With a Republican House emboldened by their greatest electoral success in 50 years, it seemed like Obama's agenda had been dealt a major blow. Any further intrusions into the health care sector would be blocked with the support of the American people. Cap and trade legislation instituting a carbon tax would be looked upon as raising taxes in the midst of an already anemic recovery. Card check, designed to increase the unionization of the workplace, seemed DOA. Net neutrality, a government intrusion into Internet pricing, seemed doomed to wander in the wilderness as yet another government solution in desperate search of a problem.
Quietly, however, all these agenda items have been unilaterally imposed on the American people through the HHS, EPA, NLRB, and the FCC. What could not be passed in the Congress has been mandated as law by the bureaucracy. Many of these new rules will be challenged in court and, as Reason reports, the HHS has already backed down from funding end-of-life counseling, a measure that was removed from the original Obamacare bill. The EPA's new carbon tax has already survived at least one judicial challenge. Verizon is filing suit against the FCC. South Carolina is moving to block card check.
The fact that all of these measures can be imposed by the executive branch and only checked by the judicial branch is a massive failure of government and an indictment of Congress's desire to delegate its own constitutionally mandated powers to other bodies. Congress has repeatedly ducked responsibility from everything from instituting unpopular policies to declarations of war. The Constitution states that only Congress can declare war but it has not used its power since World War II. Resolutions on the authorization of force have been used in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq. When there is no possibility that Congress can be held responsible for their actions, the nation too often entangles itself in foreign wars.
Although all spending bills must originate in the House, bureaucracies always seem to have the funds that they need to enforce whatever regulations they decide is best for the American people. This not democracy, this is tyranny. Congress needs to immediately reassert its constitutional mandate and reign in the power of the entrenched bureaucracies whose mission can vastly change from administration to administration. Congress is the check that keeps the President from having the power of king. The deliberative process of the legislative branch is the bulwark that protects us from passing bad laws. When that process can be skipped because it is inconvenient for the party that controls the White House, we become less free.
Unfortunately, dismantling the bureaucracy seems an impossible task. Although Reagan ran on eliminating the Board of Education and the Department of Energy (a new bureaucracy created by his predecessor, Carter) he never even came close. As these bureaucracies persist, the ability to get rid of them diminishes. A good first step would be to legislate against the latest overreaches of these entities and eventually craft legislation to limit their power going forward. Unfortunately, Congress seems more than content to leave the heavy lifting, and our liberty, to unelected bureaucrats.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
What Drives Mass Murderers?
Over the weekend, a Democratic Congresswoman was shot in Tucson by a 22 year old male obsessed with anti-government rhetoric. Already you can hear about how he was spurned on by the vitriol of our political debate and possibly by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and the Republican party. The opposite was said about James Lee, the hostage taker at the Discovery Channel, who was obsessed with Malthusian philosophy, the environment, and Gaia theory. It was said he was spurned on by Al Gore and the Democratic Party. In reality, extremists are rarely the products of the left or the right. Usually their views defy classification and often logic.
Take for example Joe Stack who flew a plane into the IRS office last February. His manifesto included references to "Big Brother Tax Man," the plight of immigrants, the "presidential puppet" Bush, obtuse attacks on the FAA, distrust of big business, hatred for the Catholic Church, attacks on capitalism and overthrow of the US government. Although painted as a right wing extremist for his anti-government views, he could also have been characterized as a left wing extremist for his anti-capitalist attitudes.
A month after Stack's suicide mission, a former mental patient named John Bedell opened fire outside the Pentagon. Although painted as a right ringer inflamed by conspiracy theories, his personal history leans to the left in that he was a registered Democrat, he hated George Bush, he had an affinity for 9/11 Truth theories.
While the Unabomber has been classified as a left wing extremist due to his anti-technology, anti-progress pro-environment manifestos (there is a silly test here that offers you statements from both Gore and the Unabomber and asks you to guess which one said which) not even this is accurate. In his manifesto, the Unabomber says, ""Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality." Well I guess even the Unabomber isn't wrong all the time.
The shooter in Tucson is another amalgamation of liberal and conservative beliefs with some irrational and unclassifiable ones thrown in for good measure. He attempted to join the military (leans right) but was rejected due to drug use (leans left). The shooter laughed publicly about killing babies in school when talking about abortion (leans left) but rejected the school's constitutional authority when they tried to discipline him (leans right). His Youtube profile reveals his favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf (both lean left, remember Nazis are national socialists) but also had familiarity with firearms (leans right).
He was also obsessed with mind control, felt grammar was one form of government mind control, and denies the right of the federal government to print currency. It is notable that his personal history and political beliefs that we read so much into have less in common with other mass shooters than his wacky unclassifiable ones. The interest in mind control puts him in the company of other famous assassins such as Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley, Sirhan Sirhan, as well as Columbine killers Harris & Klebold.
