The Stimulus Project

I don’t envy reporters. Sometimes I even feel downright sorry for them. Take the staff at CNN, for example. They realize that the “stimulus” effort is losing public support. According to their own polling data, 56% of the public oppose the plan, while 42% still support it. Only 25% of those polled believe the stimulus has helped the middle class.

In what I can only assume is a public relations effort designed to restore Americans’ faith in the President’s ability to “save or create jobs” by throwing borrowed money down a government rat hole, CNN has decided to launch a week-long analysis of the program. The network’s “The Stimulus Project,” represents its best effort to smear as much lipstick on the stimulus pig as it can. The entire reporting staff is on the job, and the series is as in-depth a review of the government’s plan as CNN can muster without actually cracking open an economics book.

Yet despite the network’s full-court press, even their reporters seem to be scratching their heads, wondering why such a brilliant plan hasn’t delivered the results that were promised ten months ago. They’d better figure something out quick, though. Obama’s State of the Union speech is just a few hours away, and after the week he’s had, I’m sure he’d appreciate whatever cover CNN can drum up for him.

To be perfectly honest, though, I feel a little uneasy watching CNN’s reporters fumble around in the dark looking for traces of economic recovery attributable to the stimulus plan. It’s a lot like watching a week-long snipe hunt. It’s funny for a while, but at some point the joke just becomes cruel and you start to hope that someone will have mercy on them and call the whole thing off. After all, this isn’t summer camp. This snipe hunt is actually televised.

But let’s give Tony Harris, Campbell Brown, Ali Velshi, and all the other little CNN troopers some credit. They have indeed tried their best to point out the obvious benefits that the stimulus plan has bestowed upon a select few individuals. And as one would expect, they have avoided any consideration whatsoever of the hidden costs that have been foisted on the American populace as a whole. For example, this is what the CNN/Money webpage looked like last night. How many “what is seen and what is not seen” fallacies can they cram on a single page?




“The Stimulus Project” does question from time to time whether individual initiatives are really useful, even by the media’s own lax standards. For example, there was a piece on the cost of street signs that advertise how various projects are being funded with stimulus money. Ohio State Senator Tim Grendell objects to spending $1M in taxpayer money just to advertise that the state is spending taxpayer money.

These counterpoint stories are few and far between, however. Most of the coverage focuses instead on the recipients of all that taxpayer loot and the number of jobs that have been “created” from it (the Obama administration claims that figure is now 2 million jobs, by the way). “The Stimulus Project” spends most of the programming day presenting stories about the husband and wife who were able to keep their home thanks to the stimulus program, or how the stimulus program “lights up the solar energy biz.”

Of course it’s easy to find individuals who benefit from receiving other people’s money (I suspect it would be hard not to find them), but CNN’s relentless focus on the obvious falls far short of proving the case that government spending is helpful to the economy as a whole. Nor does it prove that the government can spend your money better than you can. And it certainly does nothing to suggest that the short-term “stimulus” effects felt by those lucky few individuals are in any way sustainable over the long term without constant injections of additional taxpayer money.

These questions are not merely left unanswered by CNN’s analysts, they are never even considered. CNN has done a remarkable job at accepting uncritically the administration’s claim that spending money is de facto a good thing for the economy – regardless of whether the money comes from real savings, borrowing, or printing; and regardless of what the money is spent on. Evidently the CNN team believes that paying people to dig holes and fill them back up again would be just as “stimulative” as any other project that could be undertaken. In this respect CNN is firmly on the Keynesian side of the Hayek vs. Keynes debate - or would be if they had any idea who Hayek and Keynes were.

Lagniappe - January 2010

Use a Decongestant, Go to Jail
I have allergies. Nothing serious, just some persistent congestion. To relieve my symptoms I take Alavert D. I went to the pharmacy this weekend to pick up a box, and as always I had to present my driver’s license to the pharmacy tech who entered my personal data into the store’s recordkeeping system. I then had to sign an electronic pad to affirm that I had read and understood the threatening note informing me that my purchase of allergy medication was subject to federal controls, and that if I dared buy more Alavert than some faceless bureaucrat deemed appropriate, I would be subject to a fine of $250,000 and up to five years’ imprisonment.

