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.

Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet

I enjoy counter intuitive and Matt Ridley is certainly that.

Matt Ridley - Fossil Fuels Greening the Earth

The Jobs Report shows a Better Result than given credit for

Partisan politics causes the GOP pundits to declare every jobs report as a half empty glass. It's a reflex that is tiresome and makes them vulnerable to the blind siding they suffered this past presidential election. The truth is that for the past thirty months government payroll has reduced steadily while the private sector has steadily increased. It is a headwind that does not cheer the Obama administration, but it is impressing this Libertarian, less government more freedom, commentator.  

Austerity versus Growth

Reduced government spending does not automatically mean less economic vigor if the spending is useless and unproductive.  For example the job loss in Defense Department centric northern Virginia is sure to cut some of that quadruplicated intelligence cluster fucking going on there that is a pure economic waste. The Department of Energy has another cluster going on with turf battles between it's various constituencies; Coal, Oil & Gas, Nuclear and Green, all negating each other.  Eliminating the DOE would improve the economy in spite of the jobs lost. Value for money as practiced by Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President, is an example of careful spending and high interest rates growing us out of the doldrums and into a boom economy in spite of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Bernanke's actions and warnings to the contrary. 

The Late Adopters

Robert Draper's article in today's New York Times Magazine is brilliant and truly beyond the GOP's grasp given their predilection for ignorance.  It's hopeless for the old guard but not young conservatives who are natural Libertarians given their belief in the individual, liberty and free markets.  They just need to shuck aside the Authoritarian influence of their elders. With regard to the modern techniques of politicking that the Romney campaign seemed have missed out on, it's not something that is exclusive to Obama Democrats.  The retro McCarthyite, Senator Cruz of Texas,  appears to have used similar tools to get himself elected.

Rubio and The Zombies

Again I have to agree with Paul Krugman's editorial today that Senator Marco Rubio's reply to the State  of the Union Address appears to have been scripted by the GOP dead heads in charge.  Marco is interesting because he is intelligent and nuanced.  Unfortunately the powers that be dumbed him down.

BTW Paul,  I resent your mention of Cato Institute as a bullet point favoring your argument against the free market.  It puts you in the same unthinking zero nuanced camp that you are attacking in your editorial.   An Adam Smith Wealth of Nations style free market requires many intelligent players for the benefit to society derived by the invisible hand to come about.  The housing bubble developed becasue of greedy, ergo stupid as in pigs get slaughtered, and concentrated banking and non banking institutions so that I don't see a repudiation of free markets here.

Studied Ignorance

Paul Krugman has a point in his editorial today in the New York Times labeling the GOP's "Ignorance Caucus".    On my tangent of Separation of Church and State for example I find purposeful insistence by the Evangelical right to promote creationist theory in the classroom to be the equivalent of dulling the brain of their adherent's children with a shot of whiskey every day. It kills the natural inquisitiveness of children on how things work when every answer is God's will, or Inshallah in Islam.  I doubt a doctor could be a doctor without understanding evolutionary theory and I resent Christian Authoritarians as much as Islamic ones who would take us back to the middle ages.

After Ron Paul, then what?

Brian Doherty's rumination in today's New York Times regarding the Republican party and a possible change toward a libertarian ideology is wishful thinking.  The GOP is authoritarian with neocons wanting to exert influence abroad and evangelicals here at home.  Libertarian is the counter to authoritarian and the two find the other repellant.  My preference is to let the GOP die off.  It already has in New England and Libertarians should work on making political inroads there to fill in the vacuum.
  

A Pack with the Devil

In my NTFB blog I describe friction costs in finance eating investor's capital.  Government has friction costs as well covering payments to lobbyist to influence, legal teams to reap,  government bureaucracy to counter and then the court to adjudicate the resulting claims and counter claims. Plenty of friction for everyone to bear and a nice living for lobbyists, lawyers and accountants.
I propose reducing easy points of friction that have lost their sponsors by a rate of ten to one with the simple proposition that an elected legislator finding that they are forced to make an unseemly compromise counter with the requirement that ten articles be eliminated from the federal code in compensation much like earmarks were used earlier on. The result would be a Pac-man like government eating away at the old and irrelevant.
I have some knowledge of the tariff code of the United States.  It's as old as the country and is very much loaded with special interest clauses. Chapter 64 deals with "footwear, gaiters and the like."  The chapter refers to sneakers and other sports footwear.  The chapter is chock full of articles covering the influence of special interest in the U.S. that are now dead and gone.  The sponsors lost the economic battle in spite of 40% duty rates favoring them. In the mean time the American consumer is perpetually saddled with exorbitant and really regressive tariffs for the consumer and protecting no company and generating heat favoring those ministering the process; yes lawyers and accountants.  The beginning of the Pac-man revolution would find many of these easy sponsor-less articles that a LBJ like legislative  horse trader could offer with no sweat.  It would be after ten years of massive devouring that finally the super legislator would break into a sweat looking for deadwood to make a Pac-man deals. By that time a lot of the tax and tariff and many other codes would have been cleaned up considerably.    

  

Divided Republican Soul Searching

The New York Times article linked below, shows a Florida Tea Party activist with the poster:

Mission

Fiscal Responsibility

Smaller Government

Free Market

As a libertarian, I agree as I expect Republicans do as well until we dig into the details.  For example, fiscal responsibility is an issue where the GOP has sinned greatly. If a war is necessary, then taxes must be raised to fight that war.  If agreement to raise taxes is not possible then the war was not necessary.  

Big government comes from wars, military and drug, and a Republican's call for smaller government rings hollow until I see some real cut back on those fronts.  Another Big Government issue is Big Brother morality.  If Republicans are to save themselves from extinction then they have to separate Church from State. That means educating their Evangelical supporters not to push for legislation dealing with morality.  Anytime a Republican Politician is asked about religion in any aspect they must repeat a carefully crafted mantra stating "my religious beliefs are personal and exclusively shared with my family and church."  When confronted with an issue such as Gay Marriage the response should be that our Declaration of Independence clearly states "the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and as an American I will do the necessary to make sure this country lives up to that promise no matter how distasteful I may consider the pursuit to be.
Finally, free markets are not to be considered free if there is government intervention saving the bankrupt.  From my NTBTF blog I rant a rave that the only government regulated banks to be allowed are those small enough to be under the FDIC's wing.  The others should be let go to prosper or fail.  Dodd Frank is a big bank's dream act because only they have the resources to outwardly comply and inwardly rig.  Republican's are going to have to deal with their big buck consitutents in the same manner that I suggest with the Evangelicals.  There is a precedent in Teddy Roosevelt's Trust Busting at the beginning of the previous century's gilded age which the GOP should re-acquaint itself with.
I am Libertarian because I doubt the GOP as well as the Florida Tea Party promoter holding the placard have thought through many of these devilish details that on the surface place us 180 political degrees apart.

Divided Republican Soul Searching