United Liberty

There’s a pervasive myth floating around the progressive left that pro-market advocacy necessarily means pro-business advocacy (and, by extension, anti-poor people advocacy). That is, as I said, categorically a myth, but that doesn’t mean people don’t believe it — they do. Kudos are due many times over to the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney for doing yeoman’s work to try to dispel these myths, like this thorough and merciless rebuttal to Anna Palmer’s joke of a POLITICO piece on a supposed resurgence of corporate lobbyist influence in the White House if Mitt Romney wins the election, as if there’s nothing to see in the Barack Obama White House:

You mean after he kicks out the lobbyists in Obama’s White House like Patton Boggs lobbyist Emmett Beliveau (7), O’Melveny & Myers lobbyist Derek Douglas (8), and Pfizer’s, AT&T’s lobbyist at Akin Gump Dana Singiser (9)?

By that point in the column, Carney had already identified six registered lobbyists working in the administration; by the end of the thrashing, he identifies a total fifty-five registered lobbyists working in the White House.

Tonight President Obama will deliver his third State of the Union address, but something that happened yesterday illustrates the true state of our union far better than anything you’ll hear tonight. As we reported yesterday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was detained by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials at the Nashville International Airport. Paul was detained by TSA officials after refusing an invasive full body pat-down following some kind of anomaly in the body scanner’s reading. Some might argue that there’s nothing to get worked up about here. After all, shouldn’t we expect senators to be treated like everyone else? But it is precisely because everyday citizens are subjected to these invasive procedures on a daily basis that Sen. Paul’s detention is so alarming. His high-profile detention by the TSA serves as a reminder that Americans are having their privacy violated every day on their way through the nation’s airports.

You probably won’t hear about Sen. Paul’s detention by the TSA in President Obama’s address tonight. You’re not likely to hear anything about it in the GOP response delivered by Governor Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.), nor even in the Tea Party response offered by businessman and former presidential candidate Herman Cain (R-Ga.). You probably won’t hear about the National Defense Authorization Act, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or any of the other manifold ways that Washington has undermined the Bill of Rights. But whether our politicians want to raise these issues or not, these are the issues that define the state of our union in the 21st century. And the state of our union is dire.

If you’re like me, you hoped that you wouldn’t be hearing anything more from allegedly corrupt former Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) after he decided in 2010 not to seek a sixth Senate term. Unfortunately those hopes were dashed when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) decided it just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hire somebody who allegedly knows exactly what it takes to buy a senator. The MPAA selected Dodd as its new head lobbyist chairman and CEO last year. Now Dodd is taking aim at Wikipedia, Google, and other websites involved in today’s protest against the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship legislation pending in Congress:

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Given President Obama’s first instincts to centralize power in Washington and expand his own executive power, it might seem unlikely that he would issue a veto threat against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). But we might be able to persuade him if we speak in language that is well understood at the White House, which is the language of reelection. While the Obama campaign might think backing SOPA/PIPA will help the president’s reelection efforts by way of generous campaign contributions from Hollywood, the White House might want to consider that signing SOPA/PIPA into law could damage his chances of reelection in at least five important ways.

1. SOPA/PIPA will alienate independents. No question about it, independents love and are well-informed about threats to their civil liberties. The Obama campaign might want to remember an ACLU poll from 2007 that showed a large majority of independents insisting that the next president should restore civil liberties that were eroded during the eight years of the Bush administration. That President Obama largely hasn’t restored those civil liberties hasn’t gone unnoticed. Maybe that’s why new polling shows Ron Paul and Mitt Romney beating Obama and even Rick Santorum nipping at his heels among independents. Many independents are independents precisely because they don’t trust either party to protect their civil liberties. Obama can kiss those independent voters goodbye if he signs SOPA/PIPA into law.

Yesterday, we went over the top 10 news stories from 2011, which were mainly about news and issues that made headlines this past year. This morning, we’re recapping our most read stories from 2011.

Being a libertarian-leaning blog, we touch on a variety of issues. From those of you that aren’t familiar with libertarianism, it is a philosophy grounded in individual liberty. We believe the individual is sovereign and has a right to pursue whatever lifestyle he chooses, provided that he doesn’t harm or disparage the rights of other sovereigns in the process. The belief in individual sovereign also extends to economic liberty and a belief in free markets.

With that said, our top posts from 2011 range from civil liberties issues, including the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Fourth Amendment, to defending free markets and fighting cronyism and corporatism in Washington and on Wall Street to covering Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and having an open discussing the libertarian philosophy.

We offer no additional commentary on these posts. If you would like to read them, just click on the title. Again, have a safe and happy new year.

With the economy in a sustained recession, unemployment at or above nine percent for approaching three years, and tens of millions of Americans struggling just to put food on their table, perhaps few people or organizations have been showered with such hostility and ill-repute as have “corporations.” Yet, of all of the root causes of our current economic malaise, such contempt may nowhere be more misplaced.

Obama, after the shellacking his party took in the 2010 elections and with no end in sight to the economic downturn, has turned to finding a scapegoat or two to deflect blame for the anger and frustration America feels. His two favorite targets are Republican “obstructionism” and those evil, faceless corporations that steal from the poor to sate their insatiable greed.

