Donald J. Trump is neither Republican, nor Conservative, nor Capitalist.

I have previously posted about the value of free trade.  In summary, free trade benefits consumers by increasing sources of competition for consumer's dollars, resulting in better quality of goods at lower prices.  While protectionism, on the surface, seems like a plausible strategy to protect domestic industries or jobs from foreign competition, the reality is that this protection of the interests of a few comes at the price of the many: less competition and higher prices for the consumer and less overall economic growth.  Secondly, trade promotes peace.  When goods and services cross borders, armies don't.  No country goes to war with a country with whom it has a profitable trading relationship.  Lastly, markets are made of voluntary transactions.  Only an economic system based on freedom to choose what to buy and from whom is congruent with a free society.  Protectionism, by limiting those choices, is antagonistic to the goals of a free society.


For three decades, there has been bipartisan agreement in the United States on the value of free trade.  For Republicans, the policy promotes their ostensible core values of lower taxes and less intervention of government in the marketplace.  Even Democrats, however, largely acknowledge the value of trade as downward pressure on the prices of consumer goods, as promoter of economic growth, and as a promoter of international alliances and friendships.  President Reagan negotiated the first Free Trade Agreement with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.  His successor, President George H.W. Bush completed negotiations with both Canada and Mexico on a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  NAFTA was not ratified by Congress before the end of President Bush's term, but President Clinton also championed the deal and challenged so-called, "progressive" elements in his own party to push for its passage.  Since then, administrations of both parties have participated in the World Trade Organization and have pushed for free trade agreements in the remainder of our hemisphere.


With such broad bipartisan support for free trade, one would think the idea of protective tariffs on imports is a thing of the past.  However, in 2016, Donald Trump ran for the nomination of the very party that had been trade and capitalism's loudest champion by decrying, "these trade deals."  As President, he made good on his anti-capitalist, anti-market, anti-trade rhetoric three months ago when he slapped a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum.  Initially, these tariffs excluded our closest allies of Canada, Mexico, and the European Union; but in an effort to win concessions in revisions he wants to NAFTA, the President allowed these exemptions to expire yesterday.


The historic partnership between the United States and Canada illustrates the value of free trade.  Even long before the initial Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. and Canada have been each other's largest trading partners for decades. The border between the U.S. and Canada is the longest undefended border in the world and has been peaceful for over two centuries.  Many companies employ people on both sides of the border and both nations have reaped profits and enjoyed economic growth from the free trade agreements that have made the U.S.-Canadian alliance the greatest strategic and economic alliance the world has ever known.


President Trump's actions threaten this historic relationship as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has vowed to retaliate.  In addition to alienating our allies, Mr. Trump is pursuing a harmful economic policy that might protect some manufacturing jobs but will do so at the expense of American consumers who will face higher costs for products made with these metals.  Mr. Trump's actions are a repudiation of the economic platform of the Republican Party for the last 40 years as it had been the party focused on tearing down trade restrictions and opening markets.  In November 1988, President Reagan devoted a weekly radio address to support for free trade and warning against protectionist demagogues like Donald Trump, "Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies, they are our allies.  We should beware of the demagogues who are willing to declare a trade war with our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world; all the while cynically waving the American flag.  The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion.  It is an American triumph, one which we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom." (quote begins 3:37 into the address).  Mr. Trump's tariff is more than just anti-conservative or anti-Republican, it is anti-capitalism.  Capitalism requires open and competitive markets but a protective tariff represents government closing of markets to competition or hindering competition in the market place and picking winners and losers in the marketplace by increasing the cost of competing in the market for some companies and not others.  The winners are the favoured domestic producers. The losers are the consumers who are deprived of the lower prices and higher quality that result from competition for their business.


To call Donald Trump and his supporters conservative, Republican, or capitalist when their economic view resembles that of self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (although in fairness to the Senator, he apparently opposes tariffs on Canada while supporting them on everyone else - apparently capitalism is good for Canada but everyone else needs protection from competition and higher prices) more than that of Ronald Reagan, is laughable.

The President's Fuzzy Math

President Obama trumpeted new regulation spearheaded by the EPA that will require the nation's fossil fuel burning plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% from 2005 levels (which were 10% higher than 2012 levels).  According to the Los Angeles Times, this represents, "one of the biggest steps any country has ever taken to confront climate change."

Of course critics predictably either question the consensus view of global warming, arguing that it is not primarily due to anthropogenic carbon emissions; or argue that such regulations will come with very high economic costs by intentionally restricting the use of the cheapest and most efficient fuels.  Whether or not there is any merit to those arguments is less relevant (although cost-benefit analysis is important) than the more fundamental question of whether or not this plan, assuming the consensus view of global warming is correct, will significantly effect or reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

Currently, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are near 400 parts per million (ppm).  The United States accounts for 19% of the world's carbon emissions, or 76 ppm (0.19 x 400).  Fossil fuel burning plants account for 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, or 7.6% of the world's total (.19 x .40 x 100%), or 30.4 ppm (.4 x 76).   The regulation would require a 30% reduction from a time when U.S. emissions were 10% higher.  So, if the U.S. power plant contribution were currently 10% higher than it is (10% of 30.4 ppm is slightly more than 3 ppm), the total would be about 34 ppm and if that contribution were reduced by 30% (34 x .3) then the U.S. contribution to atmospheric CO2 concentration would be reduced by 10.2 ppm for an overall reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration of 2.5% (10.2 ppm/400 ppm x 100%).  The calculations would be similar, by the way, for raw emissions rather than concentrations as, in 2008, were 35000 teragrams (corresponding to a 350 ppm concentration).

