United Liberty

Some very interesting (and good) news out of Connecticut, courtesy of the Hartford Business Journal:

Now that Connecticut state employee unions ratified $1.6 million in concessions this week, Gov. Dannel Malloy’s administration will begin shrinking the state’s government in other areas as well.

Management positions may be consolidated, vacant positions will be left open, and the fares on the New Haven rail services may increase, said Office of Policy & Management Secretary Ben Barnes on Friday morning.

“The best way to restructure state government is to do it deliberately with time and make sure all the needed services are still provided,” Barnes said.

Beyond the concession agreement, the state wants to shrink its size while maintaining an appropriate level of service. Barnes said Malloy’s budget team already has identified hundreds of millions in potential savings reductions, although some are more attractive than others. Cutting grant programs to outside agencies, for example, wouldn’t be to popular.

As part of the union concession agreement approved Wednesday, the state and the employee unions will need to hit savings targets of more than $150 million through various cuts in health care, technology and general savings. The unions and the government managers will form committees to identify possible cost savings.

It’s good to do it deliberately, I think, and with time: sudden shocks will not bring anyone over to “our side.” But this is fantastic news in any case: a Democratic governor has obtained large scale cuts in government expenses from public unions, traditionally one of the largest forces in making sure that government stays bloated and expensive.

It’s been a long time since I last interviewed Dan Carlin, host of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. That doesn’t mean that he’s stopped being interesting, however. In this installment, I asked his unique, historically based perspective on China, Iraq, the United States military and marijuana.

I think that’s going to be a pretty accurate statement in any society where warmaking becomes a regular feature of the system. Once you develop a major societal infrastructure to support such a military establishment, you begin to build up a vast array of interests (both in supplying and providing for such an entity, but also for ways to employ it that would benefit someone). These interests have a way of bending and warping the nation-state’s priorities and interests.  I think that is something that is one of the lessons the writers of Classical Antiquity try to pass on to us.  The people who founded the United States read those authors and understood those lessons, and tried to heed the warnings of the Greek and Roman writers and keep those “perverse incentives”  under control by limiting the growth of a large standing army and by counseling an avoidance of things like “  entangling alliances”   that could drag you into someone else’s wars.

President Barack Obama doesn’t need anymore bad news, but that’s exactly what Obama got yesterday as Gallup released new approval numbers, which are highlighted by poor numbers on the War in Afghanistan and the economy:

Support for Obama’s management of the war fell to 36%, down from 48% in a February poll. Now, a record 43% also say it was a mistake to go to war there after the terrorist attacks in 2001.

The decline in support contributed to the lowest approval ratings of Obama’s presidency. Amid a lengthy recession, more Americans support his handling of the economy (39%) than the war.

Only 41% of those surveyed Tuesday through Sunday approved of the way Obama is handling his job, his lowest rating in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll since he took office in January 2009. In Gallup’s separate daily tracking poll, his approval was at 45% Monday.

We’re coming off the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the economy is hobbling along and is just as vulnerable as it was with the stimulus bill was passed early last year. Obama is facing the prospect of a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and enough losses in the Senate to slim down the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, President Barack Obama has told of this own party that it may not be a good idea for him to campaign for them.

In a column over at the Washington Post, Amity Shlaes provides us with some historical perspective between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama, and sees the same mistakes being made all over again:

By fixating on the debt and stimulus plans, Obama and Congress are overlooking challenges to the economy from taxes, employment and the entrepreneurial environment. President Roosevelt’s great error was to ignore such factors — and the result was that sickening double dip.

Taxation is an obvious area the Obama administration ought to reconsider. Income taxes, the dividend tax and capital gains taxes are all set to rise as the Bush tax cuts expire. The Obama administration portrays these increases as necessary for budgetary and social reasons. A society in which the wealthy pay their share, the message goes, has a stronger economy. The administration and congressional Democrats are also striving to ensure that businesses pony up. The carried-interest provision in the tax extender bill seeks to raise rates on gains by private equity and hedge funds. If that were not enough, a so-called enterprise value tax would be levied on partnerships that sought to elude the new high taxes by selling their companies.