Maybe he has a point though. After all, we all know that Steve Jobs became one of the richest men in the world as the head of Apple by hiring legions on thugs to go out across America to households and college campuses, brandishing guns and clubs and threatening violence if the poor masses did not give these brutes their money in exchange for little pieces of molded plastic and silicon and copper which Jobs called “Macs” and “iPods”, “iPhones” and “iPads”. His reign of terror was so complete that every time Jobs released a new version of these little pieces of plastic, hundreds and thousands of people would camp out overnight at one of his stores to give up their money in exchange for these gadgets, in the hope that by voluntarily doing so his thugs would not show up at their homes, schools and places of businesses and threaten them there.

For the last few weeks, protesters have camped out in New York City to express their grievances with Wall Street. The complaints are somewhat familiar and to some extent, I can understand where they’re coming from. They are upset with what they see as government colluding with corporations for taxpayer-funded bailouts during very tough economics times.

The frustration with corporatism is understandable, libertarians and free market conservatives have expressed the same sentiment for years only to take a back seat to the idea that what’s “good for business” is good policy. But as we’ve come to learn, so-called “pro-business” policies aren’t always a good deal for taxpayers. And by that I mean that we truly want a level playing field, but not through excessive taxation or regulation. Rather, keeping government out of the business of picking winners and losers.

But some members of the nascent “Occupy Wall Street” have expressed demands (note that these demands are unofficial), which for all of their supposed distrust of government, these guys have a very utopian idea of what government should be — likely enough to make Karl Marx and Che Guevara proud. Nevermind that they would be economic suicide.

Among the suggested demands for the movement are (with my comments next to them):

There are more and more people out there pissed at the rich.  I certainly understand where they’re coming from, but they’re wrong.  The rich per se aren’t the problem.  It’s time to quit fighting against the rich.  Occupy Wall Street has been wanting to smack the rich, and making a lot of noise about it.  The problem is they’re wrong.  The rich are not now, nor have they ever really been, the problem.

No, the problem is the corporatists.  Those are the people we need to stand united against.

Corporations are a tool, a way to organize businesses.  They’re not the enemy either.  However, the people who seem to believe that corporations deserve tons of special breaks, including government bailouts, are.  They are the reason people are pissed.

Ezra Klein has a piece where he outlines many of the complaints of the OWS-ers.  Most of them are debt related.  A lot of it is student debt, debt that Presidents through the years told them to take on for a better life.  I understand that anger…to a point.

But you look around and the reality is not everyone is suffering. Wall Street caused this mess, and the government paid off their debts and helped them rake in record profits in recent years. The top 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation’s income and 40 percent of its wealth. There are a lot of people who don’t seem to be doing everything they’re supposed to do, and it seems to be working out just fine for them.

A notice in this morning’s Federal Register gives us insight about how regulatory capture begins.

The Department of Energy is looking to create a a regulatory subcommittee of vetted stakeholders to develop energy efficiency standards for electricity distribution transformers:

SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or the Department) is giving notice that it intends to establish a negotiated rulemaking subcommittee under ERAC in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and the Negotiated Rulemaking Act (NRA) to negotiate proposed Federal standards for the energy efficiency of low- voltage dry-type distribution transformers. The purpose of the subcommittee will be to discuss and, if possible, reach consensus on a proposed rule for the energy efficiency of distribution transformers, as authorized by the Energy Policy Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, as amended. The subcommittee will consist of representatives of parties having a defined stake in the outcome of the proposed standards, and will consult as appropriate with a range of experts on technical issues. DATES: Written comments and requests to be appointed as members of the subcommittee are welcome and should be submitted by August 29, 2011.

So the government is looking for parties with “a defined stake” — meaning entities operating in distribution transformer space, from electricity companies and device manufacturers to green groups and (probably) well-heeled and connected Democratic donors — to appoint (not elect) to a committee responsible for promulgating efficiency criteria that will eventually have the force of law.

The free market.  Capitalism.  Call it what you will.  The truth is that people often don’t understand the difference between capitalism and what we currently have.  They mistakenly call our current mixed economy capitalism, and they blame companies that try to stamp out competition as being capitalistic.  They’re wrong.

Today, many companies spend a great deal of money on lobbyists that take their wish list to Congress.  That wish list does occasionally call for relaxing of some regulations, but more often than not it calls of increases in regulation.  Why?  Because they like the idea of making in harder to enter the market and provide competition.  Increase regulations also give them the benefit of possibly stamping out smaller competitors.  That forces consumers to go to one of the big guys for their products.

This, my friends, is not capitalism in any way, shape, or form. It’s not.  This is corporatism, plain and simple.

In capitalism, these regulations designed to stamp out the little guy wouldn’t exist.  Would the little guy thrive?  Maybe, maybe not.  It would be up to that little guy to make it though.  He (or she) would have to work hard, make good decisions, and convince his potential customers that they should be from his company.  If all that comes together, then he’ll survive just fine.  If not, well…it’s all on him.

Capitalism isn’t a pretty system, but it actually is the most fair.  When progressives talk about fairness, they never consider capitalism as being just that.  However, it really is.  An open market, where each individual is free to determine their own destiny.  If they want to start a company, there’s not a governmental body standing in the way trying to keep them from it.  There’s nothing to it but their own determination and skill.