A Huge Entitlement Was Repealed in America Once

There has been a lot of feelings of doom and gloom lately among conservatives after the health bill that was passed by the Congress and signed by the President. People think that since it is a new entitlement this will never go away. All entitlements have grown and expanded. Entitlements are here forever, because once people start receiving a benefit they will never give it up. This is simply not an historical fact. A huge entitlement was repealed in America once. This is an entitlement that existed even when we were colonies. Just like today, these entitled folks were very concerned about health care, education, and protecting the environment.

The entitled had to have complete control over how and how much medical care and education were delivered. They had to have a lot of individual mandates with respect to not having guns get into the wrong hands, and not having outside agitators have contacts and influence that might disturb the existing environment. There was an important need for the entitled to be convincing in explaining the limits of just how much one can improve their station in life, and any limited improvement is completely dependent on how loyal, faithful, and respectful that one is.

Promiscuous sex was not discouraged, and increases in population were welcomed instead of discouraged. The strong family ties were found to be a problem, and it was better for maintaining a discipline and devotion to the work to have families split apart.

There were moderate politicians during this period that tried to reach across the aisle and make compromises over where the entitled folks could live and operate. There were factory owners in states where the people strongly opposed and banned the entitlment, but these owners did not object to the raw materials the entitled people were providing them. These factory owners wanted the materials, and worried they would drop off with any changes to the system.

Legal challenges were made to this entitlement that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court did not repeal this huge entitlement program. A major political party was created by people who opposed this entitlement.

I think by now most of you know what I am talking about, and there are certainly new wrinkles and nuances in entitlement programs today compared to this earlier entitlement. The entitled were private citizens then, and they are public elected officials now. The entitled lived in a mansion then, and they occupy a federal building now. The descendants of those held captive then are willingly and voluntarily giving up liberty for goods and services they don't have to pay for now. The descendants of those held captive then are told by the entitled now that there are rich conservative over-achievers who will be in bondage to paying the money they will not receive for their labors so that they can give out all the goods and services they have promised to them.

THE ENTITLED THEN


THE ENTITLED NOW


THE PLANTATION THEN


THE PLANTATION NOW


THE SLAVES THEN


THE SLAVES NOW


One final meme to dispel is that idea that our elected leaders do not hear us. This is also simply not true. They have not only heard, but they have replied.

...we have always been and I believe continue to be, in
too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.

Eric Holder
A.G.

BIG EFFING DEAL.

Joe Biden V.P.

I WON.

Barack Obama Pres.

I hope the repeal now is not as bloody and violent as the repeal then. It was a big problem then the entitled were private citizens who had lived on their private land and built an economic system around their entitlement. It is less of a problem now that the entitled are public officials who are occupying public buildings. We can vote them out of office, and we must.

Will, Reich, Daniels, and Health Insurers

George Will, Mitch Daniels, and Robert Reich have all spoken and written recently about the health insurance debate. It reminds me a little bit of three blind men and an elephant. One touches the elephant's foreleg, another touches the elephant's tail, and the third one touches the elephant's trunk. They each can write truthfully about what an elephant is really like to them, and yet the actual elephant is a lot more complicated.

Let's start with George Will who
recently wrote a column, That rock in the
health-care road? It's called the Constitution. an excerpt:

Would it be constitutional for the government to legislate compulsory calisthenics for all Americans? If not, why not? If it would be, in what sense does the nation still have constitutional, meaning limited, government?

Supporters of the mandate say Congress can impose the legislation under the enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce. Since the New Deal, courts have made this power capacious enough to include regulating intrastate activity that "substantially affects" interstate commerce.

But if any activity, or inactivity, can be declared to have economic consequences, then anything can be regulated or required. Furthermore, judicial review and the Constitution itself is largely nullified by a doctrine of virtually unlimited judicial deference to Congress's estimates of what is "necessary and proper" for the regulation of commerce.

George Will makes an additional argument in another column, A divided brain in Washington. an excerpt:

Obama's leitmotif is: Washington is disappointing, Washington is annoying, Washington is dysfunctional, Washington is corrupt, verily Washington is toxic yet Washington should conscript a substantially larger share of GDP, and Washington should exercise vast new controls over health care, energy, K-12 education, etc. Talk about a divided brain.

I like what Will is saying about the slippery slope of growing the government way too much based on Congress's estimates of what is "necessary and proper" for the regulation of commerce. I also appreciate the truth in what he says about a divided brain about claiming that something is broken and therefore should exercise vast new controls over health care. What I find missing in George Will's writings is an acknowledgement that a few health insurance companies do get their way with state legislators and insurance commissioners. These companies have even been known to press states to limit how many other health insurers they license. If he acknowledges this, then he can accept that Congressional oversight is needed under the enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce to undo these abuses.

Next we have Robert Reich who recently wrote a column, Bust Up the Health Insurance Trusts. an excerpt:

They were created in part by hospitals to spread the costs of expensive new equipment and facilities over many policy holders. Collaboration was the point, not competition. The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act made it official, exempting insurers from antitrust scrutiny and giving states the power to regulate them, although not necessarily any power to regulate rates.

