[5/13/10] Shock and Appall; Awe to Follow

Tony Blankley addresses the current Republican political trend toward housecleaning -- and Senate cleaning too -- dumping hands-across-the-aisle-and-into-your-pockets Spendican appropriators.  Along the way, he whups up on David Brooks, the liberal local New York paper's Republican house boy.  Of Senator Robert Bennett's defeat last Saturday, Blankley writes

I was delighted to see him lose because the next Congress is going to need a lot of a certain type of politician -- and Mr. Bennett is not that type.

We need determined men and women who share the view of us shocked and appalled Americans that we are in crisis -- and that we cannot wait until 2013 to stop the madness and start the rollback. Winning a majority of Republicans in November without electing a majority for radical, immediate rollback will be essentially as good as losing. As a Republican Party man for 46 years, I have, until now, always thought it was better to win a majority any way we can.

But not this year.

I hooted "Hooray," when I read that!  It mirrors my own thinking exactly, except that my radicalization occurred over twenty years ago, the first time the Republican party establishment proved to me that they would always support the Republican in Name Only (RINO) Arlen Specter.

I've sent not one red cent to the national party since, and I won't until they are run by honest, effective economic conservatives like Senator Jim DeMint and Senator Tom Coburn.

My money goes to the candidates who espouse true belief in economic freedom and who are supported by the Club for Growth.  This year we are sending money to Marco Rubio in Florida and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, among others.  I recommend that you go to the Club's web site, join -- its free -- and send any money you might ordinarily send to the national Republican party to the candidates in places where it can do some good.

Then we can turn our shock and appall into the appropriators shock and awe!

[5/11/10] Greece as a Model (Part III)

In case you are ever inclined to think my economic analyses are simplistic, or that my lack of degree in economics discredits them, here is the WSJ lead editorial today, saying

But there is no such thing as a free sovereign bailout, and the EU's intervention merely transfers those risks from banks and other creditors to taxpayers and the European Central Bank.

Or, in other words, the wallet will be transferred from the back pocket to the front.  It closes with

The real euro crisis, in short, is one of overspending and policies that sabotage economic growth. Sunday's shock and awe campaign has merely postponed that reckoning­and at a fearsome price. 

The only real choice the EU has to save the Euro in the long term is to kick a whole bunch of people off the dole and make them produce to consume.

The financial events started by Greece's effective bankruptcy will ultimately lead to the grand collapse of Social Democracy.  There is no substitute for individual economic freedom, where the spoils of success -- and failure -- are your own!

[5/10/10] Greece as a Model (Part II)

Here is Robert Samuelson on the Grecian problem... and the Portugese problem... and the US problem.  It focuses on the international finance aspects of the welfare state instead of the supply side aspects as my earlier note to you did, but the conclusion is the same:  when your transfer payments get too large, you produce less than you consume, and you can continue that only just so long by borrowing.

[5/10/10] What Elena Wants...

We began our last trip east with dinner at DC's fine tapas bar Jaleo,  with our son Brad, his wife Laura, and our friend John L.  Later in the evening we were joined by Elena Kagan.  Well, she was seated alone at the table next to ours, anyway.  Ms. Kagan will later today in all probability be nominated by Obama to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. 

Alas, there was no opportunity to grill her on judicial activism or theories of constitutional interpretation.

Here, courtesy of the liberal local New York paper, is a compendium of her statements on those and other relevant subjects.  Remember, as she would replace the arch-liberal Stevens, the best a constitutional textualist -- one who believes the words of the Constitution must mean today what they meant when ratified -- can hope is that she will be to him who appoints her what David Souter was to George H. W. Bush: an extreme disappointment.

[5/9/10] Utah's Bennett Will Be Senator No More

Utah's three-term Senator Robert Bennett -- who promised to stay for no more than two -- was not renominated by his state's Republican Party Saturday.  This WSJ article details the manner of his loss, and offers some editorial opinions by the probably young intern writer Stu Woo -- I kid you not, you just can't make this stuff up -- who likely won't write a piece this important ever again.

