Law

Lies and Untruths – Part Two

Jacques Delacroix Law, Politics , , , , , ,

This is the second part of a two-part mini-essay. See part one here.

The first common untruthful practice I observe among liberals consists in turning factual decisions into moral ones.

The second mendacious practice I catch frequently among liberals is related to the first but it’s more egregious. It consists in shutting off debate in the name of compassion. Dorothy Rabinowitz, the wisest commentator in the Wall Street Journal, gives a wonderful and blood-curdling example on 1/15/10.

As everyone knows now, the race for the seat of the late Senator Kennedy has turned into a referendum on the Democratic health care reform project. The Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, is the standing Attorney General of Massachusetts. Earlier in her career, when she became a District Attorney, she had to make a decision about an appeal by a convicted child molester, a Gerard Amirault. The man had been convicted among other beauts, of sodomizing a five-year old with the blade of a butcher knife. There was never any physical evidence. (Read this sentence again because you may have missed its stark, clean meaning.) The whole trial had been of the same ilk. Judges wanted to reverse the decision. Ms Coakley declined to help and instead, went into high gear to prevent Mr Amirault ( and his sister and his old mother) from ever going out free and clear. Continue reading →

The Revolution That Was Naught

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , , ,

One of the most dangerous causes that conservatives and Leftists alike have aligned themselves with over the past few decades has been that of democracy-promotion abroad. They all fail – usually out of omnipotence – to understand that representative democracy is a byproduct of  a private property rights regime, much like everything that is good in this world.

In Egypt, the newly elected Islamist president has been clamping down hard on opposition movements, an obvious barrier to the democracy that many occupiers of Tahrir Square had called for. The latest target is Egypt’s version of Jon Stewart. I made a bet with Dr. Delacroix in October of 2011 concerning the Arab Spring. I wrote:

Time will tell, of course, which one of our predictions comes true. In two years time, Tunisia, which did not get any help from the West, will be a functioning democracy with a ruling coalition of moderate Islamists in power.

The Egyptian military will be promising the public that elections are just around the corner, and Libya will be in worse shape than it is today. Two years from today, Dr. J, you will be issuing an apology to me and making a donation to the charity of my choice.

Since you are very good at avoiding the facts on the ground in the name of democratic progress, I think we should establish a measurement rubric by which to measure the progress of Libya. How about GDP (PPP) per capita as measured by the IMF?

He declined to accept my challenge. As of today, I have only been wrong about the Egyptian military, but with Morsi (a former engineering professor at Cal State-Northridge) turning the screws on non-Islamist opposition as fiercely as he has, I wonder how much longer the secular military will tolerate his already shaky rule.

Liberty is the mother of democracy, not vice-versa. Hawks like Dr. Delacroix and Nancy Pelosi would do well to remember this (but they won’t; they believe themselves to be omnipotent).

Homosexual Marriage

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics, Religion , , , , , , ,

I don’t care much if homosexuals, a small percentage of the population, gain the right to marry. (The right to marry? What kind of a right is this?) In general, I don’t like the idea that an activist minority can use the armed power of the state to force a cultural change at all, on a well identified majority. (Why no thave a court decree that lies are now included under the definition of “truth,” subject to fines and even to jail terms for recidivism?) I also don’t get all that agitated by the realization that civil union contracts can achieve the same objective, concrete ends, as marriage without hurting deeply the many.

At the same time, I think that both fear of the new and a simplistic reading of the Bible motivates many opponents of homosexual marriage. (By the way, given the California large majority vote on Proposition Eight, it has to include many Democrats, not just Republicans.) I am no theologian but I have trouble imagining a God who loses sleep over the fact that some men love men (and act upon it) or that some women love women (and act upon it). After all, that was His indifferent design that did it.

I am not much concerned either about the example it will set if the right to homosexual marriage becomes the law in the whole country as it is already in several states. I don’t think we are on the eve of seeing a woman marry her two Chihuahuas, one male, one female, for example. The spread of polygamy is a greater possibility. One form, polygeny, might turn out to be OK because there is a shortage of functioning males, I hear. I do believe in slippery slopes though. I have to because I am a three-times former smoker.

