A minimalist approach to essential, transparent, accountable, flat, adaptable, responsive, solution-based government, rooted in virtuous individual autonomy, traditional values and free markets, with a bias towards reduction of government functionality, cost and scope
Krikorian is an anti-immigrant scholar who I find disingenuous; I've been following Cato Institute's Nowrasteh on Twitter and have followed innumerable exchanges (which I believe Nowrasteh has gotten the better of). This is the first clip I've seen of him "live" and David Bier does a good job debunking Krikorian's misleading statistics.
God Bless the Syrian Refugees, Beautiful Children of God
Political Cartoon
Courtesy of the original artist via Ron Paul
Courtesy of Ben Garrison via Audit the Fed
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Aretha Franklin, "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
Cultural Marxism
Cultural Marxism explained. This is too important not to share. Original video: https://youtu.be/dYu6qhd88_M
Posted by Richard Oarnah on Saturday, January 2, 2016
Obama: Me, Myself and I
In case you missed it -- this is a real gem.
Posted by National Review on Thursday, January 7, 2016
Quote of the Day Posterity -- you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. John Quincy Adams Chart of the Day: Federal Land Management
You have to pay money to visit Karl Marx's grave. Because the marx enthusiastists could not find a realistic way to maintain the property without charging visitors a fee. I'm just going to let you process that now
The Pentagon Slush Fund
Political Potpourri
The first poll of the new year is from California with Cruz narrowly leading Trump by 2, and Rubio and Carson trailing well behind.
Aretha Franklin (with the Eurythmics), "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves"
Propaganda and the Obama Presidency
Reality Show President: Inside the White House PR Machine
President Obama's photography staff continues to bypass the independent media through the skillful use of photography and social media. The boycott has sent a powerful message to the public about the use of presidential PR in news reports. But make no mistake about it: when it comes to crafting the president’s public image, the White House calls the shots.
Posted by Reason Magazine on Tuesday, January 5, 2016
This is a hard story for me because I'm a Viking fan and Adrian Peterson is a phenomenal running back; in 2012-13 he become 1 of just 7 running backs ever to rush 2000 yards in a season. Last year his younger 2-year-old son died of severe head injuries, allegedly caused by Joseph Patterson, boyfriend of the boy's mother. However, Adrian Jr., his 4-year-old son, misbehaved, and Adrian switched him, leaving clearly visible marks across his legs, days after the incident.
I realize not being a parent it's easy for me to say that I don't believe in corporal punishment, but I see kids as God's gifts. I occasionally babysat nephews and nieces, and they weren't always angelic. I remember playing a board game with my oldest nephews and niece, when the older two started kicking reach other under the table and the youngest was throwing game pieces at his siblings. I gave them two warnings to stop the nonsense, and then in my professor voice, I told them all to get ready for bed. They instantly went silent and looked at me with disbelief, like what did you do with cool Uncle Ronald? I was not angry, but I was firm. (Actually, I've seen a lot worse--at UTEP, a senior coed threw a temper tantrum in the middle of class. She had inferred a general warning about academic dishonesty applied to her, which is sort of like Perry Mason getting a member of the public to interrupt the proceedings of the court with "Is it me?") But I never raised a hand against them, even when a sister-in-law gave her (unsolicited) permission. Striking a child when you are in an emotional state--not good. I don't think it's a good idea to model impulsive violent behavior. One thing about growing up as a military brat; military personnel have to have a lot of self-control and discipline. I always treated kids like little people, asked them questions (favorite ice cream, whatever) and expressed enthusiasm for their accomplishments, say, getting to the next level of a computer game, which to be honest is not my thing. My second nephew once was drawing something, and I gave him lavish praise (although I never did take that history of art course Sister Marilyn wanted me to take--I was insisting on Sister Mary Christine's metaphysics class). My nephew over the next hour or two gifted me with maybe two dozen original masterpieces...
Yes, as the oldest of seven, I know about the terrible two's, etc. But a few weeks back, I was grocery-shopping at WalMart when a mom, quite frustrated with her crying 2 or 3-year-old child, shouting warnings at him, slapped his face which brought his crying to a whole new level. I resisted the urge to intervene; I wish she could have seen herself at that moment.
Going back to switching, no, Adrian, certainly not to the point of breaking skin. I don't care if your folks did the same or or if every Southerner switches his kids: there are better ways, and you have to remain in control of yourself.
The One Certainty about Global Warming; Statists Don't Have a Viable Solution: Free the Markets!
Obama Launches Second Apology Tour at the UN
Tell me you didn't say that... Aren't you proud, as the first post-racial President, this occurred on your watch? Do you have any more criticisms of America to make the case for the anti-Americans?
How Much of a Narcissist is Barack Obama?
Facebook Corner
(National Review). "On what basis did the president of the United States declare that a group of Muslims that calls itself the 'Islamic State' is 'not Islamic?'" I think this is a distortion of Obama's rhetoric. He was plainly quibbling about the term ISIS/ISIL calls itself, i.e., the Islamic State: "Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a "state".... ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple." Of course, Islam (denominational or not) is the state religion for over two dozen countries, and there are varied implementations of sharia law (personal and/or criminal) or secular law in Muslim countries. I think the situation is more complex than a legalistic what the definition of "is" is; for example, Iraqi soldiers are not "innocents". You might argue that ISIS is a resistance movement with nationalist aspirations. And certainly states have engaged in terror activities, e.g., the Gestapo. I do think that terrorizing religious minorities does seem inconsistent with the teachings of the Quran (Quran 2:256; Quran 60:8), but consider the bloody religious wars among Christian denominations in Europe: almost any movement can pick and choose verses to rationalize their activities. Of course, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the world's population and the vast majority of them are peace-loving.