Being the smart-aleck that I am, I shook my head and said, “God forbid I clear my sinuses without the Feds knowing about it.”

The pharmacy tech nodded in sympathy and sheepishly replied, “I know. If it weren’t for some people out there…”

I didn’t say anything else. I just paid for the medicine and went about my shopping. But her response was frustrating. What kind of rationale is that? None of the children in class get to do arts and crafts because the slow kid in the back of the room might eat the paste? Not exactly the Spirit of ’76, is it?

Such is the way of things, I suppose. Bit by bit, our freedoms are chipped away and for some reason decent people accept the flimsy excuse that the limits of liberty can extend only as far as the worst elements of society permit.

Chavez Loses Power in Venezuela
Venezuela’s chief export is energy, yet Hugo Chavez can’t even keep the lights on in Caracas. The self-proclaimed Marxist recently imposed rolling blackouts to avoid a collapse of the country’s energy grid. But as soon as he realized how unpopular the blackouts were, he fired his Minister of Energy and suspended the plan indefinitely. A drought is being blamed for the lack of power, but it has been acknowledged that the oil-powered thermoelectric plants are also performing below capacity.

This sorry little episode brings to mind a quote from Milton Friedman, who once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” Hugo Chavez has been in charge of oil-rich Venezuela since 1998, and in that time there have been shortages of electricity, beef, fish, dairy products, chicken, several cereals, coffee, flour, and freedom.

Smokers and Millionaires
A recent AP poll indicates that most Americans favor forcing someone else to pay for their health care. Prior to the Brown victory in Massachusetts, this was being spun as good news for the House version of the socialized medicine bill, which includes a provision for a 5.4 percent income tax on individuals making more than $500,000 a year and households making more than $1 million. The poll showed 57% of respondents favored imposing an even more punitive tax which would have hit people making more than $250,000 a year.

Why the AP considers this news is beyond me. It’s one of the oldest tactics in politics – offer the majority a shiny new toy and tell them that the cost will be borne exclusively by the hated minority. How many state and federal programs have been passed on the basis of similar promises to soak millionaires or tax smokers? If the politicians could just find more millionaires who smoked, it’d be free health care and hydrogen cars for everyone!

Invasion of the Body Scanners
Suspected (and spectacularly incompetent) terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has given the TSA yet another excuse to violate the rights of travelers. Although I’m sure he tried his best, Abdulmutallab proved incapable of blowing up his own crotch - let alone the entire airplane – and had to settle for a few second-degree burns and a serious beat-down from the other passengers as a consolation prize. I’m sure he would have preferred 72 virgins, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Despite the tidy-whitie terrorist’s abject failure, the TSA isn’t taking the chance that some other mental defective who can’t pass the entrance exam at suicide bomber school might try the exact same tactic at some later date. Acting on a warning provided by the bomber’s father a few short days before the attack, the TSA leapt into action just a few short days after the attack. With the kind of steely resolve that makes Jack Bauer look like Mary Poppins, the TSA stepped up to the plate and made the hard decisions that are, sadly, “necessary to keep us all safe.” They decreed that from then on no one would be allowed to use blankets or visit the lavatory during the last hour of a flight. Take that, Al Qaeda scum!

One would think that this kind of air-tight security would be enough to foil any ne’er-do-well’s evil scheme, but the TSA was not content to stop there. They relaxed the no-potty rule, and now they’re looking into expanding the use of see-through body scanners. These are the machines that can see right through passengers’ clothes, enabling TSA security personnel to ogle hot chicks ensure the safety of hot chicks the traveling public.