With size has come not only market power but political clout. Big for-profit insurers deploy enough campaign money and lobbyists to get their way with state legislators and insurance commissioners. A proposal last year to allow California's Department of Insurance to regulate rates, for example, died in committee. These companies have even been known to press states to limit how many other health insurers they license.

And when they can’t get their way, insurers go to court. In Maine, one state that aggressively regulates rates, WellPoint's Anthem subsidiary has sued the insurance superintendent for reducing its requested rate increase.

Antitrust is no substitute for broader health care reform, but it's an important prerequisite. If a handful of giant health insurers are allowed to dominate the industry, many of the other aspects of reform (establishing insurance exchanges, requiring people to have insurance, even allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines) won’t bring down the price of insurance.

Reich provides a somewhat correct history, but I do not appreciate his use of big, for-profit, and giant as adjectives to cast insurance companies in a negative light. Insurers do not get their way with state politicians writing regulations to limit other insurers because they are big, giant, and for-profit. They do it because it costs less money to pay off state politicians than to compete for customers in a large market. Another solution that Reich gets wrong is the idea that the federal government must set the minimum standards for all the insurers because the customers are not smart enough to purchase what they can afford and need.

Finally Gov. Mitch Daniels recently wrote a column, Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts. an excerpt:

In Indiana's HSA, the state deposits $2,750 per year into an account controlled by the employee, out of which he pays all his health bills. Indiana covers the premium for the plan. The intent is that participants will become more cost-conscious and careful about overpayment or overutilization.

Everything in that excerpt is true. There are things that are not mentioned in this column about the state of Indiana HSA plan that are also true. The $2,750 per year from the state is not deposited until the employee has deposited $2,750 of his own money into the account. An employee will pay all his health bills out of the HSA account, and then pay health bills out of one of his personal accounts if prescription drugs, doctor visits, and medical tests early in the year deplete the money in the HSA account toward the end of the year. The state of Indiana HSA plan for state employees is an excellent plan for some people but not for everyone.

Health insurance is complicated, and some folks may strongly disagree with my ideas more than any disagreement they might have with Will, Reich, and Daniels. Nevertheless I will offer some of my own ideas about health insurance, and try to defend them against any criticism.

I think the US Congress should provide oversight as one of its enumerated powers to regulate interstate commerce and remove the antitrust exemption for health insurers. The US Congress should require states to allow competition from health insurers across state boundaries. The state insurance commissioners and state legislators should limit the rules and regulations to insurers that only require them to meet the same better business practices required of all other businesses.

The US Congress should create a special high risk health insurance pool for folks who live in federal districts and federal territories and are not able to obtain health insurance from any other insurers. Folks must provide a written proof of being denied coverage and proof of residence in a federal district or territory to qualify. A federal tax on transactions occurring in the federal districts and territories will fund it.

Ten regional districts should be created to manage high risk health insurance pools for folks who live in the state of the region and are not able to obtain health insurance from any other insurers. Folks must provide a written proof of being denied coverage and proof of residence in a state within the region to qualify. States in the regional districts will each provide money to fund it.

The increased competition and relaxation of regulations should increase the number of different plans a customer can choose between which will in turn increase the number of people who choose to buy an insurance policy. I do not think any individual should be forced into buying health insurance. There should be oversight and record-keeping of folks going to emergency rooms with no health insurance.

For me a baker and health insurer should both let the free market determine what ingredients are in their products, how much to charge, and how much profit they acquire. The only role I want for government is to have the oversight of a referee and keep somebody from using political clout instead of the market to pick winners and losers.

2010 US House Pickups in Texas

Texas has 32 House seats, and 12 of these are currently held by a D. There will be a run-off GOP primary on April 13th for six of these twelve. We have a name for a GOP candidate in the 2010 general election for the other six seats. Below is a table where I list these House seats and order them by what I consider the degree of difficulty in winning from least difficult to most difficult. I'd love to see the Rs pick up all 12 of them, but that is not realistic. If the Texas Republicans can unite after the April 13 run-off primary behind the winners I truly believe four of those candidates could defeat the incumbent in the general election.

I've only lived in Texas since September of 2009, and I expect a lot of posters that are more informed than I am can correct any errors in my analysis. No matter what district a voter lives in he needs to remember the first vote any D takes is a vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker. That fact alone should make anyone hesitant to vote for a D for House in 2010.

House CD	Incumbent	2008 vote pct	Challenger
CD 17	Chet Edwards	53.0 %	TBD
CD 23	Ciro D. Rodriguez	55.8 %	TBD
CD 27	Solomon P. Ortiz	58.0 %	TBD
CD 15	Ruben E. Hinojosa	65.7 %	TBD
CD 25	Lloyd Doggett	65.8 %	Donna Campbell
CD 28	Henry Cuellar	68.7 %	Bryan Underwood
CD 20	Charles A. Gonzalez	71.9 %	TBD
CD 29	Gene Green	74.6 %	Roy Morales
CD 18	Sheila Jackson-Lee	77.3 %	John Faulk
CD 16	Silvestre Reyes	82.1 %	Tim Besco
CD 30	Eddie Bernice Johnson	82.5 %	TBD
CD 9	Al Green	93.6 %	Steve Mueller

The Wizard to the Cowardly Lion

You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you're confusing courage with wisdom.

