Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Obama's New Healthcare Ambassadors

The Great Pumpkin...A Statist? Say It Isn't So!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

- Doug Larson

Monday, October 26, 2009

You Could Put Any Label By This Hole

Friday, October 23, 2009

Some Already Have Privatized S.S.

A Great Tat of the Tree of Life!

Thank You For Stealing At Walmart Today!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Four friends spend weeks planning the perfect mountain camping and fishing trip.

Two days before the group is to leave Rob's wife puts her foot down and tells him he isn't going.

Rob's friends are very upset that he can't go, but what can they do.

Two days later the three get to the camping site only to find Rob sitting there with a tent set up, firewood gathered, and supper, the fish he had caught cooking on the fire.

"Dang man, how long you been here and how did you talk your wife into letting you go?"

"Well, I've been here since yesterday. Yesterday evening I was sitting in my chair and my wife came up behind me and put her hands over my eyes and said 'guess who'?"

I pulled her hands off and she was wearing a brand new see through nightie. She took my hand and took me to our bedroom. The room had two dozen candles and rose pedals all over. She had on the bed, handcuffs and ropes! She told me to tie and cuff her to the bed and I did. And then she said, "now, you can do what ever you want."

So here I am.

THE NEWEST DEMOCRAT TAX … PLASTIC SURGERY?

We have yet another new tax from Obama and the Democrats! Do these people just sit around all day long looking for something to tax? Where do you think we would be if Democrats spent one half of the time they spend thinking about new taxes, thinking of ways to cut the size and cost of government? How much better off do you think we would be?

Okay so this new tax … the Democrats want a 10% tax on plastic surgery to help pay for Obamacare. Now I know exactly what you are thinking … That’s just a bunch of rich people getting their facelifts and their plastic boobies! And I’m sure that’s what the Democrats were thinking when they came up with this.

Now, here’s where we run into the problems. What about the plastic surgery that is done for the purposes of repairing injuries or burn damage? Uh oh! Looks like we are going to have an exception right off the bat. Now what about surgery for re-creating breasts for women with breast cancer … uh oh! We are going to need another exemption! If you are getting fake boobs: a 10% tax. If you are repairing you original equipment: no tax there. What about repairing scarring from an automobile accident? You see where this is going, folks. All we are doing here is increasing the bureaucracy.

Then there is this belief that plastic surgery is for rich people. Horsesqueeze. Statistics show that 90% of all plastic surgery patients earn less than $90,000 a year. Those people who are lower income and middle class. So here is yet ANOTHER Obama tax on the middle class. Oh but they will get around it by calling it something else; it’s not a “tax” it’s a “fee.” Or a “surcharge.”

All of this doesn’t matter much. It is all about taking more of your money and putting it into the hands of the government. I am so sick to death of this Democrat drive … every day that passes … they sit in their little committee rooms up there, they sit in their offices, they lurk around their West Wing offices in the White House … and all they think about, day after day, are two things. Number one: how can we grow government? Number two: how can we tax people to pay for it?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

One Before Bed!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

absolute subordination

"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Emma Goldman, "What is Anarchy?"

Isn't Anarchism Unrealistic?

It's sad to me that such a basic thing as the principled opposition to coercion is considered to be extremist, unreasonable, unrealistic. Why do I have to believe in permanent peace to oppose war? How is it utopian to denounce force?

bkMarcus, Isn't Anarchism Unrealistic?

Me & My Baby!

Saturday, October 17, 2009

What Every Office Needs

Quote of the Week

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."

-George Washington

Rush: Run to the RIGHT, Run to the RIGHT!!!

Dow's Up Kids, No More Worries................

Another Classic!

