July 4th is no day to celebrate

From the July 4, 2009 Orlando Sentinel

In 1794, Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia. James Madison, the principal author of the U.S. Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object."I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents," he said.A few decades later, while serving in the same capacity as a member of the House of Representatives, David Crockett, upon listening to pleas from his fellow congressmen to give tax dollars to the widow of a deceased naval officer, said, "We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress, we have no right so as to appropriate a dollar of the public money."Madison and Crockett would not recognize the United States of America as we approach our nation's 233rd birthday. In fact, these gentlemen, along with the others who created our great nation, might suggest that the July Fourth festivities be canceled and replaced with a national day of mourning for what we have lost the past several years.When our republic was founded, the framers of our Constitution formed a rule book that established our government as the protector of our life, liberty and private property. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that along with national defense, Congress can allocate our earnings to provide for the general welfare of the citizenry.Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others argued that "general welfare" was confined to only those functions that secure our rights. These three natural rights were to be the only rights we would enjoy. Everything else — a car, access to education, decent health care, concert tickets — would be part of our interests, things we would have to obtain by serving our fellow man effectively enough so as to earn the income necessary to enjoy them. Where our earning capabilities were stunted by disabilities, illness or bad luck, charity from secular and religious sources was to fill the gaps.During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Alexander Hamilton argued that the general welfare clause should not be confined to the specific spending clauses in our Constitution. Hamilton argued that the government should be able to spend money on anything so long as the argument could be made that it was for the general welfare of the nation. Not one of the Founding Fathers agreed with Hamilton during the convention.The Supreme Court agreed with Hamilton in 1935. Fearing that the Roosevelt administration would pack the Supreme Court with justices sensitive to his big-government agenda, the court specifically mentioned Hamilton as the Founding Father who best understood what the role of government should be in our lives. Consequently, since the 1930s, the cost of government has risen from about $20 per person annually to more than $10,000.Today, our quasi-socialistic nation has moved so far from the intent of the Founding Fathers that it is laughable to hear politicians swear an oath that even mentions the Constitution.Consider the past few years alone. Trillions of tax dollars have been allocated to pre-emptive wars, domestic spying on innocent citizens and bank, automotive and insurance bailouts. We have seen huge increases in social-welfare spending for the elderly, people facing foreclosure and farmers who were supposed to know that sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not.We are witnessing the nationalization of General Motors, the banking sector and the health-care industry, all while higher taxes are imposed on America's most productive citizens to pay for the well-being of the less productive. Moreover, we now have the highest corporate income-tax burden in the developed world, while India, much of Eastern Europe and China moves in the opposite direction.If you believe in liberty and small government, July Fourth is no day to celebrate. We cannot, in good conscience, celebrate our independence when we have become so dependent on the government.It is a day to think about how much longer a nation can survive when the citizenry forms a longer and longer line at the trough of public tax dollars.

The Wall Street Journal
MAY 29, 2009
The 'Unseen' Deserve Empathy, Too


By JOHN HASNAS
While announcing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court, President Barack Obama praised her as a judge who combined a mastery of the law with "a common touch, a sense of compassion, and an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live." This is in keeping with his earlier statement that he wanted to appoint a justice who possessed the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles."

Without casting aspersions on Judge Sotomayor, we may ask whether these are really the characteristics we want in a judge.

Clearly, a good judge must have "an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live." Judicial decision-making involves the application of abstract rules to concrete facts; it is impossible to render a proper judicial decision without understanding its practical effect on both the litigants and the wider community.

But what about compassion and empathy? Compassion is defined as a feeling of deep sympathy for those stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering; empathy is the ability to share in another's emotions, thoughts and feelings. Hence, a compassionate judge would tend to base his or her decisions on sympathy for the unfortunate; an empathetic judge on how the people directly affected by the decision would think and feel. What could be wrong with that?

Frederic Bastiat answered that question in his famous 1850 essay, "What is Seen and What is Not Seen." There the economist and member of the French parliament pointed out that law "produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them." Bastiat further noted that "[t]here is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: The bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen."

This observation is just as true for judges as it is for economists. As important as compassion and empathy are, one can have these feelings only for people that exist and that one knows about -- that is, for those who are "seen."

One can have compassion for workers who lose their jobs when a plant closes. They can be seen. One cannot have compassion for unknown persons in other industries who do not receive job offers when a compassionate government subsidizes an unprofitable plant. The potential employees not hired are unseen.

One can empathize with innocent children born with birth defects. Such children and the adversity they face can be seen. One cannot empathize with as-yet-unborn children in rural communities who may not have access to pediatricians if a judicial decision based on compassion raises the cost of medical malpractice insurance. These children are unseen.

One can feel for unfortunate homeowners about to lose their homes through foreclosure. One cannot feel for unknown individuals who may not be able to afford a home in the future if the compassionate and empathetic protection of current homeowners increases the cost of a mortgage.

