Category Archives: rights

The Meaning of the Absence of Reasoned Argument

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Here is a sample of the kind of campaign that President Obama is running in his attempt to get reelected.

They’re obsessed

By Jim Messina, Campaign Manager on

In just about 24 hours, Mitt Romney is headed to a hotel ballroom to give a speech sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a front group founded and funded by the Koch brothers.

Those are the same Koch brothers whose business model is to make millions by jacking up prices at the pump, and who bankrolled Tea Party extremism, and committed $200 million to try to destroy President Obama before Election Day.

So in the hours before Romney courts two men obsessed with making Barack Obama a one-term president, let’s see how many of us can chip in to the Two-Term Fund.

Here’s what Mitt Romney told his supporters just after his victory in the Florida GOP primary:

“We must not forget what this election is really about: defeating Barack Obama.”

Pitch in $3 or more over the next 24 hours to show that, while that message may fire up two oil-industry billionaires, it’s also one that plenty of us are tired of hearing.

The Koch Companies’ President of Government and Public Affairs, Philip Ellender, responded to this in a well-publicized manner.  I won’t go into that letter; however, a copy of it can be seen here.

What’s interesting, though, is Obama’s response, through Messina, to the Koch Industries letter.  I’ll cite relevant parts; the whole letter can be read at the link.

I am writing in response to your letter, in which you portrayed the oil and gas executives you represent as average citizens trying to make their voices heard.

Of course, no such representation was made. They did mention the “tens of thousands of members and contributors from across the country and from all walks of life” with respect to Americans for Prosperity.  Of course Obama knows that there are not “tens of thousands” of oil and gas executives all across the country; this is deliberate, Alinsky-esque distortion.

But it is a cynical stretch to describe the political activities of your employers as furthering democracy when they are courting huge checks from special interest donors to pay for negative ads, with no public disclosure of the identity of those donors.

Hmm.  Obama claims to know of “huge checks from special interest donors,” but there is “no public disclosure of the identity of these donors.”  Which side of Obama’s mouth should we believe, here?  Or is Obama confessing to domestic spying on private American citizens?

You argue that Americans for Prosperity is a grassroots organization of everyday citizens. But its emphasis on rolling back environmental protections and blocking a clean energy economy appears to be nothing more than an effort to promote the corporate interests of your employers and others who lavishly, and secretly, fund its operations.

This is another deliberate distortion.  AFP doesn’t espouse rolling back environmental protections or blocking clean energy.  AFP, along with all thinking Americans, do espouse eliminating excessive EPA regulations that hinder business—of any type—with no discernible gain for the environment.  Nor do we Americans seek to block clean energy.  We do object to Obama wasting our money on the Solyndras of the nation, and we do object to Obama wasting our money on “green” enterprises whose product cannot survive in an honestly competitive free market without those props.

You note in your letter that Americans for Prosperity has tens of thousands of members and contributors from all walks of life across the country, suggesting that this is the source of AFP’s funding. There is one way to verify your point: disclose those donors for the public to make that judgment.

How very Axelrod of Obama.  He doesn’t have to supply any evidence.  He just has to accuse, and given the accusation, of course the accused is perforce guilty unless he can prove his innocence.

But, even though I’ve spent some time on this, it’s all just cynical distraction, which is Obama’s intent with his Messina letter.  What’s most important here is that at no time does Obama address the issues raised in the Koch Industries letter response to his original ad hominem attack.

If the President’s campaign has some principled disagreement with the arguments we are making publicly about the staggering debt the President and previous administrations have imposed on the country, the regulations that are stifling business growth and innovation, the increasing intrusion of government into nearly every aspect of American life, we would be eager to hear them.

and

It is understandable that the President and his campaign may be “tired of hearing” that many Americans would rather not see the president re-elected. However, the inference is that you would prefer that citizens who disagree with the President and his policies refrain from voicing their own viewpoint. Clearly, that’s not the way a free society should operate.

and

I…hope the President will reflect on how the approach the campaign is using is at odds with our national values and the constitutional right to free speech.

Oh, yeah—Obama did pretend to address the nation’s debt explosion:

That is why the President introduced a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion and put us on a path to solvency.

Obama’s “plan” is two budget proposals so ludicrous that even the Democratic party voted it out of town unanimously, and the second proposal, just last month, doubles down on that bad joke.