I have only one question before this plan is fully implemented and we’re all forced to undergo a technological strip search before boarding the flight to Peoria. Since no one is (yet) suggesting that minors should be prohibited from air travel, does this mean that TSA screeners will be charged with possession of child pornography? I for one would prefer they not be allowed to take pictures of my children naked. That’s one of the reasons I put clothes on them in the first place, after all.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

One of the most enjoyable parts of my recent vacation was that I was able to catch up on some long-overdue reading. I used to be a voracious reader, but for some reason I don’t have nearly as much time for books as I used to. Can’t imagine why.

What? No, Jason, you can’t watch Handy Manny right now. Eat your dinner! Ciana, put down the Wii and do your homework.

Sorry. Where was I? Oh, right. But while spending Christmas in California I was able to read Judge Andrew Napolitano’s The Constitution in Exile, Ron Paul’s End the Fed and Pillars of Prosperity, Driving Like Crazy by P.J. O’Rourke, and Frank Chodorov’s The Rise and Fall of Society. I enjoyed them all, but the title I was most interested in reading was Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Dr. Michael Sandel.

Dr. Sandel is a Professor of Government at Harvard University who teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary political philosophy. I first heard him speak during an interview on NPR’s Think in which he presented and expressed sympathy for the libertarian case for the disestablishment of marriage. I looked him up online and discovered that his Harvard lecture series on justice is available to the public.

The lecture series is definitely worth a watch. Dr. Sandel is exactly the kind of professor I would have liked to have had in college. He’s entertaining and engaging. In addition, I felt that in the course of his lecture he presented the libertarian position honestly (even though I knew his disagreed with it) and I appreciated his integrity in that regard.

After watching the first few episodes I was intrigued enough to buy his book on the same subject, Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do? The book follows the flow of the online series. Knowing that Dr. Sandel was not a libertarian, I thought he would offer a strong counter-argument, and believe it or not I was looking forward to having my viewpoint challenged. I didn’t necessarily expect him to win me over, but I did expect to hear some questions that I hadn’t previously considered and to be faced with a more substantive debate than what I usually get from my intellectual opponents in the blogosphere.

It didn’t happen.

In Justice, Dr. Sandel brings the concept of a knife to a philosophical gun fight. It seems that his goal in writing the book is to convince the reader that a “just society seek[s] to promote the virtue of its citizens.” As he points out in the first chapter, concepts of justice generally revolve around three different elements - welfare, freedom, and promoting virtue. His argument is that welfare and freedom are insufficient for the establishment of a just society. What is needed is “a politics of moral engagement” that incorporates ideas of virtue into civic discourse and brings moral issues directly into the public sphere:

“Some consider public engagement with questions of the good life to be a civic
transgression, a journey beyond the bounds of liberal public reason.
Politics and law should not become entangled in moral and religious disputes, we
often think, for such entanglement opens the way to coercion and
intolerance. This is a legitimate worry. Citizens of pluralist
societies do disagree about morality and religion. Even if, as I’ve
argued, it’s not possible for government to be neutral on these disagreements,
is it nonetheless possible to conduct our politics on the basis of mutual
respect?

The answer, I think, is yes. But we need a more robust and engaged civic life than the one to which we’ve become accustomed…Rather than avoid the moral and religious convictions that our fellow citizens bring to public life, we should attend them more directly – sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening to and learning from them…

A politics of moral engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is also a more promising basis for a just society.”

In my opinion, Dr. Sandel fails to make his case, primarily due to two serious shortcomings that run throughout the length of the work. The first shortcoming is that the argument is practically devoid of any serious understanding of fundamental economic principles. This is a significant problem given the importance Sandel himself places on economics as a determinant of justice. According to the author, “To ask whether a society is just is to ask how it distributes the things we prize – income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honor. A just society distributes these goods in the right way; it gives each person his or her due.”