--The Wizard to the Cowardly Lion



There are different types of wisdom. One of them, conventional wisdom, can sometimes be neither wise nor conventional. I am not saying that the four-term Senator from Arizona is a wizard or that the one term senator from South Carolina is a cowardly lion. I guess I just used the quote because the wizard of Oz used "my friend", an annoying phrase used often by John McCain.



The reason for writing this diary about these two Senators running for re-election in 2010 has nothing to do with the horse-race aspect of the election. As much as I detest McCain and admire DeMint both of them are going to be re-elected. My reason for writing this diary is to focus on the money that these two men have raised for other people in 2010. Winning support for a position of leadership has a lot to do with how much campaign support you have provided to your colleagues. John McCain has a PAC, Country First, that has contributed to four candidates for the US Senate. Jim DeMint has two PACS, MINT and Senate Conservatives Fund. The tables below indicate the names of the recipients, and the amount of dollars they received. The Florida US contest is extremely important for determining if Sen. DeMint is rising in the US Senate and Sen. McCain is dropping in the leadership department.



The real comparison between these two men is a choice between having leadership that is authoritarian and progressive (McCain) or libertarian and conservative (DeMint). I am personally rooting for the latter.

The early 20th century progressives were authoritarian in prohibiting booze, and the early 21st century progressives are authoritarian in prohibiting lobbiests campaigning, and consumers buying incandescent light bulbs. As a progressive they know they are smarter and must decide for all of the rest of us what is in our best interest. They lost the argument with the passage of the 21st amendment then, and they are losing the argument incrementally with Supreme Court decisions now. We always need to remain vigilant against these authoritarians. They may go off and hide for a while, but they will be back when they think they see an opening.



I recently watched the movie, Fountainhead. I recommend this movie especially two main characters, Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark, for showing the authoritarian progressive vs the conservative libertarian. a Cliff-Notes excerpt:

Toohey knows that a Fascist or Communist state requires a citizenry willing to obey. He can establish a dictatorship only if the majority of individuals are willing to give up personal autonomy - to surrender their minds to a leader. This is the two-pronged goal that he attempts to reach: destroy the independent thinkers like Roark, and, by convincing individuals to surrender their judgment and values, turn them into followers like Keating. A dictator requires a flock of sheep; he cannot hold power over a citizenry of independent men.



Toohey has a clear vision of his role in the collectivist state. He himself is not the brute of physical force who gains dominance by unleashing a reign of terror. His role, rather, is to be the intellectual advisor behind the throne. The brute will hold physical power over the masses, and Toohey will hold spiritual power over the brute. Toohey is a behind-the-scenes puppet master, who surreptitiously wields the real power - and this will be his place in the totalitarian state he seeks.

source


Country First PAC John McCain

Senate Candidates	Amount
Crist, Charles J Jr (R-FL)	$5,000
Portman, Rob (R-OH)	$7,400
Thune, John (R-SD)	$5,000
Coburn, Tom (R-OK)	$2,400

MINT PAC Jim DeMint

Senate Candidates	Amount
Thune, John (R-SD)	$5,000
Burr, Richard (R-NC)	$5,000
Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)	$5,000

Senate Conservatives Fund Jim DeMint

Senate Candidate	Amount
Rubio, Marco (R-FL)	$10,000

Sarah Palin - A 21st Century Duchess of Devonshire?

In September 2008 the movie, The Dutchess, was released.

A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, an ancestor of Princess Diana who was alternately celebrated and reviled for her extravagant political and personal lives.

Now I have not yet actually seen this move, but I have read a review of this movie that has moved me to ask the question in my title. I encourage you to read the review and draw your own conclusions. I also do not presume that the author of this review intended any comparison, so just blame me for the suggestion. I will provide some excerpts of this review that I think bolster my suggestion.

I did not expect that, amid the romance, costumes, and drama, I would strike libertarian gold!
It was one pivotal scene in particular that piqued my curiosity. When Charles Fox (played by Simon McBurney), who was Georgiana's mentor and the leader of the Whig party, argues for the importance of "freedom in moderation," Georgiana responds quickly and firmly that there cannot be scales of freedom. Rather, the "concept of freedom is an absolute."

The Duchess of Devonshire lived in a time that bears striking similarities to our own. In the late 18th century, England was rife with tensions between an increasingly powerful state and a swelling grassroots opposition. The frustrated Whigs were becoming increasingly radicalized in their defense of liberty against the corrupt, ever-expanding powers of King George III.

I think you could replace the word Whigs with Republicans and replace the words King George III with President Obama and it would describe early 21st Century US.

But Georgiana was not a shrinking violet. She was fiercely passionate about her party's ideals. Her favorite book was Vertot's Revolutions of Sweden, which is about, as she put it, a "[h]ero fighting for liberty of his country and to revenge the memory of an injur'd friend against lawless cruelty and oppressive tyranny."



Georgiana recognized that liberal ideals could only be spread through dedicated organizing and savvy marketing.



Georgiana was a marketing genius, one of the first to refine political messages for mass communication. She was an image-maker who understood the necessity for public relations, and she became adept at the manipulation of political symbols and the dissemination of party propaganda. She was simultaneously a public figurehead for the Whigs and an effective politician within the party.
To keep morale alive, she held vibrant, theatrical parties, dinners, and rallies.