(IPI). For Lollapalooza's first seven years, the event promoters didn’t have to pay the 5% city tax or the 1.5% Cook County tax, even as other music festivals did. The deal cost taxpayers, and saved the managing group, more than $1 million in 2011 alone. The deal was originally struck under ex-Mayor Richard Daley, who is now reaping the benefits of past alliances. Corrupt quid pro quo. Why does this not surprise me? Unethical? Clearly. I love the part about where Daley is being brought to the Austin project for his "vision"; I think Chicagoans may question that....
(Reason). It's almost too perfect: The Obama administration doesn't like being portrayed as unfriendly to the press, so its press office decides to stop a journalist from suggesting in a report that it is. Why am I not surprised by the actions of the White House Office of Propaganda and Censorship? Of punishing media sources/personnel for not providing enough positive spin to the White House perspective? What is transparent about this administration is its partisan, self-serving motives.
(Citizens Against Government Waste). As domestic violence and trademark scandals continue to surround the National Football League (NFL), many Members of Congress have questioned the validity of the NFL's tax-exempt status as some Senators have even introduced legislation that would revoke the league's tax classification. CAGW President Tom Schatz told the Washington Post, "When Congress starts deciding which organizations can be tax-exempt and which ones cannot, it's a very slippery slope." Do you think the NFL should lose its tax-exempt status? SHARE your thoughts below! http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/politics/could-the-nfls-scandals-cost-them-their-tax-exemption-status/2014/09/23/55bfee58-434d-11e4-8042-aaff1640082e_video.html Listening to a fascist demagogue like Cantrell want to punish the NFL over the overhyped "Redskins" kerfuffle or others engaging in the Politics of Greed over executive salaries is nauseating. I am sympathetic to Schatz' point over the tax code being used as a political weapon. However, what I don't find compelling is the lack of equal protection: why does the NFL have this break, while other major sports like MLB or the NBA don't? What we need is a more consistent, lower tax structure.
(Drudge Report). OBAMA INVOKES FERGUSON AT UN Obama starts his sequel apology tour at the UN.
(Citizens Against Government Waste). While advocates of a minimum wage increase continue to cite “democracy” and “equal rights” as relevant factors in the living wage equation, they fail to acknowledge that a substantial increase would both defy the basic rules of economics and decrease opportunity for all Americans. Alexandra Booze, CAGW's Manager of Media and Policy, writes "Instead of wagging his finger at Congress’s failure to 'give America a raise,' President Obama should instead give America a chance." Do you agree? SHARE your thoughts below. http://swineline.org/?p=9019 The minimum wage is basically a war on lower-skilled/experienced young workers. It is a prohibition on voluntary contracts between employers and workers. Note that only about 2% earn the minimum wage. As employees pick up valuable skills and training, they become more productive and valuable to employers, leading to wage increases (or risk competitors poaching their employees at market prices). Note that we have a surplus of unemployed workers at the current minimum wage; this suggests that the market-clearing wage is below the status quo. The existing minimum wage is a barrier to gainful employment at lower rates. And if I don't want them at $7/hour, I certainly won't hire them at $10-15. Moreover, I believe the prohibition hits smaller companies in a disparate fashion. The problem is not that businesses are "greedy"; it's that economic growth is too low--precisely because government policies make business planning more difficult, discourage savings and investment and raise the cost of labor. For example, in oil shale hub Williston, ND, WalMart starts its wages for many jobs at $17/hour; Williston has among the lowest unemployment rates in the country, with many oilfield workers making in the high 5-figures, low 6-figures. WalMart had to offer higher wages, not because of some government mandate, but business conditions.
Quote of the Day Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character. Albert Einstein
Image of the Day: The Unholy Trinity
Via the White House Propaganda Office
Former ObamaCare Czar Sebelius, The One, the Wicked Witch of the Left Coast
If There's One Thing Obama Knows, It's Symbolism
This is an original signature blog quote that I used extensively during the middle years of the blog. I won't say that I knew all the examples featured in the video, but some were obvious, even without the narrator saying a word--take Caroline Kennedy near the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office with The One; who isn't immediately reminded of John-Johnunder the desk or Caroline and John-John in their Halloween garb in the Oval Office? To be honest, maybe imitation is a form of flattery, but other than maybe patterning my right-handed batting stance after my baseball hero Harmon Killebrew, I liked to chart my own path. I won't say I haven't had my inspirations (for example, I loved the way Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica starts out by listing the strongest arguments against his own position, and I was thrilled when I figured out how he resolved it) But when people spend most of their time hiding behind soundbites and phony gimmicks, I instantly recoil like I would from a shyster or a slick used-car salesman trying to offload his lemon as a "cream puff".
