Is This Really Where Our Passion Goes?

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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?