So, assuming every other nation on the planet completely froze atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. effort would decrease atmospheric CO2 concentrations by a whopping 2.5% to 390 ppm.  The effect of that on warming would probably be negligible and would certainly be obliterated by the continued CO2 emissions from U.S. sources not due to fossil fuel burning power plants (such as automobiles) and continued contributions from other countries, particularly developing countries such as China and India.  Both these sources could be expected to increase and China and India currently account for 30% of the world's carbon emissions.  Finally it is important to point out that the most abundant and important greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide but rather it is water vapour.  Water vapour occurs in the atmosphere at concentrations of up to 4 parts per hundred, or 40,000 ppm, which is 100 times the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.

Even assuming the consensus view of global warming is correct, the notion that this negligible reduction in the world's increase in emissions of a trace greenhouse gas will meaningfully impact global warming is absurd.  Therefore, if the program has any cost at all, no matter how trivial, it is not worth the zero benefit derived from it.

Asylum

Relations between the United States and Russia are currently strained because of Russia's decision to grant political asylum to Edward Snowden.  Snowden is a computer specialist who has done contract work for both the CIA and the NSA.  Recently he has made public details about the NSA's domestic surveillence program on U.S. citizens.

Government officials on both sides of the aisle have labeled Snowden a criminal.  He has been called a spy and a traitor.  Yet, Snowden wasn't peddling his information to foreign governments, terrorist organizations, or enemies of the United States.  Rather, he was peddling his information to news organizations.  He wasn't sharing U.S. government secrets with the enemy, rather he was sharing them with the very American people that U.S. government ostensibly exists to protect.  Sharing information with the American people about their goverment spying on them is espionage and treason?

President Obama wants Snowden extradited to the United States to face trial.  Just today the President denied that Edward Snowden was a patriot and he called on Snowden to explain his actions in court.  But think back a few decades ago.  Suppose a Soviet dissident, who had revealed evidence of the communist regime in Moscow spying on Russian citizens and abusing their civil liberties, sought asylum in the United States.  Would the U.S. have granted asylum?  You betcha.  But how is the morality of Edward Snowden's situation different just because it is now the U.S. government spying on its citizens?

Police State

I have no idea what was going on this morning in my neighbourhood this morning, but police had and entire street blocked off and at least a dozen men that looked like a military unit, but were probably a S.W.A.T. team, in helmets and combat fatigue were present.   There was, perhaps, a serious situation brewing on that street, but I found their presence more scary than reassuring.  It reminded me of a trip to Prague my wife and I took a few years ago.  Prague is a lovely city and I would highly recommend it as a travel destination.  Immediately after checking in to our hotel, we went over the the Old Town Square, which is a delightful place just to hang out.  It is vibrant with people, picturesque with a beautiful centuries old astronomical clock, lined with cafes and restaurants and chock full of vendors of food and wonderful Czech beer.  That night there was a large group of Polish soccer fans, in Prague for a big game, shouting and waving Polish flags.  Not speaking a word of Polish (or Czech for that matter), I had no idea what they were chanting and perhaps it was obscene or over the line, but my impression was that they weren't particularly rowdy.  Nonetheless there was a police response to the soccer fans that consisted of helmeted police officers with clubs and shields forming a perimeter around them and helicopters with search lights overhead.  It certainly seemed like overreaction to us and served as a scary reminder that the Czech Republic had been, not so long ago, a communist bloc police state (we quickly returned to our hotel).

Observing a similar scene in my own neighbourhood this morning (even though there may be a perfectly legitimate reason for it) was chilling and reminded me of how little the country I live in resembles the country I grew up in.  While there is long way to go between the United States in 2013 and Czechoslovakia circa 1968, slowly and inexorably the United States is becoming a surveillance state and police state.  Cameras are everywhere keeping an eye on us, although most notably now at intersections and speed traps.  Police forces are increasingly relying on paramilitary S.W.A.T. teams and becoming increasingly well armed.  There is even talk about police forces using unmanned drones.  Courts have ruled that police can place a tracking device on your car (even while it is sitting in your driveway) without a warrant and I have discussed the increased federal surveillance in a previous post.