What Have Liberalized Economies Done For Us? (Mental Note: Pope Francis Needs To Listen to Caplan, Not the Likes of "Politics of Envy" Krugman or Piketty)
Every single American schoolchild probably knows this poem and a related song, sung to the melody of "The Farmer in the Dell". The Independent has the story of one of the most important archeological finds in American history. On his first voyage were La Pinta, La Nina, and the flagship Santa Maria. The Santa Maria ran into a reef off the coast of Haiti and had to be abandoned. Barry Clifford and his team believe that they have located the wreck...
Facebook Corner
(Reason). We have a new contender for most-telling-ever Obamacare quote this morning: “We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has.” Huge false premise there: you did not have choice before. I see the point the article is trying to make, but when you consider it you realize the article is inciting fear based on a fundamentally false premise. The article would have you believe a consumer had a lot of choice *before* ACA, when in fact you had very very little. If you had a large full time employer, you had a limited choice of the plans the corporation decided they would pay for. Within those plans, you had a limited choice of providers the insurance company decided to support. Their choice. Not yours. They control your providers, your treatment, your meds. If you had a smaller employer, or were a independent contractor, you had a choice of having no insurance or having an outrageously expensive individual plan. If you had pre-existing conditions, prior to 1996 you were essentially uninsurable. After 1996 you had a mandated option of an outrageously expensive individual plan. Unfortunately, ACA is an insurance solution to a health care problem. It is better than what existed before for many people, but it still terribly flawed. People wonder what could possibly be worse than the government controlling health care. My answer is: what we have now and had BEFORE ACA: insurance companies controlling an individual's health care. Staggering ignorance here. First, health has been traditionally regulated at the state level. Among other things, there are interstate barriers to marketing, risk-pooling, etc. And contary to your assertion otherwise, most states had established high risk pools, which is a form of implementing guaranteed issue. ACA was not set up to shore up existing state/regional pools, allow insurers to market their own state-regulated policies nationally (including true catastophic insurance), allow pooling beyond state lines and/or self-insure like corporations with multi-state operations, etc. Recognize a broad issue here? The prohibition of a free market to dysfunctional government policies. Second, health insurance really isn't insurance but bundled health services. Principal reasons for that including corrupt special-interest groups trying to socialize costs through benefit mandates and dysfunctional tax policy providing tax-free benefits to employer-sponsored health insurance. In time, it was only natural that unions and/or employers would try to maximize preferred, discriminatory tax treatment to include ordinary vs. catastrophic expenses. Recall this was an FDR gimmick to pay lip service to his equally economically illiterate wage-and-price-controls. To this day, most economically illiterate "progressives" confuse compensation (wages and benefits) with wages. In other words, the government pretended that health benefits didn't count, hence so-called tax expenditures, an indirect subsidy for employer-sponsored insurance. This has an economically perverse effect by effectively reducing the market cost of healthcare, which exacerbates sector cost pressures (think supply and demand). I could go on and on, but ACA perversely makes a bad situation even worse by trying to centralize healthcare (never mind the government continues to implement below-cost prices for government health program participants) and tries to expand Medicaid (with the idea of vesting a larger percentage of the population to government healthcare). Your crackpot conspiracy theories about private healthcare sector insurers is purely ideological nonsense. First, the industry has SMALL profit margins compared to, say, high tech companies. Second, state barriers to entry lowers the number of companies, not to mention the very high cost of government regulation, which helps drive industry consolidation. The bottom line is the only REAL solution to the healthcare problem is NOT another failed government program, but restoration of a REAL free market.
Quote of the Day Decide on what you think is right, and stick to it. George Eliot
The Cult of Personality
I have never bought into the birther nonsense, the Bill Ayers' scandal, the socialist, etc. What I don't like is his deliberate manipulation of his image, his getting a little too full of himself, and his engaging in nonstop soundbites, redefining terms like "balanced", "fair", etc. (over and beyond his economic illiteracy, abysmal seat-of-the-pants activist foreign policy, etc.) Yes, other Presidents have done their share of carefully crafted images (e.g., in today's world, FDR's vain refusal to allow public view of his disability would rightly be condemned from ignoring the empowerment of what is possible despite a disability), but these usually didn't unduly restrict the press or cheapen the office of the Presidency by making appearances on questionable television programs.
Putin's Counter-Sanctions
My Native State vs. The People's Republic of California: Job Growth Since the Start of the Great Recession
HT: Carpe Diem
Facebook Corner
(Reason). The Texas Third Court of Appeals has upheld a punitive $5 tax levied on anyone who patronizes a strip club in Texas. Because Texas strip clubs stopped collecting the fee while it faced legal challenges (and some never started), they now face millions of dollars in retroactive payments owed to the state. No, the Tenth Amendment generally allows state policing functions: health, safety, morals, etc. Nothing is preventing you from moving to communities receptive to businesses combining drinking and strip clubs or simply paying the state tax, hiring exotic dancers to your private residence, accessing Internet porn, etc. Now personally I don't believe in majoritarian abuse of the taxing authority (including large taxes on cigarettes, beer, etc.), and I think the enforcement mechanisms aren't that cost-effective, but this isn't a blanket ban on strip clubs...
