profitable. This profitability has driven innovation and created cutting edge, high quality treatments, that while expensive, save lives (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/25/AR2009072502381.html). Furthermore, U.S. hospitals can reinvest the money they earn into buying new equipment and offering more services. The small (250-bed), non-profit hospital in downtown Baltimore at which I work, in the seven years I have been, on the medical staff; has expanded the Emergency Department; built a new outpatient cancer/women's health center, with its own operating rooms; bought a second MRI scanner and then replaced the first one with a newer scanner; added a third CT scanner; and is in the process of building a new, larger, hospital! The single payer system in Canada is responsible for the relative scarcity of health care resources (compared to the U.S.) that can create queues and long waits for treatments.

However, the single-payer system is not even what is on the table in now in Washington. Since the President has been deliberately vague and there is no actual bill yet from Congress, it is hard to discuss specifics, but we can discuss the general proposal that the President has talked about. The general plan is to require employers with payrolls over $500,000 to provide employees with health insurance or pay and 8% tax payroll tax. Those not covered by employer provided insurance can opt into a public, government funded plan, that would function like the single payer system in Canada. In addition health insurance would become portable so a person can keep their insurance if they lose their job and there would be restrictions on denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. The selling points of the plan are that everyone would have access to coverage and that people who like their current insurance coverage would, ostensibly, get to keep it.

But, the public option is a Trojan horse. Many employers may find an 8% payroll tax cheaper than what they pay in health insurance premiums for their employees and subsequently drop their coverage, forcing their employees into the public plan. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean debated this issue on the August 9, 2009 broadcast of ABC's This Week (In my opinion, both Speaker Gingrich and Governor Dean are men of substance and worth listening to, whether one agrees with them or not). Speaker Gingrich cited a study that suggested as many as 130 million Americans would lose their current coverage under the plan (as currently crafted in the bill that passed in the House). Dr. Dean dismissed that study as one funded by the health insurance industry, but acknowledged that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated 5-10 million Americans would lose their current coverage. This is actually an astounding admission. The administration argues that if you like your current coverage, nothing has to change; but under the bill that passed in the House, by any estimate, millions of Americans will actually be forced to change their coverage (and probably rely on the public plan). The left maintains that the public plan only provides, "more competition," for the private insurance market, which will be to the benefit of consumers. However, when one competitor can insure people at a loss (deficit spend) and also sets the rules of the competition (health care legislation and regulation), it is hardly accurate to call this competition. The public plan is a tentative first step to the gradual establishment of a single payer system, with all the advantages and drawbacks of such a system as previously described.

PAYING FOR HEALTH CARE

The President has insisted that Congress find funding for health care reform (the buzz word is, "deficit neutral") and that it control health care costs, which have been growing faster than inflation. Such a plan can hardly be deficit neutral. The creation of a public health insurance plan would create a new entitlement that would commit our government to ever escalating spending. Covering more people, for longer if the universal (or near universal) coverage increases life expectancy can only cost the tax payers a lot of money. Currently, Medicare spending is one of the largest pieces of the federal budget. In short, it will be expensive and in the absence of tax increases on everyone, it is hard to see how it would be deficit neutral. In fact, the CBO declared that the current plan that passed in the House was not (source: http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14085725). But, would it control costs?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spends about 15% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. By contrast, Canada spends about 10% of GDP on health care. Canada also spends less per capita on health care. Proponents of government reform, particularly single payer reform, point to these statistics and argue that Canadians get just as much service (or nearly so) for less. However, these statistics ignore the fact that health care costs have been spiraling out of control in Canada as well. Health care spending in Canada has also been increasing faster than inflation and hit a record high last year, causing some in Canada to question whether the Canadian system is sustainable (source: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/11/13/health-spending.html).

In his book, Free to Choose, Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman discusses government spending and this discussion, indirectly, explains why no third-party payer system, whether public or private, can control costs. According to Friedman, there are four types of spending: 1) you can spend your own money on your self, in which case you have incentives to both spend as little as possible and to get the most value for your money, 2)you can spend your money on someone else, in which case you have still have an incentive to spend as little as possible, but not necessarily to get the best value for your money, 3) you can spend someone else's money on you, in which case you still have an incentive to get the best value, but not necessarily to spend as little as possible, and 4) you can spend someone else's money on yet someone else, in which case you don't have an incentive to either get the best value or spend the smallest amount possible. Third party health payments, particularly government ones, are category 4. Private payments may be category 2, but even this is not much of check on costs because the consumer of health services is not paying directly and as treatments become more advanced, they will become more expensive. A government insurance plan will do little to limit the escalation of health care cost, it will merely shift the cost from the private sector to our heavily indebted federal government.

In the final analysis, there are only two ways to control costs. The first is to ration care (as private insurance companies do to varying degrees) as in the British model. In Britain, the government is not only the third-party payer, it is the allocator of health care resources. For example, in the United States, having end stage renal disease makes one automatically eligible for medical disability and Medicare and Medicare covers the cost of dialysis treatments. In other words, the United States has made a policy decision that no American should die because of a lack of access to kidney dialysis. In Britain, your eligibility for dialysis is determined based on your age and other medical comorbidities. This type of government rationing does control costs, but most Americans would find this unacceptable. The second way to control costs is not to have third party payers at all, but rather have the actual consumers of health care foot the bill (a true fee-for-service system). Then health care spending would by Type 1 and patient's would have greater incentive to take better care of themselves and get the best value for their money. Furthermore, in a true market system (which the private health insurance is not, for a variety of reasons), costs cannot rise higher than the market will bear or higher than than capacity of consumers to pay. If they do and no one can afford the service, those that provide the service will go out of business. A market system would give an incentive to doctors to charge a little as possible, to keep patients, rather than to charge as much as possible to a third party payer. However a true free market, fee-for-service, system does nothing to expand coverage and rations care solely based on one's ability to pay, an outcome many also find unacceptable.

THE REAL DEBATE

Getting beyond the scare tactics, then, the real debate is not between socialized medicine and free market medicine, neither of which are actually on the table; it is not between rationing, which will happen with either private insurances or a government plan and unlimited coverage; and it is not, despite all the President's disingenuous rhetoric, about controlling health care costs (although perhaps it should be). The debate is about how to expand health insurance coverage for the 47 million Americans who do not have it, whether it is a proper role for federal government to expand coverage, how to pay for such coverage, and how much is reasonable to ask the vast majority of Americans with coverage to sacrifice to provide such coverage.

Universal coverage would have the advantages of, potentially, a healthier population; less utilization of Emergency Services; and, in the case of government health insurance, shifting a cost burden off corporations and potentially making them more competitive with their overseas competitors. Universal coverage sounds like a noble goal, but it will come at a price. The price, as discussed above, is a loss of innovation in medicine and the potential to create a shortage of health care resources. If the American public is persuaded that what is lost in transition to a Canadian-style system is worth the moral imperative of expanding coverage, then reform with a public option will pass; if not, then it will not. But, that is the case the President should be making if he is honest with the American people, not trying to scare them into thinking their health care will become unaffordable if his plan is not passed. Likewise, the right needs to argue that the costs are not worth the gains and propose other ways to expand coverage without sacrificing the things we would all like to preserve about health care in the United States.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

On thing that has not changed as I have reflected on this issue over the last two decades is that I continue to believe Canadians enjoy great health care. Health care in Canada is, arguably, second only to the United States and everyone has coverage. Such a system is nothing to be afraid of, but neither is it a panacea. It simply substitutes one set of problems for another. The single-payer system stifles innovation, contributes to shortages of resources, and shifts costs to tax payers without doing much to control them. Furthermore, I am not convinced that our federal government truly has the Constitutional authority to become such a large player in the market place (although the precedent has certainly been set with it's take over of AIG and GM). I am also not convinced of our government's ability to manage anything competently or cost-effectively. Finally, I think in the midst of recession and with federal deficits reaching unprecedented levels, and both entitlement spending and interest on the national debt accounting for an ever growing percentage of the federal budget, I do not think now is the time to contemplating any new entitlement programs. Having framed the debate, I think it is a better debate to have another day.

Despite my free market principles (and the growing phenomenon of concierge care), I am also not naive enough to believe that the genie of third party payers can be put back in the bottle. I do think there are ways to harness market forces to both reduce costs and expand coverage (although this would fall well short of universal coverage). For example, Safeway has reduced the cost of health care for its employees by 40% by providing incentives for healthy living in the form of lower premiums in return for lifestyle modification such as smoking cessation, weight loss, exercise, or meeting goal cholesterol levels (source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html). Senator McCain's campaign proposal to allow purchase of health insurance coverage across state lines would expand coverage by letting individuals purchase less expensive plans from other states and would provide increased competition in the health insurance industry to help drive down costs. Currently health insurance companies operate in carved out niches, protected by competition from other states and in many states a handful of insurers account for the vast majority of the insured. This lack of competition can only benefit insurance companies at the expense of health insurance consumers. In medical school I, and others, wrote a paper discussing likely changes to the health care system by 2010. We discussed a proposal in the news at that time that would allow individuals to deduct their health insurance premiums from their income taxes, the way businesses who provide health insurance do, which would help individuals who did not receive health insurance from their employer purchase individual plans. I would also favour true health savings accounts that would allow the young and the healthy, who aren't likely to require much coverage at that point in their lives, to put money away, tax free, that can be withdrawn at any time later in life for health expenses. Perhaps, for now, such modest measures will have to suffice.

Many thanks to all that I have been discussing this issue with over the last several months: lay persons, physicians, and other health professionals; residents of the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand; liberals, conservatives, and moderates; all of whom have helped me finally organize some, I hope, coherent thoughts on a topic I have wrestled with for a long time.

Iran

2009-06-20T01:46:00.005-04:00

Protests of the recent election results in Iran continue and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the clerical wing of Iran's government (and probably the true source of political power in Iran) has promised that they will be forcibly suppressed. Because Iran is a essentially a totalitarian police state, we will never know whether or not President Ahmadinejad was indeed popularly re-elected. However, as discussed last week on Meet the Press by Vice President Biden, there are reasons to be skeptical of the result. Ahmadinejad was apparently declared the winner before voting was completed. The voting was reported as percentages of blocks of millions of votes, rather than a province-by-province tally as has been the case in previous elections in Iran. Furthermore, the percentages garnered by Ahmadinejad did not change regardless whether the bloc was rural, where Ahmadinejad enjoys broad popular support, or urban, where opposition candidate Mousavi is popular (and including, apparently, Mousavi's home town). The Iranian government's response to the protests - sharp police crackdown and blackouts of cell phone service and internet access - also raises suspicions about the veracity of the election results. It is unlikely that the issue will be resolved to satisfaction as the person ultimately responsible for investigating allegations of fraud is the same person who certified the results initially and who has backed Ahmadinejad from the beginning - Ayatollah Khamenei.

In January 2005, I wrote an essay discussing similar, peaceful, protests of election results in Ukraine (posted on this blog on April 26, 2008: http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange-revolution.html). The comparisons and contrasts between the current protests in Iran and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine illustrate key points about the origins of liberty.

First, democracy is no guarantor of liberty. Not only are elections corruptible, as the current situation in Iran attests, but they can also serve as vehicle for consolidation of government power at the expense of liberty. It should not be forgotten that, although the National Socialist party never achieved a majority in the Reichstag, it did achieve a plurality, through democratic means, that allowed it to form a coalition government with Adolph Hitler as Chancellor. This ended the Wiemar Republic and established the most brutal police state the world has ever known. In Putin's Russia and Chavez' Venezuela, popularly elected Presidents have governed as virtual autocrats. Furthermore, although majority rule is an important principle in liberal democracy, for a society to be truly free, the rights of the minority must be respected and protected. In other words, the will of the majority has limits. Even if the official results of the recent elections in Iran are accurate, the crackdown on protest and dissent demonstrates that Iran has a long way to go to become a free society. The right of a political minority to peaceably assemble and dissent is a critical component of liberal democracy. Ukraine took an important step toward liberal democracy when it allowed Victor Yushchenko's supporters to protest the election results. Unfortunately, Iran seems committed to not taking this step.

Secondly, as important as free, fair, and transparent elections are to liberal democracies, civil institutions that protect minority and individual rights are more important. In the United States, this is accomplished by a written Constitution that limits the power of government and the checks and balances between the three branches of federal government, the federal government and state governments, and the public and private sectors. A key component of this that we in the U.S. take for granted is an independent and impartial judiciary. In Ukraine's Orange Revolution, the court, appointed by the ruling party that had ostensibly beaten Yushchenko's opposition in the election, asserted its independence and established a principle of judicial review when it discarded the fraudulent election results and ordered a re-vote. In Iran, no such independent review of the election results exists.

Finally, a free society must respect the individual property rights of its citizens and private ownership. In his thought-provoking book, The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria examines the relationship between capital and liberty. Governments that rely on their citizens to produce wealth, in the end are fertile ground for liberal democracy because a legal framework protecting private ownership and individual rights will emerge to promote the economic growth on which the government depends. Although an oil rich state, Iran has a dynamic, non-oil, economy and a per capita income (in 2003-4) of somewhere between $5,000-$6,000 USD; the level of wealth production Zakaria suggests could provide fertile ground for liberal democracy. Iran, once a cradle of civilization, still has the potential to join the 21st century as a vibrant liberal democracy, but only if those other conditions are met. Only then will elections be fair and transparent and only then will the Iranian government rule with the consent of the governed. Elections are not the starting point of liberty, but rather the endpoint. The reward of a free society ready to govern itself.

It seems this is not the moment for the birth of Iranian liberty. But the response to the suspicious election results shows that Iranians are ready and the seeds of their ultimate liberty are being planted today. Iran's nuclear program has been a concern to the U.S. because Iran has been, essentially, a rogue-terrorist state. Iran's transformation into a liberal democracy that is a valued member of the community of nations will neutralize such a threat. The United States needs to be prepared to extend an open hand not to Ahmadinejad, but to the Iranian people who have demonstrated the same yearning for freedom that we have as Americans. Our policies must show us to be friends of the Iranian people, even when we are opposed to the Iranian government. The time may not be now, but the time is coming when the Iranian people will seize control of their own destiny.

Where's the Beef?

2009-05-23T17:19:00.010-04:00

Four months ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. In an historic inauguration, he became the first African-American, or indeed any ethnic minority, to become President. After eight years of the unpopular Bush administration, the changing of the guard was welcome to most Americans. The fresh face elected to the highest office in the land not only looked different, but promised something different. Barack Obama was coming to the White House to bring, "Change We Can Believe In." The disastrous policies of the Bush administration will be undone as a new day dawns in America....

But those of us who observe politics closely can only note that in almost every election, the "out party" complains about the excesses of the "in party," rides the abuses of the "in party" to victory and then becomes the new "in party," and proceeds to continue to exercise the power it previously complained about, but for which the previous government set precedent. Such behaviour is as old as the republic itself (consider Jefferson's Second Revolution in 1800, in which he rode the issue of the Alien and Sedition Acts to power, abolished them, and then proceeded to use state sedition laws to prosecute those that disagreed with his government) and perhaps as old as democracy itself. President Obama is no exception. For all his talk about change, the President has remained committed to continuing and fulfilling the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

To the careful observer, it is not surprising that the policies of the Obama administration are similar to the Bush 43 administration. After all, Barack Obama campaigned as a liberal and the Bush administration was the most leftist administration in four decades. My recent open letter to President Bush describes the left-wing policies of his administration in detail (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-letter-to-president-george-w-bush.html), but the highlights included a new federal health care entitlement, an increased role of federal government in education, massive domestic spending, socialization of financial industry, and a proposal for a federal "car czar" to give government control of the auto industry. While I know of no specific education proposal from the Obama administration, his White House has made an even larger and more unaffordable health care entitlement a priority. His administration has continued to socialize the financial industry by bailing out and buying large shares in more and more banks, and his car "politburo" now essentially runs GM and Chrysler and the President himself canned the GM CEO. Massive government spending continues. Candidate Obama took issue with one major Bush administration domestic policy - the tax cuts. President Obama, however, is quite content to let them continue and has no plans to repeal them (they will, however, expire if not renewed by Congress, in 2011).