Economics and the Drug War

Economics and the Drug War
by Bart Frazier, Posted October 14, 2009

It is becoming ever more apparent that the war on drugs has been lost. Doomed to fail from the moment of its inception, the war the U.S. government has been waging has not been against drugs, but against people and the laws of economics. The results have been violence, corruption, and a militarized society.
A basic law of economics states that when there is less of something that people want, that item will become more expensive. Because drugs are illegal and their supply restricted, their price rises. As the price of drugs goes up, people who were previously on the fence about dealing drugs find dealing worth the risk. Higher profits always attract new suppliers, whether the market is legal or not. Intensifying the drug war makes it more profitable to be a drug dealer. The drug war creates drug lords and drug cartels.
The ironic thing about prices is that the street prices of drugs are the barometer by which the drug warriors gauge their effectiveness. If the street price goes up, they conclude that there are now fewer drugs on the streets and that they are “winning” the war. They might as well call “the drug war” a dealers’ jobs program.
Criminals making incredible profits buy politicians, bureaucrats, and police. There is simply no way around it. As long as drugs are illegal, there are going to be government officials who are willing to help the drug dealers for a price. The drug war corrupts the government.
By making drugs illegal, the government precludes participants in the drug market from using the legal system. Disputes can no longer be settled in court. Competition among rival businesses is not settled by efficient marketing and a quality product, but by violence. It is the only recourse of competitors. Drug dealers can’t go to the police to report theft, fraud, blackmail, or even murder, because they put themselves at risk by doing so. The drug war incites theft and violence.
The drug war also makes criminals out of good people who use drugs. Using illicit drugs is frowned on by most, but a person has the right to ingest anything he wants as long as he does not infringe on the rights of others in the process. The vast majority of the millions of people whom the government has incarcerated are people who have not violated the rights of others. They have simply put something in their bodies that the government doesn’t approve of. The drug war criminalizes nonviolent activity.
The police state has swelled in large part because of the war on drugs. Every year, SWAT teams across the country kick down the doors of homes looking for drugs. Armed with tanks and military weapons, they inevitably end up killing people in the process. As a senior editor at Reason magazine, Radley Balko, states, it’s “an epidemic of isolated incidences.” The drug war militarizes society.
We have seen this all happen before. When the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale of alcohol, the booze still flowed and organized crime took over where legitimate business was forbidden. As the booze flowed, so did the blood. Chicago was particularly hard hit by Prohibition, with Al Capone spreading murder and corruption throughout the city.
The economics of the drug market cannot be altered. The war on drugs produces violence in the streets, puts thugs in charge of a whole sector of the economy, and violates the rights of peaceful citizens. This has been going on for decades. If drugs were legalized, the drug trade would be disciplined by the market and not by violence. People would be free to use drugs, as is their right. And the police state would lose its primary excuse for bashing down people’s doors and seizing their property. Why continue this madness? It is time to legalize drugs.
Bart Frazier is program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Rat In A Maze

A True Classic!

Out When?

“It is a contradiction to try to promote free elections by interfering in them. But this is exactly what NED has done.” NED is long overdue for abolition.

The Early History of a Worldwide Nuisance
by James Bovard, Posted October 15, 2009
Few federal agencies have as much bipartisan support as the National Endowment for Democracy. Created in 1983, NED’s stated mission is to “strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts.” In actuality, NED allows U.S. politicians to meddle in foreign elections at the same time they pretend to be spreading democracy.

The previous year, Ronald Reagan had announced in a speech to the British Parliament, “Let us now begin ... a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation ... to foster the infrastructure of democracy.”

NED’s first chief, Allen Weinstein, later explained the Endowment’s rationale in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” NED aimed to be cleaner than the CIA — not the loftiest standard.

NED was created because Reagan believed the federal government was not doing enough to promote democracy abroad, despite the fact that the U.S. Information Agency, the Agency for International Development, and various education programs were conducting scores of exchange programs, sending bargeloads of publications overseas, and whooping up the American Way around the globe.

NED is based on the notion that its meddling in foreign elections is automatically pro-democracy because the U.S. government is the incarnation of democracy. NED has always operated on the principle that “what’s good for the U.S. government is good for democracy.”

NED seeks to provide the U.S. government with deniability for its foreign meddling. NED describes itself as a “private, nonprofit, grant-making organization created ... to strengthen democratic institutions around the world.” In reality, it is a government agency that launders U.S. tax dollars, removing the taint before foisting them on U.S.-favored groups abroad.

NED was designed to be largely unaccountable. It is largely a conduit of taxpayer money to the national Democratic and Republican parties (through organizations they created after NED was authorized — the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute), the AFL-CIO, and the Chamber of Commerce. These four organizations have received most of the money NED has distributed, much of which they passed on to consultants, foreign political parties, and other organizations. For many years, its board of directors consisted largely of NED grant recipients. The agency was controlled by lobbyists, political hacks, and interest groups on its gravy train, ensuring no shortage of “honest graft.” Perhaps Congress believed that having a hand in the till is necessary to truly understand the agency and its mission.