Throughout the book, economic examples are used to guide the reader into different ways of thinking about the notion of justice. Unfortunately the presentation of these issues goes no deeper than the average story on MSNBC. For example, the book opens with a discussion of “price gouging” in the wake of a hurricane. In this presentation, Dr. Sandel does mention the free-market arguments against price gouging laws – arguments that are based on issues of welfare and freedom. And he does not dispute them. But then he moves on to the concept of virtue, and suggests that if we consider the issue in this light, then we should support price gouging laws because they illustrate the values prized by a just and virtuous society. Why it is virtuous to deprive people of needed goods and services in an emergency is never really explained. Basic economic insights concerning the meaning and function of the price mechanism, subjective valuation, and marginal utility could shine a lot of light here, but are nowhere to be found in the analysis. This superficial treatment might play well with the economically illiterate, but for the rest of us it merely undermines the argument.

The second flaw is, I believe, the fatal one. Throughout the book, Dr. Sandel conflates society with the state. Equating government (a coercive institution) with society (properly characterized by peaceful interactions among individuals) exposes a serious deficiency in the narrative, particularly for a Harvard professor of political philosophy, who should presumably know better. It’s a bit like watching an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and hearing Marlin Perkins equate predator with prey. “You see, Jim, the lions are simply the gazelles' means of ordering their society.”

These two flaws even converge from time to time. In Justice, “society” is constantly referred to as though it were an entity imbued with an existence apart from the individuals who comprise it. On more than one occasion, the problem of political philosophy is described as being one of determining how “society” should allocate “its” wealth - an interesting assertion given the fact that society is merely a large number of individuals. The question of how the group legitimately comes into possession of the wealth created by individuals within it, however, is left unanswered.

A more advanced understanding of economics would counter the mistaken assumption that wealth exists independently of its creators, and in a fixed quantity. A more realistic view of government would counter the mistaken assumption that it is synonymous with society, or that it could ever be the yardstick against which the virtue of a society should be measured. But in Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do? virtue is only sought within the political realm. The idea that government could be restrained by concerns of welfare or freedom, leaving society free to nurture virtue, is never seriously considered.

And at no point does Dr. Sandel offer a realistic look at either the history of the state or the nature of government actions in the real world. No serious treatment of the unintended consequences of government’s economic interventions is ever provided. Even the most horrific government program – war - is given scant consideration, other than to ask whether the draft is a more just means of fighting “our” wars, or which injuries deserve the Purple Heart.

Instead, Dr. Sandel pushes forward with his view that a proper political system cannot be constrained by bourgeois concerns for welfare or freedom, but must transcend these bounds in order to foist virtue upon the polis. This is justified in part by a few weak attempts at showing how voluntary agreements are not actually free, but coerced. Of course, the alleged coercion in the examples generally comes from the fact that man is a physical being living in a world of scarcity, rather than from any actual violence on the part of one of the participants. And since he’s now shown that freedom can be coercive, he skips quickly along to his “Big Brother Knows Best” worldview, completely overlooking the fact that everything in his preferred system is actually coerced - not just kinda-sorta hypothetically coerced. If the alleged coercion within voluntary contracts is enough to cast doubt in the good doctor’s mind about the morality of the free market, then one would expect the real-live coercion of government solutions to be just that much worse.

Sadly, such a blatant contradiction goes unremarked. And because of these and other problems I was thoroughly disappointed in the book. Frankly I had expected more from a Harvard professor. Maybe he’s got responses for these problems stashed away in his lecture notes somewhere - Dr. Sandel is a very smart guy, after all. But Justice was written for a broad audience, and perhaps his intention was to provide a suggestion, rather than a logical proof. Maybe one day he’ll publish a more in-depth exposition of his theory. I really hope he does – such a book would be worth the read.

Although Justice was disappointing, it does provide two very valuable insights. First, it shows us that a political philosophy unencumbered by sound economic reasoning is at best a silly little fantasy (and at worst a totalitarian nightmare). The second insight is that if this is the best argument a Harvard professor can level against libertarianism, we must be on pretty solid ground.

Thanks for that, Dr. Sandel.

Be Good and You Will Be Lonesome

In 1897 Mark Twain wrote a book titled Following the Equator. One of the opening pages contains a photograph of the author with an inscription that reads, “Be good and you will be lonesome.” Maybe that explains why there are so few libertarians in the world.