Roosevelt, too, pursued the dual purposes of revenue and social good. In 1935 he signed legislation known as the “soak the rich” law. FDR, more radical than Obama in his class hostility, spoke explicitly of the need for “very high taxes.” Roosevelt’s tax trap was the undistributed-profits tax, which hit businesses that chose not to disgorge their cash as dividends or wages. The idea was to goad companies into action.

Back during the Bush years, the Left became so opposed to George W. Bush’s agenda that they started to take the side of defending some of the most misogynist and xenophobic people on earth: Islamic fundamentalists. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of female genital mutilation, the refusal among many Muslims to become integrated in society, and provocation of massive violence and the hostility to free speech among radical Islamists, landed her a fellowship at the right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute, despite having worked at an abortion clinic and being an avowed atheist. The Right in those days seemed in many ways like more of a friend of both freedom and equality than the Left.

It is amazing how quickly times change, however. The moderates and thinkers that have for decades made the Republican Party an attractive vessel for the educated and thoughtful appear to be in the process of being purged. Kathleen Parker, for years syndicated as the conservative counterweight in newspapers to the late liberal columnist Molly Ivins, found herself the recipient of hateful and abusive comments after saying in a column that Sarah Palin was not yet ready for the national spotlight. David Brooks’ consistent common sense got him scoured on talk radio and sites like NewsBusters after he took on the talk radio nut jobs:

Some non-shocking but nonetheless ridiculous news about the people we pay to oversee offshore coastal drilling:

So what were the staff members at the Minerals Management Service—the Interior Department division in charge of regulating offshore drilling—doing instead of their jobs? Watching pornography, according to a report from the Interior Department’s inspector general, as well as a slew of other offenses, including at least one inspector who used crystal meth and may have been under its influence at work. Staff members also accepted tickets to sporting events and free lunches from the oil and gas companies they were supposed to be overseeing. “[W]e discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange—both government and industry—have often known one another since childhood,” the inspector general wrote.

A libertarian friend of mine (what a shock!) said brilliantly of the administration’s regulatory policy: “If the people you’re trying to regulate are endorsing your policy, the chances are you’re not doing it right.”

And seriously - crystal meth? When I hear stories like this or political leaders having secret affairs with fellow males (often when they’re stomping on gay rights), I just have to sit and wonder. Doing hard drugs and having gay love affairs are not everyday trivialities that everyone engages in like jaywalking or even shoplifting. If you’re engaging in these activities, it’s emblematic of something else.

Via Ed Driscoll comes a commercial run by W.R. Grace & Company back in 1986 that, in hindsight, seems to be prescient:

As some of you may recall, J. Peter Grace was something of a star among Reagan-era deficit hawks. In 1982, when the Federal Budget Deficit was $ 120 billion dollars, and the National Debt was $ 1.412 trillion, Grace was appointed by President Reagan to head what came to be called The Grace Commission, which was charged with investigating waste and inefficiency in government. Grace went on to co-found Citizens Against Government Waste, an organization that continues to fight government waste and pork barrel spending.

One wonders what Grace would think if he knew that this was what the future had in store:

Nathan Newman over at Talking Points Memo put together a great montage of statements from Republicans disenchanted with Arizona’s immigration legislation:

If the apparent de-evolution of behavior by the tea parties wasn’t enough, Republican congressman Eric Cantor is now finding himself a target:

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said today a bullet was shot through the window of his campaign office in Richmond, Va. this week, giving just another example of the numerous acts of violence and threats against members of Congress this week.

Just about all the reported incidents have targeted Democratic members in the wake of their support for health care reform, but Cantor today blasted Democrats — calling out two party leaders in particular — for “ratcheting up the rhetoric” surrounding the dangerous threats and blaming Republicans for inciting the hostility.

I wouldn’t say that the Republican Party incited this hostility. It wasn’t the Democrats either. I blame the Tea Parties, which have mutated from a gathering of libertarians upset about the economic state of the United States into something quite horrible and ugly.