What has changed?  Has the United States become a more dangerous place since I was kid?  No, not really.  Despite all the furor over gun control sparked by the recent school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, homicides by gun were the same or less in 2004 than in the 1970's, 1980's or 1990's, and therefore lower per capita.  Jihadist terrorism is nothing new as employees of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Marines in Beirut in 1983, relatives of passengers on PanAm Flight 103 in 1988, or anyone who remembers Jim McKay's report from the 1972 Munich games can attest.  The challenges to an undeveloped nation developing a nuclear weapon remain steep and the dangers posed by radiological dirty bombs remain overestimated.  What has changed is technology and fear.  In the 1970's and 1980's we didn't have speed cameras, unmanned drones, or high tech scanners at airports and GPS devices weren't ubiquitous.  Nor did we voluntarily relinquish privacy by carrying GPS trackers in our pockets (smart phones) and putting every increasing amounts of data about ourselves into the public domain through blogs like this one or on social media sites.  However, we accept this ever increasing surveillance because, despite the fact that threats have not changed and the vast majority of us live full lives in relative safety, we have become more afraid.  9-11 has generated so much persistent fear for two reasons.  The first its simple audacity.  Khalid Sheik Mohammed is often described as the, "mastermind," of the attack, but this is gross overstatement.  It didn't take a genius to send 19 hijackers to the U.S. on student or work visas and have them hijack four planes armed with box cutters.  It wasn't brilliant, but it was tragically effective and seeing such death and destruction caused by such simple actions and planning is indeed scary.  Secondly, 9-11 represented a paradigm shift.  Previously, hijackings were more about taking hostages than using the plane itself as a weapon.  While this paradigm shift does require some alteration in how we respond to terrorism, our reaction to it which has included increasingly invasive airport searches and multiple foreign wars, some of which had nothing to do with the attackers, represents gross overreaction to what was, is, and always will be, a low frequency event.  Similarly the disturbing headlines about a school shooting may motivate us to action, but the fact of the matter remains that the vast majority of gun homicides are not mass shootings.

And so fear, largely irrational, has fueled the transformation of the United States into a country increasingly hard to recognize compared to the country of my youth.  But, what if  the greater threat to life and liberty is not external but internal?  What if the greater threat is the surveillance we've agreed to place ourselves under?  What if the greater threat is the greater concentration of power, power that can be abused, in the hands of fewer and fewer people who are those that are supposed to keep us safe?  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Fiscal Lemmings

As of the time of this writing, Congress and the President have a little more than 36 hours to come to some sort of agreement or we will, "go over the fiscal cliff."  It is important to understand what is meant by the, "fiscal cliff."  In its failure to act on meaningful deficit reduction as outlined by the Simpson-Bowles commision and as part of a previous deal to raise the government's debt ceiling, Congress passed a law that mandated certain tax increases and spending cuts to kick in automatically unless a new law aimed at deficit reduction was passed.  The problem many have with the fiscal cliff is that it raises taxes and cuts spending across the board rather than in a targeted fashion.  While the silver-tongued persuasively argue that our deficit should be addressed with surgical precision, using a scalpel rather than a chainsaw, to target tax increases to those who can best afford them and cutting waste and redundancy rather than cutting programs that benefit real people; the realty is such arguments are usually a smokescreen to allow protection of favoured constituencies. 

If no agreement is reached, on January 1, 2013, the payroll tax cut will expire and everyone's income tax rates will revert to Clinton era rates.  Other than poverty assistance programs, all government spending will be cut across the board approximately 8%, including military spending.  Republicans don't want this to happen because they refuse to raise anyone's taxes and they don't want to cut one cent from military spending.  Democrats don't want this to happen because, although they spent years arguing that the Bush tax cuts were irresponsible and Clinton tax rates were appropriate, they only want to raise taxes back to Clinton rates on the wealthy and they don't want to cut entitlement spending.  Currently, both parties are focusing on the effects of the tax hikes on middle class families and on the economy and any "deal" that seems likely to emerge will probably entail skipping the hard spending cuts, making no cuts in military spending, and raising taxes on people making somewhere between $250,000 and $1,000,000 per year, depending on what kind of deal can be reached.  While this would avoid, "the cliff," it would be the worst possible outcome for our country.  We would avoid a short term impact on the economy from higher taxes, but make no progress to reducing our deficit or long term fiscal responsibility.  For twelve years now, Americans have been getting more and more government and paying less and less for it.  This has to stop.  As far as I can tell, the only way to get any meaningful cuts in federal spending from our two political parties is to go over the cliff and accept Clinton era tax rates for everyone (these rates didn't seem to stunt economic growth in the 1990's).

This morning on ABC's This Week, former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) argued in favour of going over the cliff.  He pointed out that the most important problem facing our country today is our deficit, which desparately needs to be reduced and expressed the opinion that the only way to both increase revenue and decrease spending appears to be at this point to let the New Year roll in without a deal.  He also argued that doing so would cause short term losses in financial markets but that in six months they would rally because uncertainty would be removed:  everyone would know what tax rates would be, everyone would understand that finally there is going to some spending cuts, and everyone would know that the United States is at last curbing its deficit.  He's right and conservatives Marc Thiessen and Avik Roy made identical points in the Washington Post and the National Review on Friday (December 28, 2012). 