Whichever way the Supreme Court decision comes down, I will easily live with it. My friendship for the homosexuals of both sexes I have known and who care about the decision makes this acceptance even easier. (That’s the way it is: Principles regarding abstractions tend to melt a little in contact with the warmth of flesh and blood of real people.) Homosexual activists are not, however making friends with me by their insistence of having the Court (or the courts) overturn the results of a well established democratic process. I mean California Proposition Eight (against which I voted).

Deep inside my brain, there is also a vague notion that the issue does not reduce to morality or to tolerance. It has to do with some very basic structures of human thought based on dualities. I don’t have a good grasp of this. I will wait until I do to discuss the topic (unlike some visitors on this blog who will say anything twenty seconds after it comes to mind.)

FDR, Uncle Fred, and the NRPB

Warren Gibson Economics, History, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged, government officials regulate the economy through something called the Bureau of Economic Planning and Natural Resources. She clearly chose that name to reflect their belief that productive people were bound to produce just because of their “conditioning” and could therefore be treated pretty much like coal in the ground—as resources ripe for exploitation.

One wonders whether she had ever heard of the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB). The NRPB was a real agency, part of the kaleidoscope of bureaus that formed the New Deal. Its history is in some ways as dry as dust, but a closer look reveals some interesting and timeless insights into the planning mentality and the role of personalities in shaping history.

The philosophy underlying Roosevelt’s New Deal, if one can call it that, was to try something and if it didn’t work, try something else. In that same spirit the NRPB mission changed frequently; even its name changed four times before it was killed in 1943. It had been authorized as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, but that program was ruled unconstitutional in 1935, leaving the National Planning Board, as it was called then, in danger of extinction. It was quickly rescued by FDR, however, and established as an independent agency. Casting about for a new name, one planner suggested “natural resources,” whereupon another commented that human beings were America’s most important resource. “National Resources” was suggested. The President chewed the phrase over a few times, then, pleased with its sound, grinned and announced, “That’s it. Get that down, boys, because that’s settled.” Continue reading →

A Free Market in Medical Services

Fred Foldvary Economics, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are two directions for the reform of the U.S. medical services systems. One is towards welfare statism, the control of the medical system by the federal government, and the other is towards economic freedom, providing individuals and families a free choice in medical care.

Economic theory points to a pure free market providing the most productive and equitable economy and therefore medical services. Central planners lack the knowledge to efficiently allocate resources, and politics skews the outcome towards special interests.

Here are the reforms need to have a really free market in medical services: Continue reading →

Some introductory links

muricaderp Law, Links, Politics , , , ,

It’s a great privilege and honor to be invited to write at Notes On Liberty. Brandon’s invitation for me to join the team actually came as something of a pleasant surprise, since my economic politics tend to fall pretty far to the left of the consensus here. I cast a straight libertarian ticket in the 2000 general election (the first election in which I was eligible to vote) and I voted for Gary Johnson last year, but I much more often vote for Democrats, generally because I find the social and civil liberties policies advanced by their Republican opponents absolutely frightening and the economic policies advanced by their Libertarian opponents naive, unduly dogmatic and hence unfeasible.

That said, I believe I’m what one of my favorite bloggers, Fabius Maximus, usually regards less as an accurate self-description than as a self-serving pretension: a true nonpartisan. Fabius occasionally posts survey data indicating that the incidence of nonpartisanship in the electorate is exaggerated, an exaggeration that he attributes largely to voters’ desire to be hip. By contrast, one of my most common reactions to the two major US political parties (probably to the annoyance of many of my Facebook friends) is that they’re both overdue for the federal death penalty, and that there’s room for both of them on the prison van to Terre Haute. There’s a certain facetiousness and poetic license to my peddling of this imagery, but it does not exaggerate the disgust and exasperation that I all too often have with the behavior of both parties, and especially that of their leaders.

I’ll probably have more on that theme in future posts. Tonight, however, I’m going to devote the rest of this post to links that I’ve found inspirational, resonant, or too ghoulish to resist, from various corners of the internet. The only caveat is that the links are going to have a more disjointed appearance than they would in a standard list format; I like to provide some context for links that I include in my writing, especially since the links themselves can be longer than some readers have time to read, so tonight I’ll be providing a synopsis for each.

Fabius Maximus

Fabius Maximus is the pseudonym of a geopolitics blogger who, as far as I can tell, is based in the Washington, DC area and employed in something pertinent to the federal government, although he is extremely coy about himself. His tone can be authoritative and brash, rather like a less screechy literary version of John McLaughlin, and he can be very cynical. But cynicism, I’d say, is warranted in times such as ours, particularly as an antidote to the saccharine earnestness that many mainstream journalists and commentators seem to regard as the only appropriate approach to the world.

