United Liberty Is (Cato) Unbound!

jdkolassa — Mon, 06 May 2013 11:47:56 -0500

Every month, Cato puts out a new issue of Cato Unbound, an online journal that looks at various topics. This week, the topic is fusionism, something that has received quite a bit of attention here at United Liberty.

The format of Cato Unbound is quite simple. One writer contributes a lead essay, and then three other writers write response essays. Then, it descends into a furball as we all starting writing shorter response posts to each other. The discussion is not just there, however; blog posts elsewhere will be linked, and everyone—yes, including YOU!—is encouraged to join in the discussion.

Our lead essay this month is written by Jacque Otto, a friend of mine and a writer at Values and Capitalism, a project of the American Enterprise Institute. She writes:

There is a grey area between the well defined conservative and libertarian movements. Those of us building our ideological frameworks between the two have discovered that our philosophical frontier is becoming increasingly crowded. Even though many of us on the Right describe ourselves as “conservative/libertarian-ish,” we are often viewed as either squishy libertarians or overly hard-nosed conservatives, and we are viewed askance from either side.

It is difficult to articulate the relationship between conservatism and libertarianism and where we in between should fit. Many imagine a sliding scale of political ideologies, with totalitarianism on the far left, anarchy on the far right, and mainstream party positions delicately placed near the center. In this model, libertarianism sits to the right of conservatism, almost as an afterthought. Many political scientists think that separate scales are needed for social and fiscal issues, such as the famous Nolan Chart, which lends a more prominent placement for libertarianism.

These efforts, while helpful to some, are far too rigid for reality. The ideological spectrum, like a watercolor painting of ideas, bleeds around the edges. There are no thick black lines that surround the beliefs of libertarianism and conservatism, or that demarcate where an individual falls. There is plenty of room for variation within this bright spectrum, and the practice of keeping separate encampments for libertarianism and conservatism ignores that we are both camped on the same side of the war of ideas.

You are encouraged to read the rest of the essay, though like all Cato Unbound issues, it’s a bit longer and more detailed than the usual blog post. I’ll be posted Wednesday, Students for Liberty Vice President Clark Ruper will go live Friday, and Acton Institute Research Fellow Jordan Ballor will go live next Monday.

I look forward to this issue with great excitement and anticipation, and I hope you do too!

CPS Tyrannizes Again; Abolish Child Protective Services Now

jdkolassa — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:17:32 -0500

Yet another incident of Child Protective Services violating civil rights has emerged, this time in Sacramento:

SACRAMENTO, CA - A Sacramento family was torn apart after a 5-month-old baby boy was taken from his parents following a visit to the doctor.

The young couple thought their problems were behind them after their son had a scare at the hospital, but once they got home their problems got even worse.

It all began nearly two weeks ago, when Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex took their 5-month-old boy Sammy to Sutter Memorial Hospital to be treated for flu symptoms, but they didn’t like the care Sammy was getting.

The mother had questions about what was going on with the care, but it soon escalated out of control:

Anna said Sammy suffers from a heart murmur and had been seeing a doctor at Sutter for regular treatment since he was born. After Sammy was treated for flu symptoms last week, doctors at Sutter admitted him to the pediatric ICU to monitor his condition. After a few days, Anna said doctors began talking about heart surgery.

“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna said.

Anna argued with doctors about getting a second opinion. Without a proper discharge, she finally took Sammy out of the hospital to get a second opinion at Kaiser Permanente.

“The police showed up there. They saw that the baby was fine,” Anna said. “They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms.”

Medical records from the doctor treating Sammy at Kaiser Permanente said the baby as clinically safe to go home with his parents. The doctor added, “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”

“So police saw the report from the doctors, said, ‘okay guys, you have a good day,’ and they walked away,” Anna said.

Anna said the next day police and child protective services showed up on her doorstep. Alex Nikolayev said he met them outside a short time after they arrived.

“I was pushed against the building, smacked down. I said, ‘am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me down onto the ground, yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house,’” Alex said.

Then police let themselves inside.

On home video shot with a camera Anna set up herself, police can be seen entering her front door on Wednesday.

“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me ok?” a Sacramento police officer said in the video.

Don’t resist? You’re just going to take their child and want them to not resist? What sort of screwed up 1984 totalitarian dictatorship is this?

Regrettably, this is not the only incident. This happens far too often. The comments section are full of parents who have had similar things happen to them. There are also tales of the federal government paying local CPS offices “bounties” for children—I have no way to know if that is true, but I would not be surprised that somehow, federal shenanigans are involved here.

News10 ran a second story the day after, noting how CPS determines to take a child into custody:

SACRAMENTO - Thursday, Sacramentans were gripped by the story of a couple whose baby boy was taken from them by Sacramento County Child Protective Services (CPS).

Anna Nikolayev claimed CPS had taken her 5-month-old son Sammy after she and her husband removed him from the Sutter Memorial Hospital intensive care unit without a proper discharge and before taking him to Kaiser Permanente for a second opinion.