A deal that generates minimal increased revenue by raising taxes on only a small fraction of Americans, that does not subtantially reduce federal spending, and that does not cut military spending at all is not in the best interests of our country.  While there are valid concerns about the effects of higher taxation on the economy, continued borrowing and printing is more detrimental as it devalues the currency and must ultimately be paid back with interest, representing an even higher hidden tax on future generations.  If some phony eleventh hour deal is reached, Wall Street will rally and Americans will breathe a sigh of relief at avoiding the scary cliff.  But the reality is, Howard Dean, Marc Thiessen, and Avik Roy are right. We should be rushing like lemmings over this cliff.  Now is not the time for a deal.  Now is the time for Congress to engage in what John Randolph of Virginia called in 1828, "masterly inactivity."

Happy New Year, 1984

As 2012 comes to a close it seems more and more likely that the new year will not be 2013, but rather George Orwell's 1984.  While it is still difficult to envision the oppressiveness of Mr. Orwell's Stalinist Oceania taking root in the United States, Sinclair Lewis was right to warn us in a similarly themed novel that simply believing, "It Can't Happen Here," will not secure our liberty.

I remember about a decade ago having a conversation with someone, who was likely a partisan Democrat, who asserted he couldn't support George W. Bush because of the PATRIOT Act.  While I didn't think quickly enough to ask whether or not he had voted for Bob Dole in 1996 because Bill Clinton proposed the same measures in his 1995 anti-terrorism bill, I do think he was right to be leary of the PATRIOT Act.  Its only saving grace was that provisions would sunset unless renewed, so that if it was an overreach it could be corrected later when cooler heads prevailed.  Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act has been renewed in its entirety (most recently in 2011).  Its most controversial provisions include allowing the government to search your personal records, whether library, financial, medical, etc., without your knowledge or consent; allowing for secret searches of your home or property without your advanced knowledge; allowing the government to demand your records from a third party by subpoena (a security letter) that requires no probable cause or judicial oversight; broadening the definition of a domestic terrorist; making easier to deport legal aliens; and loosening the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act) restrictions on eavesdropping.

As threatening as these measures are to civil liberty, what has happened since is absolutely chilling.  After discovering that the Bush administration had been ignoring the FISA law and not getting warrants for eavesdropping on calls made overseas, Congress, instead of impeaching the President, passed amendments to the FISA law essentially allowing warrantless eavesdropping.  More recently, the government has created the National Counterterrorism Center to sift through any and all government databases to look for evidence of possible criminal activity, even for individuals not currently under active investigation.  Although Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has, for now, dropped his bill that would allow the federal government to read all e-mail without a warrant, the Senate recently left provisions to require a warrant for all e-mail searches (regardless of how long it has been stored on a third party site) out of amendments to the Video Privacy Protection Act.  Federal courts have ruled that the government does not need a warrant to track your whereabouts via your GPS enabled cell phone.  On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed the 2012 renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a provision of which labels the United States as one battlefield in the war on terrorism and therefore anyone apprehended on U.S. soil, suspected of terrorism, can be detained indefinitely without charges being filed and without access to counsel or the courts.  At the President's insistence, language that would have protected U.S. citizens from this treatment was removed from the bill before final passage.  Although an amendment sponsored by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) that would restore constitutional protections of due process to American citizens suspected of terrorism was passed last month, Congress seems poised to pass a 2013 renewal of the NDAA that strips American citizens of this protection (further proof that lawmakers don't read the bills as the Senate voted for the amendment restoring protection for U.S. citizens 67-29 and then voted for a 2013 NDAA stripped of those protections 81-14).  Finally, the government maintains a program of targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists and reserves the right to assassinate even American citizens suspected of terrorism without due process.  Actually the administration claims that internal review by White House officials constitutes "due process."  It is a strange concept of due process, indeed, that does not involve formal charges, confrontation by an accuser, access to counsel, review by an impartial judge and trial by a jury of peers.  As discussed in a previous post, the administration has already assassinated American citizens under this program.

So what does all this mean?  It means that it is currently considered legal for the government to sift through your personal records and information in government data bases, read your e-mails, eavesdrop on your overseas phone calls, monitor the books you check out from the library or videos you rent, and track your whereabouts via your mobile phone all without your knowledge and without a warrant.  If, after this massive invasion of your privacy, it then suspects you of terrorism or ties to terrorists it can apprehend you and hold you indefinitely without access to counsel or without a trial.  Or, alternatively, it could order your execution, again without leveling any charges or allowing access to counsel or trial by jury.  In other words, your fourth amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures and your fifth amendment protection not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law have now become completely meaningless.  Since all this can be done in secret and without warrants or trials, the government need not produce publically or in court any evidence whatsoever that their suspicions about you are true and therefore there is actually nothing preventing the unscrupulous from misusing this authority arbitrarily.  In other words, your only real protection against having these powers used unjustly against you when you have done nothing wrong is the good intentions of those that wield this power.  Perhaps the current administration is scrupulous about who it spies on, who it detains, and who it assassinates; but even if that is true, what is to prevent subsequent administrations from being less scrupulous?  Doesn't this level of government surveillence, government detention, and government assassination sound like Big Brother's Oceania?  And it has already happened here.

