Monthly Archives: February 2010

Roger Simon noted today that:

[T]he United States House of Representative voted to increase the national debt limit to $14,294,000,000,000 by a 217-212 vote. All the “ayes” were Democrats, even after the election of Scott Brown.

Simon likens the increase of the national debt limit to an act of mass political suicide by House Democrats:

What’s going on here? Was this a mass act of seppuku? Or perhaps they are lemmings, taking the plunge ensemble off some Alaskan cliff.

I disagree. Rather than blind, ideological suicide, the House Democrats who voted to increase the debt limit are betting the farm on a number of political assumptions. Democrat are assuming that Republicans will neither craft nor effectively articulate to their base and Independents a principled, fiscal response to 2009’s record fiscal profligacy. Decreasing military spending and reducing effectively dealing with unfunded entitlement programs are absolutely necessary. Both measures would be unpopular with the Republican base, which generally favored Bush’s expansion of government, Congressional authority (DOMA), and entitlements. Victor Hanson expounded on this idea earlier today:

It won’t be enough for conservatives to say they are not Obama, and not ready to become a socialist Belgium. They need far more — a systematic agenda that outlines exactly how Americans are to become fiscally solvent, what and how much should be cut, a vow to end the congressional culture of corruption and become Spartan in our congressional habits, a confident energy policy that encourages nuclear, natural gas, and oil drilling to tide us over to new sources of energies, and a new resolve to enforce our borders, and end the naïve posturing of treating our war against Islamic jihadism as some sort of interesting legal debate that bounces around the philosophy department lounge.

Democrats are further wagering that the Republican party cannot mobilize a sufficient number of Scott Brown-type candidates or candidacies in enough House (and Senate) districts to recapture either the House or the Senate. While Republicans, Independents, and Tea-Partiers alike may be optimistic about the Scott Brown effect, it remains far from certain. Moreover, as VDH notes, Democrats have a few more arrows in the quiver that may temper the Scott Brown effect:

[E]xpect a renewed “Bush did it” offensive, the promiscuous playing of the racial card to stifle dissent, and [yet unspent hundreds of billions of] stimulus money lavished on everyone from train aficionados to solar panel producers.

You’d think that the GOP might make an issue out of the fact that holding billions of “stimulus” dollars in reserve to spend in key districts in campaign years is literally (to use Biden’s favorite word) bribing us with our own money – an unacceptable form of political chicanery if there ever was one.  Yet, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, the GOP is generally incapable of mustering an offensive against Democrats. So Democrats have that going for them too.

November will tell whether the Democrats’ going all-in on an assumption of Republican incompetence will pay off. Then again, it appears that Washington is determined to continue redefining record fiscal profligacy. That’s gonna enhance the Scott Brown Effect, if the newly resurrected GOP can take a lesson.

From Rodney Balko, an interesting read:

So the success of the ordeals relied on the guilty believing that God wouldn’t intervene to save them, the innocent fully believing that God would intervene, and a surrounding community willing to accept a high clearance rate for those who allowed themselves to be tested.

As Leeson explains, when doubt entered the system, the delicate balance was thrown askew. But while they lasted—up until the Church of England withdrew its support for the notion in the 13th century—ordeals were a more efficient, likely even more accurate, way of determining guilt than expensive fact-gathering and inquisitions (which were likely subject to their own forms of manipulation).

It’s doubtful there are many lessons we can glean from ordeals today. We aren’t about to return to a society so reliant on divine intervention. But Leeson’s paper is a fascinating look into a system that, though driven by objectively false beliefs, not only produced surprisingly accurate results, but produced results that only became more accurate the more fervently the community believed.

Good economic read here. The author, a Cato scholar, notes that “Government spending in industrialized nations now consumes, on average, nearly 45% of GDP with Canada and the United States slightly below average,” and that, by sharp contrast, John Maynard Keynes “agreed with the premise of “25% [of GDP] as the maximum tolerable proportion of taxation.

The conclusion?  ”Ironically, John Maynard Keynes might not be a Keynesian if he was alive today. He certainly would not be a proponent of big government.”

More highlights below, but read the whole thing.

While many factors influence economic performance, the negative impact of government spending is one reason why small-government jurisdictions such as Hong Kong (where the burden of the public sector is below 20% of GDP) have higher growth rates than nations that have medium-sized government, such as Canada and the United States. The same principle explains in part why big-government countries such as France often suffer from economic stagnation.

Interestingly, a large body of academic work attempts to measure the growth-optimizing level of government. This research is based on the notion there is not much prosperity in a state of anarchy. Governments solve this problem by imposing the rule of law (courts, police protection, etc). Those governmental functions cost money, but they yield big benefits. Moreover, government spending on “public goods” such as basic infrastructure also can facilitate the functioning of a market economy.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that most government spending today is devoted to programs for what is known as transfer spending and consumption spending. These outlays dampen economic growth, according to the research, largely because they displace private sector activity and also require punitive tax rates. Most studies using current economic data show that economic performance is maximized when the public sector is less than 20% of GDP. And if historical data is used, the evidence suggests that government should be even smaller.

South Park, Season 14, begins March 17, 2010. Mark your calendars.

Nancy Pelosi recently stated “[t]he American people don’t care about [political] process,” and followed it up with this:

“As I’ve said to my colleagues,” Ms. Pelosi said, “ ‘Go in the door. The door’s locked? Go to the gate. The gate’s locked? Climb over the over the fence.’

“ ‘It’s too high? Pole vault in. That doesn’t work? Parachute in.’We have to get this done for the American people,” she concluded, “one way or the other.”

To no one’s surprise, Speaker Pelosi’s considers political process a tool that may be discarded, bent, or broken, in order to achieve her policy goals as quickly as possible. Would Speaker Pelosi favor disregarding due process in order to put admitted rapists behind bars more efficiently?

Of course she wouldn’t. Nor should she. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments safeguard traditional American notions of justice and liberty. Likewise, adherence to our Constitutionally enumerated form of government safeguards our democratic liberty.

As such, it is quite disturbing that Speaker Pelosi has so little respect for political process.

Political process (loosely defined as transparency, political accountability, reading bills before passing them) preserves our nation’s collective democratic liberty – the real ability to effect change in government.

We should elect individuals who value that freedom above any sacred-cow policy measure.

Food Politics in Cuba, from Reason.

An opportunistic plea for food ends thusly:

In a trial closed to the public, [the food pleader] was convicted of “precriminal social endangerment” and sentenced to two years in prison.

More on Cuba below:

Bill Whittle responds to a commenter re: Climategate, AGW, F-22 program, Academia, and more.

See also, “A Tale of Two Revolutions: The War of Ideas & the Tragedy of the Unconstrained Vision.”