In general, one can feel compassion for and empathize with individual plaintiffs in a lawsuit who are facing hardship. They are visible. One cannot feel compassion for or empathize with impersonal corporate defendants, who, should they incur liability, will pass the costs on to consumers, reduce their output, or cut employment. Those who must pay more for products, or are unable to obtain needed goods or services, or cannot find a job are invisible.

The law consists of abstract rules because we know that, as human beings, judges are unable to foresee all of the long-term consequences of their decisions and may be unduly influenced by the immediate, visible effects of these decisions. The rules of law are designed in part to strike the proper balance between the interests of those who are seen and those who are not seen. The purpose of the rules is to enable judges to resist the emotionally engaging temptation to relieve the plight of those they can see and empathize with, even when doing so would be unfair to those they cannot see.

Calling on judges to be compassionate or empathetic is in effect to ask them to undo this balance and favor the seen over the unseen. Paraphrasing Bastiat, if the difference between the bad judge and the good judge is that the bad judge focuses on the visible effects of his or her decisions while the good judge takes into account both the effects that can be seen and those that are unseen, then the compassionate, empathetic judge is very likely to be a bad judge. For this reason, let us hope that Judge Sotomayor proves to be a disappointment to her sponsor.

Mr. Hasnas is a visiting professor at Duke University School of Law.

Some thoughts on homeschooling..

5/27: Letters to the Editor
May 27, 2009
Home-schooled children are smart, considerateIn Monday's Sentinel ("Home-schoolers, don't quit system"), Amy Platon argued that parents who home-school their children are creating citizens who will have less compassion for their community, avoid improving the lives of our fellow man and only look out for their own interests.As a professor in Orlando for the past 18 years and father of two home-schooled boys, I think I can respond to her concerns.The home-schooled students who come to my economics classes are, along with their counterparts from India, Russia and China, my best students. They earn the highest grades, have wonderful communication skills and are willing to help their fellow students. In fact, many of our nation's best universities seek out home-schooled students because of their unique life experiences and high SAT scores.In areas where my wife and I are not experts, the free market of ideas has provided experts. We use private-school clubs and programs, free-market educational resources and cooperatives with parents who are specialists in everything from electricity to pottery to provide our sons with an enriched learning experience. Moreover, through music and sports programs, we help our boys function in a society of non-home-schooled children.
Platon should be concerned that America's public schools rank at or near the bottom of international comparisons. If concerned parents want their kids to emerge from this epic recession as viable competitors with Chinese and Indian children, then looking into the home-school option would be a good place to start.Jack Chambless Oakland

Government as car maker...

The moment we have all been waiting for has finally arrived. The United States government is officially in the car business. The same government that has given us the wildly successful post office; public education; American-Indian reservations; the War on Poverty, drugs and terrorism; public housing; forest management and many other highlights in the history of things that don't work, is now poised to give us our future automobiles.

Let's take a moment to review how we got here.

First, the 'Big Three' American companies failed miserably to compete with Japaneses car companies from the early 70's on. With the help of the economically illiterate United Autoworkers union, American companies saw declining market shares, rising costs and inferior quality come home to roost.

Facing bankruptcy, two of the three run to Washington, D.C. to beg for the plundered tax dollars of people who drive Toyotas, Hondas, Hyundais and other cars that are not made by GM or Chrysler. Our government proceeds to hand them billions of dollars and a threat to come up with a better model in a couple of months (to replace what took decades to doom them) or face the pressure of federal intrusions into how to get us from point A to B on the highway.

Of course the beggars from Detroit failed to deliver on this impossible task and the Obama Administration, a.k.a, the "Superior Ones" ostensibly nationalized GM by taking a 50% ownership stake and condemned Chrysler be the certain death of being largely run by that world-class company, Fiat.

Now that the federal government has huge ownership stakes in both companies, the feds get to tell the companies what to do. Naturally, this means the companies will be forced to do things that have not even one remote connection to anything that the laws of supply and demand would insist they do.

In a free market, absent bailouts and takeovers by government, GM and Chrysler would be wise to file for bankruptcy, close every plant in unproductive, union states and move to places like Texas, Florida and other places where you can hire workers for far less than the absurd amounts the UAW workers get. Then, as smaller, leaner companies, GM and Chrysler could go about competing with Toyota and Honda on a playing field that Adam Smith would love.

Instead, on May 18th, GM CEO, Barack Obama announced that he will be determining what course of action the car companies will now face. HE has decided that all cars should get 30% better fuel economy than they do now by the year 2016. HE has demanded that this take place so that we can all fight global warming in smaller, lighter, less roomy death traps on wheels.

Take a look at the data for yourself. When government forces our cars to get better mileage, highway deaths increase.

These cars will cost more (Obama predicts $600 more) and will not have the same power or capacity that our vehicles do at this time.