In her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe is quick to point out that owner's like Simon Legree are the exception rather than the rule.  Her point is that no matter how unlikely it is for an owner to treat slaves like Simon Legree treated Tom, a system under which such treatment is perfectly legal is immoral.  Likewise no matter how unlikely it is that the above powers could be turned on innocent American citizens, a system in which doing so could be construed as perfectly legal cannot be allowed to stand.  Benjamin Franklin warned us that, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  Yet this is route we, as a nation have taken.  And so we usher in a new year that is not really 2013, but rather Orwell's 1984.

Maryland Question 6

My apologies to readers outside the state of Maryland for this post on a Maryland ballot question for the 2012 election.  However, the issue of same-sex marriage is one that has been raised in virtually every state in the Union and will be debated in all fifty.  Therefore, I hope the general reader will also find this post of interest - Publius

The state of Maryland will have the following referendum (question 6) on the ballot on November 6, 2012.  A vote for question 6:

Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.

Although I intend to vote for question 6, I do not think this represents the best solution to the issue.  This issue ultimately revolves around differences of opinion between people of different orientations and different religious traditions about what constitutes a marriage.  Some see it as a sacred union, made holy by God, that is meant only to bind a man and woman together to become one, for the purpose of sharing a life together and raising a family.  Others see it as life-long commitment of fidelity between two people who love one another.  Others still see it as both.  The question is, why should the state be involved at all in this personal arrangement between two people?  While marriage means much more to the couples involved, to the state it merely represents a contract between two consenting adults.  The state's only role should be to mediate contract disputes (separations and divorces).  With any other contract, the state does not need to approve or give a license ahead of time, but the participants do have recourse to go to the state (the courts) if there is a dispute or breech of the contract.  Why does the state treat marriages differently?  If the state were out of the marriage business entirely then everyone would be free to marry whomever he or she chooses, provided both parties are adults and consent, within the dictates of his or her own conscience and religious tradition.  The ideal solution to this issue is not to expand state permission to marry to gay couples, but rather to get rid of state permission to marry altogether.

However, the preferable option is not on the table.  Therefore, I support question 6 as the next best alternative that would still treat everyone equally under the law.  This law would allow gay couples to enter in, and have legally recognized, the same type of life-long committed relationships as heterosexual couples.  Those who oppose gay marriage need not have one.  Churches that view homosexual behaviour as immoral need not perform them.  This is a pro-liberty law on every level.  It expands liberty for gay couples and protects the religious liberty of the traditionally married.

Recognizing the committed relationships of gay couples in no way threatens the time-honoured institution of traditional marriage, which remains a holy, loving, eternal commitment between a man and woman who, God willing, will start a family together.  In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."  Similarly, it does me no injury to me for my neighbour to have a same-sex spouse or no spouse.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

2012 Endorsement: Gary Johnson

In a previous post during the Republican primary, I endorsed Ron Paul for President in 2012.  With the Republican convention over, Mitt Romney officially nominated, and Ron Paul out of the race (he is not running as a third party candidate and in many states would not qualify to be on the ballot as a third party candidate due to "sore loser" laws), I endorse Gary Johnson, now the Libertarian Party candidate, for President of the United States in the upcoming general election.

In my Ron Paul endorsement, I gave serious thought to Gary Johnson, who at the time was also in the Republican primary.  Ron Paul was the more electable candidate in the GOP primary because of his abortion position that was more in line with rank and file Republicans, his ability to raise money, his organization, and his poll numbers that kept him included in the debates.  Despite lacking these advantages, Governor Johnson was and remains a credible candidate for President of the United States.  A former two-term Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson has executive experience and is the only candidate in the race ever reelected to executive office.  As governor, Gary Johnson engaged in the type tax cutting and spending cutting that other Republicans merely talk about.

As President, Governor Johnson would submit a plan to balance the federal budget next year.  This plan would include meaningful entitlement reform, a massive reduction in military spending by ending our involvement in unnecessary foreign wars, and the elimination of corporate welfare and industrial subsidies.  Governor Johnson would abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with a national sales tax, a position I also advocated in a previous post.  While Governor Johnson has not advocated a position on tighter monetary policy, he has promised a credible audit of the Federal Reserve.  As President, he would not sign extensions of the PATRIOT Act or reauthorizations of the NDAA that allow for infinite detention of American citizens.  He would end the practice of targeted assassinations of American citizens without real due process and stop the aggressive raids of medical marijuana clinics.  He is the only candidate in the race who will avoid a war with Iran.  If we are serious about limiting the scope of government, promoting peace, dealing with our debt crisis to create an atmosphere in which sustainable economic growth is possible, and restoring our civil liberties, then the only credible candidate is Gary Johnson.  Governor Johnson has both the principles and the executive experience to get the job done.