Nikolayev said a CPS social worker told her Sammy was removed from their custody due to “severe neglect,” but did not elaborate on the severity of the neglect, nor the specifics behind the decision to take the child. However, CPS did release the following statement:

“We are sensitive to the pain that such crises cause for families and aware of the complexity of the evaluations made by the social work, medical and court professionals involved. The laws and policies that guide agency practice are designed to ensure that there are adequate protections for the rights of everyone involved, while placing priority on children’s health, safety, and well-being.”

News10 then quotes a long list of regulations, including mandates to keep open a 24-hour hot line and to take complaints, but it’s all crap. No government agency should be given the power to bust in and kidnap a child from his or her parents, period. And that’s what this is: kidnapping. Only it’s sanctioned by the government.

I’m not saying every family is perfect. There are some who have real problems. But giving a government agency the power to kidnap kids from their families is not the right answer. That will only go out of control, breed resentment, and ultimately hurt a lot of innocents in the process, just like every other government program. If there is a serious, serious problem, then let them bring it before a judge and get a warrant, but let it be public and let all the facts be presented, and let the parents have their voice too (and the child as well, most importantly.) But that is not done here.

First they tried to come for our guns. Now they’re coming for our children. What’s next?

Refuting Progressives: So Easy A Blogger Can Do It

jdkolassa — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:43:44 -0500

A blogger by the name of Allen Clifton over at “Forward Progressives” has put out a list of “facts” that annoy conservatives and Republicans, supposedly for fun. Allen writes:

I highly encourage all liberals to share this with their conservative friends. Then watch as they haplessly try and argue against each comment.

It’s irresistible. And, as I expected, it doesn’t actually make us look bad. It just shows that progressives like Mr. Clifton haven’t thought their argument the full way through. I’ll leave the points Mr. Clifton makes in bold and my responses below.

Let’s begin:

1. Nowhere in our Constitution does it say we’re a Christian nation.

2. In fact, no where in our Constitution does the word “Christian” appear even once.

These points are actually true, and I cannot argue with Mr. Clifton. The Constitution does not mention the word “god,” and while many of the Founders were religious, it is questionable whether they were hardcore Christians or rather deists (or, in Mr. Jefferson’s case and the case of others, Christian Deists.) There are mentions to God in the Declaration of Independence, but again, are these references to the Christian conception? The Declaration refers to “Nature’s God”—a deist term, not a Christian one. The only time the Constitution mentions God is in the dating: “ the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.”

That’s hardly grounds for making the Constitution a Christian document. That’s just how you told the date back then. These days, we replaced “Lord” with “Common Era.”

Of course, many argue that the Constitution was based on Christianity in the background, using the tenets of “natural law,” but one can get natural law without any reference to a deity. Ayn Rand (sort of) did so. So Mr. Clifton does begin strong.

3. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion—it also doesn’t specify any particular religion.

This one I think is a bit more debatable—as much as I like the Founders, I don’t know if they would tolerate a nonbeliever like myself. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. Many of the founding documents of the individual Thirteen Colonies contained passages specifically barring atheists, Muslims, Jews, and even Catholics from having any political representation or power whatsoever.

However, I am inclined to go with Mr. Clifton—if one has freedom of religion, then one must also have freedom from it. Otherwise, it would be meaningless. And there are, strangely enough, atheistic religions. Religious humanism and religious naturalism are two examples. I would also argue the Church of Global Warming, but that’s a bit more tongue in cheek.

4. The 2nd Amendment actually refers to a “well regulated militia.” While it says the right for Americans to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, the phrase “well regulated” obviously infers that this right doesn’t come without regulations.

Lest you think I’m going to let Mr. Clifton off easy, I now give you where his argument breaks down: the “well-regulated militia.” This is a subject upon which many progressive Internet activists have utterly missed the point. In the time of the drafting of the Constitution, well-regulated meant only that the militia had to be well trained. There would be a guide in effect for the training of militia, known as the “Manual of Regulations.”

Here is a list of examples of the phrase “well-regulated” being used around the same time. Clearly they are not referring to government regulations.

This was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Heller decision, and for once, they got something right. Mr. Clifton’s argument fails utterly, unless he wants his regulations to be in the form of training Americans how to fire an assault rifle. Which I’m not sure I would be against.

5. Our Constitution doesn’t mention anything about our nation having to be based on pure Capitalism.

No, it doesn’t—but that really fails to think it through, doesn’t it? What is capitalism but the system of free and voluntary associations between individuals? When you have a document that restricts the government so it cannot interfere in these interactions, what are you going to have, by default?

Capitalism. It is a natural outgrowth of our Constitution, and that’s just how our Founding Fathers wanted it to be. A system where we could live our lives as we please without government interference, and that includes the economic sphere.

Mr. Clifton should give more than just cursory thought to this.

6. A corporation is an entity, not a person, and our Constitution wasn’t created to protect the rights to entities—they have none.

Debatable. For a long time, there has been a useful “legal fiction” that corporations are people. This is because it would be absolutely painful to get every single shareholder of a corporation to sign off on every decision, and to be dragged in before a court—so it was allowed for corporations to be treated as individuals in court to make everything simpler.