Georgiana was a powerful asset for the Whigs, serving as campaign manager, strategist, advisor, inspiration, and symbol of the movement. She brought Whig ideals back into fashion with her costumes, balls, and events. She helped shape the strategy and direction of the party, and she charged along when her comrades lost steam.



Driven by strong convictions and a fervent belief in freedom, Georgiana was a master political propagandist, a powerful negotiator, an impassioned orator, and a keen political strategist. In many ways, she was the woman behind the men of the Enlightenment.

So that's it. These parts of this review are what made me think of Sarah Palin. I know some people think that Sarah Palin can do no wrong while other people think she can do nothing right. The truth is somewhere in between. This is not a pro-Palin nor an anti-Palin diary. It is just my personal observation that Sarah Palin can refine political messages for mass communication, and Sarah charges forward when her political comrades lose steam.

The Blue and Gray - Then and Now

The Blue and Gray comes from the colors of the uniforms worn by the union army (blue) and the confederate army (gray) during the war between the states. The confederate states were all in the southeast quadrant of the US, and the union states were the northern states and Oregon and California. The confederate states had less freedom for its inhabitants which included slaves. That was then.

Now, William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens have published a paper, Freedom in the 50 States. This document just about flips the map on the states with less freedom(gray) and states with more freedom(blue). The following is a summary of their findings.

We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same. This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.

The authors of this study have put the data online, and one is able to adopt their own weights to see how the overall freedom rankings change. LINK



Pia Varma is a candidate for the US House seat in Pennsylvania's 1st district, and she has some excellent thoughts on the subject of freedom.

Freedom! That word once started revolutions. There was a time when people pretty much understood that freedom was so precious that nothing and no one should have the power to take it away. America was founded on that basis. No matter your race, gender, religion or social class, as a human being no one could take your freedom without your consent. But individual freedom cannot exist without individual responsibility. That means you own the consequences of your choices: profit and loss, success and failure, happiness and sadness. But that was then, this is now.



Today, millions of Americans have been led to believe that they can have the good without the bad. They never bothered to think about the costs though. Like eating in a fine restaurant, we never see the bill until the meal is over. Even better if someone else is paying. So we vote for nice sounding policies and the people who promote them all because the costs cannot be seen or they are supposedly paid by someone else. But any immediate benefit we get will fade and at the next election cycle we are back at that table begging like Oliver Twist, Please Sir, May I have some more.



Every day, more and more Americans are lulled into relying on the government to solve their problems. They never realize that the cost of doing so is their freedom. No matter how bad the government makes their lives, they still trust that someday it will get better. The sad part is, they genuinely believe that they are safer under that false blanket of protection.



In a free market businesses are forced to provide product and services demanded by the consumer. The consumer controls the quality, quantity and costs. If he does not like the services at one company, he simply fires them and goes to a competitor. But when the industry is in the hands of a monopoly, as is the case with education, the consumer, in this case parents and children, is forced to accept what is offered. Sure you can opt for private school but this option is only available to a select few.



A private business competing in an open market has to listen to its customers or risk closing its doors. Public schools don’t have this problem. Incentives matter.



Government has a duty to prevent those things which can be prevented, but we as individuals have a duty to ensure that we do not become the victims of our own security. More government, more agencies, more money has not, cannot and will not make life perfect.

The two maps below are what the US looked like in 1861, and what, according to the report, the US State Overall Freedom Ranking reveals today. I colored the 17 most free states blue, the 16 least free states gray, and the 17 states in the middle light green.

Who Wrote Your History Textbook?

I recently wrote about the US history that is not taught about some famous American market entrepreneurs. That really is just the tip of the iceberg. In every period of our history there are statist biases being taught to students in classes. Larry Schweikart has written a book that includes a list of lies that can lead to a bitter attitude about this country being formed by the students. It is important to know who wrote your history textbook, and what kinds of bias are evident.

The American Textbook Council is an independent national research organization established in 1989 to review the history and social studies textbooks used in the nation's schools. Since its foundation, the Council has achieved a prominent place in national discussions and exchanges about history textbooks and the social studies curriculum through its many bulletins, studies, and reports. The Council's many projects, evaluations of history textbooks and social studies curricula, and efforts to educate the nation about the civic implications of multiculturalism have earned it a reputation for integrity and fairness.

The Council endorses textbooks that embody vivid narrative style, stress significant people and events, and promote better understanding of all cultures, including our own, on the principle that improved textbooks will advance the curriculum, stimulate student learning, and encourage educational achievement for children of all backgrounds.

To give some guidance to educators who need quick assistance and a place to begin, the history textbooks listed below that have been adjudged in content and design satisfactory or superior to their competition in previous Council bulletins and studies are marked with a plus (+). Textbooks that have been adjudged grossly deficient or inaccurate in reviews are marked with a minus (-). Unmarked textbooks are of mixed quality. Each of the following textbooks is identified alphabetically by publisher, first designated author, and abridged title. BL denotes a book that has been backlisted, i.e., it is no longer actively sold as "new" yet is for sale as inventory. Such books are gradually being retired or may be niche sellers with enduring popularity.

