Monthly Archives: May 2013

A Thought on Privacy

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an absolutely awesome expression of governmental hubris, says that New Yorkers should just “get used to” the city’s rapidly proliferating surveillance cameras.

You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they’ll be cameras everyplace…whether you like it or not[.]

Amazingly, Federal Judge Richard Posner agrees.

Obviously, surveillance cameras didn’t prevent the Boston Marathon attacks.  But they may well have prevented further attacks planned by the bombers, including whatever destruction they may have attempted to cause in New York City.  Moreover, the criticism ignores deterrence.  By increasing the likelihood that terrorists or other criminals will be apprehended, surveillance cameras increase the expected cost of punishment.  That will not deter all attacks, but it will deter many.

Surveillance cameras also can be expected to increase the cost—and difficulty—of maintaining individual freedoms in the face of a constantly snooping government.  But surveillance cameras are of a piece with the lockdown imposed on Boston during the recent manhunt.

Ben Franklin was right.  Posner and Bloomberg are wrong.  But the latter plainly are speaking from the perspective of government and not from the perspective of government’s employers.

Some Misconceptions about Debt

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AP has some.

A number of misconceptions are shown in their article carried by Fox News.  They begin with this:

China is responsible for just a shade over 7% of [US’] total debt.  And while it remains the single largest foreign lender (just ahead of Japan), China’s been slowly trimming its holdings, down from nearly 10% a few years ago.  Overall, all foreign investors—including national central banks—account for roughly one third of the total outstanding federal government debt.

Never mind that there’s a reason the SEC requires those who acquire 5% of the shares of a company to file public documents identifying that acquisition.  That’s enough to start exerting significant influence over the company’s behavior.

Then the AP writes this misconception:

The national debt will soon be front-and-center again…with an expected new Obama administration request to increase the government’s borrowing authority, the legislatively set debt ceiling.  The higher limit would not authorize borrowing for new spending but just enables the government to pay all the bills already racked up.

This is, at best, a naïve reading of the present administration’s demand to continue borrowing.  It’s the House of Representatives that is so loathe to raise the borrowing limit without an offsetting reduction in actual spending.  President Barack Obama repeatedly disparages that body for insisting on reducing spending: he wants to borrow more so he can spend more, not so he can simply “pay all the bills already racked up.”  Those already racked up bills are the result of his past five years’ spendthrifting.  And of similar overspending by prior administrations.

And this:

US politicians see the mountain of debt, but investors globally view US Treasury securities as among the world’s safest financial havens, reflected in part by their current super-low yields.

There are two misconceptions in this single sentence: 1) for how much longer, as our debt continues to grow out of control, will those global investors view our Treasury securities as safe?  How safe do those global investors see Greek debt as being?  Cypriot debt?  Spanish debt?  Etc?  2) Those “super-low yields” aren’t market rates, they’re artificially suppressed rates capped by Fed intervention in the market.  For how long will those global investors be satisfied with such poor returns on their investments?

And this quote from Nicholas Lardy, a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics:

There’s a huge misconception here.  The guy on the street thinks that we’re up to our ears in indebtedness to China.  And it is a large absolute amount.  But the public holds a lot more….

We are up to our ears in indebtedness to China.  That we’re even more irresponsibly in debt to ourselves doesn’t at all mitigate that simple fact.

Finally,

Social Security holds $2.7 trillion of the debt in its trust fund, in the form of special unmarketable Treasury bonds.  The Federal Reserve holds a $1.7 trillion portfolio of Treasury notes and bonds, much of it accumulated over the past four years with its heavy purchase of US securities to stimulate the economy and hold down interest rates.

This is simply a description of one contributory factor in Social Security’s impending failure: that’s a debt that cannot be repaid—at any price, marketable or not—given our present, much less our growing, unsustainable overall debt.  Notice, also that market manipulation of interest rates—the avowed purpose of the purchases.

Progressivism, Conservatism, and Moral Equivalence

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Herb Croly, a founder of the Progressive movement, had this to say about the advantages of Progressivism:

To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy.  But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of a constructive national democracy.  …the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Theodore Roosevelt, another founder of the movement, spent much of his New Nationalism speech touting the virtues of the Federal government in nationalizing American businesses and of government guidance for individual prosperity.  There’re these, for example:

It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business.
…
It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale.  I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves.  I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.

And

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used.  It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community.  We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.  This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

FDR imposed wage and (farm) price controls because he didn’t believe businesses or Americans who ran them or worked for them were smart enough or honest enough to make their own decisions.

President Barack Obama is working to nationalize one-sixth of our nation’s economy, and he is on record as saying

I think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.

And

I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

On the other hand, our Declaration of Independence has this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….

Thomas Jefferson had this on wealth redistribution and personal responsibility, in particular:

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Jim DeMint, late of the US Senate and current President of The Heritage Foundation:

Well, one of the most important things for Americans to be reminded of is that a lot of the exceptional nature of our country is founded in Judeo-Christian values that promotes individualism, personal responsibility, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to family, charity.

Mitt Romney had this during the 2012 Presidential election campaign:

We [conservative Republicans] believe in individual initiative, personal responsibility, opportunity, freedom, small government, the Constitution.  These principles, these American principles, are key to getting our economy back to being successful and leading the world.