But that also ignores the deeper fact of the matter: the Constitution is not protecting the corporation, it is protecting the people in the corporation. It is protecting the employees, the managers, and yes, the shareholders. Believe it or not, Mr. Clifton, those are people too. Should becoming a corporate executive and making decisions for a corporation mean I must give up my 4th Amendment rights? Should government be allowed to just take things from corporation in searches? Imagine Uncle Sam coming to your phone company and just taking all their records about your phone calls without any warrant or justification, but just because they could.

Would you still want the Constitution to not “protect” corporations?

7. Education is more important than national defense. What’s the point of a strong national defense if there’s nothing worth defending?

This to me is really stupid on all sorts of levels. First, what’s the point of a great education if there is no strong national defense to protect it? Second, what education? Have you seen our educational scores lately? And don’t give me that malarkey about not spending enough money. We spend plenty enough as it is and you know it:

Third, who is to say that education must be provided by the government? I can see many good arguments for necessitating national defense by a government, but not for education. For the better part of the 17th-19th centuries, education was private, and we did fairly well. Yet now we have public schools all over the place, and nobody is learning.

This “fact” is a completely BS statement. It is, at best, a value preference for education over national defense. I don’t know how one could “haplessly” argue against it, considering all the evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Clifton, try harder.

8. There are far more poor and middle class Americans than rich. If you continue building a society based on taking from the many to benefit the few, then we’re not going to have a nation much longer.

First of all, I don’t see the problem with the income distribution. So what that there are a few rich folks? Does it matter? No. Let me illustrate.

Say you had a system where those at the bottom made $10,000 a year and those at the top made $20,000. Now, say you have an alternative system where those at the bottom made $100,000 and those at the top made $200,000,000,000. The first system is more equal than the second, but the second system is far more desirable to live in, would it not?

If Mr. Clifton is trying to argue that we should stop cronyism—corporate bailouts, subsidies, programs meant to keep the cost of food high, and the fiat currency model being dominated at the Federal Reserve—then I am all in favor. These things we can easily agree on. But if he thinks that somehow taking from the rich to give to the poor—i.e., an inversion of his statement—will save this country, I want to know what he thinks of Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, the Ukraine (particularly in the 1930s-1950s), Vietnam, and the pre-reform China (not that post-reform China is all that much better in terms of freedom.) Oh, and while we’re at it, maybe Italy and Greece too. Does he think those places with their high amounts of income redistribution were paradises?

One can say we should have a minimal safety net. But that’s a big difference than what Mr. Clifton is implying, which is that we should have a lot of income redistribution in the manner he likes. The evidence is stacked against you, Mr. Clifton. You have a hard claim to make if that is your case.

9. Rich people didn’t become rich by giving away their money, Trickle Down Economics is the biggest con our country has ever seen.

No, they didn’t—they became rich by serving other people. In a free market economy, the only way you get someone’s money is by providing them with a reason to give it to you. That means you either provide them a service or a good. The only other way is theft, which is the dominant method of taking money in socialism and communism.

This is not a hard concept to grasp. Lately it has been made much more difficult via the efforts of corporate lobbyists and cronyists, but that’s just paying lip service to capitalism.

Mr. Clifton thinks he has an “ironclad” argument, but really, there is loads of evidence to suggest he is quite wrong. While giving out tax breaks and subsidies to major corporations is not the answer, there are suggestions that eliminating the corporate tax rate would boost employment in this country. Cutting down on red tape would also encourage companies to bring their business back here rather than taking it abroad. And yes—the minimum wage, which keeps tons and tons of unskilled, frequently young, African-American citizens out of a job.

There are many things we must do—reform our monetary policy, stop subsidizing corporations, and making the tax code more uniform—but Mr. Clifton has made an error here by, again, not really thinking through how people earn their money. Yes, some steal, whether at gunpoint or, on Capitol Hill, at penpoint. But most earn their money by providing goods and services to other people.

Think of that. An economic system based entirely on serving others! You would think Obama invented it.

10. Decades ago we all paid a much higher tax percentage, and our economic policies protected the people more than businesses. During these times our nation saw historic growth and unheard of economic prosperity. None of that was done by basing our policies on giving more to the rich.

This is one that is hard to argue—if you’re only looking at one part of the picture. Yes, it is true that our tax rates were much higher 50 years ago. It’s also true we had an economic boom.

It’s also true that every other industrialized nation on planet Earth had been bombed flat thanks to World War II, and the only game in town was the United States of America. When you have a monopoly, you can do quite a lot.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a monopoly anymore. Americans don’t realize it yet, but we actually have to compete with other nations now. We can’t afford a high minimum wage and a high tax rate, because companies and individuals can go elsewhere to get things done. The more and more we slide down the economic freedom index, the more and more we’re going to be unable to pay our bills.

Mr. Clifton’s comment only means that he is still living in a distant past, instead of dealing with the realities of today.

11. Perhaps most news seems liberally biased because your news sources refuse to report facts.

This really isn’t a fact, this is just a stupid line. I could say the same about education system that has left most young adults, who are usually left-wing liberals, unemployed and living in their parents basement. But Mr. Clifton does have one point here, a point underscored by Erick Erickson of RedState earlier this year: “conservative” news outlets do a poor job of reporting.

However, “liberal” news outlets do a terrible job of reporting too, especially when it comes to “spending cuts” which are completely nonexistent. Oh, and one word: Gosnell. So Mr. Clifton should not feel smug on this account.