When I first started studying libertarian political theory, it seemed pretty straightforward to me. There were a few issues that took some time to work through and accept, but the big-ticket items – tolerance, respect for individual rights, free markets, and peace – were fairly uncontroversial. They seemed to be very much in line with the basic principles espoused in foundational American documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And growing up in the United States during the Cold War, I was constantly reminded of how lucky we all were to live in a “free country.” (I realize now that was a rather optimistic use of the term even back then, but of course we were grading on a curve).

So given that background, libertarianism seemed a very natural fit. It never occurred to me that extolling the virtues of freedom in a place like the United States of America would make me the subject of scorn and outright hostility, but much to my surprise there are plenty of Americans who hate us libertarians every bit as much as we love liberty.

A quick scan of the blogosphere (which, granted, is like a Petri dish for vitriol) and we discover that some on the left view libertarians as stupid, selfish, anti-social, and pure evil. (Warning: the authors of these links work blue – lots of carnal gerunds).

The attacks don’t come only from the left, of course. Many on the right also view freedom as a threat that must be expunged (“Libertas delenda est!”), and they certainly have nothing good to say about liberty’s more consistent defenders. Mike Huckabee, for example, believes that libertarianism is “heartless, callous, [and] soulless.” Of course, he also claims that “Republicans are becoming libertarians,” so what does he know?

I suppose there are a number of reasons for this. It seems that many Americans have become so acclimated to the gradual accretion of government power over the years that the concept of the State as prime mover is now the default position - if the government doesn’t do X, X won’t get done. As the government continues to crowd out the private provision of goods and services, it will only become more difficult for Americans to conceptualize how a free market would operate if just given the chance.

Another factor may be all the people who call themselves libertarians but are not. When Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill Maher all claim the libertarian mantle there are no doubt many people out there who actually take them at their word. That can’t be good for our image.

And certainly some of it is our own fault. It’s not always easy to present the libertarian philosophy in a way that can break through the statist baggage that so many people bring with them. I remember how difficult it was as a candidate to express these ideas clearly and succinctly, and in a way that illustrated both the virtues and the pragmatic benefits of voluntary solutions to the issues of the day. (Something I’m still working on).

But even after taking all of these factors into account it still seems odd that those of us who promote peaceful interaction and voluntary solutions to life’s problems are often reviled as misanthropes, whereas those who advocate coercive (i.e., government) methods are granted the moral high ground almost out of hand. Robbing Peter to pay Paul has been elevated to same lofty ethical perch as dedicating one’s life to feeding the poor or healing the sick.

This is not a new issue. Libertarians have probably been wrestling with this problem ever since the days of Lao Tzu. Frederic Bastiat wrote about it over 150 years ago, saying:

“When we oppose subsidies, we are charged with opposing the very thing that it
was proposed to subsidize and of being the enemies of all kinds of activity,
because we want these activities to be voluntary and to seek their proper reward
in themselves. Thus, if we ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in
religious matters, we are atheists. If we ask that the state not intervene, by
taxation, in education, then we hate enlightenment. If we say that the state
should not give, by taxation, an artificial value to land or to some branch of
industry, then we are the enemies of property and of labor. If we think that the
state should not subsidize artists, we are barbarians who judge the arts
useless.

I protest with all my power against these inferences. Far
from entertaining the absurd thought of abolishing religion, education,
property, labor, and the arts when we ask the state to protect the free
development of all these types of human activity without keeping them on the
payroll at one another's expense, we believe, on the contrary, that all these
vital forces of society should develop harmoniously under the influence of
liberty and that none of them should become, as we see has happened today, a
source of trouble, abuses, tyranny, and disorder.

Our adversaries believe that an activity that is neither subsidized nor regulated is abolished. We believe the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind. Ours is in mankind, not in the legislator.”

Bien dit, mon ami. Of course, if Frederic Bastiat couldn’t settle the issue I know I won’t do any better here. Nevertheless, I don’t see why those of us who support greater freedom should constantly have to defend our motivations. It seems to me that in a nominally free country such as ours, the burden of proof should be on those who claim that the best solution is always the violent one. It should be up to them to explain why the issues of the day can only be addressed by putting hands in our neighbors’ wallets and guns to our neighbors’ heads.