The liberty of local bullies

This piece by Noah Smith is one of the most provocative broadsides on Ron Paul and libertarianism that I’ve found. It takes a more strident tone than I’d be inclined to take, but I have to support any essay that includes the phrase “my freedom to punch you in the face curtails quite a number of your freedoms.” That’s a pretty succinct articulation of one of my longstanding critiques of the libertarian movement and likeminded classically liberal movements abroad: that they all too often ally themselves with thieves and other unsavory, predatory characters. These unholy alliances strike me as a big reason that libertarianism has such trouble gaining popular traction as an alternative to the two-party status quo, manifested by the tendency of Libertarian Party candidates to win less than five percent of the vote in three-way contests. This is a very unfortunate situation, if for no other reason because libertarians are damn near the only people willing to take a serious stand against the erosion of civil liberties in the United States.

The Lazarus File

A Case So Cold It Was Blue

Dateline NBC, formerly a respectable news magazine, has taken to devoting Friday nights to lengthy reviews of sordid murders, a great thing for those of us who find that Keith Morrison’s hushed tones and ever more skeletal face appeal to our dubiously maudlin tastes. I don’t see why I shouldn’t do the same, especially for a case involving Brandon’s fellow Bruin, LAPD Detective Stephanie Lazarus.

I actually don’t remember whether I’ve ever seen a Dateline NBC special on Lazarus or just saw the 48 Hours version, but the pieces above, in the Atlantic and Vanity Fair, respectively, are better in any event. (I can’t exactly recommend my own television viewing habits.) The Lazarus case wasn’t spectacular just because the suspect (since convicted and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison) was a highly regarded police detective. The intricacy and sensitivity of the investigation were also far beyond what I’ve ever seen a broadcast account do justice. The investigation was started by a cold case squad at the Van Nuys Division (in the provinces by LAPD standards) before being reassigned to the Robbery-Homicide Division, the elite squad at LAPD headquarters that is responsible for high-profile murder investigations. That posed an even touchier problem: Stephanie Lazarus worked across the hall from RHD at Parker Center and was friendly with many of the division’s detectives. The detectives ultimately chosen for the case, Dan Jaramillo and Greg Stearns, were in effect chosen because they were out of the loop socially. (Judging from their portrait in Vanity Fair, Det. Stearns is also out of the loop sartorially, and proudly so. The portrait suggests that those two are classics, and know it.) On the morning of the arrest, teams were posted in Simi Valley, Lazarus’ hometown, with sealed envelopes instructing them to execute search warrants on her house and car. One of their colleagues surreptitiously trailed Lazarus downtown on a Metrolink train. It was the LAPD at its best, in contrast to the original investigation of Sherri Rae Rasmussen’s murder, which was the LAPD at its most incompetent. Lyle Mayer, the lead detective in the original investigation, will be forever remembered as the idiot who let a murderer stick around at the LAPD for another 23 years after telling her victim’s father that he watched too much TV. (Unless he was crooked. Reasonable people disagree on this point.)

Government and Governance

Fred Foldvary Law, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

Policy debates typically center around the role of markets versus the role of governments. But this is a misleading distinction. Human society always has governance. Private organizations such as corporations and clubs have management, rules, and financial administration similar in function to those of government. The difference is that private governance is voluntary, while state-based government is coercively imposed on the people within some jurisdiction. So a central question is not whether the market or the government can best accomplish some task, but whether the governance shall be voluntary or coercive.

The Market-Failure Doctrine

Most economists would agree that we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. But the doctrine of market failure found in most economics textbooks fails to distinguish between consensual and coercive governance as correctives. The prevailing theory asserts that while markets might provide private goods efficiently in a competitive economy, markets fail to provide the collective goods that people want. There are two basic reasons offered as to why markets are not sufficient. Markets can easily determine the demand for private goods, but how can we tell how much each individual wants of a collective good? We could ask people how much they are willing to pay, but how do we get a truthful answer? Free riders also are a problem. Once the collective good is provided, folks can use it whether they pay or not, so why pay?