(Cato Institute). "It strangles growth and innovation for companies to have to prove ahead of time, to the satisfaction of discretionary regulators and politicians, that their products are good." First of all, the free market does not protect a vendor whom has harmed customers through defective products, negligent services, etc. Second, a vendor is only as viable as its reputation. Third, just as CPA's independently attest to fair financial statements (look at what happened to Arthur Andersen in the wake of Enron), industries could maintain independent certification plus an arbitration service, not unlike BBB. What's laughable is how all the Statists in this thread have totally ignored notoriously failed government regulators and had better hope that if and when they or a loved one is dying from a disease which has a cure bottlenecked by FDA bureaucrats, the cure will arrive before it's too little, too late.
(Cato Institute). "It's hard to escape the conclusion that Michael Sam paid a price for being openly gay, but we're on the road to a more open society for all."
[Editorial comment: Cato Institute, as I've mentioned in past posts, is hyping the unconventional concept of "marriage equality". Most of us have had a "live-and-let-live" attitude, which I believe is the legitimate libertarian, not cheering for State intervention into community norms. I've mentioned in past posts when I first moved to Houston, I quickly learned of the Montrose community being a gay hub in the city. Even though my personal belief system rejects the gay lifestyle, I never had any interest trying to impose my values on the Montrose community. And this was well before the common culture starting pushing the gay agenda through media politically correct propaganda.] What we do behind closed doors is private behavior. Kissing his boyfriend was very public. Of course, all this was PR for a marginal football player whom may very well sue the Rams for inevitably cutting him.
(Cato Institute). "As we all know, two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts changed the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate into a tax and thus rescued President Obama’s signature legislation. What you may not know is that with this slight of hand—or flick of the wrist—he actually sent Obamacare flying from the constitutional frying pan into the constitutional fire." Do you expect Chief Justice Roberts to say, "Whoops! My bad!"? I have not reviewed the ObamaCare arguments, but I know the government was pushing the tax authority argument as their insurance policy... Shouldn't the opposition have brought up the origination argument during the original SCOTUS hearing?
(IPI). A historic measure to cut taxes in Missouri passed last week, and it should be a reminder to Gov. Pat Quinn that his own plans to increase income taxes will have real consequences for Illinois’ future economic competitiveness. Quinn saw The One pile up ungodly amounts of debt, resist any meaningful cuts, and impose class warfare tax hikes and figures he can do so in The One's home base...
[a follow-up exchange on a Libertarian Republic thread a few posts back on whether the Romney defeat was a good thing. I reprint my original response in italics.] Well, for one thing, we would have been spared a 2016 Obama-Romney rematch. I've argued in a different forum that I thought Romney missed a golden opportunity to resurrect the free-market, non-interventionist Old Right, that he should have thrown Bush under the bus, to run against 12 miserable years of mediocre economic growth and massive deficits. He also come across as unprincipled, a flip-flopper on various issues (abortion, immigration, etc.) He also came across as wonkish vs. populist; Hermain Cain's '9-9-9' was easily to grasp than Romney's 59-point economic plan. I thought that trying to play to the right of Obama on foreign policy was a strategic mistake; Obama had spent much effort in his first term trying to co-opt the right, by promoting Petraeus, out-droning Bush, etc. What Obama was not prepared for was Romney doing an about-face and saying, "You know, we can't afford to continue nation building in strategically questionable places half-way around the world." I think Romney was saying what he thought the people wanted to hear, like when he ran on "progressive" positions in Massachusetts. We have big challenges, like the Baby Boomer Retirement Tsunami, that we need to address directly, with imaginative solutions, not political rhetoric or policy tweaks. Was Romney's loss a good thing? No; we've lost 4 years we'll never get back under undeniably one of the worst, most incompetent Presidents in American history. It was a wake-up call: the GOP's ground game in getting out its base and using high technology has been uncompetitive since the first Bush's reelection debacle of being unable to anticipate or adjust to Clinton's rapid response team. Romney did far worse among immigrants--even Asian immigrants--than George W. did, all because an alienating stance on immigration, trying to appease the anti-immigrant special interest group; this is not a surprise. Republicans have been uncompetitive in the People's Republic of California since Wilson's scorched-earth reelection as governor. Republicans need to stop rerunning Reagan's campaign from over 3 decades ago; they need to come up with a compelling, simpler, consistent pro-liberty message, sort of a revamped pro-markets, non-interventionist Old Right. Romney's loss was a great thing. Obama's win was the problem. What would have been great would have been a Gary Johnson or Ron Paul win. Maybe then America would have headed toward liberty. I was worried about Romney's neo-con rhetoric, but Romney is an excellent administrator and, unlike Bush, is ready to use the veto for fiscal discipline. He probably would have worked on the unfunded liability problem and we definitely would be seeing smaller deficits, more competitive business tax brackets. Romney's key problem is that he is a better tactician than strategist--he doesn't seem to have a fundamental ideological standpoint. He seems to think government can solve problems, like the TARP intervention. There were his notorious flip-flops on issues like abortion when he ran for office in Massachusetts. Yet there were some signs--like when the Dems were pushing for a string of bailout loans for the auto industry, and he was correctly seeing that they were perpetuating a failing business model and needed to go to bankruptcy. I don't think Johnson was a better governor than Romney and he had been out of elective politics for a decade. Ron Paul was closer to my political standpoint; I would like to have seen more administrative skills, and his rhetoric is a bit too strident. We definitely would have a better foreign policy and some epic battles with Congress. The problem with a Ron Paul Presidency is that he would need to have a like-minded Congress and shown more of an ability to compromise. I can count on one hand the number of federal legislators mirroring his libertarian-conservative views. That's why I'm disappointed with Romney--he does have the ability to work with a legislature, and I thought if he had gone more Tea Party in 2012, rejecting 12 years of Bush/Obama. But too much of a tactician--really, a 59-point economic plan? Why not just say, "I'm for free markets and for free trade"...