Christmas in California

We’re spending Christmas this year with my family in Laguna Beach. For those readers who aren’t familiar with Southern California, Laguna Beach is a town that makes Beverly Hills look like a trailer park in Blue Springs, Missouri. As nice as it is, spending time in California is always difficult for someone with my (anti-) political leanings. As I’m sure you’re aware, the state is in serious trouble these days. Decades of direct democracy combined with a strong socialist streak are taking their toll on the Golden State, which is now suffering from 12% unemployment.

Sad to say, the attitudes expressed by the locals don’t offer much hope of a quick recovery. I went to get a haircut a few days ago, and the stylist asked me where I was from. When I told her I was from Texas, she asked me how things were there these days. I told her that Texas has certainly felt the effects of the recession, but it was doing better than much of the rest of the country, as its unemployment rate was somewhere between five and seven percent.

“Really?” she asked, incredulous. “It’s so bad here. We’ve got 12% unemployment. The problem is that the state doesn’t have any money. And what really makes me mad is that the rich are still doing well.”

At this point I stopped talking. I know my limitations, and unwrapping all that was wrong in her statement was going to take a lot more time than I wanted to spend. And I have always lived my life according to the principle that it’s a bad idea to argue with someone holding a straight razor in her hand.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think that my stylist was part of California’s problem. If you believe that people would be better off if the government would just take more money away from them, there will be no end of politicians lining up to provide that very service. Of course, businesses won’t be able to expand or hire workers, and you won’t have as much in your pocket to pay for the little things in life like food or rent. Before you know it, your state will be suffering 12% unemployment and you’ll be struggling to make ends meet. Hmm…

Sadly, that was not the worst of it. As much as it pains me to admit, the most shocking behavior I witnessed in Orange County came from my very own family, who evidently do not listen to a word I say. They tell me confession is good for the soul, so I guess I’d better come clean about the shameful rent-seeking behavior in which my relatives are currently engaged.

First, my sister is going to close on a condo next month, and in order to make the deal happen she will be taking advantage of the $8000 government incentive for first-time homebuyers. This is the “temporary” incentive that was set to expire this year, but was then extended so the Obama administration could further prevent the market from clearing out malinvestment in the housing sector and reinflate the very bubble that has caused so much trouble as of late. I can only assume that the temporary incentive will be extended over and over again, eventually becoming just another entitlement program.

But the rent-seeking does not stop with my sister. My very own parents have sidled up to the federal trough, and I’m not talking about their Social Security checks. If only! No, my mother and father took advantage of one of the most inane, ridiculous government programs ever devised.

They bought a golf cart.

That’s right, A FREAKIN’ GOLF CART! Taking advantage of the Cash for Clubbers program, my parents are now tooling around downtown Laguna Beach, California in a taxpayer-subsidized electric cart. The shame and betrayal is almost too much to bear.

Here’s a picture of my parents, smiling from behind the wheel of their ill-gotten-gainsmobile.

And here’s a picture of my kids in the same golf cart.

As you can see, my son is not impressed. Nor should he be, since he’s the one who will actually pay for this contraption. No doubt he’s thinking, “I’m only three years old and I already owe $7000 for this thing? I can’t even reach the pedals!”

Since it’s Christmas, I decided to put aside my disgust over my parents’ shameful behavior (at least temporarily). I even offered them some helpful suggestions for the vanity plate they should get for their new toy. Here are some of my ideas:

WLTHXFR
IOUSA
RENTSKR
DEDCTBL
UPAY4IT
TEEBILL
THXPRES
STMUL8D
CASH4US

I’d be happy to hear your suggestions as well. I’ll forward them to my parents, along with what I’m sure are your fondest holiday wishes for them. Merry Christmas, everyone. I’m going to hit the eggnog.