Publisher	Author	Title	Rating
McGraw-Hill/Glencoe	Joyce Appleby	American Journey
McGraw-Hill/Glencoe	Gary B. Nash	American Odyssey	-
Houghton Mifflin/McDougal	Jesus Garcia	Creating America
Houghton Mifflin/McDougal	Gerald Danzer	The Americans
Pearson/Prentice Hall	James West Davidson	The American Nation	-
Pearson/Prentice Hall	Daniel J. Boorstin	A History of the United States	+
Pearson/Prentice Hall	Andrew Cayton	America: Pathways to the Present	+
Harcourt/Holt	Edward L. Ayers	American Anthem
BL Harcourt/Holt	Sterling Stuckey	Call to Freedom
BL Harcourt/Holt	Paul Boyer	Boyer's The American Nation	-

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has on its web site a link to reviewers' findings of some of the textbooks listed. Instead of ranking the textbooks with a (+)or(-) these reviewers assigned a letter grade ranging from C+ to F for the textbooks. The table below shows their results.

Publisher	Author	Title	Rating
McGraw-Hill/Glencoe	Joyce Appleby	American Journey	C+
BL Harcourt/Holt	Paul Boyer	Boyer's The American Nation	C-
Pearson/Prentice Hall	Andrew Cayton	America: Pathways to the Present	C-
McGraw-Hill/Glencoe	Gary B. Nash	American Odyssey	D
Houghton Mifflin/McDougal	Gerald Danzer	The Americans	F

The meager research I have done on this subject leads me to thinking that the choices for schools in choosing history textbooks are between barely acceptable and completely unsatisfactory. The direction in education in the US is to move toward more uniformity and standardization, and less control by each state. I think that this is a very bad idea, and I applaud Alaska and Texas for refusing to take federal dollars in exchange for losing control of education standards.

There are progressives in both the Republican and Democratic Party who want to attack anyone opposed to the national takeover in education as being someone who doesn't care about all the children getting an excellent education. This line of attack should be answered by informing them that the more local the government the more caring exists. There are so many programs and plans that are talked about in Washington, DC that have absolutely nothing to do with duties and enumerated powers that are listed in the US Constitution for the federal government. They will attack anyone who opposes their programs as someone who just does not care about things that are very important to people. They miss the point of the opposition. Opposition is not because something is not important or because we don't care about people. The opposition is because the local government has the authority to run programs not listed by the US Constitution. The tenth amendment does spell this out fairly well.

The bottom line for me is that I would want my history lessons to come from American Journey.

My Take on Lame Duck Senators Casting Votes

Lane Kirk is a lame duck. There has been an election for the Massachusetts US Senate seat, and Scott Brown won the election. There is a lot of outrage that Lane Kirk is continuing to cast votes. I understand that outrage. My take on this is different from others that I have read. I want to take into account ALL lame duck US Senators, and not just Lane Kirk. The heat that I can catch for this kind of accounting may be huge, because it does not necessarily reward one political party over the other one.

I do not favor imposing mandatory term limits on congressmen. We already have a market-driven set of term limits. They are called general elections. They occur every two years for the House and 1/3 of the Senate so the voters can remove any House member after two years in office and any Senate Member after six years in office. This is the check on power that the founders had the wisdom to put into the constitution, and I am good with that. The check is that any judgement made by a congressman's vote is that he has to face the voters in the next election, and defend his vote. Now the problem with this particular check comes into play when you have a congressman who is not going to run in the next election or whose seat just got won in the previous election by another person. What I have described is a lame duck who has no concern for accounting for his vote to the voters in his state.

My take is that the US Senate can make their own rules with a 3/4 majority vote required. I would like to see them come up with a Senate Rule that a lame duck member will recuse himself, and not vote on key major votes. If Supreme Court Justices are allowed to recuse themselves, then why shouldn't a lame duck US Senator?

Purity Test - Don't Play the Game

For those who are wondering, the pic is from the movie War Games (1983).


There has been some talk about a purity test for candidates. Some people are in favor, and some are opposed. Put me in the camp that says Do not play this game! I recently read an article at Politico,
Dem plan: Split GOP, tea party
From the article:

Menendez and his staff will distribute a memo Tuesday advising Democratic campaign managers to frame their opponents early and to drive a wedge between moderate voters and tea-party-style conservatives.

The memo urges Democratic candidates to force their opponents to answer a series of questions on health care, taxes and some of the favorite causes of the far right:

Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? Do you think President Obama is a socialist? Do you think America should return to a gold standard?

If a Republican candidate says no to any of the questions, the memo says Democrats should “make their primary opponent or conservative activists know it. This will cause them to take heat from their primary opponents and could likely provoke a flip-flop.

This is not anything new. Saul Alinsky included this in his Rules for Radicals Rule #7 Tactics point 4

4.Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The MSM will try to trap a GOP candidate or GOP officeholder in this same manner. I recently read a book written by William F. Buckley, The Reagan I Knew. There is a chapter titled Stockman and the Budget. An excerpt

Reagan was pleased to find in Washington a 34 year old congressman, David Stockman. He had done graduate work at Harvard, where for a period he was in the divinity school. Reagan duly named him Director of OMB and put him in charge of the administration's grand plan to cut tax rates and the budget and the deficit simultaneously.