Despite the witch's brew of political beliefs that modern assassins and mass shooters claim to kill for, it seems that the only thing they really have in common is paranoia bordering on psychosis. It is worth remembering that Camden, NJ spawned the first American mass murder in Howard Unruh back in 1949. When his spree had ended and he was asked why he had killed so many people, he hung his head and was rumored to have said "I was sick of people calling me 'Howie'"
Take for example Joe Stack who flew a plane into the IRS office last February. His manifesto included references to "Big Brother Tax Man," the plight of immigrants, the "presidential puppet" Bush, obtuse attacks on the FAA, distrust of big business, hatred for the Catholic Church, attacks on capitalism and overthrow of the US government. Although painted as a right wing extremist for his anti-government views, he could also have been characterized as a left wing extremist for his anti-capitalist attitudes.
A month after Stack's suicide mission, a former mental patient named John Bedell opened fire outside the Pentagon. Although painted as a right ringer inflamed by conspiracy theories, his personal history leans to the left in that he was a registered Democrat, he hated George Bush, he had an affinity for 9/11 Truth theories.
While the Unabomber has been classified as a left wing extremist due to his anti-technology, anti-progress pro-environment manifestos (there is a silly test here that offers you statements from both Gore and the Unabomber and asks you to guess which one said which) not even this is accurate. In his manifesto, the Unabomber says, ""Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality." Well I guess even the Unabomber isn't wrong all the time.
The shooter in Tucson is another amalgamation of liberal and conservative beliefs with some irrational and unclassifiable ones thrown in for good measure. He attempted to join the military (leans right) but was rejected due to drug use (leans left). The shooter laughed publicly about killing babies in school when talking about abortion (leans left) but rejected the school's constitutional authority when they tried to discipline him (leans right). His Youtube profile reveals his favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf (both lean left, remember Nazis are national socialists) but also had familiarity with firearms (leans right).
He was also obsessed with mind control, felt grammar was one form of government mind control, and denies the right of the federal government to print currency. It is notable that his personal history and political beliefs that we read so much into have less in common with other mass shooters than his wacky unclassifiable ones. The interest in mind control puts him in the company of other famous assassins such as Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley, Sirhan Sirhan, as well as Columbine killers Harris & Klebold.
Despite the witch's brew of political beliefs that modern assassins and mass shooters claim to kill for, it seems that the only thing they really have in common is paranoia bordering on psychosis. It is worth remembering that Camden, NJ spawned the first American mass murder in Howard Unruh back in 1949. When his spree had ended and he was asked why he had killed so many people, he hung his head and was rumored to have said "I was sick of people calling me 'Howie'"
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
A New Year But Two Old Parties
The two party system is set up so that third parties are mostly shut out of the discussion. Occasionally a third party will bring up a valid position on an issue but once it is adopted by either major party, the third party originator of the idea slumps back into obscurity.
But what if it didn't have to be this way? What if magically we could have a new start to go along with this New Year? What would a libertarian country look like?
Libertarians have one answer for most economic questions: the free market. Austrian economists (notable among them, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman) teach us that prices are transmitters of information and that anything that distorts prices (usually government intrusion) adds static to that information. For example, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac distorted the mortgage market by allowing un-creditworthy people to buy homes, prices rose. These prices were lies that the government was telling its people.
Free markets could do everything from prevent the next real estate bubble to providing kidneys to people on transplant lists. Markets are examples of spontaneous order. If people have a want, need, or desire, someone else will fill it for economic gain. When people move into an area in large numbers invariably churches, supermarkets and retail stores follow. If the desire for pizza in an area increases, it is only a matter of time before another pizzeria opens.
All without one central planner, markets provide efficient solutions to problems that don't even need to be vocalized. Government does a bad job of planning even for vocalized problems with resources that vastly outnumber private sector giants like Wal-mart.
On social issues, a policy of noninterference is what most libertarians would like. People regulate themselves remarkably well and as long as they are not hurting anyone else, it is no one else's business anyway.
Unfortunately government is the biggest intruder into the "culture war" issues taking sides on issues like gays in the military, gay marriage, the amount of salt allowed in restaurant food, banning happy meals, redistricting fast food chains out of urban areas, banning alcoholic beverages that contain caffeine, banning smoking in public places, banning lingerie football, banning trans fats, even banning singing and dancing.
Private proprietors are free to do most of these things (excluding, at least, the first two) and I would even prefer a restaurant that bans smoking entirely but when government makes these decisions for people, it treats them as children. Top-down solutions always have unintended consequences such as when smoking bans hurt bar revenues especially in areas that border states that don't have that law. If half the bars voluntarily banned smoking and the other half let it stay, maybe a happy medium could be reached through spontaneous order and everyone could be made happy.
Although conservatives would applaud libertarians' economic policies and liberals would applaud at least some of the social ones (on the other hand, many bans were initiated by do-gooder progressives, one good reason libertarians tend to side more with conservatives than liberals), there are some issues which put libertarians on the fringe of both the right and left.