In foreign policy and national security, President Obama has pursued a similar course to President Bush as well. Although rhetoric has changed, policy has not. President Obama announced the closing of Gitmo, but has no real plan to do so. Furthermore, he has promised not to release any enemy combatants that cannot be tried but are still a danger (presumably he decides whether they are dangerous or not). Therefore, open ended detentions will continue whether at Gitmo or not. After promising due process and a right to a trial to those detained, President Obama has decided to return to the military tribunals established by his predecessor. The surprising insurgent candidacy of Senator Obama owed its success, in part, to his opposition to the war in Iraq, his opposition to the surge strategy in Iraq, and his promise to end that war. President Obama views the Bush exit strategy for Iraq as adequate and has made no effort to modify the status of forces agreement President Bush negotiated with the Iraqi government in order to hasten our withdrawal. Besides, those troops aren't coming home, signaling and end to our foreign adventurism, when they leave Iraq they will be deployed in Afghanistan. But, the most chilling Bush administration security policy was its illegal eavesdropping on mobile phone calls made overseas. Yet, in the late stages of the campaign, Senator Obama voted for the bill that essentially retroactively endorsed that policy, gutted the authority of the FISA court and gave the federal government a longer time limit to eavesdrop on someone without a warrant. Now his administration happily uses this authority to "keep us safe." Senator Obama said he would not support the bill if it granted immunity for telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration in their illegal eavesdropping. The bill did grant such immunity and Senator Obama still voted for it (see the following article for a nice discussion of the new FISA law: http://www.slate.com/id/2194254/pagenum/all/ ).

The Bush 43 administration was a serious threat to the liberty of American citizens. It grew the size and scope of government at an alarming rate, it usurped the authority of state governments, it amassed debt that our descendants will never be able to repay, it made a mockery of private ownership when it bought large portions of the financial sector, it went to war without a declaration from congress and defined the war in open-ended way to seize war powers indefinitely, it detained people without charges, and it illegally eavesdropped. In November 2006 and November 2008, the American people said, "enough," and ousted Republicans from both the legislative and executive branches of government. Presumably these voters wanted, "change." Presumably these voters wanted Bush policies to end. Presumably these voters did not want a President who would essentially represent a "Bush third term." The irony is, a Bush third term is exactly what the voters got. Under President Obama, questionable detentions and increased government eavesdropping will continue, foreign adventurism will continue, new health care entitlements will be created, runaway spending will continue, socialization of the financial industry will continue. In no substantial way are the policies of the Obama administration different from those of the Bush administration (oh, except for a few federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research, hurray change!). I am reminded of Walter Mondale's reference to a popular TV commercial of the mid 1980's when he challenged the lack of substance to Gary Hart's, "new ideas." For all the President Obama's talk about change we can believe in, "where's the beef?"

On Libertarianism, Part 2

2009-05-23T16:45:00.008-04:00

Pragmaticus argues for more federal regulation of the economy because, he concludes, people are too irresponsible to self-regulate. He gives Barry Madoff, predatory lenders, people who borrowed beyond their means, and CEOs with golden parachutes as examples. Publius responds:

As far as regulation goes, I have never argued that there shouldn't be any. In fact, I have been quite clear that government has an important regulatory role to play and I was quite specific about what I thought it should be (http://freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-libertarianism.html). Madoff violated EXISTING laws and regulations, did he not? In the housing crisis, federal regulators BLOCKED state efforts to curtail subprime lending (http://www.slate.com/id/2182709/pagenum/all). The Fed was irresponsibly slashing interest rates to below the inflation rate. So you can put faith in regulators, but quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who will guard the guards? or in this case, who will regulate the regulators?). I agree that people will act irrationally, but the way markets work is that people who make irrational or unwise decisions pay a price and learn and the markets correct. Most of the time, just the individuals involved pay the price - but when government acts irresponsibly, as Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed did; we all pay the price. What you can't do, if markets are going to work, is remove what is called moral hazard (or as Newt Gingrich said, you can't have capitalism on the way up and socialism on way down). Yet, what are we doing? All these people did act irresponsibly - some at the prodding of the feds, many others not - and we are bailing them out! How can a market self-regulate if no one pays the price for their bad decisions? It can't, it's the loss that corrects the market. What will these bailouts accomplish? Not much other than delay a market correction that still has to happen eventually.

Finally, I can't believe any rational person would look at the behaviour of Wall Street, and the bankers, and the house poor borrowers and conclude that the solution to irresponsible financial behaviour is regulation by a government that acts even MORE irresponsibly. It is laughable to call Madoff the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. The United States Federal Government is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Since World War II, with a a few anomalous years under Nixon and Clinton (interestingly both times when control of government was divided between the two parties), our government has done nothing but spend, and spend, and spend, and amass debt that it never intends to repay (and probably never can). Yet, investors, particularly foreign ones, continue to finance it by buying our bonds - why? Because the government has a continually renewing source of revenue - the annual income tax - which brings in the new money each year to pay the interest on those bonds, making them still a good investment even though the principle cannot be repaid. That is exactly how Ponzi schemes work - the revenue collected from new investors is used to pay the profits of the old ones and it can continue ad infinitum as long as their is a stream of new investors. Madoff got caught because no one wanted to invest anymore when the economy went south. Well, when you have taxpayers instead of investors it can and will go on and on until it finally reaches the day of reckoning - when interest on the debt commands such large share of the federal budget that the tax revenue can no longer pay it and all the entitlement spending we have committed ourselves to (Medicare, Social Security, Medicare Rx, and soon national health care). You think the solution to Madoffs in the marketplace is these Ubermadoffs in Washington? This new irresponsibility knows no partisanship - both parties do it - and the current administration seems poised to do it bigger and grander than anyone. It simply has to stop. Our long term survival as the most prosperous country on the planet depends on it. I am not sure government can get smaller, but it at the very least NEEDS to stop growing. The irresponsible in the private sector are a fraction of the population (albeit probably a majority). The irresponsible in Washington are everyone - except Ron Paul, and sometimes John McCain.

What about the federal government gives you such confidence? The stellar way it manages Amtrak (which is far more expensive than flying, which the feds don't manage)? The stellar way it delivers the mail (which Fed Ex, DHL, and UPS do better but are prevented by law from delivering letters and may only deliver packages)? The stellar success of the ethanol industry - a government created, subsidized, and protected industry that continues to lose money? The fantastic job the government has done managing the war in Iraq or the aftermath of Katrina? The way the Fed devalued the dollar with low interest rates? In what way has the federal government inspired your confidence that increasing it's control over business and industry would be successful, or even better? Its success rate when it has tried is abysmal.

Why I Hate Presidents Day

2009-02-14T19:55:00.006-05:00

This coming Monday (February 16, 2009) is Presidents Day. This is the federal holiday that honours George Washington (born February 22) and Abraham Lincoln (born February 12).

Certainly these two men are worthy of remembrance. Washington was instrumental in the founding of this nation. The independence declared by Adams and Jefferson meant little if not defended in the field by Washington. Washington's prowess as a general may be debatable, but he indisputably accompolished an amazing feat. Largely through force of will; he was able to keep a small rag-tag army in the field against what could only be described as the super power of the 18th century; maintain moral; and prevail despite shortages of food, clothing, weapons, and other equipment. Under our current Constitution, Washington was the first President of the United States. But more than being first, Washington set an example for the others to follow. Washington's example is his great gift to our nation. In the history of mankind, generals who lead revolutions usually seize power (Caesar, Napoleon). After victory at Yorktown, Washington resigned his commission, disbanded his army, acknowledged the political supremacy of the Continental Congress and went home to Mount Vernon. For this, King George III called him, "the greatest man in the world." The American Revolution was fought for the principle that no one man should rule with absolute power. Washington could have destroyed that principle and ruled as a popular, perhaps even just, king, but he did not. After the Constitution was ratified, Washington was concerned about the powers invested in the Presidency and therefore limited himself to two terms. Again, he voluntarily relinquished power that no one would have begrudged him. In so doing, he set a precendent that every future President followed until FDR. Regardless of whether or not you believe FDR's legacy is a positive one, certainly a number of his supporters must have taken pause at his virtual lock on the Presidency because after FDR the Constitution was ammended to enshrine Washington's wisdom into law and limit Presidents to two terms.

Lincoln was arguably the most able President in the history of this country. No President has been handled a greater challenge than civil war. Lincoln's courage and fortitude held this nation together. His actions are not without controversy. His means may have been, at times, questionable. But, his legacy is a United States that remained united and whole and cleansed of the stain of slavery. Emancipation set the ground work for people of colour ultimately to share in the Jeffersonian ideal that all are created equal.

Why then do I hate Presidents Day? When I was a child, the holidays were separate: Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday. I can understand the desire to consolidate the two rather than have two holidays so close together, but the problem I have with President's Day is that in renaming it, the great legacy bestowed on our country by these two men gets lost. It should be a day for remembering the great gifts of Washington and Lincoln to our nation, not a day for buying cheap mattresses. Invariably, use of the term Presidents Day conjures up images of Mount Rushmore and other Presidents. We as a nation should be grateful for the contributions of Washington and Lincoln, not reminded of the irrelevance of Millard Fillmore, the corruption of Richard Nixon, the lechery of Bill Clinton, or the incompetence of George W. Bush. If it has to be one holiday, why not Washington-Lincoln Day, instead of Presidents Day?

Trade

2009-02-09T21:36:00.004-05:00

We are in difficult economic times. The collapse of the housing bubble has had repercussions in other aspects of the economy. Banks, faced with default mortgages, are now unwilling to lend. With capital frozen, business cannot expand or grow. Hiring freezes, and employees are let go to cut costs. In this climate, everyone looks to government to create jobs and protect jobs. Populism and protectionism become popular.

This is evident in the creation of the current economic stimulus package that is being debated on Capitol Hill. The House and the Senate have passed two different bills, which must be resolved in conference committee. The House version contains, “Buy American,” clauses to insure that the government money spent will go to American businesses, buy only American products and, “protect,” American jobs.

It is easy to understand why such measures might be popular in these economic times, but they are extremely short sighted. No one makes an effective argument for truly free trade. Trade proponents argue that it creates jobs, opponents point to the jobs lost. The truth is, in any free and competitive market there will be winners and losers. This gives each side examples to point to, but confuses the public at large that is trying to decide, on balance, whether open trade or protectionism would be better.

However, these, “practical,” arguments about whether free trade costs or creates jobs miss the larger moral issue at stake. What defines a free society is freedom of choice. Our Constitution enshrines some freedom of choice in the First Amendment – our government is not allowed to dictate what you can say (or think), cannot prevent you from assembling peacefully, and cannot tell you what to believe or what god to worship. True liberty, however, requires that this freedom of choice extend to economic activity as well. What empowers consumers is having multiple businesses providing goods and services competing for the consumers' business. The consumer then can choose amongst various options the product he or she judges is of reasonable quality and/or a reasonable price. Monopolies or trusts exploit the consumer by denying choice and either force the consumer to accept inferior quality or charge the consumer exorbitant prices. The competition of a free market prevents this economic exploitation.

Protectionism similarly exploits consumers. Freedom and both political and economic power are maximized when the consumer has more choice. Limiting access to foreign goods, or subsidizing domestic ones, or inflating the prices of imports through tariffs, limits choice and forces the consumer to accept higher prices than the market would otherwise bear. What helps a narrow segment of the population (those that work in the industry being protected) exploits everyone who consumes goods and services and hurts us all. Economic freedom of choice is so crucial to liberty that, in the same sentence of the Declaration of Independence that charges King George III with the tyranny of taxing the colonies without representation, Jefferson also labelled George III a tyrant, “for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.” It is no less exploitive to restrict consumer’s access to the fullest selection of goods and services today through trade barriers as it was in Mr. Jefferson’s day or when the lord of the manor would insist that all his serfs use the lord's mill exclusively.

Furthermore, economic protectionism is no longer practical in the 21st century. The world and the U.S. economy have changed over the last century. The airplane, the telephone, the cellular phone, the computer, the internet, and broad-band internet access have made the world smaller. The world is now, to borrow Tom Friedman’s phrase, flat. It is now much easier to market goods and services to all parts of the globe, buy from and sell to all parts of the globe, and collaborate with others in every corner of the world. These technological innovations make it impossible to build a wall around fortress America and remain internally self-sufficient. As developing countries can manufacture simpler things less expensively, our economic growth depends on being a center of innovation for the new goods and services of tomorrow. We cannot continue to do that unless we take advantage of the same tools – a worldwide talent pool and the ability to maximize profit by outsourcing tasks that others do better or less expensively – as our competitors will. The truth is, we have no business manufacturing something if we can’t make it better or cheaper and we will need to have open access the world’s resources if we are to continue to innovate. This means our workforce will have to have more flexible skill sets and gone are the days where working on the same assembly line provides a lifetime of job security. This is neither bad nor good, it simply is. Our policies must reflect this reality and trying to protect the industries of the 20th century, burying our heads in the sand, will lead to a long-term lack of competitiveness that stunts our economic growth and allows competitors to pass us by. Buy American provisions will simply encourage others to close their markets to our goods and services and lead to escalating trade wars that will deprive us of the competitive advantages and opportunities of full participation in the global marketplace.

The Buy American provisions in the economic stimulus package are a poison pill that threatens our liberty and long-term economic prosperity. President Obama has voiced his disapproval of these provisions, but if they remain in the final bill, they will prove and interesting test of the new President’s leadership. If such provisions are in the final bill, President Obama should veto it. President Clinton took on elements in his own party when he promoted NAFTA, can President Obama do the same? If these provisions are in the final bill, will President Obama have the political courage to veto a stimulus package that most of the country believes we need in the face of the economic crisis and ask Congress for a new bill without these provisions? I, for one, certainly hope so.

An Open Letter to President George W. Bush

2009-01-03T18:42:00.002-05:00

Dear Mr. President:

Shortly before Christmas, sixteen years ago, I wrote your father to thank him for his service to our nation as President. I thanked him for his leadership and, to this day, believe our country is better off because of it.

It is with a heavy heart that I cannot do the same today. While I realize that your administration was dealt a difficult hand (9-11, financial crisis, etc.), I am forced to conclude, as a majority of Americans have, that your administration has failed this nation and your leadership has been detrimental to it.

In my opinion, Mr. President, this is a direct result of being conservative in rhetoric only, rather than in policy. Yours has been the most left-leaning administration in decades, and certainly more leftist than your three predecessors. Other than tax cuts, which I do thank you for, your administration has not pursued any conservative policies. You have presided over the largest increases in domestic, non-defence, discretionary spending since LBJ’s great society. You had been in office for six years before you finally vetoed a spending bill. Your administration created a brand new healthcare entitlement (the Medicare prescription drug benefit). Industrial subsidies for agriculture, wool, sugar, and ethanol have increased on your watch. Both your father and President Reagan were committed to free trade with other nations. Although you have negotiated free trade agreements with our Latin American neighbours, you have also placed (at least temporarily) protective tariffs on European steel and engaged in trade disputes over the purchase of lumber from Canada. This free spending domestic policy has saddled us with debt, undoing the 104th Congress’ work in balancing the federal budget, and is a record Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton could have been proud of.

While President Reagan wanted to abolish the federal department of education, you expanded the role of federal government in education with the No Child Left Behind Act, which makes the federal department of education the watchdog of schools in every state. What policy could be more antithetical to the Reagan-Goldwater view of devolving power out of Washington? I am shocked that, as a former governor, your administration would make a mockery of state sovereignty. In addition to No Child Left Behind, your administration, under Attorney General Ashcroft, attempted to use the Controlled Substances Act to prosecute doctors in Oregon that assisted in suicide. While I am not an advocate of assisted suicide, I would defend to my last breath the right of the state of Oregon to decide what is acceptable medical practice in Oregon. Similarly, your administration has disrespected laws allowing medical use of marijuana in several states. Wading into the Terry Schiavo case was truly shameful. Clearly such end of life decisions belong to families and state laws should govern who is an appropriate decision maker. The federal government clearly has no role in such cases. Fortunately you chose not to pursue it in your second term, but your proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage is also a frontal assault on state sovereignty and states rights.