[follow-up that basically repeated support for Paul or Johnson] You are confusing ideology with leadership. Reagan talked a good game, too, but came up short. I do think foreign policy would have been different under Ron Paul. No, RomneyCare was a tactical move; the "progressives" wanted to do single-payer, and the Bush Administration was threatening a Medicaid cutoff--which would have blown his state budget wide open.
Quote of the Day The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without. S.J. Gould
Image of the Day
Via Drudge Report American citizens had a 1 in 30 chance to be born in the USA
Obama Narcissistic Behavior Watch
I haven't done one of these in a while, but in the context of the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, Politico has an interesting post/retrospective about Obama's humor. Here are some relevant excerpts:
[Obama] is also very funny (and the first to laugh at his own jokes)...When it comes to the sine qua non of political humor — devastating self-deprecation — Obama is less skilled...(he stepped on a joke about [bowling] with Jay Leno in 2009 by adding an ill-considered ad lib about his Special Olympics-level skill, for which he was forced to apologize)...And as is often the case with other rhetorical aspects of his presidency, Obama sometimes seems to deliver his jokes — however effective they may be — with the disembodied distance of someone observing his own performance... Yet when asked for examples of Obama’s best self-deprecating lines, Favreau struggled a bit for an answer, eventually citing jokes about big ears and bad poll numbers.
The classic self-deprecating joke mentioned was JFK's 1958 when JFK quipped that his wealthy father didn't want to have to pay for a landslide.... To be fair, the author points out that President Zipper also was more interested in aiming zingers at his critics than himself. I personally think the inability to laugh at oneself is a serious personality defect.
(Just in case my critics wonder about me, I've poked fun at myself several times in past posts, e.g., when one of my nieces complains about insomnia, I suggest reading my dissertation or one of my articles or book chapters; one of my best friends characterizes our friendship as "an acquired taste"; I sometimes refer to my third sister as God's way for making it up to my folks for having me; and my dissertation chairman once quipped that it takes me 20 minutes just to introduce myself...)
Unequal Contribution Limits = Unequal Protection Under the Law: Can You Say 'Unconstitutional'?
Facebook Corner
(IPI). Our hybrid retirement plan immediately cuts Chicago's $29 billion in unfunded pension liabilities in half. All govt employees should be moved to 401k plans like the private sector. Oh, you want the governments that employ police and fire, etc to contribute 6.2% towards social security for us too, since we don't get that? If they did that towards our pension instead, plus our 9.4% we contribute from our salaries towards our pension, our pensions would be funded. Heck, maybe they should also do a little bit of matching like the private sector does, we'd have even more money for our pensions then. Instead, they haven't even contributed 6.2% towards our pensions all along, resulting in the mess you see now. If it goes to 401k, like you say, then I want the defined pension plan of social security as well, just like the private sector. That'll cost the taxpayers even more than what is in place now. People keep throwing out this 401k suggestion-not realizing that it'll be more expensive... Leave it to the self-serving parasite to play the victim card. Blame your union leadership if they let the Tax-and-Spendocrats get away with spending your pension contribution on other special interests. I have no problems with new/younger employees paying into social security and/or 401/403, just like the private sector. But I believe that you have to contribute 10 years to be eligible for social security benefits. (Of course, social security itself is a Ponzi scheme.)
(This is a follow-up to an essay in the Libertarian Republic; I commented in yesterday's post.) So, you're for freedom as long as everyone thinks the way you do? What does it matter what two consenting adults do? So long as a same sex couple isn't infringing on your rights, what do you care? As the meme says, I want Gay couples to be able to defend their marijuana plants with their guns. It might help if you identify who you are referring to: the original author or me. I don't think either of us discussed "gay marriage". Most pro-liberty conservatives want the State out of marriage, period. I definitely support the traditional social context, but what I wrote is that I am skeptical of State intervention and have a "live-and-let-live" tolerance of human activities. On a more practical level, for example, I believe in the voluntary association of those whom support traditional values and the right of those whom don't share those values to congregate as they choose; I don't believe in the State intervening in the private affairs of consenting adults, regardless of my moral preferences. But I think it's hypocritical for libertarians to go beyond negative liberties to intervene in the social context imposing their own moral preferences: for example, there's a difference between tolerating non-traditional relationships and using the State to confer special status in traditional communities.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg." ~ Thomas Jefferson The idea of whether or not something "picks my pocket or breaks my leg" is the marker I, and hopefully most libertarians, use to determine where one person's rights end and theirs begin. If it does me no harm and it doesn't force me to contribute monetarily then what someone does is of little concern to me. It seems that both parties are constantly advocating policies that threaten me with one or the other. I am either forced to conform to their dictates under threat of force or, forced to monetarily support people and ideas which I disagree with. Government was only intended to deal with limited aspects of society that individuals acting in voluntary agreements could not solve by themselves. When boiled down they amount to the following. 1) To deal with those within society who would do harm to others, whether that harm is physical or financial and 2) To deal with the things that would benefit society as a whole. Not benefit one man or woman over another, not benefit one race over another, not benefit one sexual preference over another, not benefit one corporation over another and, not benefit one economic class over another but, benefit ALL of society as a whole. Conservatives and Liberals have strayed away from serving society as a whole and have instead turned to helping those groups, classes and individuals who can help them maintain their power and help them to achieve more. I don't agree with your phrasing of the discussion. Conservatives don't look to intervene in the economy or the social milieu. The liberals or "progressives" constantly intervene through the State to impose their values and political preferences in divisive terms--the have's and have not's. The conservatives worry about the unintended consequences of liberal domestic programs and/or foreign meddling (don't forget the 4 major wars we intervened with in the twentieth century started under Democratic Administrations and the Old Right, e.g., Robert Taft, resisted intervention). There's a difference between resistance to interventionist policy and an alternative advocacy; you seem to be buying into "progressive" talking points. Now, granted, conservatives are not monolithic: for example, paleos favor economic protectionist policies, and many military conservatives advocate activist/neo-con foreign policy. But don't confuse the political rhetoric of the GOP as the opposition party as synonymous with conservatism.