NED’s second president, Carl Gershman, a former executive director of the Social Democrats USA, a splinter group of the Socialist Party, asserted in August 1984 that direct federal aid to private organizations would allow the United States to “engage in the competition in the world of ideas.” He complained that “the word ‘democracy’ has been appropriated by its enemies” and justified the new agency: “While only Washington can provide adequate funding, the nongovernmental nature of the endowment allows for more flexibility.” NED and its advocates talked as if the idea of freedom could not compete without a government subsidy. But people in East Europe were bitterly opposed to Soviet rule not because they received American-subsidized pamphlets but because they hated being oppressed.

The Endowment quickly begot debacles and backlashes against the United States. Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) observed in 1986, “This thing is not the National Endowment for Democracy but the National Endowment for Embarrassment.” Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) complained, “From its very inception, the National Endowment for Democracy has been riddled with scandal and impropriety.”

The General Accounting Office slammed NED in 1985 for improperly diverting $3 million to institutes connected to the Democratic and Republican parties, despite a prohibition of such handouts in a congressional appropriation bill. Rep. Hank Brown (R-Colo.) complained, “Congress has made it abundantly clear that it does not want the money it gives to NED to go to the political parties. How can a group that flouts clear congressional intent presume to teach democracy to others?”

Intervening in democratic countries
The legislation that created NED prohibited the agency from interfering directly in foreign elections: “Funds may not be expended, either by the endowment or by any of its grantees, to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office.” Yet NED intervened in the 1984 Panamanian presidential election, shuffling $150,000 to support Nicholas Ardito Barletta, the candidate favored by the Panamanian military. At that time, the U.S. government opposed military rule in Panama. After NED money financed a huge May Day rally for Barletta, U.S. Ambassador James Biggs wired Washington, “The embassy requests that this harebrained project be abandoned before it hits the fan.” Though Barletta won the election, he was later deposed by the military.

The Reagan administration originally justified NED as a way to promote democracy in “totalitarian” states or where “democracy is still fragile.” However, one of the first targets of U.S. intervention was France, a nation with almost two centuries of democratic government. Irving Brown, Paris-based director of international relations for the AFL-CIO, explained the use of NED funds: “France ... is threatened by the Communist apparatus.... It is a clear and present danger if the present is thought of as 10 years from now.”

The National Inter-University Union, a right-wing French student group, received $575,000 in NED funds. The group had led “numerous anti-government protests, including mass demonstrations [in 1984] against government plans to remove subsidies from private schools.” NED never explained why government subsidies for French private schools were a cause worthy of U.S. tax dollars. The grant was justified because the union was a “counterweight to the propaganda efforts of left-wing organizations and professors active within the university system.” The New York Times noted the student union’s “reputed ties to the Service d’Action Civique, an outlawed, extreme-right paramili-tary group.” The AFL-CIO’s Free Trade Union Institute, which funneled NED money to the French group, informed NED’s Gershman that the grant was intended to finance “the struggle against anti-democratic forces, the organization of factions teaching organizational techniques, and techniques for staging demonstrations.” After a public uproar in France, Gershman suspended the grant to the French student group “until we clear up questions about its antidemocratic character.”

Gershman initially denied that the grant had been secret. However, a memo to Gershman from Eugenia Kemble, director of the Free Trade Union Institute, insisted that NED activities must be kept secret in some countries: “The beneficiaries of these funds would be in danger or in trouble if the financing was made public ... because repressive governments or groups of communists could use this information against the individuals or the unions that we want to help.” A French newspaper reported that “France is on the list of nine countries for which financing is kept secret, along with the Philippines, Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Poland, Surinam, Paraguay and others.” NED did not disclose details of the grants either in its annual report or in its reports to Congress. (The grants occurred long before American neoconservatives identified France as an enemy of U.S. hegemony.)