12. Being Muslim doesn’t mean someone isn’t American. Islam is a religion, not a nationality.

This is true. It’s sad that this needs to be explained.

13. George W. Bush actually did double our national debt, President Obama has not.

This is partially true. Bush did double the debt; his first year federal debt stood at $5.6 trillion, and when he left office federal debt was just north of $10 trillion. Using the numbers from Treasury Direct (2001-2008, a rough estimate, cutting out the years he wasn’t really in office) Bush increased the debt by 72%. (Feel free to call me out on the math.) But that was spread out over 8 years. What about Obama?

Well, at the end of 2012, our national debt stood at over $16 trillion. That’s an increase of 60%—and that’s only in four years! At the same rate, Obama will increase the debt by 120% over his total eight years in office, a lot higher than Bush’s increase, almost half again as large.

This is one that only time can truly tell. We’ll have to see what Obama does over the next four years. But Mr. Clifton shouldn’t get so smug, and liberals shouldn’t think they have something to annoy people with. Unless they’re annoying us with the fact they don’t realize eight years is twice as much as four.

14. Bush also inherited a balanced budget. It was his tax cuts and unfunded wars which sent us back into budget deficits.

It’s true; Bush did inherit a surplus. And the wars did contribute to the budget deficit. On that I don’t really argue. But I do quibble with the notion that the tax cuts caused the budget deficits. Mr. Clifton is putting the cart before the horse. The problem is not the tax cuts; it’s the spending.

If George W. Bush had actually cut spending and kept it low, we would not have had a budget deficit. We would have been fine. Instead, Bush and Republicans threw out the limited government playbook for who knows what reason and became voracious spenders. So tax cuts aren’t the problem whatsoever.

What Mr. Clifton’s line implies is that whatever money is in your pocket does not belong to you, it belongs to the government, it is only loaning it to you, and it should be able to tax you whatever it thinks at whatever point in time. That’s dangerous…and wrong. Any money you receive by peaceful, voluntary interactions with others is yours. Period and full stop.

Americans are cutting back spending in this economy to make ends meet. Shouldn’t the government do the same thing? Why should we just assume it should raise taxes and make everything fine?

15. Social Security and Medicare is socialism—and millions of Republican voters benefit from, and receive, these benefits.

Well, that’s pretty direct, and honest for once. I won’t argue with this, and I also won’t argue with the latter point either. (Although “benefit from, and receive, these benefits” is redundant and an example of bad English.) I will say this, though: in America, you don’t have a choice. There is no way to “opt-out” of these programs. The government ordered Americans over the past century to enroll in Social Security, and then took money out of their pockets. So when they receive the money back, it seems to be only fair.

This does not mean that Social Security and Medicare shouldn’t be reformed or done away with entirely. It just means that people were coerced by government action into participating. Nothing more, nothing less. Mr. Clifton should remember that—and if he thinks it isn’t mandatory, just see what happens if he tried to keep that Social Security money they deduct from his paycheck.

16. Health insurance is you paying for another person’s health care—in fact all insurance is you paying for someone else.

This is true—and one reason why I, personally, am against all forms of insurance. (This is certainly not a view held by other United Liberty contributors.) I think there are moral hazard problems with insurance, problems that are serious. But, so long as it’s voluntary, I shouldn’t have a problem with them.

Except insurance isn’t really voluntary these days. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, basically created employer-connected health insurance when he instituted wage controls during World War II; unable to attract employees, companies were told by the government to give health insurance as a perk. This destroyed the former business model of the healthcare industry, which had doctors who made house calls paid for either directly or through various voluntary aid societies, like the Elks Club or Rotary or any number of organizations. And, yes, many of these were pooled healthcare funds, like insurance. (For more information, see chapter 7 of Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz of the Cato Institute.)

This system was added onto by Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, who in 1973 sponsored a bill that created the dreaded HMO. This is hardly a voluntary thing, which is what most people on the right rail against. Yes, we understand what insurance is, Mr. Clifton—but do we understand what problems we have with it?

17. We had record oil prices under Bush, not Obama.

Hmm. To figure this one out, I decided to do some checking. There was a huge spike in oil at the very end of the Bush Administration, in 2008, which crashed quite quickly. But during the Obama Adminstration, on average, oil prices are much higher. So while they may not technically be record oil prices, if we remove the one ridiculous spike (and that spike is ree-dic-you-luss), Obama still has higher oil prices.

Not sure what Mr. Clifton was trying to prove there.

18. The “Great Recession” started in 2008, while Obama took office January 20, 2009—you know, after the recession started.

It is true that Obama is not the cause of the Great Recession. What is equally true, however, is that the recession was caused by the government. Forcing banks to loan to people who couldn’t pay the loans back, and having the federal reserve create boatloads and boatloads of new money, led to the creation of a bubble that popped….and none of the government “fixes” have repaired it.

For more information, read Thomas Woods’ Meltdown. It’s a good—even humorous!—look at what happened, as well as how to fix it.

19. If Obama is the cause of our economic problems, why do Republicans avoid, at all costs, being associated with George W. Bush?