Lagniappe - December 2009

2009 A.D. Here, 2009 B.C. in Uganda
As regular readers know, I’m no fan of NPR. Nevertheless, I give them credit for a recent story about a particularly evil bill currently working its way through the Ugandan legislature. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 would empower the Ugandan government to jail consenting adults who engage in gay sex, give life sentences to people in same-sex marriages, and even extradite gay Ugandans living overseas. According to NPR, homosexuality has been illegal in Uganda for over a century, but evidently the government’s codified hatred of gays doesn’t go far enough some Ugandans.

The bill’s author, David Bahati, says, "This is a defining bill for our country, for our generation. You are either anti-homosexual or you're for homosexuals, because there's no middle point. Anybody who does not believe that homosexuality is a crime is a sympathizer.”

Call me a “homo-symp” then, because I don’t believe that homosexuality is a crime. The crime would be to support or comply with such a disgusting law.

I write this post with the knowledge that if the bill passes I may never be able to set foot in Uganda. (And I had so hoped to visit “Africa’s Friendliest Country”). But as Stephen Langa, of Uganda’s Family Life Network, explains, “Providing literature [about homosexuality], writing books about it, standing up and saying it is OK — you should be arrested. Even if you are not in the act, you should be arrested. Anybody who tries to promote it should be arrested. That's why we need a stronger law."

Rewarding the Arsonist for Setting the Fire
Time magazine has named Ben Bernanke its Person of the Year. In what may be the single most sycophantic article ever written in the English language, Time lauds Bernanke for bailing out bankers, flooding the world with dollars, and setting the groundwork for the next big bubble.

It’s been a rough year as far as high-profile awards and commendations go. First President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize and now this. No doubt the Oscar for Best Picture will go to Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story.

Goldbugs Bug Stephen Colbert
On December 15th “The Colbert Report” ran a parody of conservative radio talk show hosts’ paid endorsements for firms that sell gold. I’m not sure what bugs Stephen Colbert more – Glenn Beck or gold? I suspect it’s a close contest. It seems most big-government types have an intense dislike for gold. After all, an increase in demand for gold is a very public no-confidence vote for the government, and what could be more insulting? And statists just don’t understand why people might prefer a yellow metal that exists in relatively fixed quantities to the limitless supply of paper money controlled by Time magazine’s Person of the Year. To each his own. I rather like having some gold as part of a diversified portfolio, but that may be due to the fact that I bought it in 2007 for $600 an ounce. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I wonder how many of Mr. Colbert’s investments have doubled in value over the last two years?

First-Grade Virtue
I took my family to the mall last weekend to wrap up the last of our Christmas shopping. Since it’s the holiday season the Marines had been deployed to strategic locations throughout the mall to collect donations for the Toys for Tots program. I handed my six-year old daughter a few dollars and asked her to drop the money in the bucket. After she did that, I explained to her what the Marines were doing.

I said, “They’re going to take the money you just gave them to buy Christmas presents for little boys and girls who don’t have many toys.”

My daughter thought about it for a second or two and then - in all earnestness - replied, “Well that was very considerate of me.”

My little girl may be forgiven for taking moral credit for my modest contribution to Toys for Tots. After all, she’s only six. But how often do we hear a similar attitude expressed by those in government? Isn’t this the ethical theory underlying much of the push for socialized medicine? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid claim the moral high ground because they want to spend other people’s money for the benefit of some politically-favored constituency. How considerate of them.

My daughter’s understanding of virtue and ethics will continue to develop as she grows up, which is more than I can say for those in Washington.

Stealing From Widows And Orphans

The cost of living is going up, so the House of Representatives figures the cost of dying should go up as well. On Thursday, the House voted to extend the 45% estate tax permanently. The estate tax is applied to any Americans stupid enough to die with at least $3.5 million in assets ($7 million in the case of married couples). Whenever that happens the federal government swoops down like a vulture to pick over the deceased taxpayer’s carcass, thereby depriving the grieving widows and orphans who are left behind of almost half their inheritance. Doesn’t anyone care about the children?