The intrusiveness of federal government under your administration does not stop with the trampling of states rights. Rights of individuals have also been threatened by illegal detentions, aggressive interrogation tactics, and illicit eavesdropping. I appreciate that stronger measures may be necessary in the post 9-11 world, and I am consoled by the fact that provisions of the USA PATRIOT act are subject periodic review and renewal by Congress. However, it is worth remembering that when similar anti-terrorism measures were proposed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by President Clinton, it was Republicans that defeated those measures with concerns that they threatened civil liberties. I miss the days when Republicans concerned themselves with keeping the federal government off the back of the people… Your administration’s expansive view of executive authority is frightening. In a recent appearance on Fox News Sunday, Vice President Cheney argued that the War Powers Act was unconstitutional, not because it strips Congress of its constitutionally defined role to declare war, but because it allows Congress to interfere (after 90 days) with the President’s execution of his role as Commander-in-Chief! I can understand, in the 21st century, why a War Powers Act is necessary to allow a President to act in a time-sensitive manner while Congress convenes, debates, and votes. But, make no mistake sir, under our Constitution it is Congress alone that has the authority to decide when and if the United States goes to war.

Your foreign policy has been no less leftist. In your second inaugural address, you set as a goal of U.S. foreign policy, the elimination of tyranny in our world. This is certainly a noble ideal, but not a suitable guiding principle for the foreign policy of any nation. Foreign policy must always be based on national interest. Aiding freedom fighters to prevent communist hegemony may have met that goal, but toppling all dictators in every corner of the globe does not. Your policies resemble the nation-building zeal of the Clinton administration (Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia), the, “make the world safe for democracy,” philosophy of President Wilson, and the human rights agenda of President Carter more than the, “humble foreign policy,” that you promised in your 2000 presidential campaign. I would agree that things have changed because of 9-11, but we knew before invading that Iraq had no role in 9-11. We also knew Saddam was not anywhere near the largest state sponsor of terrorism (Iran has been a much bigger sponsor of terrorists), his military had been cut down in size by Desert Storm, his country was under tough economic sanctions, a third of his country was under a no-fly zone, and Iraq had not threatened another country outside its own borders in over a decade. Even assuming the accuracy of intelligence reports of WMD (which I did at the time), it is clear from these facts that there was no justification for invading Iraq. Possession of WMD is not enough. That would be justification for invading dozens of countries (including the U.S.). Only intelligence of an imminent attack with those weapons could justify pre-emptive military action. As a Christian, I cannot believe you asked, “What would Jesus do?” and concluded that He would invade Iraq. The consequences have been staggering. Not only have lives, American and Iraqi, been needlessly lost, but this unnecessary, unjustifiable war has cost billions of dollars, alienated our allies and strengthened the hand of Iran, a country that actually does sponsor terrorists and has an active nuclear program. In this, too, your administration’s policies have been contrary to the principles of previous Republican administrations. Your father explained why military occupation of Iraq was a bad idea:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in, “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would have instantly collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable, “exit strategy,” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren – outcome.

George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft
A World Transformed, p.489 (1998)

Finally, I would like to say a few words about the financial crisis. The most basic conservative principle is the limitation of government’s influence in the market place. Conservatives believe that this not only encourages economic growth, but also establishes an important economic component of individual liberty. We all know that the financial crisis, while global, began with the collapse of a real estate bubble in the United States. What is often not discussed is that the real estate bubble was created by the type of government intervention in the market places that all conservatives should eschew. As you know, the Community Reinvestment Act indirectly encourages subprime lending by mandating home loans to low-income families. A revision of the act on your watch in 2005 made it easier for lenders to participate in the program by allowing smaller banks to participate solely as lenders, with less oversight. In addition, in 2004, your administration increased the affordable housing goals of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and allowed them to include securitized subprime loans toward their affordable housing goals. The goal was to increase home ownership and in your 2004 State of the Union address, you boasted about the success of these policies, noting that new home construction was the highest in twenty years and home ownership was at an all-time high in the U.S. But, these policies ignore the fundamental conservative principle that government intervention in the market place has unintended consequences. Add to these policies a Federal Reserve that kept interest rates artificially low and you have an artificial market that encourages exuberant lending. Furthermore, the Feds policies devalued the dollar, which raised the price of fuel and food, and made it more difficult for those with subprime mortgages to make their payments. Your administration’s manipulation of the marketplace for a public policy goal of affordable housing helped create this financial crisis. Such policies are anathema to conservatives who believe in free market principles. Your administration’s response to the crisis has been even more shocking. Bailouts of industries, government ownership of financial institutions, and a, “car czar,” to direct business decisions of the automakers that take government money. In short, the response to a crisis created by ignoring free market principles and has been socialism – government purchase and ownership of private industry. These policies can in no way be seen as anything other than leftist.

In summary, the policies of your administration have abandoned almost every conservative principle: free trade and laissez-faire economic policies, strict interpretation of and adherence to the Constitution, limited government intrusiveness and the protection of individual liberty and states’ rights, fiscal discipline, and non-interventionist foreign policy. Your administration has systematically undone and reversed the policies of previous Republican Presidents and Congresses. The result has been an unpopular war, disaffected conservative voters, the decimation our political party and policies that lay the groundwork for President-elect Obama to establish a new American socialism. This is not what we conservatives thought we were voting for in 2000.

Mr. President, it is not my goal to be disrespectful. I understand that you had to make difficult decisions in real time, and it is easy for me, or anyone else, to play, “Monday morning quarterback.” However, I felt compelled to explain to you why so many of us conservatives feel let down by your administration. On January 20, 2001, I stood in the cold, pouring rain, on the Mall in front of the Capitol while you took the oath of office. I was excited about your election and hopeful and optimistic about where you would lead this country. As I have watched your administration do nothing but expand the scope of federal government for eight years, I feel betrayed. I think you need to understand that a number of conservatives feel this way and I hope you will reflect on what I have said.

Let me close, Mr. President, by wishing you, Laura, the twins, your folks, and all of your family a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. Regardless of our differences, I wish you the best and hope you enjoy some much deserved time off.

Decision 2008

2008-11-05T18:08:00.005-05:00

I have made it a point not to discuss the Presidential race or endorse a candidate in my postings because I want this blog to be about issues and ideas and not about personalities. However, I would like to suspend that custom today and comment on the results of yesterday's historic U.S. Presidential election.

I must admit that I did not vote for Barack Obama yesterday. Other than his opposition to the war in Iraq, his views are antithetical to those presented in this blog. However, today I am proud of my country for electing him. Although he had a number if advantages - fund raising, George Bush's unpopularity, John McCain's link to an unpopular war and the simple truth that the party that holds the White House during an economic downturn always loses it - any of those could have been negated by racial prejudice, and they weren't. I may not agree that President-elect Obama's policies will be the best for our future, however 63 million Americans did and they didn't let Barack Obama's race dissuade them. That may seem like a small thing, but in a country that as recently as 150 years ago enslaved people of colour and as recently as 50 years ago had laws designed to deny them access to the voting booth, it is a big deal.

But more than that, Barack Obama is a bi-racial person, and on his father's side, a first generation American (the son of a Kenyan immigrant). His origins are humble, raised by a single parent and grandparents. From this improbable beginning, he will become President of the United States. His election is an affirmation that the American Dream is alive and well. He has demonstrated that we speak the truth when we tell our young people that in this great land, you can be anything you want to be and achieve anything you set your mind to achieve. Regardless of who your parents are or the colour of your skin, the United States of America is a land of opportunity for all.

I am sure that in the years to come I will be posting criticism of some of President Obama's policies. But today it is my sincere hope that his administration will be a successful one during which our nation enjoys peace and prosperity. It is my hope that his election will transform how the world views the U.S. by demonstrating to the world that we are not simply a nation of gun-slinging cowboys, but a nation of diverse peoples.

I did not support Senator Obama's candidacy, but his election reminds my of why I love this country.

D.C. v. Heller Revisited

2008-10-26T16:42:00.010-04:00

A friend of mine recently sent me this article from The New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/washington/21guns.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

The article presents arguments critical to Justice Scalia's majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller from the right.

The gist of the article is that the Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller is politically motivated and at odds with an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. It is an example of judicial activism on the right, the way Roe v. Wade is an example of judicial activism on the left. The argument runs that it makes a mockery of federalism by restricting the states ability to establish their own gun laws (as Roe restricts the states ability to have their own abortion laws).

Those that have read my post from April 26, 2008 (freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/district-of-columbia-v-heller.html) will already know that I disagree with this view. I came to the same conclusion, by the same reasoning as Justice Scalia did.

Unlike Justice Scalia, who is an avid hunter (I think he's even survived hunting trips with the Vice President), I have never and will never own a gun. I don't hunt and I detest handguns. The only purpose of a handgun is to shoot a person, and I would agree no one needs one. I would favour the DC handgun ban, if I thought the Constitution allowed it. I came to the conclusion that it didn't independent of any political pro-gun agenda.

Justice Scalia's decision does not impair localities ability to regulate ownership - in the same way speech is still regulated (no profanity on publicly owned broadcasting venues, speech that incites violence isn't protected, speech that creates a danger (the old, "yelling fire in a crowded theatre,") isn't protected and slander isn't protected). In my view, there is nothing different about the right to keep and bear arms (which the framers clearly viewed as an individual right) and the right to free speech, free assembly, a free press, or freedom of religion. They are all quite explicit in the Bill of Rights. I agree with the point, later in the article, that comparing D.C. v. Heller with Roe is unfair because gun rights are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution and abortion rights are not.

I can see how some would view the decision (DC v. Heller) as activist. The idea that this decision is an assault on federalism is certainly a very originalist way of looking at the issue as the Bill of Rights was initially felt to apply only to federal law (and therefore the original interpretation to the 2nd Amendment is that the federal government shall not infringe the right to keep and bear arms - important because of the preceding clause that explains the reason: so that States will always have an armed citizenry to resist a federal standing army if necessary). Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans viewed the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, and they were, but after they were repealed there will still plenty of state sedition laws viewed completely acceptable under the Constitution that provided that only the federal government couldn't restrict speech or the press.

However, the 14th amendment changed all that. The equal protection clause mandates that those rights extend to everyone equally, in any state. So now state legislatures can't pass laws restricting free speech, free press, free assembly and so on. The argument from the right against Scalia's decision is an argument that they should be able to. In my view, if the 14th amendment extends all other rights guaranteed in the Constitution into every state and locality, it does so for second amendment rights as well, just as Scalia observed. We would not tolerate a different law with regard to free speech in New York city compared to Wichita Falls, Kansas would we? There are perhaps good reasons to have different gun laws in those two places, but the Constitution, extended to the states by the 14th amendment, forbids it.

I am not in favour of a national gun ban. I am, in priniciple, in favour of letting states and localities figure what gun laws work best for them as the critics of the Scalia decision suggest. I would be all for a constitutional amendment that restricted the second amendment to the federal government and allowed states and localities to be autonomous on this issue. But, I remain convinced that it takes an amendment to do that, and to do it without an amendment sets precedent that puts the remainder of the Bill of Rights at risk.

Anatomy of a Financial Crisis

2008-10-14T23:23:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago, Congress passed a $700 billion dollar spending bill to buy mortgage loans in danger of default. Doing so bailed out numerous lenders who made these risky loans and will require the federal government to figure out a way to realize payment on these loans. The purpose of bailout was to prevent the financial collapse of the nation’s mortgage companies and banks. The move comes after purchasing the failing AIG and was aimed at preventing a massive credit crunch as loans would default, banks would collapse and failing companies would send the stock market in a tail spin. There would be no money to lend, no loan that would be considered safe, stockholders (and people with a 401K) would see their savings evapourate and a run on banks could jeopardize cash savings as well. This crisis, we were told, had the potential to develop into the next Great Depression.

Our politicians have a penchant for labelling everything a “crisis.” Whether it is the tide of illegal immigration, or the number of Americans without health insurance; whether it is the war on drugs, or the war on poverty; whether it is the threat of WMD in Iraq or the threat of global climate change; we are always told by our leaders that the sky is falling and only decisive action by government can fix the problem. Although our political leadership has, “cried wolf,” on many occasions, it is easy to see how the current situation could degenerate into the misery described above. Whether or not the government’s action will stop this economic collapse is, of course, another story.

What has been missing, however, from the rhetoric of both the President and the Congress and from most politicians on both sides of the aisle, is a frank discussion about how we got to this point in the first place. Politicians on the left have, predictably, laid the blame on greedy predatory lenders who took advantage of folks to make a quick buck. They argue that this is what naturally follows from too little regulation of the economy and that if only the government had regulated the mortgage industry more tightly then all of this could have been avoided. The current situation is a failure of deregulation. Even the Republican candidate for Vice President railed against the, “greed and corruption on Wall Street,” during the Vice Presidential debate. Almost no one has the political courage to assign any blame to the borrowers that took out mortgage loans that were beyond their means.

Although both lenders and borrowers are clearly at fault here, the notion that this crisis was created by a lack of government influence in the market place could not be further from true. Our government actively fostered the economic climate that created this housing bubble. Far from being a failure of deregulation, government intervention in the market place had a hand in creating this financial crisis.

The first piece of the puzzle is the Community Reinvestment Act. First passed in 1977 and then modified in 1995 and 2005, this act was passed with the goal of increasing home ownership among the working poor. It requires lenders in impoverished areas to maintain a quota of loans (often subprime loans) to underprivileged individuals. In other words, a percentage of the subprime loans contributing to this crisis were specifically mandated by the federal government. The act requires federally regulated banks to meet the credit needs of the community in which it is chartered by offering mortgage loans to low income families.(1) Although the act specifically states that banks are not required to make high risk loans to meet community needs, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in 2000 of 143 of the 500 largest CRA-regulated banks revealed that the security of such loans is variable from loan to loan and institution to institution and that, on average, such loans are more likely to default or be unprofitable than other loans.(2) The same study estimated that 25% of CRA loans were, “unprofitable or marginally unprofitable.”(2) The CRA encourages predatory lending in two ways. First, some CRA banks will issue subprime loans to low income families directly because they would still get CRA credit for these loans and improve their CRA rating. Secondly, banks can get CRA credit by securitizing predatory subprime loan, buying them with federally guaranteed letters of credit.(3) Banks can even get credit for making subprime loans to low or middle income individuals that qualify for prime rates.(3) New federal regulations in 1995 and 2002 expanded the CRA, making it easier for smaller banks to participate by focusing on just lending.(4) In 2002, when several states, including Georgia(5), tried to limit credit for subprime lending, federal regulators blocked those efforts.(6)

In addition to the CRA, a 1992 federal law required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to devote a percentage of their activities to meeting affordable housing goals(4) and at the height of the housing bubble in 2003-2004 the federal government was directly securitizing nearly half of the nation’s subprime loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government subsidized corporations).(7) In 1999, Fannie Mae was pressured by the Clinton administration to securitize more high risk loans, in an effort to expand home ownership among low and middle income Americans.(8) The Clinton administration also moved, in 1995, to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to count subprime mortgage securities toward their affordable housing goal.(9) Although this directive was later rescinded in 2001, in 2004 the Bush administration raised the affordable housing goal from 50% to 56% and again allowed Fannie and Freddie to count securitized subprime mortgages toward this goal, further encouraging predatory lending. Although some, such as University of Michigan Law Professor Michael Barr would call easing these restrictions on Fannie and Freddie, “an abject failure to regulate,”(9)nothing could be further from the truth. This was no failure to regulate. This was a specific government tampering with market forces to encourage subprime lending as a mechanism for increasing home ownership. President Bush bragged about the success of this policy in his 2004 State of the Union address noting that new home construction was the highest in twenty years and home ownership at its highest levels ever in the U.S.(10) He was, of course, describing the housing bubble that has now burst. Far from being created by an unfettered free market, this bubble was created, intentionally, by government policies aimed at loosening credit to expand home ownership.