Perhaps because Mr. Bush is not really a conservative? Or perhaps Republicans are aware of the cognitive dissonance involved? This is a serious problem that writers like Daniel Larison have noted. It certainly does not apply to all Republicans or conservatives…and it definitely doesn’t apply to libertarians.

Mr. Clifton has raised some good points, but he has utterly failed in others to knock down the argument for free markets. Mostly, he has succeeded on purely social grounds, something that libertarians would not argue with him on. So it’s not all bad. But he has made some serious errors, and I was hardly “hapless” responding to these points.

Let me make a few my own that will likely stymie Mr. Clifton:

Government welfare programs have failed to bring a single American out of poverty, and have prolonged poverty for decades.
Minimum wage prices young and unskilled Americans out of the economy and increases unemployment.
Taking 100% of the income from the top 1% would not put a dent in our public debt or budget deficit.
Stimulus does not boost the economy, because it takes money out of Peter’s pocket to pay Paul. The economy is not larger because of it.
Stimulus must end eventually, and liberal Keynesians never think about that, so they have no plan for when it does.
Public education is not about educating kids, it is about lining the pockets of teachers and administrators who can’t actually work.
Economics is not about the numbers or the amounts, it is about the value brought to individuals, and there is very little value provided by the current government.
Regulations to “protect” consumers against Big Business are actually written by Big Business. To protect consumers, we must deregulate.
Affirmative action, by promoting one race above another, is a form of institutionalized racism.
You can have gay marriage, but individual churches are still allowed to not officiate gay weddings—forcing them to would be violating the First Amendment.
Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion to the debt, will make your insurance more expensive, and is actually a huge bailout to the pharmaceutical corporations.
The police will not protect you from a home invader, they will only come later to collect your body. If you need to protect yourself, you’re probably going to need a gun.
Article I of the US Constitution mandates that all legislation must be made in Congress, and thus all the regulations made by the EPA, FDA, FCC, SEC, and other regulatory agencies is unconstitutional.
Human beings, by virtue of being self-aware, sapient beings, have natural rights, including the right to own a business and enjoy the fruits of their labor, which cannot be infringed upon.

Let see Mr. Clifton deal with those points.

No More Tanks: Army Tells Congress to Stop Spending

jdkolassa — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:15:50 -0500

Whenever people call for cutting the military budget, the usual response goes something like ”How can you keep the Army from getting the equipment it needs to fight wars?” Well, the problem with that response is highlighted today by this story from ABC:

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”

It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located.

If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.

This is not uncommon. There were similar calls, I believe, during the requisition of the F/A-22 Raptor, and other military projects as well. The military knows what it needs; but what Congress spends on is not that. “Military spending” has little to do with actual national defense, and more with barrels and barrels of pork.

It is also a glorified jobs program; what Rep. Jordan and Senators Portman and Brown are after is not just the prestige of creating tanks for the Army, it’s about the jobs involved:

Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks’ materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.

The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The plant is Lima’s fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. “All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company’s spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually,” Berger said.

Here’s the problem with that assessment: what Berger is ignoring is the money that Congress is taking from other Americans to give to the tank plant. It’s not all that different from welfare programs; the difference lies in how it’s being managed and who is receiving the benefits. If ordinary Americans were interested in tanks, using money they made from their jobs, perhaps. But right now, nobody—not even the Army—wants these tanks, so the “demand” is purely artificial. At best, this is nothing more than a corporate subsidy.

I do believe we need a strong national defense—but spending too much on the military, especially on things they don’t even want, does not make us stronger. It makes us weaker, by worsening our fiscal position and opening us up to other threats elsewhere. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said that our greatest national security threat is our debt, and he’s stayed firm on that. Wasting money on useless pork projects, even those related to the military, will only exacerbate this threat.

It’s time for Congress to listen to the real leaders when it comes to our national defense.

ACLU on the Side of....Conservatives?

jdkolassa — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:15:56 -0500

Freedom is nonpartisan. At least, that’s the message I got this morning from my Twitter timeline when these two stories appeared. The first is out of Alaska, where the local ACLU chapter is defending an…anti-abortion group?:

The ACLU of Alaska is urging Alaska Governor Sean Parnell to provide more information about some creative censorship by state workers earlier this month during a street protest in Juneau. The street protest was staged by a group called the Center for Bioethical Reform, a fringe anti-abortion group that displays explicit pictures of aborted fetuses in public places to get their message across.

That’s what they were doing early in April on the sidewalk across the street from Alaska state Capitol building. The protest wasn’t exactly a rally. The CBR group included between four and six people, as counted by the Press from videos and photos of the incident. The group was around the Capitol about four days total, and on Tuesday, April 2, some state workers grew tired of the banner featuring a giant photo of an aborted fetus.

Some state employees parked delivery vans on the street, in between the protest banner and the capitol building. Rather than move their banner, the CBR protesters held their ground and began making video of the rather awkward attempt at censoring the graphic images. It’s “attempted censorship” because the CBR protesters could have simply walked to another part of the sidewalk. Alternatively, they could have recruited more than a half-dozen people to help them display graphic images of bloody fetuses in public places.

The ACLU then is pushing for the state to investigate and reprimand these government workers, all the while maintaining that it is pro-choice. However, its head notes:

“While we support a woman’s constitutional right to reproductive choice, everyone has the right to peacefully protest and the government may not pick and choose who gets to speak,” said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Alaska.