I see it more simply than Stu.  Here's my take:  Senators and Congressmen, represent the people of your state or district; or else bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your seat good-bye.

Karl Rove was here on his book tour a week ago, and when I was handed the microphone and stood up in the ballroom before the assembly of NM's GOP high rollers, he said as it changed hands, "Oh, no!  You shouldn't have done that.  That guy's trouble."

He said that because an hour before when we were getting our picture taken together, I reminded him that "The party leadership has made serious mistakes meddling in State elections recently: NY 23 and the Florida Senate race come to mind.  And your President saved..."  "Arlen Specter," he interrupted "We had to do that.  If we didn't back our committee chairman, party discipline would suffer."  Then he rushed on to explain that NY 23 was the State party's mistake.  Which is when I told him that if there was a question-and-answer session after his then still-to-come talk, I'd have another question for him.  For the moment, I had a lot of head scratching to do over how party discipline was helped by working for the re-election of the biggest flaunter of party discipline ever.  But I digress.

When I took the microphone in the ballroom, I asked "After the 2006 election there was a lot of debate about the cause of our party's defeats.  I think that the people in the streets protesting spending have put an end to that debate,  Do you think that the Spendicans in our party -- Senators and Members of Congress with seniority who will run the Appropriations  Committees if we retake the Senate or House -- have learned their lesson?"   I had to talk right through him to get the last sentence out because he had already started telling everyone that the losses were not because of too much spending but because "there were 15 Republicans who misbehaved, like Mark Foley, Duke Cunningham, and Jack Abramoff's friends."

He kept right on talking after I finished my question, haranguing us for so long on the misbehavior, I was pretty sure he was going to do as he had promised when he opened the floor to questions: dodge mine.   But he didn't.  He had heard it, remembered it, and prepared his answer.  "And as for your second question, 'Have they learned their lesson?'   I hope so!  The bridge to nowhere was a blow from which we never recovered."  Note that his answer to my question -- only question actually -- completely contradicted his diatribe against my statement of opinion... by agreeing with me.

Well, if there are any who haven't learned the lesson yet, Bob Bennett's defeat today will teach a few more.

[5/7/10] Greece as a Model

You should remember my propensity to explain national and international finance in simple supply-side economic terms. You may remember my 100 word lesson in economics explaining the role ofindividual economic liberty in increasing production of goods and services.

A financial crisis such as Greece's is the result of a nation consuming more goods and services than it produces. Greece's last few annual deficits, announced as 4% of its total annual production, now are thought to have been 12%. You may think that this government deficit of spending over taxation has little to do with the production deficit over  consumption, but you would be mistaken. The government deficit, driven almost exclusively by transfer payments, drives consumption over production, increasing demand which can only be met by imported goods and services. Increased imports drive the trade deficit up and force increased borrowing from other nations.

Finance is about satisfying current demand with future production or vice versa, and it provides a way to cover trade deficits: borrowing from other nations. However, those nations' willingness to deliver goods and services now in return for promises to return that production later eventually wears thin. The process ends when the debtor nation, unable to refinance its massive debts, defaults on some or all of it. In the present situation the result can be a rippling financial collapse that goes round and round and comes out everywhere: Greece may refuse to pay Spain, who then can't and won't pay the United Kingdom, who can't and won't pay the United States....

So, as the end approaches for one country there may be an rescue effort mounted among neighbor nations to extend one last line of credit to the profligate one in return for a promise to cast aside the habit of profligacy. The European Union has made just such an offer to Greece, and Greece's government attempted to agree, but yesterday the unions of Greece called a general strike and went to the streets in riot. Today, no one believes that Greece's people will allow the agreement to be accepted.

When the proffered hand is spurned, the profligate one is left to pay in hard currency: the immediate money it can earn from its immediate exports. In effect, it must carry goods and services to the border and barter them on the spot for goods and services from other nations. The austerity program required is enforced by the lender nations' unwillingness to lend.