However, Professor Barr pointed out that about half of the subprime mortgages were made by lenders not under the CRA’s jurisdiction and another 20-25% were made by small lenders and only later securitized under the CRA (although we have seen how this is a direct result of government policy and encourages predatory lending), leaving only 25-30% if subprime loans made by CRA institutions.(11) Robert Gordon, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, offers as proof that the mortgage crisis was caused by a lack of regulation a statistic provided by Janet Yellen of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, “Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.”(12),(13) However, this does not negate the fact that CRA lending is responsible for thousands of subprime and high risk loans. In communities where CRA institutions were conservative in lending, there was demand for other institutions to offer higher risk loans.(3),(4) This was also encouraged, actively, by the federal government as we have seen through its mandate to Freddie and Fannie to increase the percentage of their business that is directed to affordable housing goals and by giving other banks incentives to securitize these mortgages by guaranteeing their investments or allowing these banks to claim that activity as CRA credit. Therefore, many of these loans made by independent mortgage companies ultimately do fall under the CRA.(14) But even the subprime lending completely outside the CRA was encouraged by federal government policies. From 2003-2005, the Federal Reserve held interests low, below the expected level of inflation.(15) This reduced the cost of borrowing money dramatically and allowed lenders to offer subprime mortgages with very low introductory, but variable, rates easily. It was a policy that changed market dynamics from encouraging people to save to encourage them to borrow. Furthermore, the Fed lowers interest rates by buying bonds from banks and thereby injecting more cash into the economy. The increased supply in money reduces the “cost,” of borrowing it, or the interest rate. The increased supply in money also devalues the dollar, and we have seen the U.S. dollar plummet in value over the past few years (yet few talk about the fact that it is the policies of our federal government that are responsible for its devaluation). Oil is sold on the world market in U.S. dollars, therefore, even without the increased demand for oil from India and China, the rise in oil prices is directly linked to the falling value of the dollar. The Feds’ inflationary policies have not only encouraged the exuberant lending that is at the root of this financial crisis, but they have also contributed to rising energy and food prices, putting an economic pinch on those low income homeowners that the government wanted to have mortgages. When these people can no longer afford to pay their mortgage, put food on the table, heat their homes, or put gas in their car to get to work, all at the same time, they then default or are at risk for defaulting on that loan, and hence the bursting of the bubble and the beginning of the financial crisis. Because many U.S. securities are owned by foreign lenders, this has become and international credit crunch. Another mechanism by which government policy helped create the crisis are government regulations that limit assessment of credit risk to a handful of credit agencies, who inaccurately assessed the risk of these loans, leading to, ironically, the most regulated banks making some of the worst mortgage investments.(15)

In summary, the federal government set a goal of increasing home ownership among low and middle-income families, an ostensibly laudable goal. The government employed several mechanisms to achieve this goal. First, it mandated lending to lower income families through the Community Reinvestment Act. Sometimes this was done responsibly, and sometimes not. Secondly it put pressure on lenders to increase their CRA activity and allowed smaller lenders to participate in the CRA. Third, it subsidized subprime lending, both directly by ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to securitize more of these loans to increase its activity to meet affordable housing goals, and indirectly by allowing secondary mortgage market banks to count securitized subprime loans towards their CRA ratings. Fourth, it encouraged non-CRA lenders to join the party by keeping interest rates artificially low and fifth, it pumped capital into the economy to lower the interest rates, thereby devaluing the dollar and putting an economic pinch on the lower income families that made the loans. Those that argue that this crisis was caused by a failure to regulate the financial industry are simply wrong. Ironically, those on the left who are blaming the, “deregulatory policies of the Bush administration,” actually opposed Bush administration plans in 2003 to increase oversight of Fannie and Freddie (Barney Frank (D-MA) argued that Fannie and Freddie were not, “facing any kind of financial crisis,” and that, “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure we see on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”)(16) This crisis was not caused by a lack of government oversight. It was caused by government policies specifically designed to create a housing bubble (to increase home construction and home ownership). Alan Greenspan cheered it on,(12) Barney Frank made sure no one put on the brakes,(16) and President Bush bragged about its success.(10) Certainly in a free market, at times, individuals or groups will act irrationally. But, a correction will occur and those who acted imprudently will pay the price, often with minimal effect on the economy as a whole. In the current situation, however, our government encouraged exuberant borrowing and lending, through a combination of mandates and incentives, creating a national economic mess. The lemmings didn’t jump off the cliff, they were pushed. These actions were taken for a good cause, affordable housing, but illustrate clearly the principle that government intervention in the market place often has unforeseen, unintended, negative consequences. This isn’t what happens when the government keeps its hands off the market, this is what happens when your government fights for you.

Unfortunately, understanding how the crisis occurred is not the same as knowing what to do about it. Much like the invasion of Iraq, the mess was caused by misguided policies but how to clean it up isn’t as obvious. Personally, I am inclined to be distrustful of government action to, “fix,” the problem, since it was government action that created it in the first place. I am distrustful of this government when it tells me there is a crisis that requires immediate governmental action, for history shows that usually politicians call something a crisis that isn’t simply to expand the government’s (and therefore their own) power. Certainly many on the left are taking just that opportunity right now, using the current situation as an excuse to expand the government’s influence in the market place (so we can have more crises like this in future). And of course it really irritates me that the solution proposed is to bailout all those greedy lenders (who, yes, do share responsibility with the federal government) who made risky loans and now don’t have to pay the price for taking a risk (which will encourage similar risky economic behaviour in the future because it is without consequence). Where is this $700 billion dollars coming from? Our Treasury certainly doesn’t have this money as our federal government is in debt. I suspect the Federal Reserve will simply print it, further devaluing the dollar and causing greater inflation (the value of the dollar compared the British Pound and the euro has increased over the last week because national banks in Europe have already pumped large amounts of capital into their economies and devalued their currencies). And, as I write this, President Bush is proposing another cash injection to capitalize banks by having the government buy ownership shares in the nation’s major banks (alas, we are back to the 200-year-old Hamilton-Jefferson debate about whether or not there should be a national bank…). Those of the Austrian school of Economics, such as Loyola College (Maryland) economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) would argue that this bailout only has the effect of prolonging economic misery by attempting to stop, but only delaying, a necessary correction in the market (in his book, How Capitalism Saved America, Professor DiLorenzo argues that the market interventionism of both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt extended the duration of the Great Depression, whereas previous economic crises had been much briefer).(17),(18) While I am convinced that this is true and that allowing the market to correct would be quicker, the real question is, at what cost? Would the losers be only those who acted irresponsibly, or does the crunch in credit have the ability to affect those who did the right thing, as illustrated in the opening paragraph. If the savings of those who were fiscally responsible are at risk in the correction, then that, in my view, is market failure and I would be willing to sacrifice my laissez-faire principles if it would prevent another Great Depression. But how can we trust that our leaders will do the right thing (even if the right thing is doing nothing) when they are always telling us of crises government needs to address, demonstrate so little understanding of how this crisis was created, and use the crisis to advance a pro-regulatory political agenda? Understanding the genesis of the crisis may not help us determine the best course of action (or inaction) to take going forward, but it does tell us something useful about future policy. The lesson to learn here is that this kind of government interventionism in the market place that creates artificial incentives to promote certain economic behaviour and devalues our currency, leading to boom and bust business cycles, has got to stop.

See also: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122298982558700341.html for another nice summary of how government policies helped create the housing bubble.(19)
_______________________
(1)Full text of Community Reinvestment Act available at: http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-2515.html
(2)Avery RB, Bostic RW, and Canner GB, “The Performance and Profitability of CRA Regulated Lending,” Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland [November 2000]. Available at: http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/Commentary/2000/1100.htm
(3)Engel KC and McCoy PA, “The CRA Implications of Predatory Lending,” Fordham Urban Law Journal, Vol. XXIX, April 2002. Available at: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=uconn/ucwps
(4)Bernanke BS, “The Community Reinvestment Act: It’s Evolution and New Challenges.” Speech at the Community Affairs Research Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 2007. Available at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Bernanke20070330a.htm
(5)Georgia Fair Lending Act. dbf.georgia.gov/vgn/images/portal/cit_1210/56/7/64943073GAFLA-OCGA7-6A.pdf#12
(6)Bagley N, “Crashing the Subprime Party: How the Feds Stopped the States from Averting the Lending Mess,” Slate, January 24, 2008. Available at: http://www.slate.com/id/2182709/pagenum/all
(7)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/06/10/GR2008061000059.html
(8)Holmes SA, “Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending,” The New York Times, September 30, 1999. Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260
(9)Leonnig CD, “How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed the Crisis,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2008, p. A01.
Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html
(10)Bush GW, State of the Union Address to Congress at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 20, 2004. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html
(11)Barr MS, “The Community Reinvestment Act: Thirty Years of Accomplishments, but Challenges Remain,” Testimony before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives on February 13, 2008. Available at: http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/barr021308.pdf
(12)Gordon R, “Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis?” The American Prospect (on-line), April 7, 2008. Available at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis
(13)Yellen JL, Opening Remarks to the 2008 National Interagency Community Reinvestment Conference. San Francisco, California. March 31, 2008. Available at: http://www.frbsf.org/news/speeches/2008/0331.html (statistic referenced in the Gordon article is actually in footnote 16, not the text of the speech).
(14)DiLorenzo TJ, “The CRA Scam and It’s Defenders,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, Daily Article for April 30, 2008. Available at: http://mises.org/story/2963
(15)“A Mortgage Fable,” The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2008. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122204078161261183.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop
(16)Labaton S, “New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” The New York Times, September 11, 2003. Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
(17)Paul R, “Bailouts Will Lead to Rough Economic Ride,” CNN Commentary (online), September 23, 2008. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/23/paul.bailout/index.html
(18)DiLorenzo TJ. How Capitalism Saved America. Crown Forum 2004.
(19)Roberts R, “How Government Stoked the Mania,” The Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2008.

On Libertarianism

2008-08-09T13:48:00.004-04:00

This entry is a discussion of the meaning and importance of libertarian principles, or principles of limited government that was composed as a response to a challenge to those principles. It is presented as the second part of a dialogue between the ideological Publius and his more practical friend, Pragmaticus. In the first part of the dialogue, Pragmaticus championed a traditional conservative view of as small a government as reasonably possible, but asserted that the libertarian view of as little government as possible was dangerous because it left society's moral compass in the hands of industry, which cares little for the people. He offered as evidence the business practices of the cigarette and restaurant industries, the latter of which serves unhealthy food in large portions to the detriment of society. He argued that communism failed because it ignored its moral compass and that public policy should be based on a sound moral compass and scientific method to determine correct policy. Publius responds:

Let me start, dear Pragmaticus, with the fact, that we don’t seem that far apart on our view on the proper role of government. The only real difference is your willingness to compromise on the philosophical view of small government for the right cause (public health, school funding, etc.) and my ideological insistence that, no matter how well meaning the goal, the aggrandizement of government is, in the long run, a dangerous precedent which threatens the liberty of the individual (government power always comes at that price). The road to Hell is paved, as they say, with good intentions. The unintended consequences of government intervention are often ignored and the principle of rule of law is sacrificed by political expediency and the overwhelming, although completely human, desire to “do something,” to address a potential problem. You are a very reasonable, rational, and thoughtful person as is evident in your discussion of how reason, fact and evidence should be used to shape public policy. What I would contend, however, is that it is a small step from conceding that government can or should intervene in a particular aspect of social policy and engaging the type of demagoguery we have seen with regard to climate change or invading Iraq, to bludgeon rational debate about facts and evidence into oblivion. Having conceded the principle of government intervention, it then becomes impossible to stem the tide of those who will then view it as their moral responsibility to use whatever means necessary to achieve a goal that they are convinced is right and just, regardless of whether our Constitution grants our government that kind of authority and whether or not they need to play fast and loose with the truth to achieve what they are convinced is a morally just end. I think that conceding a role for government in things in which it has no Constitutionally defined role leads inevitably to the type of decay of scientific method and reason that you lament.

I would disagree that a libertarian view leaves society’s moral compass in the hands of business or corporations. Libertarianism leaves the moral compass in the hands of individuals, where it belongs. I think there is no more fundamental human right than the right to self-determination – the right to make choices for yourself, the right to think independently and voice those thoughts publicly, the right to worship as one pleases, the right to engage in business and recreation as one sees fit, the right to keep what one has earned and use it as one sees fit. Is this not the philosophical premise behind the Bill of Rights? Is this not the philosophical premise of our Revolution? That we hold, “these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…”(1) This is the creed of a free society. The individual is his own king. The individual is free to live his or her life as he or she sees fit, so long as it does not threaten the life, liberty, or property of another.

A truly free society, therefore, requires a system of self-government. Your comments on the importance of a moral compass and scientific method in governance are eerily similar to Plato’s proposed benign and enlightened rule by philosopher-kings. I recently read The Republic (how I got through college philosophy courses without reading it, I am not sure) and Plato raises the same issues you do. He argued that popularly elected rulers, that are eager rather than reluctant to govern, use office for their own aggrandizement and hold and maintain it by pandering to the masses rather than pursuing good governance. His solution? Groom the most intelligent to be philosophers and rulers from day one to have an educated pool of rulers who understand science and justice, that must take a turn at ruling regardless of their will, to rule for the benefit of society. However, this philosophy presupposes that happiness is maximized in a society when everyone’s individual will is subjugated to the benefit of the state. You come close to this philosophy with your suggestions that government has a role to make sure industry does, “what’s right for society.” Plato took the argument one step further. He made the case that too much freedom for individuals to pursue their own desires, rather than simply good and productive desires as defined for them by the philosopher-kings, causes men to become slaves to their passions and allows a tyrant to rise that can play to the hopes and fears of the masses to rise to power. “The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into the excess of slavery.”(2) Eerily similar to Orwell’s, “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.”(3) Yet Plato’s solution to the problem of democracy is to have a Big Brother!

In your comments, you do not quite stray this far and you were quite clear that you still favour popularly elected government. The problem with communism, however, is not that it had no moral compass and that, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need…” was lip service. The problem with communism is that, even if practiced in its purest form, it is unworkable. It, by its very definition, subjects the free will of every individual to the will of the state, or collective. In the most ideal form of communism, no worker is entitled to the fruits of his labour (the very definition of slavery – forced labor for the benefit of someone else), only to a “fair share,” of the fruits of everyone’s labour in aggregate. With no penalty for working less, clearly such a system will encourage some to live off the work of others – and that will happen if communism abides by its stated moral compass!(4)

A free society requires that each individual be allowed to set his own moral compass. There is no moral difference between the spiritual legislation of morality passed by 18^th century British parliaments (everyone must belong to the Church of England) and advocated by modern social, so-called, “conservatives,” or the secular legislation of morality that bans drug use, redistributes wealth, or combats climate change. In each case, individuals are having choices made for them and forced upon them. Each is an example of coercion. A recognition that it is a role of government to review data, decide what is right or good for society, and then enforce that end on each individual in society is an implicit approval of coercion as a tool of public policy. If five guys who haven’t eaten in a week attack me in downtown Baltimore, steal my money and buy food they have committed a crime – even though they are many (an overwhelming majority in that hypothetical group of six) and I am only one and their need is clearly greater than mine. I ask you, how is that morally different from a majority of Americans (or a majority of their representatives in Congress) from voting to take money from wealthier Americans and distributing it to poorer Americans? It’s not. In both cases the property owned by one individual is forcibly or coercively taken, by the will of a majority and given to someone else. How can a free society operate like this? If I am not entitled to the fruits of my own labour, am I not a slave? How would we react if the majority voted to silence the free speech of the minority, or to exclude the minority from voting, or to condemn the minority’s sexual orientation, instead of taking the minority’s property? Why does it matter if the minority is a small group or just an individual; a minority of the poor, or of the wealthy; to have equal protection of personal rights and liberties (including private ownership) under the law?