Next up, the national ACLU has taken a principled stand on the gun legislation—namely, they find serious problems with it for civil liberties:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.

“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard, we think the current legislation, the current proposal on universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he went on.

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”

That one of the big guns at the ACLU voiced concerns about this gun legislation—gun legislation which crashed and burned in the Senate—shows the principled stand the organization has.

It is also an example for those of us on the right.

As I said earlier, freedom is not a partisan issue. It just is. This isn’t any different from when Rand Paul took a stand on drones and civil rights, and he earned support from not just fellow Republicans and the Heritage Foundation, but also the ACLU, Code Pink, actor John Cusack, and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.

This is exactly what we need to do. I’m sure many would ignore the ACLU because it is seen as a left-wing organization. That’s foolish. Instead, we need to be like Rand Paul: being principled, and not letting political alignments blind us. So they may mean we take up the cause of guys on the “other side.” The more the better.

Hopefully, the ACLU can be a great example to conservatives and libertarians as we fight a broad struggle against overreaching government and attacks on our rights.

NAACP Chief: GOP Needs To Become Party of Civil Rights

jdkolassa — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:32:34 -0500

A couple of weeks ago, Senator Rand Paul did a courageous and unusual thing by visiting Howard University in DC. Howard is what is known as a “historically black university,” founded in the wake of the Civil War to provide opportunities for higher education to African-Americans. It’s not exactly home turf for Republicans, but that’s precisely why Paul went, in order to bridge a massive gap that is hurting the GOP.

Response to his visit was mixed, but yesterday, NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous wrote a generally supportive op-ed on CNN. Although noting that Paul missed his target in most areas, there is one area that has promise:

Paul struck out when he tried to equate today’s Republican Party with the party of Abraham Lincoln, while ignoring much of the 150 years in between. (He even acknowledged his mistakes shortly after). But his willingness to step up to the plate can provide a lesson for a GOP struggling to get on top.

Republicans will not win black votes by paying lip service to party history while attacking social programs and voting rights. But they can make inroads by showing a commitment to civil rights, something Paul managed to do briefly in his remarks.

Paul received applause when he told the Howard crowd, “We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community.” He illustrated using one issue where the GOP can connect with black voters: criminal justice reform.

Just before the 2012 elections, the NAACP took a nonpartisan survey of black voters in key swing states. We found that 55% of African Americans believe Republicans “don’t care at all about civil rights” while another 32% think the party “just says what minorities want to hear.” But 14% said they would be more likely to vote for a Republican in the future, if they found a candidate who demonstrated a strong commitment to civil rights.

Mass incarceration is a fundamental civil rights issue. African Americans make up 40% of the 2.4 million people in America’s bloated prison system. That includes the vast majority of those in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his life.

Mr. Jealous will not get any arguments from me here. Our criminal justice system is a disgrace. Being tough on crime has netted America nothing but a bloated, stuffed-to-the-gills justice/prison system that is reaching capacity and falling apart. What can we do?

Obviously, a great first step will be to legalize marijuana. Already, with the referenda passed in Washington State and Colorado, we’re seeing major progress. Puerto Rico may jump on the wagon soon, and there has also been legislation introduced in Congress to create a commission to review federal marijuana laws. I’m not worried on this front, and hopefully increased progress will reduce mass incarceration quickly.

There is also the problem of general overcriminalization, by dealing with everything via criminal law, rather than resorting to civil penalties. In some places you can be sent to jail if you don’t prune your plants properly. It is utter madness. Fortunately, already, some on the right are working to deal with this issue. The Heritage Foundation, earlier this month, put out a legal memorandum calling for a “mistake of law” defense, whereby people who had no idea they broke some obscure law are defended from idiotic criminal penalties.

This would be especially useful for those instances where police officers try to drag someone into jail on a minor, relatively insignificant charge, in the hopes of nabbing them on something far more major. That’s just harassment. And with over 4,000 different federal crimes, not hard for law enforcement to do.

There are other areas we can work on. When I was an intern at Cato, I saw a series of PBS documentaries on the criminal justice system that changed the way I view it. The first was The Plea, a documentary that showed how plea bargains, far from being fair, are actually used capriciously and just to reduce caseload, rather than doing what the justice system is actually for: getting justice. There was also the horrifying story of The Confessions, where a cop who continually hounded a poor man got four people to confess to a crime they didn’t commit, just to get him off their backs.

These things have got to stop. And conservatives and libertarians can and should take the lead in stopping them, and the Right on Crime initiative, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has begun paving the way to work toward these reforms. .

Mr. Jealous also notes that 42% of African-Americans feel the Democratic Party is failing them on criminal justice issues, and (as quoted above) 14% would vote for the Republicans if they took a stand on civil rights. Rand Paul did that a month ago with his epic filibuster against the use of drones on American citizens, and more broadly, the defense of due process.

That’s a much, much better strategy than the current one GOP strategists are using: trying to appeal to African-Americans and other minority groups on socially conservative grounds. I got a ton of tweets after the 2012 election where the conservatives insisted that the GOP had to become more socially conservative in order to get more of the Hispanic and black vote. But as Walter Olson of the Cato Institute notes, this “Social Conservative Minority Realignment Thesis” is dumber than a Pacific cargo cult.