Reagan's confidence in Stockman came to a soggy end when The Atlantic appeared on the stands in November 1981. In an extended interview Stockman put forward his views of the Reagan program.

It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down.' So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers.

In the months ahead, administration representatives had to labor hard to finesse the objections raised by Stockman. Stockman went to the president, apologized, offered his resignation, was 'taken to the woodshed' and then forgiven, and went back to work. But although Stockman was kept on as head of OMB until 1985, the skepticism had hardened.



Stockman enjoyed the arts of explication. His conservative instincts brought him to criticize mostly the sheer size of the government President Reagan had inherited. It took Stockman a very long time before he discovered that the Reagan administration, for instance, simply stopped thinking about Social Security as a malleable budget feature. If he had known that, he says, he would not have engaged in the struggle to begin with.

I think WFB sums up what happened fairly accurately, and I also think President Reagan would have been served better by someone who was not such a conservative radical ideologue.

Seven More 2010 US House Freshman

I earlier wrote a diary about new House Republicans replacing House Democrats in 2010.  My list projected a net increase of 51, and this would change the number of House Rs to 228 and House Ds to 207.  Since that time my confidence has grown, and I believe it is now possible for House Rs to number 235 and House Ds to number 200.  There is a growing sense of courage in the country that is stirring people to campaign and fight to win seats that had always seemed unlikely to them before.  Incumbents have got a large amount of money compared to challengers, but that money they have is not deterring people any more.  I use Stu Rothenberg as a reference for my 58 selections, but I am more optimistic than he is about the 58 D seats that are in play.

I included wins in five additional states, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia.  I included an extra seat pickup in Colorado and Illinois.  I realize that some may have another individual to win in a GOP Primary than I picked, and it is not my intent to argue with you about that primary. I want, and I would hope, that you want a GOP candidate to win the General Election.  I also did not include any new Rs replacing incumbent Rs, and I certainly suspect this will occur as well.
Photos of the seven from top left to bottom right include: Scott Tipton CO-3  Vickie Hartzler  MO-4  Dick Green IL-10 Paul Schaffner ND  Mick Mulvaney SC-5 Blake Curd SD and Dan Swisher WV-1

    

  

Take the Cap Off Entering the House

Most of the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (and the states that ratified them) expected that the following principles would always apply:

The size of the congressional districts should remain relatively small.  Instead, the average district size is approximately 700,000 and growing.

The number of federal Representatives should grow proportionately with the general population. Instead, Congress has fixed the total number of Representatives at 435 ever since 1913.

The Congressional districts should be equivalently sized across the nation pursuant to the one-person-one-vote principle. Instead, some House districts are currently nearly twice the size of others.

Melancton Smith, New York Ratifying Convention  20--21 June 1788 selling points

We may approach a great way towards perfection by increasing the representation and limiting the powers of Congress. The great interests and liberties of the people could only be secured by the State Governments. If the new government was only confined to great national objects, it would be less exceptionable; but it extended to every thing dear to human nature. That this was the case could be proved without any long chain of reasoning:--for that power which had both the purse and the sword, had the government of the whole country, and might extend its powers to any and to every object. By the true doctrine of representation, this principle was established--that the representative must be chosen by the free will of the majority of his constituents: It therefore followed that the representative should be chosen from small districts. Would they be possessed of the requisite information to make happy the great number of souls that were spread over this extensive country?--There was another objection to the clause: If great affairs of government were trusted to a few men, they would be more liable to corruption. Corruption was unfashionable amongst us, but  Americans were like other men; and tho' they had hitherto displayed great virtues, still they were men; and therefore such steps should be taken as to prevent the possibility of corruption. We were now in that stage of society, in which we could deliberate with freedom;--how long it might continue, God only knew! Twenty years hence, perhaps, these maxims might become unfashionable; we already hear in all parts of the country, gentlemen ridiculing that spirit of patriotism and love of liberty, which carried us through all our difficulties in times of danger.--When patriotism was already nearly hooted out of society, ought we not to take some precautions against the progress of corruption?

Complaint For Declaratory and Injunctive Relief On the grounds that the United States government's current practice of apportioning representatives according to 2 U.S.C. § 2a is unconstitutional, a lawsuit was filed in district court on September 17, 2009.

The five plaintiffs in the case each represent the five most under-represented states in the House of Representatives.  The plaintiffs are:

John Tyler Clemons
Jessica Wagner
Krystal Brunner
Lisa Schea
Frank Mylar

Mr. Clemons is a registered voter in the state of Mississippi; Ms. Wagner is a registered voter in the state of Montana; Ms. Brunner is a registered voter in the state of South Dakota; Ms. Schea is a registered voter in the state of Delaware; Mr. Mylar is a registered voter in the state of Utah.

Scott Scharpen has written about the root causes of ills in the US House , and here are some highlights from this article.

INCREASED competition – the principles of free markets tell us that when competition is present, we get increased quality at a lower cost. With a House of 1,761 members, the supply will increase by over 300% while the demand remains the same. The example of the New Hampshire state house (consisting of 400 members for a population of less than 1.5 million) shows that competition produces a much higher turnover rate (over 30%) each election cycle. In dramatic contrast, California’s embarrassing lack of competition (the state assembly has only 80 members for a population of over 36 million) has produced a 100% incumbent success rate for the past 4 election cycles, even though the state is being driven into bankruptcy. In effect, competition creates market-driven term limits when needed, rather than legislatively-forced term limits that are advocated by so many. With appropriate competition, long tenure will depend on strong performance rather than who holds the most power and money.