It is this individual liberty that libertarianism seeks to preserve. It is important to do so, because coercing individuals to do what seems obviously, “right,” in one setting sets a precedent for government coercion that can be applied to any of those other basic freedoms we enjoy that I mentioned above. There is an important role for government in the libertarian view. The view does not advocate near anarchy. Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals. Without it, the rich would trample of the rights and freedoms of the poor and the strong would coercively take from the weak. It is the fundamental role of government to prevent that from happening. As Mr. Jefferson said, a free society requires, “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”(5) If we are to maximize liberty (and prosperity), we need to be left free to do most things, but we can’t be left free to do anything. I have been arguing that government doesn’t have the right to tell me what foods to eat, what substances I can and can’t take recreationally, who I can or can’t have sex with, or to take my money or property arbitrarily. Well, neither do I have the right to do that to any other citizen and it is the role of government to prevent me from doing so and to punish me if my actions coerce others or take from others. But, just as there needs to be a rule book to limit coercive behaviour by individuals, their needs to be a rule book limiting the power and scope of government as well to prevent this government in which we, of necessity, invest so much power from misusing this power and do to us exactly what we are charging it to prevent us from doing to each other. Most people are quite annoyed when their parents or in-laws tell them how they should raise their own children. And although they might tolerate that, they would find it completely unacceptable if their neighbours told them how they should raise their children. Why on earth, then, should we give government (the voice of our neighbours in aggregate) any role in this arena (beyond protecting children from abuse, of course) or any other decision of personal, political, or economic behaviour? In our country, the rule book that limits power of government is the U.S. Constitution. More than democracy (we have seen how tyranny can occur just as easily when a majority imposes it’s will on a minority or individual as when an individual tyrant imposes his will on the majority), this is the guarantor of our liberty. It is our Constitution that prevents government from wielding the power we have invested in it arbitrarily. It is for this reason that I tend to oppose any government program or role for government for which authority is not specifically granted by the Constitution. I understand that a 220-year-old document may not always be relevant to the 21^st century, but I think it is in the long run threatening to our liberty to lessen our restraints on governmental power by ignoring the Constitution, a court decision, or a simple majority; rather than by using the constitutionally proscribed remedy of amendment.

The economic system of a free society is capitalism. In a truly capitalist society, the consumer is king. When markets are open and competitive, profits are maximized by providing a good or service that the masses desire, at an acceptable level of quality for the masses, and at a price that the market will bear. The individual consumer benefits from having multiple companies competing for his business, the individual labourer benefits from having multiple businesses competing for his work, and the businesses benefit from having a competitive labour force to choose workers from. Most importantly, for a free society, in an open market, all of these transactions are engaged in voluntarily. Markets achieve goals through voluntary cooperation – a business chooses whether to hire person A or person B, a worker decides whether to take a job offer from employer A or employer B, a borrow decides between lender A and his terms or lender B and his, A lender decides whether nor not borrower A or borrower B is a better investment or risk, a consumer decides whether or not to buy widget A or widget B, or whether or not he needs a widget at all. Some grow impatient that markets are too slow to effect change, others complain that they distribute wealth inequitably. However, markets accomplish a distribution of wealth and resources based on persuasion and voluntary cooperation that preserves and protects liberty, rather than coercion and force. Furthermore, in truly competitive markets, wealth is distributed to those who have worked for and earned it. This brings me to another crucial role for government. It is imperative, both for freedom and individual empowerment, as well as for prosperity and economic growth, that government pursue policies that keep markets open and competitive. This means removing trade barriers and pursuing free and open trade with all countries, breaking up trusts and monopolies that would limit consumer choice and competition, providing a framework for the protection of private ownership and property rights (on which a market economy is based), and the mediation of contract disputes. Some regulation of business practice is also important. Competitive markets are based on the notion that the prices of goods and services, costs of investments or borrowing, value of stock prices and so on convey accurate information to consumers about the relative safety and profit potentials of a given benefit or the supply and demand of a particular good or service. If companies cook their books, like Enron, the consumer doesn’t have accurate information on which to base economic decisions. Monopolies are coercive and must be avoided. It is particularly egregious for governments to decide winners and losers in the marketplace by subsidies; bailouts; tax breaks; or regulatory favours for one particular industry, business, or economic sector over another.

The late, great, libertarian guru (and Nobel laureate in economics), Milton Friedman, also argued a role for government when there is, “market failure.”(6) This includes situations in which an intervention is desirable to a society as a whole but not cost effective for private industry, such as infrastructure. I would argue government funding of, particularly basic science, research falls into this category as well as it increases the understanding and knowledge base of society at large and would not be otherwise funded if the application, and therefore profit potential, of such knowledge is decades away. The classic example of market failure is pollution. The Chesapeake Bay gets polluted from the water tables of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia; but only Maryland and Virginia have a direct interest in preserving the bay. Therefore market forces would never, in and of themselves, provide an incentive for other states in the Chesapeake water table to assist with conservation of the Chesapeake Bay. Clearly, there is an important role for government in protecting the environment – not dictating how we live our lives as a way of tilting at the windmill of climate change - but regulations to limit actual pollutants, maintain a supply of clean air and clean water, and conserve important but scarce natural resources. I would argue that your “conservative,” position that government should be as small as reasonably possible is the libertarian position. Government is important and has the above roles to play – and must be effective at those roles to benefit society. But, to protect individual liberty, government must be limited to those defined roles. Government that is as small as possible (as you asserted the libertarian view advocates) is often ineffective and cannot accomplish its important role in the maintenance of a free society. Our government under the Articles of Confederation is a good example of that.

I am concerned about your trust in government over business and industry. You argued that business, “cares the least for the people.” And yet, business generates its profits solely from the people, the consumers. A business that provides a good or service that people don’t want, or at inferior quality, or at an exorbitant price will go out of business! Businesses compete for our business and need to persuade us to by their products. Although certainly some unscrupulous business owner will cut corners or cook books to generate short-term profits at the expense of his consumers, a business model for long term success is one of providing goods or services that are in demand and of competitive quality and price. It seems to me that business owes for more to the goodwill of consumers than does government (particularly with the growth of independent regulatory agencies that are outside of elective politics). Do you really think politicians seek office and wield political power because they care about you and me? Do you believe that just because we vote for a government means it will be more farsighted in pursuing what is in the nation’s best interests, or even more foresighted than a company that would like to ensure our business for years and decades to come? Do you believe the popularly elected governments don’t respond to organized special interests rather than the diffuse national interest? And regardless of what product a particular business is selling, what sneaky advertising campaign they have used to market it and make you think you need it, the bottom line is they must still persuade you to buy it. It is still your choice. I’ll put aside your mention of the cigarette industry. That is, perhaps, a special case since the product they sell is addictive. But your example of the restaurant industry is illustrative. Yes it is unhealthy to eat out. It is particularly unhealthy to eat fast food. Yes we can decry the morality of serving unhealthy food in portions sizes that are too large and not giving healthy choices to consumers. But, McDonald’s can’t force me into the store. Once I enter, McDonald’s can’t force me to super-size my fries. If I stop in for a Big Mac value meal it is a choice I have made. Government on the other hand does have the ability to force behaviour by rule of law, at the point of a gun. You are afraid of corporate power and aggressive business practices, but there is not a company in this country that can make you or I do anything we don’t want to do or don’t choose to do. Private sector monopolies are coercive (which is why government needs to prevent them), but even a private sector monopoly leaves the consumer with the choice of trying to do without that particular good or service. When laws are passed, individuals have no choice but to obey or be punished. You may recall there was a push by fast food restaurants a few years ago to add “healthier” choices to their menus. They all abandoned it when the Hardee's franchise rebounded by offering people the Monster Thick-Burger. Now it’s all about bigger burgers and super-sized fries. But why did that happen? People wanted it. People chose it. The fast food restaurants were responding to consumer demand. There was a market for unhealthy fast food and people weren’t going to fast food places in the first place because they wanted salad. These people are making individual choices (and need to be responsible for the consequences of those choices). It may not be a choice that is good for them and it may not be the choice you would want them to make, but in a free society it is their right to make it and if there is enough of them, then of course businesses will actively seek that market. As an aside, as far as mandatory labeling for restaurant food, I personally don’t have much of a problem with the concept – anything that allows consumers to make more informed choices is probably a good thing. The only caveat is, it must be applied equally, across the board, so that it doesn’t put any one particularly restaurant at a competitive advantage or disadvantage. Most people will probably still choose the food they like, rather than the food that is healthier – and many will still choose that super-sized Big Mac value meal…

This then, is the essence of libertarianism. It begins with recognizing that the most important thing about a society are the individuals that comprise it. Each individual is a unique moral agent with an intrinsic right to make choices for himself about personal, political and economic behaviour; an intrinsic right to express those choices and thought freely; an intrinsic right to worship freely; and an intrinsic right to the fruits of his own labour. Free choices are best expressed through an open and competitive market of ideas, goods, and services, in which associations are based on the voluntary cooperation of the participants and not coercion. In this context, there is an important role for government to protect our liberty from foreign threat; protect our liberty from others who may wish to coerce us; maintain a free, open, and competitive marketplace; protect property rights and mediate contract disputes; and undertake projects the market may fail to handle such as infrastructure, scientific research and environmental protection. To be effective at this essential role a government must be powerful. To prevent this power from being used arbitrarily and coercively against the citizenry and therefore undermining the liberty and freedom to choose that the government is ostensibly there to protect; the role of government must be precisely defined and limited. Those limits, in our country, are spelled out in the U.S. Constitution and therefore it is imperative that we seek to avoid empowering government with roles not enumerated in the Constitution if we are to protect our liberty in the long term. If it seems as though our Constitution is outdated on a particular subject and we want to lift the limits it imposes on our government for political expediency in dealing with an issue of the modern world, we should do so only after serious and sober reflection and prolonged debate to insure that doing so does not set a precedent for government intrusion that will threaten the liberty of future generations. This is why such limits on governmental power should be lifted only by constitutional amendment, not by fiat from the judicial bench, executive order, or the simple majority of a legislature.

I’ll end with this thought, similar to the sentiment with which I began:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard

to protect liberty when the government's purposes are

beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to

repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.

The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroach-

ment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without

understanding.(7)

1 Jefferson, T. The Declaration of Independence. In the Continental Congress, July 4, 1776.

2 Plato. The Republic. Book VIII.

3 Orwell, G. 1984.

4 Excellent literary examples of how such a system is doomed to fail, resulting in oppression, can be found in the example of the horse in Orwell’s Animal Farm (“I must work harder…”) and in the disintegration of the Twentieth Century Motor Company in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

5 Jefferson, T. First Inaugural Address. March 4, 1801.

6 Friedman M and Friedman R. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich. 1979.

7 Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States. 1928

Coup d'Liberte

2008-06-26T19:34:00.002-04:00

Today the United States Supreme Court struck a blow for liberty! In a majority (5-4) opinion, authored by Justice Scalia and using arguments strikingly similar to those in my posting on April 26, 2008 (including the same grammatical argument and the same quotes from Federalist #46 (Madison) and Federalist #29 (Hamilton)), the Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and reaffirmed that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and not a collective one:

"The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."
SCOTUS, D.C. v. Heller

The Court argued that the independent (or as the Court put, operative) clause conveying a right to the people to bear arms is not limited by the the dependent or prefatory clause, which merely explains why the right was held to be important. The Court argued that the phrase, "the people" used in the Second Amendment conveys the same general meaning as elsewhere in the Constitution (and again implies the right to bear arms is a broad, individual one) and found support for this view of individual rights (and this definition of militia) in the writings of the Founding Fathers. The Court also found support for this view in a similar right to bear arms found in many state constitutions written prior to the U.S. Constitution. The majority opinion reads U.S. v. Miller narrowly, arguing that the Second Amendment did not protect, specifically, the type of weapon involved (a sawed-off shotgun) because that type of weapon did not have any applicability to a legitimate military use as suggested by the prefatory clause. The Court acknowledges that the prefatory clause has little meaning in 21st century America, but argues that this does not change the interpretation of the right.

Most importantly however, the opinion drives home the importance that Constitutionally enumerated rights are not to be taken away by anything other than Constitutional amendment - not by acts of legislature and not by decisions of judges:

"The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—
even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a
case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting
upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future
judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional
guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with
the scope they were understood to have when the people
adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes)
even future judges think that scope too broad."
-SCOTUS, D.C. v. Heller

This is the principle of liberty that needed to be upheld in this case. Our modern sensibilities may no longer desire a broad individual right to bear arms. If so, we have a remedy called Constitutional amendment. But, it is critically important that we not set legal precedents that circumvent the Bill of Rights and open our other enumerated and important Constitutionally guaranteed rights to be side stepped by simple majorities in legislatures or on the bench.

If this opinion is characteristic of this Courts view of the Constitution, then perhaps the second Bush term (and appointments of Roberts and Alito) was not a complete disaster after all.

For the full opinion, and dissenting opinion:
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf

District of Columbia v. Heller

2008-04-26T22:47:00.002-04:00

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller, a case that challenges the District’s handgun ban. The case began when the District denied permission to Dick Heller, a security guard who carries a handgun at work, from having a permit to keep a handgun in his home. The case reached the Supreme Court after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the D.C. handgun ban was unconstitutional(1).

This is, of course, a Second Amendment issue. The District’s arguments for their ban (and indeed the arguments in general for gun control advocacy) include the following: 1) the Second Amendment applies only to militia – it is a collective right for militias and not an individual right; 2) the Second Amendment applies only to the federal government and only prevents the federal government from interfering with gun rights (a view held by the U.S. Supreme Court in Presser v. Illinois [1886](2); and 3) the concept of the Second Amendment is no longer relevant to life in the U.S. in the 21^st century as it was in the 18^th. No longer do we defend our nation with, predominantly, civilian militias; No longer is it possible for the average citizen to protect his rights from government with personal arms; and the proliferation of arms on our streets has made us unsafe.⁽³⁾

The argument that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District is the easiest to dispense with. Although it is true that initially the limitations on government power enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to apply only to the federal government and not the states, the District is not a state and ultimately its governance is the responsibility of the federal government. Furthermore, the, “equal protection,” clause of the 14^th Amendment has been interpreted, since 1897, to place the states under the same limitations of the Bill of Rights as the federal government.(3)

The Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” (emphasis added). The clearest part of this amendment is the last phrase. Whatever right is being conferred, it is quite clear that the government is not permitted, to put any restrictions on it whatsoever! The argument is whether this right is granted to individuals or whether this right is granted only to organized militias. Some argue that the first clause is a precondition for the right that follows, that the right exists only for the militias as a collective right. Indeed, the Supreme Court itself made this argument in United States v. Miller [1939]⁽²⁾. In my view, this reading ignores the grammatical conventions of the English language. In English, the preamble before the second comma is known as a dependent clause. It is it that is dependent on what comes next – the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. If individuals do not maintain this right, they cannot form the militias that the Founding Fathers deemed necessary for our national defense. Furthermore, the independent clause assigns this right to the people. The word militia is not used to describe to whom this right pertains. The word, “people,” is used in other places in the Constitution, specifically in the Tenth Amendment, clearly to denote individual rights. Clearly if the Framers chose the same word for the Second Amendment (and did not substitute, “the right of the militias to keep and bear arms…”), they intended it to convey the same meaning.