It’s time for a new approach for the GOP. Rand Paul’s strong stance on civil rights has attracted a lot of attention—and that he has the president of the NAACP writing approvingly is only a good thing. By working on marijuana legalization, reforming the criminal justice system, decreasing overcriminalization, and maybe spending a little more money on the court system rather than the prison (thus alleviating the need for unfair plea bargains that serve no one), the GOP can work to establish a better, fairer, more just criminal justice system. In the process, the party will likely earn more African-American votes. Will the effect be immediate? No—but over the long term, it will earn dividends—not just for the GOP, but for all of America.

Tax Day: Time To Pony Up Your Dollars To Subsidize Other Countries

jdkolassa — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:00:00 -0500

Usually, when people bleat about spending money on other countries, it’s about humanitarian aid. But we spend far more money on other nations than just humanitarian aid; we also spend billions and billions of dollars subsidizing other nations’ military defense.

So when you file your tax return today to your overlords at the IRS, just remember, you’re paying not only for our military, but for the military of NATO, of South Korea, of Japan, and many other countries, and letting them freeload off of you. Every time a liberal points to European socialism and says we should be more like that, just know a lot of that socialism comes because they don’t have to spend on their military—we do it for them.

Here’s the infographic and the blog post from the Cato Institute to prove it:

Mexican Cartels Invade America: End The Drug War To Stop Them

jdkolassa — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:22:47 -0500

Last week, a scary new report came out from the Associated Press on the drug cartels presence in the continental United States:

Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.

If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels’ move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.

Cartel activity in the U.S. is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation’s No. 1 supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot here.

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.

“It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office.

The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins — a man who has never set foot in Chicago — was recently named the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, the same notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.

The Chicago Crime Commission, a non-government agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the U.S.

Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem — of then-nascent cartels expanding their power — “and didn’t nip the problem in the bud,” said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where they are now.”

They “didn’t nip the problem in the bud,” says Jack Killorin. Gee, I wonder why. It couldn’t possibly have to do with a massive war on drugs that is being pushed by Mexico’s large northern neighbor, could it?

Meanwhile, I find Jack Riley’s comment that this may be the “most serious threat’ we’ve ever faced from organized crime to be somewhat laughable. Oh, surely, it is a true statement, and not one based in utter absurdity. No, the reason I find it laughable is because this threat is caused by his very own agency.

If we’re going to discuss how to stop the cartels, we must first ask why the cartels are doing what they are doing. Why are the cartels doing so much to smuggle illegal narcotics into the United States? The answer to that is simple: drug trafficking is a highly lucrative endeavor. It’s all about profits. But then we must ask another question: why is drug trafficking so lucrative? And why does it involve so much violence?

That answer is also pretty simple: because drugs are illegal, the supply of them is artificially constrained. And what happens when supply is low and demand is high? High prices, of course. And what happens if, because your product is illegal, you can’t turn to the courts and the police to defend your property if someone steals it?

Crime and violence. Naturally.

This is a basic fact that libertarians understand, but which government bureaucrats, politicians, and law enforcement professionals cannot seem to grasp—deliberately, in some cases. That’s why I highly doubt Riley and Killorin will go for the best answer to deal with the drug cartels: drug legalization. Let Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Bristol-Meyers Squibb compete to produce and sell marijuana and cocaine, legally, in drug stores across the nation. Let the trade be brought into the legal sphere, under the protection of courts, enforced by contracts, with peaceful, legal alternatives to violence made available.

There is no reason not to. As Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has noted, the war on drugs is far, far more immoral than drug use itself. Drug prohibition has no justification. Thus, it’s actually really simple to just legalize drugs, and pull the rug out from underneath the cartels. We’ve already seen two states legalize marijuana last year, a bill to legalize marijuana just passed out of committee in Oregon, and who knows what the future holds based on these trends.

Want to stop the cartels? Hit them where it hurts: their pocketbooks. Legalize drugs—all drugs—and let’s end this farce.

Why We Need Guns for Self-Defense

jdkolassa — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:30:46 -0500

You may have heard about the recent slaying of a Texas district attorney and his wife in their home. It follows the brazen daylight killing of a prosecutor in the same county, and it has everyone on edge. This is what local law enforcement is going through:

The judge was on the phone.

“Yep, I said I’ll do anything,” Bruce Wood told the person on the other end, rubbing his forehead. “They asked me to do a eulogy. I don’t know what I’m going to say.”

Elsewhere in the Kaufman County Courthouse, a sheriff’s deputy was handing out bulletproof vests. “I brought the smallest one,” he said to a secretary, who stared at the khaki armor as he explained how to adjust the side straps should the need arise. “These have the neck for a female.”

Outside, two armed guards escorted a white-haired judge from his parked car to the mirrored doors of the yellow brick courthouse in a county where little seemed the same anymore.

“Judge! How are you doing?” shouted a reporter.

“Everybody is making do as best as we can,” he said.