Another NED target — also a democracy — was Costa Rica. Even though Costa Rica had been a democracy for almost a hundred years, NED money poured into the coffers of the opposition in the mid-to-late 1980s. Almost half a million dollars in NED money was forwarded through the International Republican Institute (IRI) to the Association for the Defense of Costa Rican Liberty and Democracy, widely perceived as a front for the conservative Social Christian Party. Rafael Angel Calderon, the party’s presidential candidate, personally received almost $50,000 in NED funds. Seven Costa Rican legislators complained to the U.S. Congress that the organization “used the [NED] funds to prepare for the 1990 elections.” Costa Rica’s president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, may have been targeted because he failed to support the Reagan anticommunist agenda in Central America. Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) complained, “I think it’s unseemly, both politically and constitutionally. Here you have the Republican Party involved via the IRI with the opposition to the government in power, in a country that is the strongest democracy in Latin America and where the head of state won the Nobel Peace Prize” for his peace plan to end the conflict in Nicaragua.

NED’s top target
NED’s top target in the 1980s was the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. One Nicaraguan organization, Prodemca, received $400,000 from NED in 1985. The organization proceeded to place full-page advertisements in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Washington Times urging Congress to vote in favor of giving $100 million in military and other aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.”

In late 1988, Reagan requested and Congress approved $2 million “in support of organizations opposing the Sandinistas” in the 1990 elections. Sally Shelton-Colby, an NED director, explained, “There is a lot of Soviet and Cuban money coming into the Sandinistas. This is an attempt to balance that money by helping the democratic forces.” The existence of Soviet aid apparently nullified the U.S. statute book.

Toppling the Sandinistas was also a passion of the “kinder, gentler” presidency of George H.W. Bush. When his administration in September 1989 floated a plan to provide $9 million in aid to Violeta Chamorro’s campaign, the Washington Post noted that “there appears to be strong sentiment now — even among many Democrats opposed to a resumption of covert CIA activities — for making an open, undisguised contribution to Chamorro as a means of demonstrating U.S. support for democracy in Nicaragua.” The Associated Press reported that the Bush administration believed that “the U.S. aid would lend credibility to the opposition.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) asked, “Do we really want Mrs. Chamorro to be known as the best candidate American money can buy? Do we really want free elections and fair elections in Nicaragua, or do we want an election bought and paid for by the United States government?”

White House press spokesman Marlin Fitzwater justified the $9 million: “It’s the only way to help Mrs. Chamorro and the opposition to assure a reasonable shot at free and fair elections.” Yet federal law clearly prohibited NED from financing political campaigns. The Associated Press noted, “To reconcile that apparent conflict, endowment officials say they are not helping Mrs. Chamorro but rather Nicaragua’s democratic coalition — and that Mrs. Chamorro just happens to be the coalition’s candidate to replace Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.”

When the agency gave $100,000 to a paper owned by Chamorro, it claimed the handout was nonpartisan assistance, even though the paper did not offer “equal space” to the Ortega campaign. The U.S. aid went into the coffers of UNO, the coalition of parties and groups supporting Chamorro. Elizabeth Cohn, a professor at Goucher College, noted, “New organizations sprouted in Nicaragua and NED was first on the scene as their primary, sometimes only, funder. NED monies mobilized the opposition and with the enormous amounts of money NED funneled into Nicaragua, they essentially bought the election.” NED’s Gershman justified the agency’s actions: “If we’re not going to enter into those situations — supporting democratic groups — we would not be doing our job.” NED’s supposed “job” counted for far more than mere federal law.

Unfortunately, NED did not acquire the habit of statutory compliance as it aged. In the new century, the agency has been involved in scandals in Venezuela, Iraq, Ukraine, and elsewhere. But it remains popular in D.C., in part because it permits politicians to preen as world saviors.

There is no honest way to “fix” foreign elections. Any such interventions will be plagued by mendacity and deceit. Rep. Hank Brown commented in 1984, “It is a contradiction to try to promote free elections by interfering in them. But this is exactly what NED has done.” NED is long overdue for abolition.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Premature Congressman

“I never can think of Judas Iscariot without
losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot
was nothing but a low, mean, premature,
Congressman.”
—Mark Twain, 1873

Legislature In Session

“Now is the time when men work quietly in the
ﬁelds and women weep softly in the kitchen; the
legislature is in session, and no man’s property
is safe.”
—Daniel Webster, 1831

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest."-Gandhi

The Horror of Gun Control in Mumbai
by Benedict D. LaRosa, Posted October 16, 2009

As Ronald Reagan would say, “Here we go again!”