(Independent Institute). Senior Fellow John Graham: "Although in-kind benefits are more difficult to compare across countries than are cash incomes, they must not be ignored when making judgments about how different countries’ middle-class residents are faring." Why are we surprised when the black hole of DC sucks resources out of the real economy into its vortex of corruption? "Progressives" continue to obfuscate the real economy with their vain, megalomaniac attempts to micromanage it. When will they ever come to know that the pursuit of economic growth is what lifts all boats and the Politics of Envy is intrinsically counterproductive?
(Independent Institute). Senior Fellow Benjamin Powell discusses sweatshops and the global economy on Fox Business's The Independents. Good if you want to use such product to destroy the standards and standing of another country's labor force, industries, and revenue streams. There are no benefits from the lower prices, only stagnated wages, revenues, and tax burden exacerbated from increased dependency and lost revenues. Fair trade extends some of the protections that created the standards and standing we enjoy TO STABILIZE THE trade partner's citizens and economy. Granting untaxed intl entities right to trade dump and exploit ss lbr edges the system toward fascism, where citizens can not earn and can not control their capital. This is the ideological core dump ranting of a clueless economic illiterate whom mistakes propaganda for informed opinion. It's paternalistic hubris, which presumes the standards of a developed economy with a higher standard of living and advocates for crony unionist vested interests in preventing liberalized markets and exchange. Sweatshops can pay 3 to 7 times the prevailing wage in a developing locale; no one denies that it can be hard work (my own French Canadian ancestors were attracted by textile mill jobs in New England), but for those workers, attracted by better wages and voluntarily accept the job and working conditions, it's the gateway to an improved standard of living, and earnings can help develop the struggling local economy. You want to use the State to deprive these people of an improved standard of living? With "friends" like you looking to prevent their right to work and thus perpetuate their poverty, who needs enemies?
First, even as a classical economic liberal, I would expect the chronically ill in general to be unable to work and probably qualify under Medicaid, and age of course correlates with mortality (Medicare). So relevant comparisons would have to control for these differences; it may well be the data modeled for these factors, but I need to see more of the underlying data model/statistics. Second, I would like to see more of a theoretical explanation of why the uninsured would have a lower mortality. It could be, for instance, that that the uninsured may be healthier as a group, e.g., younger people whom cannot afford health insurance or households between jobs. Finally, I realize that you want to focus on market-distorting, counterproductive government policies, which may seek to ration care, filter drugs, etc., which could have an adverse effect on healthcare outcomes. I am also convinced that liberalization of the sector from centralized government's megalomaniac, costly bureaucratic inertia and overhead is necessary since the status quo is unsustainable, but I would like to see some bridge solutions based on the principle of Subsidiarity, eliminating interstate barriers to insurance marketing, and reforming dysfunctional tax policies which obfuscate the differences between essential, more catastrophic care and ordinary health expenditures.
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. Albert Einstein
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Via the Independent Institute
Image of the Day
Via Patriot Post
In last night's SOTU address,
The narcissist in chief referred to himself a whopping 74 times during the speech (“I” x 50, “my” x 11, “me” x 11,“ and "as president” twice).
The Myth of Stagnant Wages
I remember the first serious PC I bought, a no-name clone for just under $3000, as a young professor. Even though the dollar has declined in purchasing power significantly over the last 2 decades, I recently bought a new desktop with vastly more memory, CPU power and speed, hard drive, and functionality at nearly a tenth of that cost even though my professional compensation has been significantly more than I ever made as a junior professor. The point is I don't have to work as many hours to buy a desktop today; I'm able to spend money not spent on the new computer buying up other goods and services, which makes me better off.