Supporters of the death tax tell us that rifling through the coat pockets of the dearly departed and helping ourselves to whatever spare change we can find is actually a good thing. After all, if we just let people dispose of their own estates however they saw fit, they might do something crazy like donate the money to charity, or worse - bequeath it to their survivors. That kind of blatant respect for private property could turn our fair Republic into an aristocracy! You wouldn’t want that, would you?

Even I have to admit that this argument has a certain superficial appeal, particularly when one considers all the damage that has already been done by aristocrats like the Kennedys and the Bush family. But even though there may be some trust fund babies out there who wouldn’t do much good with their inheritance, there are certainly others who could do a lot of good with it. Either way it seems clear that the intended beneficiaries of these large estates will either do less bad or more good with the money than the Federal government could ever dream of doing, so I don’t really see why half of anyone’s estate should automatically wind up in IRS coffers.

Since I’m not yet convinced, Representative Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) invokes the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) to further strengthen the argument. Apparently it was Teddy who first proposed the estate tax, claiming that “the man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.”

I see. Now we’re getting somewhere. At the core of Roosevelt’s (and, by extension, Hoyer’s) argument is the idea that it’s not really the man of great wealth’s money in the first place. After all, he just worked a lifetime to create it. But the wealth actually belongs to the State, which graciously allowed the individual to enjoy it for lo those many years. When that individual passes away, however, whatever’s left of the property should revert to its “true” owner, the Federal government. And by a remarkable stroke of luck, the Federal government just happens to be staffed by people like Roosevelt and Hoyer. I guess that’s why you never hear them saying that the money should go to the United Way or Habitat for Humanity instead.

But I still have this nagging doubt that’s keeping me from supporting the death tax. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I’ve always felt that what someone earns belongs to him, not to me or anyone else. The amount in question is irrelevant. No matter how rich or how poor someone may be, what’s theirs is theirs. So I still have a hard time accepting the idea that taking someone else’s money just because they’re richer and deader than I is the right and proper thing to do.

These antiquated notions of right and wrong are completely beside the point for most supporters of the death tax, however. They simply tell me that I shouldn’t concern myself with such things because this particular tax only affects the richest of the rich. Ben Harris of the Tax Policy Center assures me that "very, very, very few people" pay estate taxes anyway. “It only hits about 2 out of every 1,000 estates, and these estates are the wealthiest of the wealthy. These are very high-income individuals who are affected by the estate tax."

So the argument is that since no one cares about the rights of rich people anyway, stealing from them is perfectly acceptable and I should just shut up and get with the program. After all, based on my portfolio’s performance there’s no chance this tax will affect my children when I’m gone. I’ve got mine, but there’s no harm in helping myself to 45% of someone else’s. They’re so rich they’ll never even notice it’s gone.

Whenever I hear this argument bandied about in support of yet another tax, I can’t help but recall the history of the income tax. When the present income tax was originally pitched to a gullible American public back in 1913, its supporters also claimed that only the wealthiest of the wealthy would ever have to pay it. It seems the majority has always been solidly in favor of foisting costs on the minority. Well, I’ve got two questions for you. One, do you pay income taxes? And two, are you the wealthiest of the wealthy?

That’s what I thought.

But even if the death tax somehow manages to avoid the kind of mission creep that has marked virtually every other government program known to man and remains a tax imposed strictly on the rich, how does that make it all right? Why is it that the wealthier you are, the less secure your property rights become?

I’m not the only one asking these kinds of questions. There were, much to my surprise, a few members in the House who had qualms about the extension of this particular tax (so few that they lost the vote, but let’s give credit where credit is due). Congressman and former judge Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) rose to oppose the bill, correctly observing that, “After someone dies, and someone comes in and steals from them, we consider that reprehensible, that's just despicable. But when the government comes in — because we have the power to pass laws and legalize theft — it's OK.”

He then added, "I have sentenced people personally to prison for doing that."

Well said, Congressman Gohmert. Now will you please issue an arrest warrant for Congress? They’re stealing billions from widows and orphans.