How many Rwanda, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Warsaw Ghetto, post-office, and other shootings do people have to endure before they face reality? How long does it take to learn a simple lesson: unarmed people are more vulnerable to terrorists, criminals, and crazed people than armed ones? Now the terrible toll in Mumbai: some 175 killed and several hundred others wounded.

The headlines in India and across the world should have read, “Terrorists and Gun Control Claim More Victims.” Instead, the complicity of the various Indian governments — national, state, and city — was ignored and their inability to protect the victims of that tragic event was barely questioned. The truth is that, except for a few policemen on the scene, all the victims were unarmed by public policy. India has among the strictest gun-control laws on Earth, which, according to gun-control advocates, should have made Mumbai one of the safest cities on the planet. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone with common sense or a historical perspective that disarmed citizens and visitors had no way of defending themselves and were, once again, the victims not only of terrorists, but of the misguided, immoral policy of their governments.

As Alexander the Great found out when he invaded India in 326 B.C., its people are keen fighters and weapon innovators. The British, India’s colonial ruler from 1757 to 1947, suppressed this martial tradition, disarmed the populace, and destroyed the domestic firearms industry to ensure their rule, particularly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857. The Indian Arms Act of 1878 forbade Indians to possess weapons, with the exception of those considered loyal. The law did not apply to Europeans who could, of course, possess and carry arms at their discretion.

The Indian subcontinent has been racked with strife since independence and the partition in 1947 between India and Pakistan. That may explain why the newly independent Indian government saw fit to keep the British gun-control laws in place for another 12 years before replacing them with similar measures of their own in 1959 and later years. Though not as severe as the British gun-control laws, suffice it to say India’s laws discourage the private possession of firearms, making it nearly impossible for the average Indian to own or use guns, all under the pretext of crime control.

Yet such measures have not curtailed violence on the subcontinent. For example, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards, as many as 3,000 Sikhs died in four days of riots throughout the country. In 2002, a Muslim mob murdered 59 Hindus in a railway car at the Godhra railway station by first stoning them and then setting the railway car in which they traveled on fire. Gun control made those poor people easy victims. Had they been armed, would it have prevented the violence? No one knows, but at least they would have stood a better chance to survive.

As for the terrorist attack in Mumbai, can you imagine what would have happened to the terrorists, once they started shooting, if the people around them had not been prevented by their government from exercising their God-given right to keep and bear arms, but had instead been armed? Well, imagine being surrounded by hundreds of angry, frightened, armed people shooting back and fighting for their lives — a well-deserved nightmare for terrorists and criminals. A number of innocent people would surely have been killed and wounded anyway. After all, the terrorists had the element of surprise. But I doubt the number of dead and injured would have been so great. I can almost guarantee that far more than the 10 terrorists so far accounted for would have bitten the dust. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson quoted Cesare Beccaria, father of modern criminology:

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crime.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve to encourage rather than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.

India has no excuse. The father of Indian independence, Mohandas Gandhi, observed in 1927,

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest.

Let’s hope the Indian government has learned its lesson and that there are no more Mumbais.

As the song says, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,”

Partisan Politics—A Fool’s Game for the Masses

By Robert Higgs on Oct 12, 2009 in Uncategorized

Because I despise politics in general, and the two major parties in this country in particular, I go through life constantly bemused by all the weight that people put on partisan political loyalties and on adherence to the normative demarcations the parties promote. Henry Adams observed that “politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” This marshalling of hatreds is not the whole of politics, to be sure, but it is an essential element. Thus, Democrats encourage people to hate big corporations, and Republicans encourage people to hate welfare recipients.

Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.

Even when politics seems to involve life-and-death issues, the partisan divisions often only obscure the overriding political realities. So, Democrats say that anti-abortion Republicans, who claim to have such tremendous concern for saving the lives of the unborn, have no interest whatever in saving the lives of those already born, such as the poor children living in the ghetto. And Republicans say that Democrats, who claim to have such tremendous concern for the poor, systematically contribute to the perpetuation of poverty by the countless taxes and regulations they load onto business owners who would otherwise be in better position to hire and train the poor and thereby to hasten their escape from poverty.

If the unborn children happen to be living in the wombs of women on whom U.S. bombs and rockets rain down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, however, all Republican concerns for the unborn evaporate completely, as do the Democrats’ concerns for the poor children living in the selfsame bombarded villages. Both parties’ positions would seem to rest on very flexible and selective morality, if indeed either party may be said to have any moral basis at all, notwithstanding their chronic public displays of “moral” wailing and gnashing of teeth.