Some would argue that voting for Governor Johnson, or any third party candidate that isn't likely to win, is wasting your vote.  Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney represent the status quo.  With only minor differences, they both represent continuing the same failed policies of the last twelve years.  The same government tinkering with the marketplace, the same relentless assault on civil liberties in the name of security, and the same overseas military adventurism.  How is voting for that not a waste of a vote?  While I acknowledge that Governor Johnson is unlikely to prevail in November, it is equally important to acknowledge that real change, the kind of change we need to protect both our liberty and our security, is not going to come from either major party if we continue to endorse their maintenance of the status quo.  On the other hand, if enough Americans take a stand in November, if enough object to the two party duopoly, if enough make it clear that the status quo is unacceptable, then maybe, just maybe, the seeds of change can be sown.  If Gary Johnson can achieve a meaningful share of the vote, say 5% nationally or 1-2% in a swing state that decides the result in that state, then perhaps one of the two major parties would get the message and understand that those of us that believe in liberty and limited government can no longer be ignored (or face irrelevancy as a consequence of ignoring us).  Don't waste your vote on the status quo this November.  Strike a blow for liberty and vote for Gary Johnson!

Nationalize Facebook?

This article in Slate the most asinine thing I have ever seen (OK, OK, second most asinine. The most asinine was the Facebook page, “Libertarians for Obama).  The premise is that to protect our privacy the federal government that eavesdrops on phone conversations, tracks whereabouts using the GPS on our cell phones, doesn’t need a warrant to place tracking devices on our vehicles and monitors what we check out from the library should take over Facebook.  Absurd.

Translation: Facebook is successful and profitable, Facebook has outcompeted its competitors, Mark Zuckerberg has gotten rich off Facebook, and that is just not fair so the public should own it instead.

It isn’t really even about privacy as the article goes on to explain all the wonderful things government could do if it had access to our Facebook data, “Many academics are finding that big social network data sets can generate surprising and valuable information for addressing social problems—for instance, public health and national security. Researchers are working on ways to use social networking patterns to predict the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. We could even use Facebook data to analyze criminal networks in the United States or terrorist networks around the world. We'd want to be careful about the circumstances under which our security services had access to Facebook data…”  And, later in the article, “Facebook’s data harvesting could be used to improve public policy, yet scholars rarely find the company willing to collaborate on important research questions,” which sounds an awful lot like Facebook PROTECTING our privacy to me.

The bottom line is Facebook is not private.  It is a public forum on the internet.  Anything you post here, any data you put into your profile about yourself is not private.  It is no more private than what you say to friends at a party or shout across a public square.  If you want to keep something private, don’t put it on Facebook.  We all use Facebook voluntarily and can choose not to use it if we are concerned about the privacy of our data (I know many people who do not use it for that reason).

As someone who frequently posts things critical of the government, I for one would stop using it if the government took it over.  But, I suppose if the government took over Facebook there would also be an individual mandate to use it since we have determined that the government can force you to do anything as long as they do so by taxing you for not doing it.  Then Facebook could be just like the two way televisions in Oceania…

The Commerce Clause and Health Care Reform

The signature legislative achievement of President Obama's first term has been the passage of comprehensive health care reform.  The bill has many laudable goals, including allowing adult children still in school to stay on their parents' health insurance for longer, allowing health insurance to be portable so one does not lose it if one loses his or her job, and mandating coverage for people with preexisting conditions.  There is broad bipartisan agreement on these provisions and they are not controversial.  Another laudable goal of the legislation is to provide universal coverage: to make sure every American has health insurance coverage.  The legislation does so by mandating that everyone purchase private health insurance (with an assistance program for those who cannot afford it) or pay a penalty for not having health insurance.  It is this provision that is controversial and has led to challenges of the law in the courts.  After hearing oral arguments two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule next week on the constitutionality of the health insurance mandate.

There are some good and practical reasons for supporting the health insurance mandate.  First, it does provide coverage to everyone.  No American would ever have to forgo medical treatment due to not having coverage.  Secondly, it is the mandate that allows for the ability to cover patients with preexisting conditions.  Some of the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance lack it because they are unable to afford it.  However, others choose not to buy it.  Those that choose not to buy it are usually either wealthy (and can afford cash payments for health care) or young and reasonably healthy and therefore they are taking the calculated risk that they will not need health insurance in the short term.  The only way health insurance companies could afford to add patients with preexisting conditions for whom it is clear there will be many claims to pay is to have this pool of patients who are unlikely to file claims paying premiums to offset the cost of the others.  The mandate accomplishes this and this represents the crux of the administration's argument in favour of the mandate.  Because choosing not to buy health insurance affects the coverage of others, either the ability to cover those with preexisting conditions or the increased premiums we all pay to defray the cost of treating the uninsured in hospitals and emergency rooms (it is illegal to deny emergency care to anyone regardless of their insurance status), the government has the interests of others to protect and therefore the right to make health insurance compulsory.  The same principle is often argued on the state level to make automobile insurance compulsory (although the comparison is a poor one because auto insurance mandates are state mandates, not federal and one can evade an auto insurance mandate by choosing not to drive).