But he carefully elided the Progressive regulatory environment and the increasing intrusion of the Progressive government into the lives of ordinary Americans and our businesses.

And on free speech,

When you attempt to drown out their voices through unlimited, secret contributions to pursue a special-interest agenda that conflicts with what’s best for our nation, you must expect some scrutiny of your actions.

Once again, cynically unsubstantiated accusations of secret donations (since you know of them, Mr Obama, provide the data), while continuing the free speech of ad hominem attacks.

Two reasons come to mind for such a campaign.  One is the naked intimidation of those with dissenting speech in which Obama is so plainly engaged.  He simply will not brook any disagreement with his own hallowed positions, and he attacks, personally and with demonization, all those who do disagree.  Is this the sort of President of which we want another four years?

The other reason is that Obama simply is incapable of forming an argument that defends his own position, and so he runs away from the issues at hand and dives for the cover of the ad hominem as a means of changing the subject.  He knows his policies have failed utterly, but he lacks the moral rigor to acknowledge that and change course: he is capable only of avoiding the issues and engaging in personal attacks.  Is his the sort of President of which we can afford to risk another four years?

Contraception Coverage and Freedom

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Just to look at one small aspect of Americans’ liberties, here’s an item: mandated coverage of women’s contraception.

Senator Roy Blunt’s (R, MO) amendment was an attempt to restore a measure of liberty; a copy is here;  it said, in part [emphasis added]

(E) While PPACA provides an exemption for some religious groups that object to participation in Government health programs generally, it does not allow purchasers, plan sponsors, and other stakeholders with religious or moral objections to specific items or services to decline providing or obtaining coverage of such items or services, or allow health care providers with such objections to decline to provide them.

It also says

(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS.—A health plan shall not be considered to have failed…on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because—(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or (ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.

The measure was voted down in the Senate on Thursday by a nearly straight party-line vote of 51-48.  In the run-up to the vote, Senate Democrats had cast it as an attempt to limit women’s access to birth control.  They also had claimed

[T]he bill is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and may allow employers to exclude coverage for any conditions they find religiously or morally objectionable.

They say this could become a slippery slope, resulting in the exclusion of coverage for HIV & AIDS, mental health, hemophilia, STD’s and more

The Obama administration blasted Blunt’s amendment in a press release Wednesday, saying the president’s supporters need to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions.”

I certainly hope the amendment, had it passed, would have allowed exclusion—or a decision not to purchase—for “and conditions” that are “religiously or morally objectionable.”  This is an area in which our Constitution, so routinely disregarded by the Progressive administration, explicitly barred the Federal government from entering.  Furthermore, aside from the freedom of choice issues related to mandating coverage—and so paying for this coverage when it’s unwanted or unneeded—and the ludicrous “essential health benefits” aspects of contraception, what religious or moral grounds would be cited?  The Progressives have carefully declined to offer any examples.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) was especially disingenuous in his argument against this amendment.

I don’t want Republican politicians making decisions about my family’s health care.  Women are capable of making their own health-care decisions.

Except, no, they’re not.  Not after Lautenberg got his way: their decision is thrust upon them by this Progressive and his fellows.  Senator Lautenberg and the Federal government now will make health-care decisions in lieu of them.  Obama claimed to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions,” but with this vote, women are not allowed to decline to purchase a health-care service they do not want or will not use or find morally or religiously objectionable.  They must buy.  They cannot make their own health decision.  Read again the Section E quoted at the start.  See the freedom of choice that the Progressives voted down.

Of What Polity is Merkel Chancellor?

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Spiegel International Online, in an article a couple days ago, insisted that

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a problem. External pressure on her government to back an increase in the size of the permanent euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), is rapidly growing, with Berlin now virtually isolated among the G-20 and the euro zone, with the International Monetary Fund insisting as well.  Even the world’s developing countries are calling for Merkel to agree to boost the firewall….

Internally, however, she is in a bind.  Aid fatigue has set in among Merkel’s conservatives…and the political appetite in her cabinet for countering such skepticism is limited.  …  Renegade lawmakers in the aisles of her governing coalition…meant Merkel fell short of the symbolic “chancellor’s majority,” an absolute majority of Bundestag seats with just coalition votes.