In any event, the parties’ principles of hatred have never passed the sniff test; indeed, they reek of hypocrisy. Thus, while railing against the “corporate rich,” the Democrats rely heavily on the financial support of Hollywood moguls and multi-millionaire trial lawyers, among other fat cats. And the Republicans, while denouncing the welfare mother who makes off with a few hundred undeserved bucks a month, vociferously support the hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare channeled to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Electric, among many other companies, via larcenous “defense” contracts, Export-Import Bank subsidies, and countless other forms of government support for “national security” and service to “the public interest” as Republicans conceive of these nebulous, yet rhetorically useful entities.

Notice, too, that although ordinary Democrats and Republicans often harbor intense mutual hatreds, the party leaders in Congress rub shoulders quite amiably as a rule. Regardless of which party has control, the loyal opposition can always be counted on to remain ever so loyal and ready to cut a deal. And why not? These ostensible political opponents are engaged in a process of plunder from which the bigwigs in both parties can expect to profit, whatever the ebb and flow of party politics. At bottom, the United States has a one-party state, cleverly designed to disguise the country’s true class division and to divert the masses from a recognition that unless you are a political insider connected with one of the major parties, you almost certainly will be ripped off on balance. Such exploitation, after all, is precisely what the state and the political parties that operate it are for.

Yet, rather than hating the predatory state, the masses have been conditioned to love this blood-soaked beast and even, if called upon, to lay down their lives and the lives of their children on its behalf. From my vantage point on the outside, peering in, I am perpetually mystified that so many people are taken in by the phony claims and obscurantist party rhetoric. As the song says, “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,” but unlike the fellow in the song, I am not “stuck in the middle.” Instead, I float above all of this wasted emotion, looking down on it with disgust and sadness. Moreover, as an economist, I am compelled to regret such an enormously inefficient allocation of hatred.

If you take the government to be Santa Claus, you naturally want every day to be Christmas; and the bigger the Santa, the bigger his sack of goodies.

Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Political Economy

By Robert Higgs on Oct 15, 2009 in Education, Presidential Power, free market

Since the early 1980s, I have been lecturing on the growth of government to a wide variety of audiences. In academic seminars and workshops, professors typically ask questions about my explanatory framework, my evidence, alternative explanations, possible counterexamples, and so forth. But when I speak to a friendly lay audience, the first question is typically something along the lines of, “What can we do to turn this thing around?” Academic people, who are accustomed to discussing all sorts of political and economic developments, many of which are none too savory, usually have the ability to distance themselves from any revulsion they may feel about the matters under discussion and to concentrate on how one might best explain the events in question. In social science, “value freedom” is upheld as a standard for the analyst. Market-friendly nonacademic people, in contrast, are often surprised, and appalled, to discover how much the government has grown and many of the means by which political actors have enlarged it, and their immediate orientation is toward action to reverse what they perceive to be a pernicious development. Thus, they bring normative and programmatic concerns directly to the fore. Like Lenin, they demand to know,“What is to be done?”

Because I am often introduced as an authority on government growth, the lay audiences seem shocked and disappointed when I answer the query about how we can stop further government growth by saying that I don’t know or, worse, by saying that I don’t think we ― which is to say, those of us in the room and all other likeminded people ― can do anything significant to deflect the trend toward larger, more tyrannical government.

I often receive similar reactions when I post commentaries on the Internet. Thus, I recently posted a shortessay called “Partisan Politics ― A Fool’s Game for the Masses,” and in response, one man wrote: “Quit whining and figure out something better if you’re so damn smart.” Another wrote: “Okay, Higgs. So what can one do to protect one’s person and family and aid in the country’s survival?” I commonly hear from people who find my description or analysis beside the point unless I have “an answer” or “a solution” to the problem under discussion. Higgs, they conclude, is “not constructive,” and therefore he does not deserve anyone’s time and attention.