Our marketplace used to tell car companies very clearly that size and power is what we want most. Now tree huggers and "Save the Polar Bears" activists will tell us what to drive.

With any luck we will get to drive cars like the East German Trabant (see photo) This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals.

Road trip anyone???

An Economist's Solution to Bad Election Choices...

President Obama's first 100 days are almost over and, as usual, we have evidence that we are a nation that is rapidly devolving over time. From Messrs. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin to Messrs. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Barney Frank is not what our liberty-loving Founders would have had in mind, but given the existence of universal suffrage it is to be expected that the quality of our "leaders" would deteriorate - and sometimes rapidly - over time.

The problem with our political system is simple. Every person 18 and up - even if they are idiots - get to vote. That makes no sense on numerous levels.

First, how many people from our government schools know anything about our Constitution? How many of them can tell you how long our nation went without an income tax, or what eminent domain is, or what the 'general welfare' clause means?

Without a firm undestanding of our nation's rule book - starting with the fact that we are a republic, not a majority-rule, heavy-handed democracy - how can any one claim that that they are adding value to the electoral process?

Second, under universal suffrage, we have a large segment of the population that uses thier vote to simply plunder the voter next to them. Voting for a living may seem, to our current socialist leaders, to be a perfectly acceptable proposition, but if one looks at the facts our Founders specifically said that no where in the Constitution lies a provision to take the private property of someone who is more productive than you. If I do that as an individual acting on my own I go to jail. If I do it on a Tuesday in November I am considered a good citizen for voting for the thief of my choice.

Third, why should someone who is at home at this moment smoking crack and watching 'American Idol' re-runs get one vote when Bill Gates gets one vote? Gates is far more important to our nation than the crack smoker and yet we have a system where unproductive people can, over time, out number productive people; get organized into voting blocs and push for candidates who pander to their desire to live off of the fruits of other people's labor.

To fix this we need to move away from the 'one person, one vote' nonsense and towards a system that weights your vote on how much you serve your fellow man. Of course, in our somewhat free market economy the way we measure your service is on how much money you create (earn) every year. Thus, a superior voting system would have a person bring a copy of their tax returns to the polling place on election day with a bar code that can be scanned. What would be scanned? The person's gross income (since net is simply a function of government's ability to steal property).

If you have a gross income of $33,529, that is how many times your vote for President, Senator, whatever, would count. If you served your fellow man to the tune of $23 million, you would get 23 million votes.

To make this system more efficient, any income you earned from government subsidies, bailouts, welfare, etc. would be excluded.

Yes, I am aware of the fact that people like Sean Penn, Ben Affleck and other rich, but Consitutionally ignorant people would get a lot of votes. But so would a lot more business men and women who don't vote for liberal socialists like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. They also don't vote for people like liberal-Republican John McCain.

They do vote for people like Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan and Lady Thatcher.

In other words, they vote for people who respect their right to earn and keep private property.

That, my friends, is what all of us who work need in Washington, D.C.

Daniel Hannan and our reality

I wonder who would have the courage to say this to George W. Bush or Barack H. Obama?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs&feature=related

I look forward to your comments.

Jack Chambless

Rights vs. Wishes - some thoughts from Professor Walter Williams

We hear so much about "rights" -- a right to this and a right to that. People say they have a right to decent housing, a right to adequate health care, food and a decent job, and more recently, senior citizens have a right to prescription drugs. In a free society, do people have these rights? Let's look at it.

At least in the standard historical usage of the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people. A right confers no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference. Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. That right imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference.

Contrast those rights to the supposed right to decent housing or medical care. Those supposed rights do confer obligations upon others. There is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy. If you don't have money to pay for decent housing or medical services, and the government gives you a right to those services, where do you think the money comes from?

If you said "From some other American," go to the head of the class. Your right to decent housing and medical care requires that some other American have less of something else, namely diminished rights to his earnings.

Let's apply this bogus concept of rights to free speech and the right to travel freely. If we were to apply it to my right to free speech, my free speech rights would confer financial obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. My right to travel freely would require that others provide me with airplane tickets and hotel accommodations. Most Americans, I would imagine, would tell me, "Williams, yes you have rights to free speech and travel rights, but I'm not obligated to pay for them!"

As human beings, we all have certain unalienable rights. Of the rights we possess, we have a right to delegate to government. For example, we all have a right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate it to government. In other words, we can say to government, "We have the right to defend ourselves, but for a more orderly society, we give you the authority to defend us."

By contrast, I don't possess the right to take your earnings for any reason. Since I have no such right, I cannot delegate it to government. If I did take your earnings for housing and medical services, it would rightfully be described as an act of theft. When government does it, it's still theft -- the only difference is that it's legalized theft sanctioned by a majority vote.

Decent housing, good medical care and decent jobs are not rights at all, at least not in a free society -- they're wishes. As such, I'd agree with most Americans because I also wish that everyone had decent housing, a high paying job and good medical care.