DECREASED cost of running for office – the average winning campaign for a U.S. House seat in 2008 was approximately $1.5 million. This enormous financial barrier to entry prevents ‘average’ citizens from entering national politics, and gives incumbents a great advantage. If the average district size were reduced by 75%, the cost to win a House seat would also be cut by 75%. Also, we would see special interest money playing a much smaller role in the outcome of elections.

Here is a thought experiment: consider how few people are required to get a major federal government program started.  In a country of about three-hundred million residents, a US President only needs 283 people to get what he wants.  Let’s take  Obama’s health care initiative and break down the numbers.  Any revenue generating program needs to originate in the House and get 218 votes - done  Next, the Senate has got to have 60 votes to pass something out of the Senate - done.  The House can accept with no changes what passed out of the Senate with 218 votes - not done yet.  The President signs the bill received from the Congress - not done yet.  Five Supreme Court Judges rule the new program is constitutional - not done yet.  So a president needs 218 + 60 + 5 = 283 for mission accomplished.

There is a significant correlative relationship between smaller district sizes and increased freedom. Moreover,  this is a causal relationship; that is, as the legislative districts become larger, the government becomes increasingly oligarchic and statist.

I support this effort, and wish that people would work to fix the statist problem our country faces with the elected officials in DC in this manner.  I do not think that term limits and campaign finance reform address the core problem that arose in 1913 with creation of the Fed and the 16th and 17th amendments as well as no longer increasing the total number of congressional districts.  I know the Congress we have has no interest in doing any more than having federal districts and territories get representatives instead of delegates.  I do not support that at all.

Below I have a couple of charts to illustrate  that the total number of congressional districts was increased every ten years from 1790 to 1910 (with a single exception). These increases were a direct result of the growth in total population as was intended by the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The second chart shows the different ways that state governments operate their state houses.   You can see states like California, New York , and New Jersey have larger district sizes.  States like New Hampshire, South Dakota, and North Dakota have smaller district sizes.  Guess which states have increased freedom.

US History - What Is and Is Not Taught

One reason for studying history is to learn from it.  The problem is that the history lesson we are being taught has a statist bias to it.  While it is true that some industrialists took huge government dollars, erected shoddy enterprises, and ran them into the ground, there were also those who risked their own money, overcame strong foreign competition, and pushed American industries to become world leaders.  History books are written that lump the political predators and innovative builders as one.  The narrative that is written is:

Entrepreneurs cut costs and made many contributions to American economic growth, but they also marred political life by bribing politicians, forming pools, and misusing government funds, and engaging in risky stock speculation.  Therefore, we needed the federal government to come in and regulate them.

This historical narrative does not help one to learn the right lessons from history.  It gives people the foolish notion that increased involvement and increased regulations by the federal government is always the appropriate remedy to any economic problem.

One example of an appropriate federal government intrusion is the Supreme Court case of Gibbons v Ogden.
The New York legislature gave Robert Fulton the exclusive privilege of carrying all steamboat traffic in New York for thirty years. Gibbons, a New Jersey steamboat man, decided to challenge this arrangement and hired Cornelius Vanderbilt to run a steamboat from New Jersey to New York.  For sixty days in 1817, Vanderbilt defied capture as he raced passengers from Elizabeth, New Jersey to New York City.  In 1824 Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that only the federal government, not the states, could regulate interstate commerce.

The real value of removing the Fulton monopoly was that the costs of steamboating dropped.  Passenger fares, for example, from Albany to New York City immediately dropped from seven to three dollars after Gibbons v Ogden.  Fulton's company couldn't compete, and soon went bankrupt.  Vanderbilt adopted new technology, cut costs, and earned $40,000 profit each year during the late 1820's.

Cornelius Vanderbilt left Gibbons to start his own shipping business. He never got anymore Supreme Court decisions in his favor, but he continued to compete against others who were getting money from the US or British governments and best them in water travel and later railroad travel.

History books also do not teach, but in some cases make excuses for,  the government intrusions that were not appropriate and caused more harm than good.  For example, the history books describe that the transcontinental railroads building for companies like Union Pacific run by Jay Gould, and Northern Pacific, run by Henry Villard, were so costly and risky as to require lavish federal dollars.  For the boondoggles and corruption that accompanied all this federal money largesse, they blame not the federal government for making the federal aid available, but the greedy railroad tycoons for receiving it.  James J. Hill built the Great Northern transcontinental railroad without a cent of federal aid and without boondoggles and corruption, but the history books don't point out this stark difference.

Another example is the way the Interstate Commerce Commission and Sherman anti-trust and Hepburn Acts were used not to hurt a political entrepreneur like Gould, or Villard, but instead to punish efficient market entrepreneurs like Hill and Rockefeller.  The history books don't mention the unintended consequences of loss of exports to Japan by punishing Hill.  Hill had grown US exports to Japan from $7.7 million to $51.7, and then he mostly abandoned the Asian trade after the Hepburn Act became law in 1906.  The history books don't mention the international competition between John D. Rockefeller and the Russians for winning the largest share of the global oil market.  This competition had been going on since 1885 when the Sherman Act ruling in 1911 forced the break-up of his company.

