Love is a fire.
But whether it is going to warm your hearth or
burn down your house,
you can never tell.
Joan Crawford
Retarded Bumper Sticker of the Day
This is protectionist nonsense (see Murphy or Boudreaux for a scholarly rebuttal); there are comparative advantages for nations to produce goods or services. There are also jobs associated with exports. Competition is in the best interest of consumers, increasing the variety and quantities of goods, improving one's standard of living, stretching dollars. We also live in a more integrated economy where components or raw materials used by existing US manufacturers include foreign sources. Trade wars are lose-lose propositions. The true way to increase jobs is to improve economic growth--which does not mean industrial policy but giving businesses their liberty and the ability to keep more of what they earn to invest in new or improved products, services or capacity.
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| Via Bob Murphy HT Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek |
The Recent British Election
I usually don't comment on foreign elections, although I've been sharply critical of socialist/lefist regimes in Greece, Argentina, and Venezuela. The problem is that in a struggling global economy, it's fairly easy for the leftist demagogues to promote a no-worries tax-and-spend agenda and pretend that debt or unfunded liability issues can be punted to future legislatures. It thus did not surprise me when Conservative Prime Minister Cameron found the Labor Party approaching parity in polls with the Conservatives heading down the home stretch.
I have not followed British politics on the domestic level (I did follow the Scottish referendum and various EU-related topics (I favor a more decentralized policy)), but Prime Minister Cameron has annoyed me with his gushing embrace of Obama and his un-Conservative position favoring "gay marriage". (Of course, Edmund Burke never advocated blanket resistance to change, but his was more of a gradualist approach.)
But whatever my nuanced perception of Cameron, the last thing I wanted to see was a return to British socialist leadership to parallel the recent disastrous Greek elections, the state-of-denial response to overdue fiscal controls and streamlined government. The fact that poll numbers indicated a tight election but morphed into a near Conservative landslide in one of the most biggest political upsets in modern political history.
As the above-cited op-ed points out, Hillary Clinton should pay heed to what happened in Britain. (I'll paraphrase the discussion separately.) The Democrats think they'll be able to sustain their minority turnouts, if not grow them. Among other things, I don't think Hillary Clinton has the same political charisma as Bill or Barry, and I don't think that Obama's policies have been seen as particularly effective in those communities: blacks, for instance, have not participated during much of Obama's recovery, and while Obama has discussed immigration reform for long-term undocumented residents, he's still deporting shorter-term residents. I'm not necessarily saying the GOP nominee will flip those voters (I think a lot depends on setting the right tone and policies), but apathetic voters could stay home. I also think the gender factor is being overrated: it's not so much about whether a woman can be President but whether Hillary Clinton should be President.
Hillary Clinton's electoral advantage--and disadvantage- is name recognition--and she's got some particularly high unfavorables from being on the national scene for over 20 years. The GOP has a large field which doesn't look your grandfather's GOP--including two Latino senators, a former female CEO, a former black surgeon, etc. You have a libertarian-like senator who is discussing criminal sentencing reform, criticizing the Fed and the Export-Import Bank, questioning government surveillance programs and the wisdom of knee-jerk interventionist policies in places like Libya and Syria. You find the most innovative policies on the GOP side of the ledger--while the Democrats are in a state of denial about the implications of an escalating national debt and unfunded liabilities. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated few leadership skills or taking any responsibility (e.g., Benghazi); she has been an unaccomplished senator and Secretary of State with a presumptuous sense of entitlement to the Oval Office. I suspect, just like English voters may be reluctant to admit support for the Conservative Party to pollsters, American voters may think it's not hip admitting you won't vote for the first female President. I think to a large extent Clinton's contemporary polls reflect the fact she's not seen as responsible for Obama's mistaken policies, and no doubt Democrats think that she's paid her dues after narrowly losing the 2008 nomination. But while Clinton may lock up the Dem vote, she has to worry against the Dem equivalent of McCain's strategy of linking himself to Bush, popular with the base but not outside it, or trying to co-opt conservative opposition, to the extent it positioned him poorly in the general election campaign. But most of all, if she thinks the pattern among English-speaking nations of more conservative party wins--including the increasing unpopularity of English and French socialists--not to mention the recent Israeli election--is a fluke, she may find her day of reckoning Election Day next year.