All this past week, people in this rural county 30 miles southeast of Dallas were trying to figure out what life here had become. Their district attorney, Mike McLelland, had been shot to death in his home along with his wife, Cynthia, the weekend before. Two months earlier, Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse had been gunned down in a parking lot off the courthouse square.

Now, as a memorial service for the McLellands approached, people had all kinds of questions. They wondered whether they were safe, whether there might be more targets. Were the killers outsiders or possibly their neighbors? Were the slayings of two county prosecutors the result of Texas score-settling or the start of some even darker chapter in the annals of U.S. law enforcement?

Of course they have questions. A district attorney—a government official—and his wife were murdered in their own home. There were no police there to protect them. There was no threat of the thin blue line to deter their attacker or attackers. There was just the DA, his wife, and whoever slew them. That is what happened.

This is not some ordinary citizen, some regular old joe. This is a government official. This is somebody who should, in theory, be protected, be untouchable.

But the police couldn’t protect them. Can they protect you?

This is not something comfortable with these thoughts. I don’t want to scare or terrify you. What should scare and terrify you is the mindset that those on the left have. They want to take away your guns. They want to leave you defenseless. And they justify this by saying that “it’s okay, we have police to protect you.”

Well, this incident blows that myth right out of the water. And yes, Virginia, we do need guns for self-defense. I’m not going to pretend that owning a gun will make you invincible, or will keep you perfectly safe. But it will go a long way towards that.

This is what Jim Carrey, Dianne Feinstein, and Barack Obama don’t want you to know. They don’t want you to know that this happens. But it does. And there’s only one person to rely on to protect yourself.

YOU.

Dear Farm Subsidies: Die In A Fire

jdkolassa — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:20:48 -0500

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Institute has a new analysis out on agricultural subsidies, with a title that could have come from my own heart — Farm Subsidies Must Die. I dig it.

In 2012, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) spent $22 billion on subsidy programs for farmers. Introduced in the 1930s to help struggling small family farms, the subsidies now routinely draw condemnation from both left and right as wasteful corporate welfare. While the number of farms is down 70 percent since the 1930s—only 2 percent of Americans are directly engaged in farming—farmers aren’t necessarily struggling anymore. In 2010, the average farm household earned $84,400, up 9.4 percent from 2009 and about 25 percent more than the average household income nationwide.

What’s more, a handful of farmers reap most of the benefits from the subsidies: Wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton have always taken the lion’s share of the feds’ largesse. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that “since 1995, just 10 percent of subsidized farms—the largest and wealthiest operations—have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments. 62 percent of farms in the United States did not collect subsidy payments.”

That is completely wasteful spending right there, something we could drop immediately and wouldn’t be hurt for it. In fact, repealing agricultural subsidies would have a very beneficial effect on the poorest of Americans:

In addition to the direct cost to taxpayers, these subsidies cause enormous economic distortions. Consider the domestic sugar industry. The USDA protects its producers against foreign competitors by imposing U.S. import quotas, and against low prices with a no-recourse loan program that serves as an effective price floor. As a result, the University of Michigan economist Mark Perry reports, Americans have had to pay an average of twice the world price of sugar since 1982.

That’s just one of many government interventions that have hurt the poorest Americans by increasing the price of food. The food stamp program—an $80 billion initiative designed to help poor Americans offset the high price of buying food—is embedded in the very farm bill that keeps those prices so high.

This mirrors what I wrote in an op-ed for The Blaze last year, when I laid out five policies that conservatives and libertarians should push for precisely because they would help the poor (and are free market based):

2 – End all subsidies, loans, bailouts, barriers to entry, and all cronyism
We all agree that government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers via corporate subsidies and bailouts, but we should also recognize how these programs hurt the poor. Natural competition makes goods and services cheaper, but these programs shortchange that. Take, for example, the federal Dairy Price Support Program. It has the federal government buy the ingredients for cheese and milk, thus raising the price of these goods. A 2004 Government Accountability Office report showed that “U.S. prices for butter averaged twice the world price, cheese prices were about 50 percent higher, and nonfat dry milk prices were about 30 percent higher.” What does this do for the poor, other than make them more dependent on government welfare?

Fortunately, there is increasing opposition to the farm subsidies. Americans for Prosperity, one of the largest free market activist groups in the country, has come out strongly against the farm bill, complete with updates and a very neato infographic that shows how the farm bill is really just another welfare bill:

FreedomWorks has also jumped on the opposition bandwagon. This is huge. Fifteen years ago—heck, just four or five years ago—there would have been little to no opposition to these subsidies. Most Americans wouldn’t have understood that they were being robbed, and would have just thought, “What cruel people, not caring about our farmers!” Nobody wanted to touch it. It was yet another third rail of politics. But all of that is changing.

I think Ms. de Rugy and myself will get a great present in the near future, with agricultural subsidies being thrown into the dustbin of history. They are simply untenable, and with the tiny number of Americans who are actually farmers, I don’t see how they will be defended. Even with the notion of “concetrated benefits and dispersed costs,” which permits a tiny group to basically get away with extorting a much larger group, if the liberty movement focuses on how these subsidies raise food prices at the checkout and especially on foods typically consumed by the poor, the subsidies will evaporate. People will not stand for that, especially in this recession.

Dear farm subsidies: go die in a fire. America will be so much better off without you.

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