Although I would be the last to assert that I have a claim on anyone’s time or attention, I believe that the solution-demanding response to my commentaries (or anyone else’s) betrays a confusion between diagnostics and therapeutics in political economy. The former focuses on finding the causes of a condition or development, the latter on prescribing measures by which the condition can be lessened or eliminated. This distinction is common in the medical profession, where some practitioners specialize in diagnosis and others in various kinds of therapy. In political economy, however, the two activities are often combined. In professional economics journals, countless articles have been published in which the author first lays out his “model,” sometimes presents empirical “tests” of some of its implications, and finally draws “policy conclusions” ― that is, unsolicited advice to government functionaries as to how they should employ their powers.

Lay people and professionals alike, however, need to appreciate two critical points. First, in social and economic affairs, one man’s problem may be another man’s solution. The growth of government belongs to this category. Many people are pleased when the government grows, whereas others are outraged. Still others, of course, have no concern one way or the other, so long as their personal ox is not being gored deeply. In short, the normative evaluation of a socioeconomic condition or development may vary greatly among the people involved in it.

Second, even if everyone agrees that a certain condition constitutes a problem, it still may have no generally acceptable solution. Because of the diversity of beliefs, values, and interests in the populace, whatever is done to create a “public good” ― that is, a condition that, if established at all, applies equally to everyone ― will displease some people. For example, everyone may value “national security” in the abstract, but if in its pursuit some people want the government to go to war against country X, whereas others want the government to steer clear of war with country X, then some people are bound to be dissatisfied, no matter what the government does. Issues of this kind have no generally acceptable solution, owing to uncertainties about the “production function” for certain public goods. One might imagine, of course, that one side persuades the other to change its beliefs, values, or preferences, but unless unanimous agreement is achieved ― an extremely unlikely eventuality ― a certain number of problems whose solutions are contentious will necessarily always remain.

Since the Great Depression, the American public has generally approved of an active, interventionist federal government. In a perceived crisis, most people want the government to “do something.” Of course, most politicians and government functionaries, for perfectly understandable self-serving reasons, are quite pleased to respond to such public demands for action ― after all, taking such action promises to butter their bread more thickly. Franklin D. Roosevelt enthusiastically supported an approach whereby the government would “take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Likewise, more recently, despite the great confusion that prevailed about the current recession’s causes and about the best means of moderating or reversing it, Barack Obama, soon after taking office, declared, “The time for talk is over. The time for action is now.” In both instances the president was presuming that successful therapy can be administered without a sound diagnosis. This presumption is foolish, however, if one’s interest lies not in mollifying a bewildered electorate, but in implementing a genuine remedy for the perceived problem.

Furthermore, in dealing with a “problem” such as the relentless growth of government, we must recognize that unlike the automobile mechanic who undertakes to repair a sputtering engine, we are attempting to alter the workings of a socio-economic process that has hundreds of millions of moving parts, each one with a mind of its own! It is hubristic ― a Hayekian “fatal conceit” ― to suppose that anyone can control this process in fine detail. The “man of system,” Adam Smith sagely observed, “is apt to be very wise in his own conceit.”

He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it.

I am not a “man of system” in the Smithian sense. For me to propose a “magic bullet” to stop the growth of government, as an oncologist might prescribe a certain drug to cure a particular type of cancer, would be ridiculous. Just as one may know a great deal about the origin and development of a particular type of tumor without knowing how to cure it, one may know a great deal about the growth of government without knowing how to stop it. Indeed, curing a cancer is a much simpler task.

Yet, one thing we do know: Many Americans now believe many things about their government that are false, and they expect much from the government that the rulers cannot provide. The public at large embraces myths about what the government can do, what it actually does, and how it goes about doing it. Only people enamored of such myths can support, for example, a gigantically expensive health-care “reform” at a time when the present value of the government’s promised future Social Security and Medicare benefits alone amounts to several times the current GDP. (I am disregarding here the interested parties who expect to reap short-run pillage from an intrinsically doomed system.) Until more people come to a more realistic, fact-based understanding of the government and the economy, little hope exists of tearing them away from their quasi-religious attachment to a government they view with misplaced reverence and unrealistic hopes. Lacking a true religious faith yet craving one, many Americans have turned to the state as a substitute god, endowed with the divine omnipotence required to shower the public with something for nothing in every department – free health care, free retirement security, free protection from hazardous consumer products and workplace accidents, free protection from the Islamic maniacs the U.S. government stirs up with its misadventures in the Muslim world, and so forth. If you take the government to be Santa Claus, you naturally want every day to be Christmas; and the bigger the Santa, the bigger his sack of goodies. This prevailing ideology constitutes probably the most critical obstacle to reductions in the government’s size, scope, and power. Getting rid of this ideology will be diabolically difficult, if possible at all.