The argument that the Second Amendment meant to convey gun rights to individuals is not merely a semantic one. It is pretty clear from the writings of the Framers that they intended for individuals to have the right to bear arms. Although he opposed the concept of a Bill of Rights, Hamilton envisioned our national defense maintained by a small core standing army and militia composed of, “the people at large…properly armed.”(4) In other words militia are the ordinary citizens who keep their own arms and can be called into action, “in a minute’s notice,” for U.S. defense. Madison went further to describe that an armed citizenry would be a protection against any attempt of the federal government to usurp our liberty through the use of a standing army, “To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands…fighting for their common liberties…”(5) In other words, another intent of the Second Amendment is to allow individuals to keep and bear arms so the government itself cannot take their rights by force. George Mason observed that, “to disarm the people,” was, “the best and most effective way to enslave them.”(6) Pertaining specifically to the crafting of the Second Amendment, Samuel Adams argued in favour of a Bill of Rights so that, amongst other things, the, “Constitution shall never be construed…to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”(7) The relationship between the individual right to bear arms and the militia was established in the Militia Act of 1792. This act defined militia as able-bodied free men who were then required to possess their own arms and minimum supply of ammunition.(8)

But the real question is, why do we care what the 18^th century intent of the Second Amendment was? What relevance does it possibly have to the 21^st century? The compelling case for gun control laws is not that the Second Amendment means something different than what it really means, but rather that circumstances have changed since 1791 and we need gun laws more appropriate for 2008. Although the Second Amendment confers the right to bear arms to individuals, the need to have an armed citizenry has vanished. No longer is our defense based on able-bodied, gun owning citizen militias. Rather, we now have a powerful standing army that is the most powerful fighting force in the history of planet. The right is an anachronism. The unstated intent of some Founders that the right to bear arms would serve as a mechanism for armed resistance to the government, if necessary, is equally ridiculous in 2008. Clearly private citizen gun owners can never be a match for the might and advanced weaponry of the United States military. Sure many citizens use guns for hunting and most people don’t advocate restricting those rights, but what about handguns, or assault weapons, whose sole purpose is to shoot other people? Isn’t there a case to be made that no one needs weapons like that? Even if you advocate gun ownership for self-defense, isn’t that issue one that can be debated rather than accept the 18^th century notion that no infringement on gun ownership is permitted? If there are compelling reasons in urban centers, such as Washington, D.C., why gun laws need to be strict for public safety, shouldn’t those centers be allowed to set their laws as they see fit and leave rural states to their less restrictive laws? Over the decades, culminating with U.S. v. Miller, there has been considerable case precedent allowing for this differing interpretation of the Second Amendment as the conditions in the country have made the original intent less and less relevant.⁽²⁾

Although many gun rights advocates present data supporting the benefits of private gun ownership and concealed-carry laws; statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Rifle Association, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, show that states with less restrictive concealed-carry laws have higher mortality rates.(9) Furthermore, of the 30,694 gun deaths in the U.S. in 2005, only a little more than a third, 12,352, were actually homicides. Of the remainder 17,002 were suicides and 1,340 were accidental or police-related shootings.⁽⁹⁾ Far from protecting ourselves with handguns, we are killing ourselves with handguns. Indeed, the presence of a gun in the home is an independent risk factor for subsequent homicide in the home.(10) There is also evidence that gun laws do make us safer. A 1991 study of the 1976 D.C. handgun ban at issue in D.C. v. Heller demonstrated that homicide rates declined by 25% and suicide rates by 23% after the law was implemented.(11)

I am not a gun owner, nor an NRA member. I have never been hunting and the sum total of my experience with guns was my great-grandfather showing me how to shoot a .22 when I stayed with him for a week the summer of my 10^th birthday. Although I don’t hunt personally, I don’t begrudge others who enjoy the activity. Certainly I wouldn’t favour any laws that would restrict the ownership of weapons used for sport. But, I have to admit, I am convinced by many of the arguments of those who would draw distinction between guns used for hunting and guns that are really only used to kill other people. I agree that the reasons for the individual right to bear arms stated over 200 years ago are either outdated or irrelevant today, for the reasons discussed above. Although gun rights advocates always quote their own statistics about how gun ownership reduces crime, I must acknowledge that the New England Journal of Medicine is a reputable, peer-reviewed journal and the data I have quoted from it is compelling. In my view, it just makes sense that there should be some middle ground policy that can protect citizens from gun violence in places where it is endemic and protect gun ownership where it is not. It seems to be common sense that some weapons don’t need to be legal to own, although I would never favour a complete gun ban.

So why shouldn’t D.C. have a handgun ban that clearly protects residents of District? Why shouldn’t the Supreme Court uphold its previous ruling in U.S. v. Miller, uphold the D.C. handgun ban, and overrule the appellate court? There is an important reason not to do so. There is an important principle of liberty to protect. It does not matter if the D.C. handgun ban is good policy and it does not matter if the original legislative intent of the authors of the Bill of Rights is now woefully outdated and irrelevant. What matters is that their intent, as detailed above, is clear and is part of the Constitution – the supreme law of our land. We must remain wary of laws and precedents that circumvent the Constitution, for it is the limits that the Constitution sets on our government that ultimately protect our liberties. After the Constitutional Convention, when the Hamilton, Jay, and Madison were writing what we now term the Federalist Papers to persuade the country to ratify the new Constitution, there was great debate over whether it should be ratified without a Bill of Rights, or not. Hamilton argued that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary.(12) Hamilton argued that the limits the Constitution set on the powers of government and the checks and balances established among the branches of government would protect the liberties of the citizens without need for an enumerated Bill of Rights. Jefferson, on the other hand, wrote Madison from France to argue that a Bill of Rights be included.(13) In this view, some rights are so important that they must be enumerated so that it is crystal clear that the government never has the authority to limit them. As Jefferson put it, “…a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth…”⁽¹³⁾ We have already seen that Samuel Adams argued that the Constitution should not be ratified without a Bill of Rights that included a protection of the right to bear arms, however he also advocated that it include protections of press and religious freedom as well.⁽⁷⁾ This is the important point. We may concede that the individual right to keep and bear arms is antiquated, but most of us still view the Constitution’s protections of free speech, free press, free assembly and religious freedom; due process and jury trial; and protection against search and seizure to be as relevant in the 21^st century as they were in the 18^th. Gun control laws such as the D.C. handgun ban, that run contrary to the meaning and intent of the Second Amendment, and the case precedents that have upheld them, provide the legal framework for circumventing the Bill of Rights. If we allow such tactics to be used to undermine Second Amendment rights, then how can we stop their use to undermine other provisions of the Bill of Rights as well? One could argue that the fact that the other enumerated rights are still relevant will protect them as the majority view remains that those rights should be protected. However the Bill of Rights exists not to protect the majority, but to protect the minority, including the smallest minority, the individual. The whole point of enshrining these rights in our Constitution is so they cannot be altered by a simple majority, but rather require 2/3 of Congress and ratification by ¾ of the states. If you believe that our other freedoms can’t be undermined in this way, what about the assaults on liberty in the USA-PATRIOT Act, or invasion of our privacy by the warrant-less wiretapping that few people seem upset about?

This is the age-old argument between constructionists and leftists. Does the Constitution mean what is says, or is it a, “living document,” the meaning of which changes with circumstances from one generation to the next? I have alluded to the process of amendment of the Constitution. This is the remedy the Framers provided for changing the Constitution as required when the circumstances of the nation changed. In my view, the fact that an amendment process was included not only reveals that the Framers were aware that their priorities might not be the priorities of future generations, but also implies that the Constitution is meant to be read as the strict, immutable supreme law of the land, unless it has been changed through the process of amendment. If we as a society, in the 21^st century, have moved beyond the 18^th century notion of an individual right to bear arms that, shall not be infringed, and wish to have gun laws allowing for stricter regulation of guns (at least in certain parts of the country) then we should avail ourselves of the prescribed remedy and amend the Constitution so that it no longer protects such a broad individual right to keep arms. Only in this way can we pass gun control laws without setting statutory and common law precedents that could be used to undermine other liberties protected by the Bill of the Rights. I am not opposed to gun control per se, but only if it is done in a way that protects our other liberties, rather than threatens to undermine them – only if it is done through Constitutional amendment. It is for this reason that I fervently hope the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the appellate court ruling, overturn U.S. v. Miller, and thus reestablish precedent for the respect of the Constitution that will protect our other liberties.

1 Barnes R, “Justices to Rule on D.C. Gun Ban,” The Washington Post. November 21, 2007. p. A01.

2 Tushnet M, “Interpreting the Right to Bear Arms – Gun Regulation and Constitutional Law,” The New England Journal of Medicine. 358(14): 1424 -1426.

3 Levy RA, “The D.C. Gun Ban: Supreme Court Preview,” Legal Times. September 24, 2007.

4 Hamilton A, The Federalist, #29.

5 Madison J, The Federalist, #46.

6 Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia, . . . taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at 271, 275 (2nd ed. Richmond, 1805).

7 Debates and Proceeding at the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850); 2 B. Schwartz, the Bill of Rights 675 (1971).

8 Act of May 8, 1792; Second Cong., First Session, ch. 33.

9 Wintemute G, “Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public’s Health,” The New England Journal of Medicine 358(14): 1421-1424.

10 Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Rushforth NB, et. al., “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home,” The New England Journal of Medicine. 329(15): 1084-1091.

11 Loftin C, McDowall D, Wiersema B, and Cottey TJ, “Effects of Restrictive Licensing of Handguns on Homicide and Suicide in the District of Columbia,” The New England Journal of Medicine. 325(23): 1615-1620.

12 Hamilton A, The Federalist, #84.

13 Jefferson T, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787.

A Modest Proposal for 2007

2008-04-26T17:07:00.005-04:00

Originally written on October 14, 2007:

Earth Day was earlier this week. I just wanted to post this previously written, tongue-in-cheek tract to remind us all not to take it too seriously - Publius, April 26, 2008.

In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote his modest proposal for dealing with the pressing crisis of poverty in Ireland. Bold and decisive action was needed to address so pressing and vexing a problem.

Today, we have another looming threat that requires the same type of bold action. Former Vice President Al Gore was recently awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for highlighting this important issue: the impending crisis of global warming and climate change. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore informed us that we are facing, “planetary emergency.” If we do not act, our entire planet is in peril.

Our action, of course, requires understanding the cause of global warming. Scientists tell us that global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide trap in heat. This allows for temperatures that support life, but the production of too much carbon dioxide is causing are planet to become dangerously warm, will lead to dangerously unstable climate changes, and threatens the existence of polar bears.

Human beings are the cause of this overproduction of carbon dioxide. It is a by-product of industry; produced by the burning of oil and coal for energy and electricity, produced by the burning of gasoline when we drive or fly, and in fact even produced by the lungs of every man, woman, and child when we exhale. Human beings are the proximate cause of global warming and the solution to the problem is therefore, obvious. Human populations must be reduced if the planet is to survive.

Europe has already, voluntarily, addressed the problem with a declining birth rate. Responsibly, the Chinese have limited their population growth by law to address this issue. But these measures are not enough. The human beings that exist today are producing ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide. Limiting the growth of human populations will not be enough to turn the tide. Current human populations must be reduced if we are to preserve our planet.

Fortunately, the United States has led on this issue. The state of Oregon has passed an assisted suicide law. This allows for the more prompt disposition of the terminally ill, not only removing the carbon dioxide generated by their assisted ventilation, but also decreasing the power requirements necessary to power mechanical ventilators. Other states will need to adopt similar measures. More commendable is the leadership shown by Virginia and Texas. These states have the highest per capita execution rates in the country. Again, not only removing people who individually produce carbon dioxide as well as reducing our expenditure of electrical power to house these convicts. Other states will need to follow the lead of Virginia and Texas if we are going to adequately address global warming. States that do not have capital punishment will need to institute it and all states will need to maximize their execution rates. In addition, expanding the number of capital crimes, perhaps to include all crimes, will be required. Of course the use of electrocution must be abandoned in favour of lethal injection as the former method increases our carbon footprint. Europe has, sadly, lagged on this issue.

Although these measures are important, they alone will not be enough to reduce our greenhouse emissions adequately to combat catastrophic climate change. More humans will be need to be eliminated to limit our carbon production. I would first advocate elimination of the homeless. Although this category of people does not use as much power as the terminally ill or the convicted, they do produce carbon dioxide in their lungs and their elimination will have the added benefit of making our cities cleaner and more livable. Secondly, we can use this as an opportunity to address as second problem by targeting for elimination those without health insurance. Not only will this reduce our carbon emissions dramatically, but it will also end the health care crisis in this country.

Lastly a national lottery will be required to select people for elimination. Each citizen will have a number of entries in the lottery proportional to the size of their personal carbon footprint, encouraging all of us to seek ways to reduce our carbon dioxide production. The number of people selected each year will depend on our per capita carbon footprint and the amount of carbon reduction that our climate models predict will be necessary to stop climate change.

We cannot afford to wait. We must act. If we do not act soon, our window of opportunity to stop climate change will be gone. We will have to sacrifice for the greater good. Human beings must be eliminated in significant numbers to save our planet. The survival of the polar bears depends on it.

Nation Building

2008-04-26T16:59:00.005-04:00

Originally written December 26, 2005:

As the Iraq war enters its sixth year, I thought it appropriate to post these two previously composed essays on nation building - Publius, April 26, 2008.

It is an oft repeated axiom that, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It would seem common sense that this would be true and yet history seems to repeat itself with alarming frequency. It certainly seems true that we are not a history conscious society with a subconscious belief that we have the ability to prevail over the obstacles that stymied our ancestors. Although this “can-do,” attitude can be a powerfully positive engine for ingenuity, inventiveness, and economic growth, it also makes us blind to pit-falls that history should teach us to recognize.

I find this most evident as I reflect on the war in Iraq. The lesson that history should teach us, that both critics and supporters of the Iraq war seem oblivious too, is that the forging of liberal democracies takes a long time. Setting aside the argument for invasion that was based on flawed intelligence regarding the external threat that Saddam’s regime represented, the President did state from the beginning a belief in a sort of reverse domino theory that a stable democracy in the Middle East would begin to transform the region. Whether or not that premise is true, or whether or not it should therefore be our role to create such democracies for other peoples, or whether or not it is even possible for a foreign power to create a democracy in another country by force are all debates for another day. My point here is that from the beginning, one of the President’s goals was the creation of a constitutional liberal democracy in Iraq. The administration argued that we would be greeted as liberators; that Iraq was a sophisticated nation, ready for self-government; that Iraqi oil would pay for reconstruction; and that the Iraqi people where ready to throw off the shackles of tyranny – they wanted our help to do it in 1991. In short, this would be relatively easy and cost little and the dividend, in terms of the reverse domino theory and our long-term national security, would be large. According to Bob Woodward in Bush at War, at a meeting at Camp David on September 15, 2001 to discuss our response to the September 11^th attacks, Paul Wolfowitz argued against going after Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and in favour of invading Iraq in response to 9/11! His argument, rejected by the President, was not that there was compelling evidence of Iraqi involvement, but that Iraq would be easier to accompolish! He seemed cognizant of the difficulties that British and Russians had in the past in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan, but completely ignorant of what it takes to build a liberal democracy from the ground up.

Critics of the war and events in Iraq also seem oblivious to the historical lessons of the challenges involved in establishing a liberal democracy. Two and a half years after the invasion, they seem astonished that it is taking so long and shocked about the level of violence in Iraq – which they conclude must be due to mismanagement. Yes, the administration sold this as being as painless as Desert Storm, but everyone believed it. They also make fatalistic statements about the inevitability of civil war, which will destroy the prospect of democracy. They worried that enough Sunni’s would vote against that new Constitution and reject it as if it would have been an insurmountable road block to not get the Constitution right on the first try. And they complain that the new Constitution doesn’t address all the issues of minority participation and protection or the role of Islam in government and law.