It’s clear that Progressives subscribe to the view that Big Government is a better arbiter of what an individual should do with his prosperity or his business than is that individual, and that Big Government is the proper repository of moral obligation toward men and not men themselves.  The inevitable outcome of Progressivism, though, is failure.

It is a dependency on government (which can only benefit the men in government and not at all those dependents).  It is all men being equally poor, rather than all able to increase their individual and family prosperity, albeit some will be more successful than others.  It is all men being equally amoral, having surrendered their moral obligations (if not the duties themselves, as these are as inalienable as the rights that flow from them) to government to handle in their place.

Conservatives, on the other hand, subscribe to the view that government is legitimate only when it works for the people—the people consent to its behavior and governance.  To that end, government is best when it’s kept small and controllable.  Moreover, Conservatives hold to the primacy of the man over the state.  They also believe that not only are individuals better suited than government to determine the disposition of their own efforts and assets, they are obligated to make those decisions for themselves.  And to help those less fortunate, whether that poorer fortune comes through poorer decision-making, lesser ability, or just bad luck.

The inevitable outcome of Conservatism is quite different than that of Progressivism.

It is the opportunity—and the ability—of every man to show the best that there is in him.  It is the ability of every man and his family to climb the economic ladder, to leave poverty behind.  It is the ability for every man to satisfy his own moral obligations: his obligation to be the first to take care of his family, his obligation to do his best to not be a burden on others’ charity (and to stop being a burden as soon as may be should circumstances force him onto that charity), his obligation to help those less fortunate than himself, no matter his own present circumstance.  It is a recognition that government does, indeed, have a role to play in charity when more local resources are exhausted or otherwise unequal to the task—but as a last resort, not a first.

It is moral and economic prosperity and innovation for each of us, for all of us together, and through that, for our nation—and so for our safety.

There is no moral equivalence between these two ideologies; one world view plainly is superior to the other.  (In truth, the present dichotomy isn’t unique concerning the premise of moral equivalence; that’s just a tool with which Progressives attempt to legitimize their Big Government Knows Better meme.)

Some Thoughts on Conservatism

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Jennifer Rubin has some.  For instance,

The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism—not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

And

The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them.

There is nothing at all temporal about conservative values.  Nor is there need to “rethink modern conservatism—” which is simply a figment of her imagination—or to find “new issues to defend.”  Conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and government spending, and personal freedom and responsibility, which are the principles Reagan espoused (they were not “Reagan’s solutions” are timeless.  Rubin managed to pack two false premises into those remarks.

Then there’s this:

Even after Obama’s reelection, Reagan-era conservatives have scorned any challenge to the party’s status quo, conducting search-and-destroy missions against ideological deviations from the Reagan playbook.

And

After the top sliver of the Bush-era tax cuts expired, tax increases could not be part of a budget because, as we know, Republicans are opposed to taxes.  Same-sex marriage must be opposed, because Republicans defend “traditional marriage.”  And despite Reagan’s spearheading of immigration reform in 1986, Republicans have to oppose that, too, because theirs is the party of law and order.

These are Rubin’s straw men; it’s her responsibility to defend them, no one else’s.  Except the no more tax increases part: limited government—which demands shrinking the one we have—is, as noted above, a rather timeless Conservative principle.

…principles that voters had rejected in two national elections.

Really?  Voters voted them up in the last two elections in which I participated.  Conservatives made serious gains in Congress and in state legislatures and governor’s houses in both, and they lost fewer Congressional seats than normal in a Presidential election in the last one.  I’d say Conservatives are continuing to gain ground—on our timeless principles.

The rest of Rubin’s piece is just more of this.

Conservative principles of small, limited government, low taxes and tax rates, limited Federal spending, and an emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility—with that limited government as a last resort, not a first—are as valid today as they were in 1790.

Rubin is arguing from straw men and false premises.  As long as she insists on doing this, she isn’t just wrong, she’s irrelevant.

The Convenience of Government

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President Barack Obama has decided to appeal last fall’s ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that invalidated his “recess” appointments of three people to the NLRB.  The Court ruled that since the Senate wasn’t in recess, the appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid.

Obama’s grounds for appeal would be laughable if the matter weren’t so serious.  He

urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval.

This from a Lecturer in Constitutional law.  Presidents have the authority to “make certain appointments” that the Constitution gives them, and not a particle more.

He, through his Solicitor General Donald Verrilli,

defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court’s conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate.

Sorry, Ace, “in recess” means in recess, not on lunch break, and not any period a president finds convenient.  What part of the DC Circuit’s writing on this is unclear to you?  After all, it was written in plain language with simple words:

…the inescapable conclusion that the Framers intended something specific by the term “the Recess,” and that it was something different than a generic break in proceedings [an adjournment].
…
The natural interpretation of the [Recess Appointments] Clause is that the Constitution is noting a difference between “the Recess” and the “Session.”  Either the Senate is in session, or it is in the recess.  If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in “the Recess.”

Then ObamaVerilli included in his brief this gem:

If the appeals court ruling was left to stand, it would “dramatically curtail” the president’s authority[.]

Well, yeah.  That’s sort of the point, given how far you’ve overstepped your authority.

Finally, this laugher:

The ruling “threatens a significant disruption of the federal government’s operations[.]”

You just don’t seem to get it, Ace.  The convenience of government does not take precedence over the Constitution.