Analysts of the political economy, such as yours truly, may have some capacity to open people’s eyes with regard to the government’s true nature and its actual operation. Such diagnostic work is a full-time job, however, so consumers of this analysis should not be surprised if a diagnostician cannot prescribe a sure-fire cure whenever he identifies, describes, or analyzes a problem. Moreover, consumers of opinion and analysis in political economy would be well served by developing a healthy skepticism toward all those who propose a simple cure for the growth of government ― flat tax, term limits, constitutional amendment, abolition of the Fed, you name it. The doctor with a panacea just might be a quack.

The Real Problem With Obama's Nobel

The Real Problem With Obama's Nobel
October 10, 2009
Anthony Gregory
Town Talk

Will Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize weaken America’s standing in the world, as some conservatives worry? They point out that the president was nominated only twelve days after taking office, by which time he had done nothing to possibly warrant his selection. Rush Limbaugh worries the prize will “neuter” his presidency, encouraging Obama to maintain his allegedly pacifistic foreign policy and not confront Iran. Unfortunately, the real problem is quite different.

It is valid to say that Obama had achieved virtually nothing at the time of his nomination. And yet, one could argue, from a pro-peace perspective, that he was a far more worthy back then than he is now. At the time, he was making diplomatic gestures to reverse the belligerent tone of the Bush administration. He was announcing the end of an era of torture, indefinite detention, holding suspects at Guantánamo without habeas corpus, and a foreign policy of reckless war making, specifically in Iraq. He sounded as though he wanted to make America a less aggressive nation.

Since then, the real tragedy of the Obama presidency has begun to unfold, and yet most commentators have ignored it for partisan reasons. The left has emphasized his rhetorical differences with Bush. The right has claimed he is gutting the military and undoing the “successes” of Bush’s war on terror by coddling terror suspects and being reluctant to bomb foreigners.

In fact, Obama has increased military spending. He has essentially reverted to the Bush policy on indefinite detentions and military commissions and has fought to isolate hundreds of prisoners at Bagram in Afghanistan from the protections of habeas corpus, even after a Bush-appointed federal judge determined that the same protections that reach Guantánamo should apply to many cases at Bagram. Obama has pushed to revise the Freedom of Information Act to conceal photographic evidence of torture and has protected his executive branch predecessors from any legal accountability for their crimes.

The president has escalated the war in Afghanistan, a war that has persisted far longer than World Wars I and II combined. The same day Obama was awarded the prize, he was contemplating much more dramatic escalation. He has killed uncounted numbers of civilians, including those attending a wedding party conspicuously destroyed by U.S. bombing. In the first half of 2009, nearly 90% of which was on Obama’s watch, civilian casualties in Afghanistan reached record numbers, according to the UN. Obama has ramped up drone attacks on Pakistan, contributing to a humanitarian disaster by fomenting the mass displacement of civilians. He invaded Somalia. He has done nothing to cut back America’s imperial presence throughout the world.

As for Iran, the White House is still pondering harsher sanctions or even war, which would be a calamity. Obama, like Bush, has misrepresented the threat from Iran and is reportedly contemplating a bombing mission. At the least, the administration wants more trade sanctions, which could also be deemed an act of war.

Obama probably deserves the prize as much as some previous recipients, like Henry Kissinger and Woodrow Wilson, but it is still obnoxious to see any warmonger get it. It says something perverse about what the establishment regards as pro-peace activism.

The real problem with Obama’s Nobel is not that it might neuter him, but rather that it may embolden him. In the name of peace, he and previous presidents have kept America in a virtual state of perpetual war for three generations. The Nobel is a signal to Obama that he can keep talking like a man of peace even as he acts like a master of war. Those who favored Obama, thinking he’d be less belligerent against Iran than McCain, now have more reason to worry.

Anthony Gregory
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Anthony Gregory is a Research Analyst at The Independent Institute. His articles have appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune, East Valley Tribune (AZ), Contra Costa Times, The Star (Chicago, IL),Washington Times, Vacaville Reporter, Palo Verde Times, and other newspapers.
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