There are many reasons why an individual health insurance mandate may not be the best way to achieve universal coverage, but such a discussion is beyond the scope of this post (although some of them were very well articulated by the President when he was running for the Democratic nomination).  Assuming, however, that the individual mandate is a good, or perhaps the best, way to achieve universal coverage; just because a policy or piece of legislation is good, practical, effective, and/or just does not make it legal or constitutional.  The powers of federal government are defined and limited and those limits should only be exceeded by constitutional amendment because such expansion of federal authority sets precedent for future acts of government and there may be unintended, negative, consequences of transferring sovereignty from the people to the government.  As the great, progressive, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (a Woodrow Wilson appointee) said in his dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States (in which he argued the federal government should not have the authority for wiretapping), "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 encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."  Therefore it is important to ask of any potential legislation not, "will it work? or will it help people?" but rather, "is it constitutional?"  Ideally this question should be asked by legislators before passing legislation, but when Congress passes and the President signs legislation without regard to its constitutionality, the appropriate forum for constitutional review is in the courts.  While some may be using a legal challenge to the President's health care legislation cynically and opportunistically to thwart the President's agenda or prevent others from having access to health care, the fact remains that it is important to always ask whether any expansion of government power is constitutional.  That question has been asked in the courts and soon the Supreme Court will rule.

The constitutionality of the individual mandate boils down to an interpretation of the commerce clause in Article I of the constitution which gives Congress the authority to pass laws regulating economic activity.  According to the text, Congress has the power, "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."  It grants power to regulate interstate commerce only.  However, as the economy of the United States has become progressively more intertwined it has been argued that commerce in one state has an effect on the others and therefore the federal government has assumed broad powers to regulate nearly all commercial activity.  Indeed, since the New Deal, courts have historically upheld this expansive view of the commerce clause.  However, to argue that the individual mandate falls under the commerce clause is to argue that the commerce clause empowers the government to regulate the lack of commerce. Commerce consists of the voluntary exchange of goods or services between buyers and sellers.  There may be laws governing how such exchange is structured and there may be a tax on the transaction, but the action itself consists of voluntary cooperation between buyer and seller.  The health insurance mandate is nominally a tax (there is a fine levied if one does not purchase health insurance), but it does not regulate how health insurance is bought and sold or tax the actual sale.  It does in fact take someone who had chosen NOT to engage in commerce and force them to do so.  This is an absurd reading of the commerce clause.  There may be good reasons for doing it, as discussed above (and it may be perfectly legal for states, such as Massachusetts, to do) but it clearly falls outside the enumerated powers of federal government.  Who knows whether or not such a mandate, if upheld, would ultimately lead to a grosser infringement on individual liberty, but that is the whole point: negative consequences may be unforeseen.  For these reasons, the Supreme Court should strike down the individual mandate and Congress should either amend the constitution to specifically allow the federal government to determine when commerce shall occur (rather than allowing spontaneous commerce) or pass a health insurance bill without a mandate which either allows the purchase of health insurance across state lines (an example of interstate commerce) or provides a public option for the uninsured as candidate Obama articulated.

Some Personal Reflections on Memorial Day

I was watching The Chris Matthews' Show yesterday and found a conversation the panel had about military service interesting.   They were discussing whether or not military service in a political candidate made much difference anymore with regard to electability.  The youngest person on the panel (Kasie Hunt) pointed out that it is no longer as universal an experience as it once was.  In the Greatest Generation almost everyone served. The same was true for Baby Boomers who were subjected to a draft during the Vietnam war.  But, in my generation (X) and younger, as we have fought wars with an all volunteer service, a far fewer percentage have served.  She went further to explain that less of us these days even know someone who is serving or has served.   This strikes me as true.  While I have friends who have served or are serving, the last members of my family to serve fought in World War II.  Despite extended conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have not lost anyone and, of course, our homeland has not truly been threatened.  While many have lost loved ones in these conflicts, my experience is far from unique.  In fact, I'll wager it is the norm.  Relatively few of us are feeling the pain or experiencing the horror of these wars.

It should not be lost on any of us that even when war is necessary, it is horrible.  Today is a day to remember those who have paid the ultimate price and rendered what President Lincoln called, "the last full measure of devotion," in the defense of our nation and for the cause of liberty.  Robert E. Lee observed, "It is well that war is so terrible, else we should become too fond of it."  But for most of us, is it so terrible?  Most of us live in peace and comfort while volunteers, men and women far braver than I, risk life and limb on battlefields half a world away on our behalf.  Which begs the question, what impact does the fact that a majority of Americans don't experience the horror of war have on our war policy?  Are we too quick to engage in conflict?  Have we become, as a society, too fond of it?  Certainly our political leaders order these young men and women to their deaths with impunity.  The Dick Cheneys, Newt Gingriches, Barack Obamas, Rick Santorums, Mitt Romneys, and Hilary Clintons have all advocated for the projection of military power abroad without ever having served themselves or even having sons and daughters serving (John McCain is a notable exception here.  While I often disagree with his hawkishness, at least he knows full well what he is asking our servicemen and women to do).  Those that decide whether or not we go to war do so without any personal stake. They are all, as Congressman Paul described them, chicken hawks.  How easy is it for them to order other people's sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles into battle?  How easy is it for us to let them when we are not impacted directly by their sacrifice?  For my fellow trekkers (and others who share my view that everything they ever needed to know in life they learned from watching Star Trek), I am reminded of the original series episode, "A Taste of Armageddon," in which two planets remain perpetually at war for eons because the war is entirely computer simulated, with casualties then assigned to report to painless execution chambers.  Without the violence and destruction and with relatively few providing the sacrifice, the societies in this episode tolerated war indefinitely and had no incentive to seek peace.  Is this what is to become of us?  Shall we become society perpetually at war because we have removed its sting from most of the population?

