The Chutzpah Caucus

Paul Krugman is overdoing the austerity scare.  To put in a stimulus now, when it appears from the latest Schiller housing reports that the economy is about to enjoy a nice wind in its back from housing starts, would be a step back to the bad old days of poor timing with Congress enacting a spending bill just as the economy was spurting ahead. The sequester on the other hand may tame the beast so that instead of a bubble we get good solid brick by brick economic growth. Do nothing!  No politician ever created a real job.

The Chutzpah Caucus

Who is compensating the victims of the West Texas disaster?

With the Boston Marathon bombing just happening it was easy to attribute the West Texas fertilizer factory fire and explosion to terrorism,  but now with some facts coming out it is clear that sheer negligence was the cause.  Texas has a hands off bias when it comes to government regulation and this accident is sure to cause for a call for more and tighter regulation.   But regulation without skin in the game to compensate victims is more than useless because it gives the illusion of protection.
The video taken by an onlooker from what appeared to be about a half mile away from the flaming factory which then explodes and leaves the voice of a child in the truck pleading to get out with the camera blacked out lense down on floor, left no doubt that what ever that factory was mixing up required extreme vigilance and process control.  Something that required a $100 million bond at least to be posted and the company posting the bond protecting its liability by making sure the facility was run by the book.  This is so much better than depending on OSHA, a brow beaten agency in Texas I am sure, who last visited the facility in 1985.
The importance of having a deep pocketed holder with sufficient assets to compensate all the victims is very clear today on the third anniversary of BP's offshore oil rig disaster in the gulf.  What if the rig had been owned and operated by some $75 million dollar limited liability operation allowed by Congress instead of the multi billion dollar corporation with assets and shareholders in the United State that is BP?  The fact that there was a government entity, another brow beaten agency to be sure, reviewing the plans for the oil drilling on that rig compensated no one. So who is compensating the victims of the West Texas disaster?

Connecticut passes a gun control law

As an anti-federalist, I approve of Connecticut's new gun control act that the majority of its citizens are hopefully happy with.  On the other hand I have little regard for micro regulating with a federal sledge hammer. This goes for toilets as well as guns.
What strikes me as an underutilized concept is the liabilility of the gun owner. Adam Lanza's mother apparently bought and owned the arms legally and if she had known that an act committed by the guns she owned could make her liable in a civil action, then maybe she would have been more careful about  promoting the gun culture that she did with her son.

Freedom Loses One

Today's editorial by David Brooks in the New York Times describes people as much more at liberty to follow their desires unhampered by social and religious convention and yet with the gay marriage movement it appears that some now are willing to reverse course and constrain their freedom with fidelity and responsibility. I think David has hit on the prejudice that Libertarians are for a free for all chaos of individuals reaching as far they can go in expressing their freedom but from which not much could be depended upon for the long term.

I believe that the Amish, thank you PBS American Masters, are a very good representation of liberty despite the initial belief to the contrary. They are a religious sect practicing a freedom that is restrained and communal, but taken as a whole completely detached from government and expressing a freedom more complete than many who think they are free could hope for and on the other side more faithful, responsible and civil than any on the authoritarian side could hope to be.     

Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition

Reviewing comments at the the Supreme Court this week it appears that the court will avoid a less than sweeping gay marriage decision by punting on California's Prop 8. Instead of feeling badly about it  Gay right's advocates might as well use the political ground swell in their favor to build a solid legal base legislatively brought about. With regard to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) I believe it is toast as a law but it's repeal will not replace the need for legislation by additional states recognizing gay marriage.

Clearly the federal government can create laws. But DOMA narrowly defined a condition in political flux and thereby created untenable contradictions that are easily relieved by it's repeal. Federal drug laws on the other hand will not have such a handy out without Federal Legislation to end Marijuana Prohibition. Despite various states success in decriminalizing marijuana laws it will require a bill such as H.R. 2306 entitled the 'Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011' to avoid Justice Scalia's justifiable derision of legislating through the court.

Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition

Blunt Report Says G.O.P. Needs to Regroup for '16

PBS's American Masters “The Amish” last night reminded me that a Libertarian such as Rand Paul could frame the debate in a manner that would turn the GOP away from its dead end with the Evangelical Right. No Evangelical could claim to be more pious, observant of religious order and personally conservative than a faithful Amish. So that when a candidate is confronted with a moral hardliner one could use the Amish as an example of separation of church and state where there is no intention of making others live the way they do. Until Republicans can educate Evangelicals to live without influence and support a free market agenda will they it be able to reverse the party's low appeal with the young.    

Cheer Up

It takes “The Economist” looking in from the outside to recognize the green shoots here in the States. Oil & gas production is creating jobs and opportunity while making us independent of the oil despots. This energy reversal came about with the active and total resistance in every fiber in the being of the former Energy Department head and Nobel Laureate Dr. Chu. President Obama now proposes a two billion dollar Michigan boondoggle to reduce fuel consumption while Ford independently develops an engine so light that they shipped the engine block in regular check in luggage. with no over weight penalty, for the trip to the Los Angeles motor show. Political dysfunction and empty government coffers hopefully will starve the government initiative and let the private sector come up with the economic solution. Bring it on Grover.

On the other side of the coin I see dire times for the crony capitalist in China and the energy despots of Russia, the Middle East, and Venezuela.