Facebook Corner
(Reason). A mother and her three daughters sought asylum from gang violence in El Salvador. Naturally, DHS locked them up for 9 months in an immigrant detention center. But this week, a judge finally released the family.
Yet we know if they were the politically correct type of immigrants, say, Cuban refugees, the US would bend over backwards to accommodate them. We need to stop a dysfunctional war on drugs, open up an Americas free trade zone, and have a liberalized immigration policy consistent with our unalienable freedom to migrate.
(FEE). We should be fighting to repeal, not streamline, the bloated welfare state.
What an answer: QUIT ####ING BREEDING. There aren't enough jobs to support all the damned people in this country. People procreate like rats and wonder why we're overpopulated and broke. We're running out of everything from food to space to money and everything else. QUIT. QUIT NOW. Or we're all going to drown.
You're not just economically illiterate. I suggest you go to the libertarian website humanprogress.org where in their current slide rotation they point out less money from family budgets is going to food and fewer young children are dying from starvation.
(National Review). It doesn't matter if what you say is offensive -- free speech protects ALL speech.
No. You have the right to your opinions regarding Islam and to express them without being repressed by the government or other parties. But we express our opinions in a social context. You don't have a right to violate other people's rights. In civil society, we don't have a right to aggressive behavior, verbal or nonverbal. You don't have the right to libel someone's reputation by spreading false rumors, etc. Does this mean that a fundamentalist Muslim has the right to be judge, jury and executioner? No. Even if we've done wrong, we are entitled to due process under the law. And we certainly have the right of commensurate self-defense if and when others attack us.
But suppose proponents of "gay marriage" decided to attack Christianity, which as a matter of scripture holds to the view of marriage as between a man and a woman, by sponsoring a contest displaying Jesus and His disciples in a gay orgy. I wonder how many Christians, agreeing with this thread, would regard this the same way as the Geller contest, which was particularly designed to offend the religious sensibilities of over a billion believers.
What Ms. Geller did was immoral and irresponsible, and it led to needless bloodshed. It would be one thing if you were to mock radical clerics/leaders, just like we Christians don't like being typecast as Westboro Baptists. If we expect civil tolerance for the espression of our beliefs, we must also practice it.
(Reason). Why? Because all we libertarians would need to do is point to the ballot and ask, "Here’s our argument against politics. Need we add anything?"
I'm rather tired of the trite complaint that the parties are the same, and it also seems rather stereotypical in terms of trying to make this a replay of the 1992 election based on surnames. Hillary Clinton is more strident and less pragmatic than Bill, without his executive experience, political charm, or ability to deal constructively with his political opposition. She is openly flirting with the leftist populists, with their tax-and-spend Politics of Envy and Keynesian economics, identity politics and special-interest coalitions of organized labor and environments. She is presenting herself as the Great Female Hope, pretending her gender, instead of policies and "experience", is her compelling electoral qualification. Think of how sorry the Democratic Party is to be running virtually the same political platform and priorities over at least the last 40 years--no trace of recognition on the nature of limits of centralized power. With the election of Clinton, we would be looking for more of the same, with her imitating Obama's unconstitutional power grab by abusing Presidential discretion through anti-democratic executive orders and the like.
Whereas I also favor Rand Paul and a more restrained, non-interventionist policy, I do think Richmond, like others, is underestimating Jeb Bush's more principled conservatism than that of his brother or the last two Presidential nominees. Even the left-wing press is attacking the image of Jeb as a so-called moderate; let us remember that Rubio was Bush's protege running against RINO-favorite Gov. Crist for the Senate seat in 2010. I've seen hints that Jeb Bush suggests there were mistakes made during his brother's Administration. I would hope that includes some of the high-spending domestic and meddlesome foreign policy agenda. Jeb Bush is also more reasonable on immigration policy than most GOP politicians/candidates. I think Jeb Bush is being underestimated; I have long argued that Romney basically should have thrown 12 years of Bush/Obama economic and foreign policy under the bus. I think Jeb Bush could be the most principled, politically savvy conservative to win the White House since Reagan. No, he's not a libertarian or a conservitarian like Rand Paul, but not the straw man Richmond is making him out to be.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Robert Ariail via Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Olivia Newton John (with Andy Gibb), "I Can't Help It"