The result is that the profligacy can no longer continue. Consumed goods and services must come out of current production. Of course the public sector that has caused the problem produces little of value in the domestic economy and nothing exportable, so they are in no way part of the solution. They are nothing but a drag on the entire process of recovery.  Unless the rest of the nation reneges on its promises to pay them their ridiculous golden pensions, and throws off its public sector's rent-seeking regulatory shackles then current production cannot grow to satisfy current demand.

There is no way out till the nation returns to productivity.

It is worthy of note that various states of our Union are marching down this bloated-public-sector death spiral: California, New York, and Michigan leap immediately to mind. As, of course, is now the United States of America, lead by our public-sector-favoring-and-favorite President.

[5/2/10] What Sort of Despotism...

Some decry the danger of the Tea Party protestors' comparisons to Fascism of the so-called progressive social democracy sought by the Democrats and Obama.  They and others say that the Tea Party protestors are wrong in their reading of history, or at the very least, the protestor's concerns are overblown.

Those people say we are in no danger of despotism because we democratically elect our leaders, and that freedom can never be in danger from such a government.  Obama himself said just these things in a speech yesterday at the University of Michigan 2010 commencement:

But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad.  One of my favorite signs during the health care debate was somebody who said, "Keep Your Government Hands Out Of My Medicare" -- (laughter) -- which is essentially saying "Keep Government Out Of My Government-Run Health Care Plan."  (Laughter.)

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.  We, the people -- (applause.)  We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders and change our laws, and shape our own destiny.

Of course, such comments are wrong.   Even as soon after the American revolution as 1840, the size and shape of our present government was predicted and described in detail by the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville on the basis of a short visit to America in the latter half of 1831 and early 1832.  The fourth book of the second volume of his Democracy in America addresses this issue precisely.   His chapter titles outline his reasoning:

Chapter II: That The Notions Of Democratic Nations On Government Are Naturally Favorable To The Concentration Of Power

Chapter III: That The Sentiments Of Democratic Nations Accord With Their Opinions In Leading Them To Concentrate Political Power

Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear

His argument is that since a government of the people by its elected representatives is deemed by most of the people to have more knowledge than they individually possess, those individuals willingly yield up to elected authority the power to control even the minutest of details of their daily lives.  Of course, it was to preserve those individual rights that the Constitution was amended with a Bill of Rights two short years after its adoption, but no matter, the desire to be led can overcome the text of those amendments and the desire for freedom.

It is difficult for me to extract brief quotes from de Tocqueville's final chapters.  The sentences and paragraphs are long and, even so, I find them almost all extremely compelling .  Therefore, I beg you, please take the time to read these two paragraphs addressing administrative despotism under popular sovereignty.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest­his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not­he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances­what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people. Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free: as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.

If you do not recognize our present popularly elected Federal, state, and local governments in this 170 year old prediction I will be greatly surprised.  It is not difficult to understand why de Tocqueville calls this despotism, nor to believe that we are at risk from its increase under the present empowerment of the power-hungry left by the muddle-headed middle of our electorate.

Many of the self-composed and hand-lettered signs of the Tea Party protestors are far closer to the truth than Obama's intentionally deceitful speech.  I invite you to exercise your own judgement on that subject.   An excellent photographic survey of those signs taken at the 9/12 protest in DC may be found here.  Many, if not most of them call for a return to a constitutionally limited government.  The compilation and photographs are by Messay Photography, which from its web site, seems to seek to document the diversity of DC.  Their selection roughly matches my own, which allows me to avoid uploading 300 photographs to flickr.com.  I see no sign of the sort quoted by Obama.  If you look, you will find a toothbrush-mustachioed picture of Obama from the Lyndon Larouche organization, but Larouche is a seven-time candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Here again are the final two sentences from de Tocqueville's paragraphs above:

A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.

I agree.