One need look no further than the United States to find evidence of the challenges involved in creating a liberal democracy. As we all know, the U.S. declared independence from Great Britain in 1776 and after armed conflict was recognized as an independent nation with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. In truth, the U.S. really cannot be described as liberal democracy before women’s suffrage in the 1920’s. With racial segregation and Jim Crow laws in place, it could be argued that the U.S. was not truly a liberal democracy before the Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s. In other words, in the U.S. it was a process that took 150-200 years! In this context, the administration’s notion that such a process could be completed in Iraq during a George W. Bush presidency (even with two terms) seems silly. Furthermore, our first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was a disaster and in 1787 we scrapped the whole thing to write our current Constitution. And, as wonderful as our Constitution is and as well as it has served us for two centuries, it left one major issue unresolved – slavery. In the twilight of their lives, Jefferson wrote to John Adams that this would be an issue to be resolved by posterity. He was right. It was resolved on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Manassas, Shiloh, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Antietam; resolved in the flames of Atlanta and Richmond; resolved after a horrible, bloody, civil war that to this day claims more loss of American lives than any other conflict. Within our own history there is a rejected inadequate initial Constitution, a final Constitution that fails to address key issues, and a subsequent sectarian civil war… Such things may not be preventable in Iraq. Such things may be inevitable in Iraq. But, such things do not necessarily spell doom for the ultimate establishment of liberal democracy either. In truth, just like with the U.S., the true success or failure of today’s efforts in Iraq will not be known for decades.

Perhaps Canada is a better example for comparison with Iraq. The United States in 1787 was an essentially ethnically monolithic country. Sure there were some Dutch in New York, some Germans in Pennsylvania and some Scotch-Irish, but the vast majority of the population of the original thirteen states were English. Native Americans could easily be pushed, and were, into the vast expanse of wilderness to the west. On the other hand, Canada at the time of Confederation in 1867 consisted of several separate British colonies in what are now the maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (which did not even join the confederation until much later); a British colony in British Columbia; an uneasy union of English Upper Canada (modern day Ontario) and French Lower Canada (modern day Quebec) and a vast expanse of midland prairies inhabited by some English, some French, Native Americans, and Metis – those of combined French and Indian ethnicity. In 1867, Canadian confederation had to stretch coast to coast, both to connect British Columbia with the rest of British North America and to secure the western prairie from the rapidly expanding United States. So, Metis, French, English, and Native American would need some sort of workable solution. But, in 2005, Iraq has something Canada didn’t have, a written Constitution. The closest thing Canada had to a written Constitution was the 1867 British North America Act that conferred self-governing dominion status to Canada. It re-affirmed commitments of the earlier 1774 Quebec Act uniting Upper and Lower Canada to the preservation of a distinct French society in Quebec but left language on what that constituted deliberately vague. In the early years of the Canadian confederation, this largely translated in the right to minority schools – that would be French speaking and Catholic- in all provinces. Issues of federalism between the federal government and provincial governments were also not clear in the act. Furthermore, there was no mechanism for amendment! Talk about unresolved issues! When granted more autonomy from London following World War I, Canadians were still at an impasse in deciding how to amend the British North America act, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster left amendment power in the hands of the British parliament. It wasn’t until 1982 that Canada passed an amendment process and adopted a Charter of Rights. Even in this, Quebec felt largely left out (special status was granted to Native Americans, but the, “distinct society,” of French Canada was not recognized) and in 1987, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called a conference at Meech Lake to try to resolve some of these issues. The Meech Lake Accords were not ratified. Mulroney, who became quite unpopular as a result of recession, tax and trade policy, and acquiescence to the U.S., handed the office over to Kim Campbell, Canada’s first woman Prime Minister. But, even the change in leadership could not prevent voters from taking out their frustrations on Mulroney’s Tory party and in the following election ousted the Tory majority. Not only did the Liberals have a majority, but the Tories were reduced to two seats in the House of Commons and weren’t even the opposition party following the 1993 elections. That distinction fell to the Bloc Quebecois – a Quebec separatist party whose stated objective is the end of the Canadian federal union! In the mid 1990’s a Quebec referendum on secession was narrowly defeated 51% to 49%. Yet despite these long standing ethnic divisions, Canada stands today, undeniably one of the world’s greatest, freest, and most prosperous liberal democracies. Can the Kurds, Sunni, and Shi’ite in Iraq achieve the success that English, French, and Native Americans have achieved in Canada? Only time will tell – in Canada it has been a process of over 100 years.

One would certainly expect more rapid change in this faster-paced information age. But even our more recent experience with nation building should underscore the point that successful liberal democracies aren’t made on the quick. It has been twenty years since civil war began in Lebanon and only now is peaceful democracy independent of Syria evident. It has been ten years since our involvement in the Balkans and only recently has ethnic cleansing given-way to resumed peaceful coexistence. It has been several decades of violence in Israel and only now does the Palestinian authority seem anything close to a representative governing body for a future Palestinian state. Our efforts in Haiti and Somalia have been even less successful.

There is another important historical lesson to be learned beyond the fact that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq will be long-term commitment. That lesson is embedded in a key difference in starting point between the U.S. and Canada on one hand and Iraq on the other. Before the U.S. invasion, Iraq was a totalitarian dictatorship. Neither Canada in 1866 nor the American colonies in 1775 could be described this way. In fact, the Canadian transition to independent liberal democracy is largely a gradual legislative one. In the U.S., a “revolution,” was fought that was really nothing of the sort. The birth of the United States was a successful secession. The government of King George III was not toppled, but remained intact. In fact, American colonists were largely fighting for rights that were granted to English citizens in England and kept British common law as the basis for U.S. law and jurisprudence. In both the U.S. and Canada, there was a tradition of constitutional liberty that predated the establishment of democracy. Perhaps then France is a better example for comparison to Iraq. In 18^th century France, the monarch was much more absolutist than his British counterpart. He was overthrown and executed as part of a bloody revolution. Then came democratic tyranny in the form of the Reign of Terror only to end in civil war and the establishment of an Emperor, who lead France into wars with her neighbours and then ultimately restoration of the Monarchy. To any observer in 1815, the French Revolution must have seemed an abysmal failure (and the American Revolution anything but a sure success), and yet France today is also a liberal democracy, forged over a long and bloody history with many mistakes and wrong turns in her past. Although provoked by a foreign power, the Iraqi situation now is similar, and equally precarious, to France in 1789. A totalitarian regime has been toppled and is to be replaced by democracy.

The French example underscores the historical lesson in all this that is most important with respect to Iraq and has been entirely unlearned by policy-makers. The French experience demonstrates that democracy is not the starting point for liberty. There is nothing about democracy that intrinsically guarantees or protects liberty. In his book, The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria describes the democratic usurpation of power in Venezuela between 1998 when Hector Chavez was elected president and 2002. Chavez proposed a referendum that would create a unicameral “Constituent Assembly,” that was essentially answerable to the president and to which the judiciary would be answerable. This would replace the previous bicameral legislature and independent judiciary. The referendum passed with 91% of the vote. A new constitution, based on this referendum passed in 1999 with 71% of the vote and during the late 1990’s Chavez approval rating never fell below 65%. Venezuela is a democracy, but now clearly an autocratic one. Putin’s Russia is another example of a democracy almost as autocratic as the previous communist regime. And, it should be remembered that at least initially, National Socialists gained seats, power, and influence in Germany’s Wiemar Republic through democratic means. In his second treatise of government, John Locke wrote:

Absolute Arbitrary Power, or Governing without settled standing Laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of Society and Government which men would not quit the freedom of the State of Nature for…were it not to preserve their Lives, Liberties, and Fortunes; and by stated Rules of Right and Property to secure their Peace and Quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend…to give to any one, or more, an absolute Arbitrary Power over their Persons and Estates… (Ch. XI, paragraph 137).

In other words, to protect individual liberty, the authority of government must be limited, not arbitrary. It makes little difference whether the wielder of arbitrary power is an individual or the masses.

What guarantees liberty is a constitutional rule of law. In essence, this is a compact, written or implied, between a government and its citizens that guarantees the rights of individuals and, more importantly, limits the power and authority of government. This includes societal institutions that protect liberty and check governmental authority. Mechanisms include separated powers in government (Executive, Judicial, Legislative) with independence among the branches, as well as independence of Church and State and private property rights that allow for the concentration of wealth (and therefore power and influence) in a private sector and gives citizens the ability manage their own resources and map their own destiny. The authority of the private sector and of an independent Church also provides a counter-weight to governmental power, above and beyond its necessary internal checks and balances. These institutional limits on government were certainly part of the 18^th century (except for the independent Church, a problem quickly rectified in the new United States) British tradition that Canada and the U.S. inherited. And they were present in absence of democracy, but in the context of constitutionally limited monarchy. The U.S. framers codified these concepts in the U.S. Constitution, but it was this basis of law and this acceptance of governmental limitation that made liberal self-government possible. Eastern Europe again provides illustrative examples. The most successful eastern bloc countries are those that had liberal traditions and institutions prior to World War II – Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. By contrast, Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Rumania and most former Soviet Republics have struggled with the transition to democracy. At the beginning of the year, when I expressed my optimism for liberal democracy in Ukraine, it was based on two things: the peaceful nature of the Orange revolution and the independence asserted by the Ukrainian judiciary. This suggested to me a people ready to govern themselves and establishing institutions, like an independent judiciary, to protect their liberty (sadly, I heard recently that the Yushenko government in the Ukraine has been more interested in settling old scores than in governing for the future). Democracy isn’t the first step toward liberty, it is the last. It is the reward of a free society ready to govern itself.

Our policy toward Iraq and the critics of it are largely ignorant of history. The assumptions behind the President’s strategy ignore the long and difficult process every successful democracy has had to endure to establish itself and suggest that somehow, in Iraq, this can be a short-term commitment. His critics largely argue, not that this can’t be done quickly (although a few have made that case), but that it isn’t being done quickly enough. As if it were possible to move quickly toward liberal democracy in Iraq if only we had better policy or strategy. Most chillingly, all sides have made the assumption that democracy is the first step to liberty, not the last. All sides assume elections are of paramount importance, not security, stability, or civic institutions. Occasionally a politician or pundit will comment that democracy in Iraq could mean Shi’ite theocracy, but still no one acknowledges that perhaps democracy isn’t the appropriate first step. An unlearned lesson, despite centuries of examples of tyrannical democracies that have disintegrated.

Before I will close, I will offer one last example of history repeating itself. That is the position of the U.S. in the world at the opening of the 21^st century. It is almost identical to the position of Great Britain in the world at the opening of the 20^th. A lone super-power with both economic and military influence around the globe. A power with unquestioned naval (and now air) superiority. A power with military presence spread around the globe and in occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully this un-historically conscious society can learn enough from the British example to end our hegemony, when the time comes, by adjusting to a smaller role on the world stage while retaining our liberty, peace, and prosperity at home and thereby avoid the fate of ancient Rome.

THE ORANGE REVOLUTION

2008-04-26T16:56:00.001-04:00

Originally written on January 1, 2005:

Lost in the shadow of the disastrous Asian tsunami was Victor Yushchenko’s win in the repeat Ukrainian elections. If the Ukraine manages to successfully become a stable, liberal, democracy then Yushchenko, who will be sworn as Ukraine’s new President today, may be regarded as Ukraine’s George Washington.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine has been a one-party, authoritarian, illiberal democracy. Autocratic rulers use the results of “elections” to validate their governments but in the end govern with the same heavy hand as when Ukraine was a Soviet Republic. The current ruling party in the Ukraine has even kept close ties with mother Russia. An arrangement that Vladmir Putin (another popularly-elected autocrat whose tenure in office is marked by expansion of presidential power and debasement of other institutions) has so favoured, that he worked actively for the election of the current prime minister to Ukraine’s presidency. Many in eastern Ukraine have favoured this arrangement, but at the expense of liberty and true democracy in the Ukraine – the Russian example with democracy is hardly one worth following and Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states provide better examples of how eastern European countries can transition to liberal democracies.

In Ukraine, Yushchenko has defied the status quo and forced the country to have a truly bipartisan election with two viable candidates. And so Ukrainians are divided, literally between East and West. The Eastern part of the country is pro-Russian and supported the ruling party, the Western part pro-Europe and supported Yushschenko. For Yushschenko to be truly the founder of a new era in liberal self-government in the Ukraine, both sides will have to accept his authority. Recalling the American experience of political divisions that coincide with geographic ones in 1860, this may be a difficult task and may call on Yushschenko to be his country’s Abraham Lincoln as well. But in defying authoritarianism, resisting attempts to undermine the elections (including attempts on his own life), and giving, for the first time, Ukrainians a true choice in leadership and vision for the future, Yushchenko has taken a critical first step toward true liberal democracy.

As brave as Victor Yushchenko has been and as important as his role in all of this is, as is always the case with turning points in history, he is not the only hero of this story. The Ukrainian people themselves are equally important. Ukrainians turned out to vote in astounding numbers. Much has been made in recent years of low voter turnout in the U.S. Yet, with our most recent election and the perception by many that this was a critically important election, we have recently had a vote with record turn out. So too did Ukrainians recognize the importance of this first election with a true choice, with true ramifications for future of the country. And, whether they agreed with remaining tightly in the Russian sphere of influence, or thought prosperity lay with turning toward the West, they came out to voice their opinion with their vote. A similar phenomenon was observed recently in Afghanistan, and we can only hope Iraqis, facing physical danger, will, in large numbers, also seize the opportunity to shape their own destiny.

But the critical step taken by the Ukrainian people toward establishing true liberal democracy, was not simply the act of voting itself. That they had done before, albeit without as much true choice in candidates. Rather, it was the Orange Revolution - the peaceful protests after the election that forced a re-vote. This established several important principles of liberal democracy: 1) it exercised the people’s right to peaceably assemble and express views dissenting from the government. 2) it forced the government to acknowledge that elections must be transparent and votes must be fairly counted, and 3) it established the fundamental right and ability of the people to self-govern. More than the outcome of any vote, the Orange brigades established that the government belongs to the people and governs only by their consent. The people’s will indeed determines the direction of the country. In governing themselves as individuals by eschewing violence, Yushshenko’s followers demonstrated definitively that the Ukrainian people possess the capacity for self-government.

However, as mother Russia demonstrates, democratic government isn’t always liberal government. It remains to be seen whether Yushshenko’s government will respect and protect the rights of his opposition minority. In his book, The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria discusses the parameters that are associated with the development of successful liberal democracies. He notes the importance of capitalist wealth – the earned (produced) wealth of nations. Historically, countries with a per capita GDP of $6,000 in current U.S. dollars are the ones that succeed in forming stable, liberal democracies. Ukraine, by this reckoning, is not quite there and has a greater struggle ahead if she is to be successful. By this standard, Zakaria lists the countries that are ready, economically, for stable liberal democracy: Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Malaysia, Turkey, Morroco, and of the former Soviet Republics, Belarus. At first blush, this would seem a gross oversimplification. However, the relationship between capital and freedom is a complex one. Zakaria also notes that states with intrinsic natural resource wealth (such as oil), tend not to be fertile grounds for liberal democracy. In this case, the state does not depend on production and economic growth for wealth. In other words, it is not beholden to expanding a tax base, but rather has intrinsic wealth. Since the state has no dependence on the population for wealth, it is also not beholden to the population and has no incentive to create the conditions necessary for the production of wealth – the conditions of liberal society. Production requires private ownership, which requires personal property rights, which then requires codification of the protection of those rights. Commerce requires freedom to travel, free speech to advertise, and therefore the codification of these freedoms. This is, of course, the principal of engagement with China – the notion that economic reform must ultimately bring with it political reform. As an example, Zakaria sites the growing number of lawsuits against the government in China over the last several years (and the growing ability of plaintiffs to win such lawsuits) over issues of private ownership (90,557 suits in 1997 compared to 0 in 1984).