Another example is the plan concocted during the Wilson Presidency to have the federal government build and operate armor-plate factory with federal funds.  Charles M Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel,  told them that the federal government would not be able to make armor plate cheaper than he could.  A government factory would waste the taxpayers' money.

Construction began in 1917 on the new factory.  The war delayed the building, but it was continued later.  There was an overrun of several million  dollars in post-war construction costs.  By 1921, the plant was making armor at prices much higher than that of Bethlehem Steel, and the plant was shut down within a year to never run again.

I was able to obtain the history that is not taught from a book, The Myth of the Robber Barons, written by Burton Folsom, Jr.  Some of you have listened to Glenn Beck talking about a lot of problems going back to the Wilson Presidency, but I think the human condition toward statism and elitism goes back much farther.

Adam Smith cautioned about this in his book, Wealth of Nations.  It is just as applicable today.

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

19th Century American Industrialists fall into two categories:
Market Entrepreneurs
Cornelius Vanderbilt                      James J. Hill                

    

                                           John D. Rockefeller

Charles M. Schwab


Political Entrepreneurs:
Robert Fulton                                             Jay Gould                                                

                             

 Henry Villard                             Elbert H Gary

Recarving Rushmore - a book review

In Ivan Eland’s world, the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the US President images carved into Mount Rushmore are van Buren, Tyler, Hayes, and Cleveland.


The author wrote this book in 2009, and based his ranking of each President by the degree to which each one upheld the founders’ original concept of a restrained foreign policy and a limited federal government with an appropriately constrained executive. This sounds good, except the author has a Ron Paul view of a restrained foreign policy. Every war could have been avoided, and every attack on the US is because we did something to deserve it.

I completely reject this view, and believe that the principle of peace through strength is elementary and essential. Consider an elementary child who gets his lunch money taken from him by a bully. That child will not have any peace by avoiding the bully, nor does this child deserve to be attacked. The bully will have that child’s lunch money until the day comes that the child is stronger than that bully. Through strength peace will finally come.

I do not recommend this book, especially if you suffer from hypertension and believe in peace through strength. However, I do not regret reading an analysis of Presidents that uses different criteria than what historians have traditionally used. I also think some of these views resonate with some who are participating in Tea Party events. There are war protesters who also support a limited federal government and less spending and takeover by the federal government of car companies, banks, health insurance companies, etc. We can use their votes for electing folks who will shrink the federal government, and we can let them pound sand when it comes to providing a common defense of the US.

The author writes about some of the biases with how historians rank Presidents. He mentions the “effectiveness bias” where the political skill to get his policies implemented is considered. The problem the author has is that this factor does not take into account if the policies yield positive or negative consequences. The author has a similar problem with the “charisma bias” that how much charisma a president possessed should be a rating factor. The author rejects the idea that you can’t be a great President unless you are an activist presiding during a major national crisis.

The author grades each President assigning a number from 0 to 20 for how well he did in peace, prosperity, and liberty. In the introduction he writes that after he finished the rankings were surprising even to him. I think before he even started that any President who believed in peace through strength was going receive a bad grade. I actually agree for the most part with the grades he gave on the prosperity component. There were two Presidents that received a 0 on this component, FDR and LBJ. That seems about right to me.

I created a table of the 16 US Presidents who were reelected, because I do have this bias that getting reelected is a key to how good of a job a President is doing. Compare different rankings for 16 of 40 Presidents from the conservative Federalist/Wall St Journal, the more liberal Siena Research Institute, and the author. The first number in each column is the rank and the second number in the Ivan Eland column is the Prosperity score.

Wall St Journal Rankings	Siena Rankings	Ivan Eland
George Washington (1)	FDR (1)	Grover Cleveland (2) (18)
Abraham Lincoln (2)	Abraham Lincoln (2)	Dwight Eisenhower (9) (17)
FDR (3)	George Washington (4)	U.S. Grant (19) (16)
Thomas Jefferson (4)	Thomas Jefferson (5)	Bill Clinton (11) (15)
Ronald Reagan(6)	Woodrow Wilson (6)	George Washington (7) (12)
Dwight Eisenhower (8)	James Monroe (8)	James Monroe (25) (10)
Andrew Jackson (10)	James Madison (9)	Andrew Jackson (27) (10)
Woodrow Wilson (11)	Dwight Eisenhower (10)	James Madison (28) (8)
Grover Cleveland (12)	Andrew Jackson (13)	Thomas Jefferson (26) (7)
William McKinley (14)	Ronald Reagan (16)	Ronald Reagan (34) (5)
James Monroe (16)	Bill Clinton (18)	Richard Nixon (30) (4)
James Madison (17)	William McKinley (19)	George W Bush (36) (3)
George W Bush (19)	Grover Cleveland (20)	Abraham Lincoln (29) (2)
Bill Clinton (22)	George W Bush (23)	William McKinley (38) (1)
U.S. Grant (29)	Richard Nixon (26)	Woodrow Wilson (40) (1)
Richard Nixon (32)	U.S. Grant (35)	FDR (31) (0)