Businesses don't simply aim at the upper 1%, whom only need so much food, shelter, clothing, etc. Without economies of scale, prices would be much higher. Mark Perry of Carpe Diem points out that the average American household spends less than 7% of income on meals prepared at home, a third of the average household around the world. His current post compares the work-equivalent price of household appliances over the past 5 decades-plus:
Students in a rural Kentucky county — and their parents — are the latest to join a growing national chorus of scorn for the healthy school lunches touted by first lady Michelle Obama. “They say it tastes like vomit,” said Harlan County Public Schools board member Myra Mosley at a contentious board meeting last week, reports The Harlan Daily Enterprise.
More than 50 large U.S. cities have adopted “anti-camping” or “anti-food sharing” laws in recent years, and in many of these cities the police are strictly enforcing these laws. Sometimes the goal appears to be to get the homeless people to go away. Apparently the heartless politicians that are passing these laws believe that if the homeless can’t get any more free food and if they keep getting thrown into prison for “illegal camping” they will eventually decide to go somewhere else where they won’t be hassled so much.
The statists are trying to regulate even who gets to eat your own food, an act of charity? But somehow it's okay if they tax/steal your second sandwich and distribute it themselves so the politicians get credit.
“What do you think he’d say about Obamacare?” asked Joyner, when discussing King’s legacy.
“Oh he’d like that,” Obama asserted. “Well, because he understood that health care, health security is not a privilege, it’s something in a county as wealthy as ours, everybody should have access to.”
"We were just talking with some folks earlier about the fact that, for a lot of people, it will be cheaper than your cell phone bill," Obama explained.
If you are spending $10K a year on your cellphone, you need to change cellphone carriers. NOTE: you don't have to shop a rigged government exchange to find a cheaper plan...
Somehow I don't think Obama implying that MLK was an economic illiterate is a compliment. I'm sure that Obama would not have told MLK that before the reform, a hospital already could not refuse emergency care based on an ability to pay, that increasing numbers of physicians refuse to accept new government healthcare patients (Medicare and Medicaid) because of the red tape and/or the providers lose money on them, and that the result of ObamaCare has been to dampen employment (jobs and hours) and significantly higher premiums because of gold-plated benefits and mandates; I'm sure that MLK would also not be impressed by how black employment and household net worth have worsened over Obama's tenure...
Guest Blog Excerpt of the Day
Obama knows how to bluff people whom are not very intelligent; he will speak intellectual gibberish with authority, and the MSNBC anchors will swoon with approval. But really smart people realize that he's a phony. Here is a classic example from one of my favorite economists, Thomas Sowell. To provide context, you have to realize, as I have written several times (a signature blog quote), "If there's one thing Obama knows, it's symbolism." There is an ongoing dispute between Argentina and Great Britain over a group of offshore islands. Obama is attempting to signal an Argentinian tilt on the dispute by using (he thinks) the Argentinian name for the disputed islands. Now let's pick it up from Sowell:
One presidential gaffe in particular gives the flavor, and suggests the reason, for many others. It involved the Falkland Islands.With Argentina today beset by domestic problems, demanding the return of the Falklands is once again a way for Argentina's government to distract the Argentine public's attention from the country's economic and other woes. Because the Argentines call these islands "the Malvinas," rather than "the Falklands," Barack Obama decided to use the Argentine term. But he referred to them as "the Maldives." It so happens that the Maldives are thousands of miles away from the Malvinas. The former are in the Indian Ocean, while the latter are in the South Atlantic.
Back during Barack Obama's first year in office, he kept repeating, with great apparent earnestness, that there were "shovel-ready" projects that would quickly provide many much-needed jobs, if only his spending plans were approved by Congress. He seemed very convincing — if you didn't know how long it can take for any construction project to get started, after going through a bureaucratic maze of environmental impact studies, zoning commission rulings and other procedures that can delay even the smallest and simplest project for years.
Just consider the red tape of the Keystone Pipeline approval.(cf. below): "For more than 1,800 days, the Obama administration has been analyzing whether the Keystone pipeline is in the national interest." So much for Obama's priority for those 42,000 "shovel-ready" jobs...
Liberty Thought of the Day
The Keystone Pipeline: Obama "Dithering As Usual"
Keep in mind that oil pipelines crisscross the US, and pipeline technology improves over time. The issue at hand is the anti-fossil-fuel EPA which does the bidding of anti-economic growth radical environmentalists fighting the already thoroughly vetted State Department approval. (The environmentalists would rather see us continue imports from volatile regions or anti-American regimes: war, vs. free trade, is a worse threat to the environment.) Among other things, environmentalists fail to adequately account for environmental impacts or feasibility of alternative transports of oil, including truck, rail or oil tankards. Obama is as usual leading from behind vs. refereeing this bureaucratic turf battle like a real executive.
I Am So Done With Pakistan: Cut Off Aid Now
I think I've finally heard of an anti-Christian law which is like the Old South's morally unconscionable Jim Crow laws on steroids, an incontrovertible violation of human rights. From the NY Post:
But though I’m kept in a tiny, windowless cell, I want my voice and my anger to be heard. I want the whole world to know that I’m going to be hanged for helping my neighbor. I’m guilty of having shown someone sympathy. What did I do wrong? I drank water from a well belonging to Muslim women, using “their” cup, in the burning heat of the midday sun.
I, Asia Bibi, have been sentenced to death because I was thirsty. I’m a prisoner because I used the same cup as those Muslim women, because water served by a Christian woman was regarded as unclean by my stupid fellow fruit-pickers.