Certainly there is room for debate regarding the best way to ultimately bring about the end of the Communist regime in China. However, the underpinning of the argument is the realization, evident in the Russian experience so far with democracy, that democracy is not intrinsically a guarantor of liberty. Madison’s concern for tyranny of the majority (or at least tyranny of elected leaders) is a valid one. More important than democracy is a system that protects individual liberties and freedoms. A system in which private ownership is respected, personal choices about one’s life and one’s property can be made, and the ability of individuals to engage in any activity that is peaceable, engaged in by mutual consent, and does not infringe upon the rights of others is generally protected (or in Jefferson’s words, “while restraining men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement…”). Zakaria keenly recognizes the role of the state in this regard. There must be civic institutions, both political and economic, and both governmental and private to create this atmosphere. There must be a codification of rights that limit the power of government, and a government with the power to enforce laws protecting the rights of individuals. In short, a balance of economic (and to some degree political) power between the private sector and the state, and a balance of political power within branches of government. Checks and balances both between federal and local authority as well as within federal government itself. Only in this way can a government be strong enough to govern its people, and limit itself. Hardly a new concept, Mr. Madison, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Jay expressed it quite eloquently over 200 years ago.

Which brings me to the unsung heroes of the Ukrainian Orange revolution. The courts. In overturning the results of the initial fraudulent election, the Ukrainian Supreme Court established a principle of independent judiciary. The Court was not a puppet to the governing regime and its party, but an independent authority apart from the legislature and executive. Without credible opposition before now, certainly the justices were appointed by leaders from the pro-Russian, outgoing party. But, they refused to simply be an organ of the administration. They refused to be window dressing on Potemkin democracy. This is the Marbury vs. Madison moment in the history of Ukrainian democracy, the assertion of principles of independent judicial review. Nor will the courts be the pawns of Yushshenko’s new government. Just twenty-four hours before the re-vote, the court ruled that restrictions on home balloting, that Yushshenko wanted and won in the compromise that led to a new vote, violated the voting access rights of those that were home bound. Accommodations for such voting had to be made in the eleventh hour before the election. Again the court has asserted the principles of judicial independence and review. And, in accepting the court’s ruling, the previous ruling party who had resorted to fraud and poisoning to undermine the electoral process and retain political power has solidified the courts authority, and perhaps unwittingly made their own contribution to the stability of Ukranian democracy.

The challenges facing the Ukraine are hard, but the result of this peaceful (so far) struggle for power is the birth of a truly democratic government in which principles of consent of the governed, fair and transparent elections, freedoms of assembly and speech, and checks and balances in government have been established. It is a good start, and hopefully this newborn democracy will grow and mature into a stable, liberal, and prosperous one.

THOUGHTS ON THE RON PAUL CAMPAIGN

2008-03-16T18:49:00.002-04:00

I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the Ron Paul campaign for President. Although the rational portion of my brain told me that Dr. Paul was not going to secure the Republican nomination, despite his rather unprecedented fundraising, I thought it was important to support his candidacy with my vote and with my campaign contributions.

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes discussing politics with me knows that I am essentially a Goldwater-Reagan Republican. My views would certainly be classified, generally, as right of center and while I hold some opinions that are more traditionally conservative, the over arching principle that guides my politics is fundamentally libertarian. I believe, as Locke and Jefferson so eloquently maintained, that each of us is endowed by our Creator with basic, inalienable rights and that, as Jefferson said, “to secure our rights is the only reason to tolerate government at all.” Government exists to protect our liberty from both foreign and domestic threats and the purpose of our Constitution is to set strict limits for our government so that it cannot become, in itself, a threat to our personal liberty. Although those who would empower and have empowered our federal government to live beyond its Constitutional means often have the best of intentions: trying to make our streets safer by banning certain types of gun ownership, forcing those who have earned a lot of money to help those with less, protecting us from hurting ourselves with addictive drugs, stopping “catastrophic” climate change, protecting us from violent criminals, or protecting us from foreign threats and terrorists; the end result is always the same for any of these government programs – the expansion of the government sector of the economy, the expansion of the role of government in our lives, the expansion of the power and authority of the federal government, and the resultant slow withering away of our privacy and property rights.

Sadly, however, we have witnessed an alarming expansion of federal government over the last 7 years by my own party, the very party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Poor President Reagan’s body didn’t even have the chance to grow cold before his own party had set it spinning in his grave. Under the “leadership” of Republicans, agricultural subsidies have grown; while negotiating free trade agreements with Latin American countries, tariffs were placed on European steel; the Attorney General of the United States attempted to use controlled substances laws (in and of themselves of dubious Constitutionality) to subvert the right of the state of Oregon to regulate medical practice in that state and to overrule the overwhelming wish of a majority of Californians to allow medical use of marijuana; free political speech has been restricted by new campaign finance laws, which ultimately have not reduced to influence of moneyed interests in our campaigns; the Congress of the United States waded into a state law issue in Florida over legal medical decision making; the federal government’s role in education has been expanded to the degree that the federal government, not state and local school boards, are the final arbiters of educational success; an incredibly large and expensive new health care entitlement has been created which will saddle our country with more debt for generations to come; and the government has listened to private telephone conversations without first obtaining proper warrants to do so.

As I watched debates, I found that almost none of the candidates (although McCain did decry overt pork barrel spending and earmarks) spoke to this fundamental misdirection of the Republican party and the Conservative agenda. The movement that brought Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980; lowered our taxes; won the Cold War; promoted free trade; and in the 1990’s took control of Congress to reform welfare, balance the budget, pass a line-item veto, reject an anti-terrorism bill (1994-5) that threatened civil liberties, and decry nation-building as foreign policy was being systematically unraveled by the very same party that spearheaded it and no one in the party one seemed to notice or care. Or almost no one. The one candidate that consistently spoke about how the Republican party had lost its way and needed to return to its principles of limited government was Ron Paul. The more I watched the debates, the more I would turn to my wife and say, “Ron Paul is the only one of them that makes any sense.” Congressman Paul’s presence in the campaign was important addition to the debate over the direction of our country and to provide a voice championing the principles of limited government, which used to be the cornerstone of the Republican agenda.

Then, of course, there is the war. My dissatisfaction with the Bush 43 administration really began in earnest 5 years ago with the unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq (prior to that I made excuses for the President’s blatantly left-of-center domestic policies). This blatant act of imperialism forced me to confront the dichotomy of my views – that I supported minimal government at home, but activist government abroad. And of course almost everyone who has run for President in the last two election cycles has been, on some level, a supporter of the war. Only Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Howard Dean have had the courage to challenge the assumptions that led to the invasion in the first place. All of the others, Democrat and Republican alike, voted for the war. The other Democrats, and John McCain, have all criticized management of the war and the intelligence failures that led up to the war, but none have questioned the premise that if Saddam Hussein really did have stock piles of WMD and the invasion had been handled more competently, that this would have been a justifiable use of pre-emptive military force. And of course, amongst the candidates who were opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, only two (Kucinich and Paul) had to put their political credibility on the line by voting against the war in Congress and only one is a Republican who shares my views on other issues. I thought it was critically important to have some voice questioning the policy assumptions that led us into this war in the debate on the Republican side. It needed to be made clear that support for invading Iraq and conservatism are not the same thing. There are good conservatives who supported invading Iraq and there are equally conservative people who did not. I have consistently viewed the invasion of Iraq as immoral and unnecessary, so of course my candidate was Ron Paul.

What I fervently hope is that the Ron Paul Presidential campaign is the beginning of a movement. Dr. Paul lacks the personal charisma and communications skills of an effective national politician (like Reagan), but just on the strength of his message alone he was able to garner an incredible amount of support. He had over 250,000 donors and raised an unprecedented sum for a lower tier candidate. He drew large crowds and speaking engagements. In the early contests (before Romney dropped out) he consistently garnered about 10% of the vote – usually beating Giulani – and in some of the western states on Super Tuesday got over 20%. That demonstrates a fairly solid nucleus of disaffected conservatives. Hopefully he has consolidated a base that can be built upon in the future by a candidate with better communication skills. I hope this is the beginning of a resurgent limited government movement. I really hope that the movement is able to transform the Republican party – the way Goldwater and Reagan did – but if the neocons have too much of a stranglehold on the party establishment, then I hope this turns into a viable third-party movement.

The underlying importance of this is inescapable. The size of our government needs to be reduced because our freedom and prosperity depend upon it. The value of our dollar is plummeting, prices are rising, and we simply cannot afford to continue to pay for both largesse in government domestic programs and policing the world overseas. Such massive spending will saddle future generations with debt, produce government borrowing that further inflates prices and devalues the dollar, and grant the federal government more power to exert its will on the citizenry.

Confessions of a Life-long Tory

2008-03-16T18:46:00.000-04:00

Originally Written on March 7, 2003:

It began in 1981. Prior to that, I had only vague notions of politics and public affairs. As a 9 year old in 1980 I knew only that the President running for re-election shared my name and that I liked blue (the colour typically used by TV networks to denote states that vote Democrat) better than red (the traditional colour for Republican states), so I wanted Jimmy Carter to win.

But things changed in 1981. My awareness of current events increased watching the inauguration of a new President and the return of American hostages from Iran in my fourth grade classroom. Then in the spring of 1981 something happened that, to a 9 and a half year old, seemed unthinkable (but to any student of history since 1860 must have seemed almost inevitable with Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, FDR and JFK all having died in office) – the President had been shot.

I remember in medical school reading a JAMA article about the President’s medical care after the records had been declassified. It was only then that I realized how close he had come to dying – and in fact might have if it had been 1960 or 1940. And surely would have in 1920, 1900 or 1880.

This president had a persona – a B movie John Wayne - vigorous, resolute, and larger-than-life. Unlike his major challenger for the GOP nomination, he hadn’t faced real bullets before public life – only the imaginary ones of Hollywood. But now, as president, he had taken a real bullet and he had done it with grace and courage. He told his wife that he was sorry he forgot to duck. He told his doctors he hoped they were all Republicans. Those comments did more than anything his doctors said (or didn’t say) to reassure the country. To make us believe everything would be all right. And, they gave the President a mythic persona that dwarfed the one he had on screen. It made him larger-than-REAL-life. To a young boy it was awe-inspiring and at that moment Ronald Reagan joined Brooks Robinson on my list of heroes.

And so began my life-long interest in (some would say obsession with) politics. And I began to see myself as a “conservative” or “Republican” like my hero. I had adopted what I will call the Tory position – what I mean is the political ground that is right of center, conservative in the traditional sense of being slow to change, the old guard, the traditional values – particularly with regard to law and order, nationalist, non-isolationist, pro-strong national defense. In America this was the position associated with manifest destiny. In Britain’s past it was the position associated with the maintenance of Empire.

Some of the conservative agenda was easy for me. My Catholic faith already taught me that abortion was wrong. My father’s job working for a defense contractor and my grandfather’s pride in his own military service made me inclined to support a strong defense. And I suppose, I just have a Tory temperament, that whatever part of my personality that is ingrained from birth is receptive to the conservative philosophy. I have a friend who was every bit as taken by Reagan as I was – and in fact still speaks fondly and admiringly of him – who is now a liberal Democrat…. Deep down inside, he just wasn’t a Tory.

So, I began to embrace the Reagan philosophy that he spoke so eloquently on, but delivered so poorly on, of smaller government and in so doing embraced the most traditional of American values – individual liberty. This is what made the U.S. different. Ours was a nation dedicated to equality of the individual – and equality of opportunity, not result. In the U.S., the individual is more important than the state. And the liberal position in America was tainted by its resemblance to the collectivist thought of the nations Reagan was waging a cold war against. And I began to read Goldwater and the Founders – Jefferson, Madison. These became my philosophical heroes. Later I progressed to the more modern libertarians like Friedman and Hayek. Those that espoused the views of the Revolution: all men are created equal and have innate rights. Government exists merely to protect those rights: law enforcement to deal with domestic threats to rights, and military to protect from foreign threats. The most fundamental of rights, of course, are private property rights – there is no social and political liberty without economic liberty. In short, I had adopted the philosophy of John Locke, mixed with a healthy dose of Adam Smith – which is where my embracing of Reagan’s Free trade philosophy led. Smith had been a visionary – challenging the notion of mercantile colonies and championing free and competitive markets as the key to expanding wealth. Edmund Burke echoed this sentiment when he argued, unsuccessfully, that Britain could have a more profitable relationship with independent American states when no longer saddled with the financial burden of defending American colonies. I, like Burke, wrote a paper in college arguing the same point about the British empire at it’s Victorian height entitled, “Britain’s Unprofitable Empire”. In the paper I compared the U.S. at the end of the 20th century to Britain at the end of the 19th.

But alas, I have always been a Tory. I never embraced Washington’s vision of remaining free of foreign entanglements. I have always supported a U.S. presence overseas – in Korea and Europe and certainly the Middle East. I thought the crime was not aiding Nicaraguan freedom-fighters against communist oppression but, rather, that Congress had passed a law forbidding it. On July 18, 1988 I wrote then Congressman Tom McMillen urging to support a continued US presence in the Persian Gulf to protect shipping from terrrorist attacks, even if there was a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war. Why? Because if we don’t do it, who will? No one? The Soviets? It was our duty and obligation to protect trade in the region. Our burden – or as Kipling put it in a less politically correct time, the white man’s burden.

I have been compelled to examine the origins of my own political views by this upcoming war in Iraq. A war that appears far more blatantly imperial and a war that, frankly, even an old Tory like me has trouble supporting. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are a number of good reasons for getting rid of Saddam Hussein and I don’t challenge anything the administration has said about him or the situation in Iraq. However, morally, I feel that wars should be fought because we HAVE to, not because we WANT to or would like to for whatever good intentions. We had to fight our revolution, it was clear colonists would continue to be denied the rights of Englishmen. As tragic as it was, our Civil War had to be fought to address the issues left unanswered by our founders – issues of slavery and of the nature of our Union. Certainly we had to fight World War II, a war in which the only criticism that can be leveled at the US is why didn’t we get involved sooner. And I still believe to this day we had to fight the first Gulf War. And most certainly, we had to go into Afghanistan. In our history, we fought with Mexico and Spain to acquire territory because we wanted to – and whereas the first list represents some of our finest hours, the Mexican and Spanish wars are some of our worst. And invading Iraq seems more like the latter than the former to me. The arguments for it are almost as hollow as Joseph Chamberlain’s defense of the Boer War a century ago. Attacking a small third world country (whose air space we ALREADY control) with little provocation seems to define the word “imperial” and almost validates the criticisms of us the Soviets made decades ago. It has been particularly difficult for me as I respect and admire President Bush – and have to try to figure out how to continue to support him and his other policies if he prosecutes this war… The only saving grace is the Democrats will likely nominate someone who also supports the war (all the front runners are doing the Lieberman-Kerrey-Edwards-Gephardt shuffle – we support the goal, just not the way the President is going about it. This position is particularly ludicrous for Lieberman has he has been calling for Saddam’s head since 9.12.01) and only Wesley Clark jumping into the race is likely to change that equation. But, it has forced me to think about that paper I once wrote and confront the dichotomy of my attack on the Pax Britannica while supporting all along the Pax Americana and to discover that despite my belief in drug legalization, perhaps my conservatism is more traditionally conservative and not quite so libertarian after all.

Which leads to wonder: despite my reverence for Jefferson and Adams, despite the picture of Jefferson and facsimile of the Declaration of Independence on my wall, despite my belief that the most amazing document of governance in world history is the U.S. Constitution, whose side would I have been on in 1776? Would I have been with radicals like Jefferson and John Adams – and their more firebrand colleagues like Paine, Patrick Henry and Sam Adams? Or would I have sided with the Tories?

Mission Statement

2008-03-16T18:36:00.000-04:00

This blog is inaugurated today and will remain dedicated to the principles of individual liberty and limited government. Inaugural postings will include reflections on the Ron Paul 2008 campaign for president and a piece I wrote initially five years ago on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I will be posting additional previously written pieces and then plan to maintain a blog of current political opinion. Civil discourse is welcome - minds are like parachutes, they work best when they are open.