Let us today remember all those who have paid that terrible price and let us pray for the day when there are no more of them to remember.

Free Speech

Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule on a federal law restricting free speech until the 20th Century, debate about what the constitutional protection to free speech means is as old as the republic itself.  Jefferson was swept into the presidency in 1800 largely due to the unpopularity of the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed into law by President Adams in 1798.  Specifically, the Sedition Act made it a crime to publish, "false, scandalous, and malicious," writing against government officials.  Opponents of the act argued that it made it a crime to be critical of the government and that this was unconstitutional under the first amendment which mandates, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..."  In the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively argued, that these laws were unconstitutional and should be nullified by the states.  In the Kentucky Resolution, Jefferson pointed out that protections on free speech are designed specifically to protect speech that is, "obnoxious to the views," of the government, "or thought dangerous to...their elections or other interests..."  The lesson here is clear.  The first amendment exists to protect your right to be critical of your own government.  Without it, political opposition can be silenced by force and imprisonment, or by the threat of force, and society can no longer remain free.  Although the first amendment initially applied only to the federal government, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment now extends this constitutional protection to all levels of government.  In Brandenburg v. Ohio [1969] the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this protection extended even to the advocacy of violence as long as such advocacy did not constitute an, "incitement to imminent lawlessness."

And yet this broad protection of expression critical of government is under attack in 2012 by a federal court in Virginia.  A Virginia sheriff (B.J. Roberts) fired six employees.  One of these employees, Daniel Carter, claimed that he was fired for clicking "like" on the facebook page of Sheriff Roberts' rival in his reelection bid, Jim Adams.  While it is far from clear that this was the reason that Mr. Carter was dismissed, the judge in this case declared that the issue was moot because clicking "like" on facebook did not constitute protected free speech!  A U.S. magistrate in Florida has ruled that a facebook page set up to criticize a teacher is protected speech under the first amendment, but Judge Raymond Jackson in Virginia ruled that simply clicking "like" on facebook does not amount to "expressive speech," as a posted comment would.  Really?  How is clicking "like" any less expressive than writing a cheque to a political campaign, something the Supreme Court has ruled is political speech?  How is it any less expressive than planting a sign in your front yard or putting a bumper sticker on your car, actions that everyone would recognize as protected political speech?  All are public statements made in support of a political candidate.  Isn't it the point of the first amendment to prevent precisely what is alleged to have happened in this case: the intimidation or retributive action taken by an employer or an elected official (in this case both) against someone for having opposing political views or supporting an opposing candidate?  How in the world could anyone who spent five minutes in law school, or ten seconds reading and thinking about the first amendment, dismiss this issue so casually? 

We can only hope Mr. Carter is appealing this decision and that an appellate court will recognize its absurdity.  Until then be careful: while I am protected in writing this blog, if you like it on facebook and your employer or elected official does not, you are not protected from retribution.  Unless, of course, you leave a comment.

Smith-Amash Amendment

Sent this letter to my Congressman today urging him to support an amendment to the NDAA authored by Adam Smith (D-WA) and Justin Amash (R-MI) that would restore protections against indefinite detention to U.S. citizens.

I realize that after the next election (with the redistricting), I will no longer reside in your district.  Nonetheless, I am writing as a current constituent and previous supporter about an important issue before this Congress.

As you know, at the beginning of the year, the House and Senate passed and President Obama signed a renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  Among other things, this act grants the Executive branch the authority to indefinitely detain, without charges or trial, terrorist suspects apprehended in the United States.  Initially designed to give the federal government the same power to deal with foreign nationals planning terrorist acts on U.S. soil the same way it deals with enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan or Iraq, the original language of this bill (and previous authorizations) has included language to protect U.S. citizens from being treated this way.  However, President Obama insisted that such protections be removed before signing the bill and the final version passed into law grants the authority to detain any American citizen indefinitely for suspicion of terrorism without allowing that person access to counsel or trial or producing evidence.

This is an egregious assault on the civil liberties of Americans.  Everyone deserves their day of court.  The state must show guilt beyond reasonable doubt.  On this, the Constitution could not be clearer.  The fifth amendment states, "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."  It is a strange concept of due process, indeed, if it does not include access to counsel, a speedy trial, an impartial judge, and a jury of your peers.

While this provision of the law is blatantly unconstitutional, it will remain in effect until such a time as there is an effective legal challenge in the courts.  I am writing you to ask your support in stopping this erosion of civil liberties before it reaches federal courts.  Please support the Smith-Amash amendment to the NDAA to preserve the due process rights of American citizens and restore the protections to these rights that were initially in the bill.  Thank you.

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…