4Now [Jesus] had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Or do not use dishes Samaritans have used )
See here for a relevant historical context of the Jew-Samaritan separatism. That any government would criminalize an act of kindness is unconscionable. Muslims make up about 97% of Pakistan; there is no excuse for such a grotesque violation of individual rights; water is a basic necessity of life.
Whistle-blower Protections - Yes Bulk Privileged Document Downloads and Distribution - No I do think there is a strategic need for a certain degree of government secrecy: you will not win a card game where everyone can read your hand but you can't read theirs. We cannot rely on PR releases from self-serving competitive powers; we could not want weapon designs, audits of infrastructure vulnerabilities or revelations of defense strategies or military plans or intelligence agent aliases to be made available; if we cannot maintain discretion, it will have a chilling, counterproductive effect on intelligence gathering and negotiations.
We would have to unacceptably depend on the professional ethics of potentially corrupt, unaccountable, unauthorized third-party recipients to sift through documents; think, for instance, of a rogue third-party recipient whom could use sensitive information to blackmail a high-level government official, an undercover agent or a foreign intelligence source.
It would be one thing if I was a diplomat whom knew that, say, President Obama was lying or misleading the American people about the rationale for military intervention in the Middle East or a national intelligence director misleading the country of the nature or extent of unauthorized domestic spying; in the cases of Manning and Snowden, it comes across more like cherry-picking some after-the-fact egregious discovery to rationalize their crimes, an unethical breach of professional ethics, violating their employment contract, putting lipstick on a pig.
Nevertheless, Greg Mitchell has listed a number of politically inconvenient truths, basically hidden from policymakers and American voters among Manning's stolen documents (HT Reason), including corrupt foreign government leaders taking a cut of American aid, foreign leaders turned a blind eye to US violations (e.g., bringing certain banned weapons or bombs), missed diplomatic opportunities (e.g., Hussein's invasion of Kuwait may have been motivated in part by soft oil prices in the aftermath of the Iran War), etc. To give a current contrast, the Obama Administration has made much of Assad's alleged use of chemical agents (as if murder by one means is more equal than murder by more politically acceptable means), but for example, the US had previously supported Saddam Hussein despite knowledge of his use of poison gas.
The only way to minimize the risk of these ethically dubious incidents is a less intervenionist foreign policy.
Yes, My Views on Some Things Have Changed Part III (Part II)
I have previously discussed the evolution of my position on national defense; I am not anti-military: I was born a military brat, and my Dad retired from the military while I was in college. In fact, I served in the Navy as a math instructor at a training center. The overwhelming majority of people in the military are not jingoistic warmongers; they are disciplined professionals whom serve their country faithfully. They don't romanticize war; my first dorm RA had lost one of his legs in Vietnam, and I've known people whom have lost a loved one.
In my case, I originally entered college with the idea of pursuing the priesthood, probably in the context of a teaching order like the Jesuits or Oblates. I was skeptical of the worthiness of two conflicts my Dad had served in (Korea and Vietnam). But I was also a realist: I had seen in high school history documentary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps; I was shocked such evil existed in the world. I was not unmoved by enormous violations of human rights under the USSR (particularly under Stalin) and Red China, the killing fields of Cambodia, the atrocities in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, etc. But I also realized that it was infeasible for the US to play Whack-a-Mole with rogue nations or leaders.
To a large part, I trusted political leadership to realize the bounded nature of our feasible commitments. I think, like many Americans, I was shocked by the events of 9/11, the mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians. I did expect Bush to go after UBL, and when the Taliban regime protected UBL and his cohorts, I expected a response; what I did not expect was a man whom had run against Clinton's nation building would have fallen in the same trap of the Soviets, etc. I also had concerns about Saddam Hussein, whom certainly had a motive to strike against America and controlled more resources to make it happen. I also thought he well understood the sectarian issues that led his father not to pursue regime change at the close of the first Gulf War. Once Bush intervened, I thought we had a moral obligation to leave a functioning local government, not open a Pandora's Box of regional war, say, a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But I did not envision indefinite commitments, one which continues to this day.
So I think my preference for a less activist foreign policy has always really been there. As to when I finally divorced from neo-con policy, it probably was due to two things: (1) the end of my patience was reached with the US backing the corrupt Karzai regime; (2) Obama's totally incompetent, political bungling of the Afghanistan surge decision. You don't split the difference of highest-risk, low-manpower options, and you don't announce a withdrawal before you've achieved military objectives. It's like boxing with one arm tied behind your back. You get what you pay for; either fight or cut your losses and move on. Unfortunately, Obama had boxed himself in with the absurd partisan rhetoric that the "real" war was in Afghanistan.
I've found the American exceptionalism discussion, explored in a relevant Cato Institute Event, to be interesting. I .do think our nation being one of immigrants, a revolution based on a more comprehensive application of liberty principles and equal standing under the law, and a reasonable stable democratic republic is unique; but I don't think we have a mission to propagate our application of liberty principles as a matter of force. I think we promote peace by liberty-based trade policies and spread the worthiness of our principles by exemplifying their consistent application domestically and prudently in international matters.
Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips". A Glen Campbell channel on Facebook recently featured the second clip with Stevie doing a soulful duet on the classic Bob Dylan tune.