Libertarians advocate an end to prohibition, not just of marijuana laws but virtually all drug laws and all laws banning prostitution. Do libertarians really desire to put heroin in their arm and then have sex with a prostitute? Well, not really. Prohibition is the opposite of a market. Prohibition raises prices due to the danger involved with the business, then it attracts the criminal element to run it. Even worse, when a dispute occurs, there is no legal way to settle it so the most violent criminal tends to prevail.
By enriching the pushers while stuffing our jails full of johns and users, we create a worse situation than would exist with total legalization. At an average price of $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone, we need to focus on those who are breaking laws that impinge on other people's rights, not merely our social norms. As I said before in Just Say Now, we lose 14,000 people a year to drunk driving and still never talk about alcohol prohibition. We realize the current system of creating a legal market is the best of the realistic outcomes.
Of course there is no such thing as magic and libertarianism will likely remain in the shadows. However, with growing disenchantment with liberal fiscal policy, a mounting debt that will come due in the next few decades and younger people continuing to drift leftwards on social issues, libertarianism looks like it could be the philosophy of the coming generation even though the mainstream might never adopt the fringe issues and likely won't fully embrace free markets.
Norman Thomas, an American socialist once said that, "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." I believe that in time America might simply become an economically conservative and socially moderate-to-left country and one day we will all wake up in a libertarian country.
But what if it didn't have to be this way? What if magically we could have a new start to go along with this New Year? What would a libertarian country look like?
Libertarians have one answer for most economic questions: the free market. Austrian economists (notable among them, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman) teach us that prices are transmitters of information and that anything that distorts prices (usually government intrusion) adds static to that information. For example, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac distorted the mortgage market by allowing un-creditworthy people to buy homes, prices rose. These prices were lies that the government was telling its people.
Free markets could do everything from prevent the next real estate bubble to providing kidneys to people on transplant lists. Markets are examples of spontaneous order. If people have a want, need, or desire, someone else will fill it for economic gain. When people move into an area in large numbers invariably churches, supermarkets and retail stores follow. If the desire for pizza in an area increases, it is only a matter of time before another pizzeria opens.
All without one central planner, markets provide efficient solutions to problems that don't even need to be vocalized. Government does a bad job of planning even for vocalized problems with resources that vastly outnumber private sector giants like Wal-mart.
On social issues, a policy of noninterference is what most libertarians would like. People regulate themselves remarkably well and as long as they are not hurting anyone else, it is no one else's business anyway.
Unfortunately government is the biggest intruder into the "culture war" issues taking sides on issues like gays in the military, gay marriage, the amount of salt allowed in restaurant food, banning happy meals, redistricting fast food chains out of urban areas, banning alcoholic beverages that contain caffeine, banning smoking in public places, banning lingerie football, banning trans fats, even banning singing and dancing.
Private proprietors are free to do most of these things (excluding, at least, the first two) and I would even prefer a restaurant that bans smoking entirely but when government makes these decisions for people, it treats them as children. Top-down solutions always have unintended consequences such as when smoking bans hurt bar revenues especially in areas that border states that don't have that law. If half the bars voluntarily banned smoking and the other half let it stay, maybe a happy medium could be reached through spontaneous order and everyone could be made happy.
Although conservatives would applaud libertarians' economic policies and liberals would applaud at least some of the social ones (on the other hand, many bans were initiated by do-gooder progressives, one good reason libertarians tend to side more with conservatives than liberals), there are some issues which put libertarians on the fringe of both the right and left.
Libertarians advocate an end to prohibition, not just of marijuana laws but virtually all drug laws and all laws banning prostitution. Do libertarians really desire to put heroin in their arm and then have sex with a prostitute? Well, not really. Prohibition is the opposite of a market. Prohibition raises prices due to the danger involved with the business, then it attracts the criminal element to run it. Even worse, when a dispute occurs, there is no legal way to settle it so the most violent criminal tends to prevail.
By enriching the pushers while stuffing our jails full of johns and users, we create a worse situation than would exist with total legalization. At an average price of $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone, we need to focus on those who are breaking laws that impinge on other people's rights, not merely our social norms. As I said before in Just Say Now, we lose 14,000 people a year to drunk driving and still never talk about alcohol prohibition. We realize the current system of creating a legal market is the best of the realistic outcomes.
Of course there is no such thing as magic and libertarianism will likely remain in the shadows. However, with growing disenchantment with liberal fiscal policy, a mounting debt that will come due in the next few decades and younger people continuing to drift leftwards on social issues, libertarianism looks like it could be the philosophy of the coming generation even though the mainstream might never adopt the fringe issues and likely won't fully embrace free markets.
Norman Thomas, an American socialist once said that, "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." I believe that in time America might simply become an economically conservative and socially moderate-to-left country and one day we will all wake up in a libertarian country.
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