Moreover, which case the article’s author elides, the German people have never favored seeing their hard-earned money, turned over to their government in taxes, sent overseas to reward the irresponsible populations and governments of other countries for their profligacy.

Leaving aside the economic and moral foolishness of continuing—much less expanding—the bailout facility(s), Chancellor Merkel, and her fellow German citizens, need to clarify in their own minds for whom she works—those German citizens who hired her to be their country’s chief executive, or foreign nationals in Europe and elsewhere.  This clarification will eliminate the bind.

Why Would Anyone Buy This Debt?

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Greece, last week, passed its Collective Action Clause legislation in preparation for its upcoming bond swap, wherein bondholders have agreed, in general, to a write down of some 53%: they’ll trade the bonds they hold for new bonds issued by the Greek government that will run out to just over half the value of those original bonds.  This was a—more or less—voluntary swap: agree to the deal or risk losing everything as Greece explicitly defaults.

However.

What the CACs do is force all bond holders to make the swap, whether they want to or not, once a minimum per centage of holders make the swap.  It’s important to note here that this was done retroactively—years after the bonds had been sold, years after a solemn debt agreement had been committed to by the Greek government (and the bond purchasers, but they’re not the ones making this commitment change).  In short, the CACs change the original terms of the debt, and they do so entirely unilaterally, and only after the fact.

There are two problems with this.  One, the most important, has to do with integrity and morality.  The Greek government, and the Greek citizens collectively, can be derided for their foolishness in running up so large a debt compared to the country’s ability to repay, and many of us have done so.  However, to things that are known a priori on any debt sale agreement are that there is a non-zero possibility of default, even on a government debt, and this is priced into the cost of buying a sovereign debt instrument, at however small a premium.  The other thing that is known is that the terms of the deal will be honored by all parties to it, come what may.  Even were the Greek government, for instance, explicitly to default on its bonds—to go through, for instance, the (inter)national equivalent of an American bankruptcy court proceeding—everything would proceed in accordance with already known rules and conditions.

This unilateral, retroactive change to the terms of these debt agreements, though, destroys that integrity, that morality.  An entity that will welch on its commitments as soon as they become inconvenient (albeit a large inconvenience in the present case, but there are more honest alternatives even here) cannot be trusted to honor any future commitments whenever those might become inconvenient.

The other problem is a moral hazard one; although this one has a chance of not materializing.  The moral hazard here is not the classical economist’s moral hazard, but a different kind.  Consider, for example, a basketball or soccer player who hits the game winner as the clock expires.  This player gets credit—gets the positive moral hazard—for hitting the winner.  Never mind that this is wholly unjustified: his teammates and he have spent the entire game keeping it so close that a single shot out of the 150 or so in an NBA game or dozen or so on goal in a soccer match, makes the difference.  Any shot from the first one taken in the first quarter to the penultimate one taken late in game, any of those, has significance equal to that last one made.

So it is with Greek bond holders in a more negative sense.  Suppose the required per centage of bond holders, less one, makes the swap.  The swap fails, and the Greeks default.  It’s easy to identify the game winning shooter and to lionize him.  It’s also easy to identify the bond holders who reject the swap, and I suggest that the last one to make that list will not be lionized.  All bond holders are put into this box, also, though.

Under these circumstances, I ask again my question: why would anyone buy this country’s debt in future?  An actual “I can’t pay, so I default” would bring about sore hits to Greece’s future borrowing capacity, but such a default would not, of necessity, impugn Greek honesty.  They would recover, and in pretty short order.  But having destroyed their integrity?

Regulations Impacting Free Speech

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Now we see this from the New Jersey Law Journal [emphasis added]:

As corporate money continues its steady flow through the post-Citizens United world of U.S. elections, general counsel may soon have a new disclosure item to worry about. Last Friday, commissioner Luis Aguilar of the Securities and Exchange Commission called for the agency to consider a new rule requiring public companies to disclose all political spending. Shareholder proxy proposals seeking disclosure of corporate political donations are at a new high this year, according to the National Association of Corporate Directors. Aguilar says shareholder pressure is working, because nearly 60 percent of the S&P 100 companies had political disclosure policies in place as of December 31, compared with only a handful seven years earlier.

Never mind that, if shareholder pressure is working, a Government rule controlling free speech in this arena is plainly unwarranted.  This is just another cynical Progressive administration attempt to regulate free speech.