So, the market-failure story goes, markets fail to deliver collective goods. Entrepreneurs lack incentive because they can’t get their customers to pay for the service the way they can get people to pay for individually consumed private goods. Continue reading →

Pot Shops and the Evils of Government

Jacques Delacroix Law, Liberty , , , , ,

It seems to me that few people dare entertain the thought that government is inherently bad, that it’s bad even when it’s honest and well-intentioned. That was pretty much what the founders of this republic thought but the idea is almost lost. Even when ordinary people think of bad, oppressive government, they usually have the distant federal government in mind. But it’s too far, precisely, too large, it has too many tentacles. Perhaps it’s easier to understand the moral issue if you consider something smaller and closer. The city of Santa Cruz in California (population about 50,000) just gave us a clear example of well-intentioned government action with predictably bad consequences. It’s small and it’s innocent. Repeat: innocent.

The city council just decreed that there could be only two medicinal marijuana shops in the city. Two consequences.

1 The council has created by decision a quasi-monopoly. Absent such restrictions, there might have been one hundred pot shops at first. After a short time, the number would have dwindled to a small number, possibly only two. But the winners would have been those offering the best combination of price and quality. The latter, understood widely to include possibly diversity of products and quality of service, an essential ingredient in serving presumably sick buyers.

Instead, we are going to end up with the first two applicants. That’s if the decision-making process is honest. Those two may be the worst possible or they may just be mediocre. The city’s decision is another factor, a small factor to be sure, of local high cost of living and a low level of satisfaction. Multiply this decision by 10 million and you have the Soviet Union’s economy. (Reminder: The Soviet Union did not just deny freedom, it denied a decent standard of living and the dignity that comes with not having to scramble for oranges.) Continue reading →

Senate Democrats want Crazies with Guns out in the Street

henrymoore Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

You may have heard or read somewhere that there is a Senate amendment to ObamaCare that prohibits the government from registering guns and ammunition.

Well, the amendment (3276, Sec. 2716) is real, but what it says, as any fact-checking site worth its salt will tell you, is slightly different. It just says that certain other provisions in ObamaCare shall not be construed as the authority to do this. It is not an actual ban on doing it.

Ironically, all the liberals whining about guns and mental health and how Republicans hate sick people and want the insane to run through the streets heavily armed is turned upon its head. Continue reading →

The Volcker Rule

Warren Gibson Economics, Law, Politics , , , , , , , ,

Paul Volcker is a man of considerable stature, and not just because he’s six feet, seven inches tall. He gained a reputation for courage and plain talk as chairman of the Federal Reserve System under Presidents Carter and Reagan because he broke the back of the 1970s inflation. He did so by (mostly) sticking to a tight monetary policy even though that meant sky-high interest rates and sharp back-to-back recessions before the economy could enter its vigorous recovery. Now 84, he has enjoyed a comeback in recent years as an adviser to President Obama. His Volcker Rule, prohibiting proprietary trading by banks, was heralded as one way of preventing a repeat of the recent financial crisis, and it became part of the Dodd-Frank Act signed into law in July 2010.

Dodd-Frank’s full title, incidentally, is the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Like most current legislation its name reflects hoped-for outcomes, not its actual provisions. Reading the act (the PDF is available here) is not for the faint of heart. There are 16 titles consisting of 1,601 sections for a total of 848 dense pages. Only a lawyer could love sentences like this:

Any nonbank financial company supervised by the Board that engages in proprietary trading or takes or retains any equity, partnership, or other ownership interest in or sponsors a hedge fund or a private equity fund shall be subject, by rule, as provided in subsection (b)(2), to additional capital requirements for and additional quantitative limits with regards to such proprietary trading and taking or retaining any equity, partnership, or other ownership interest in or sponsorship of a hedge fund or a private equity fund, except that permitted activities as described in subsection (d) shall not be subject to the additional capital and additional quantitative limits except as provided in subsection (d)(3), as if the nonbank financial company supervised by the Board were a banking entity.

Volcker initially outlined his proposal in a three-page memorandum. It came to life as Section 619 of Dodd-Frank, expanded to 11 dense pages. This section is supposed to prevent banks from buying and selling securities for their own accounts, in contrast to brokering customer trades. It also prohibits banks from holding interests in hedge funds or private equity funds or from sponsoring such funds. These prohibitions are supposed to lessen the need for future bailouts like those that were provided to financial institutions in 2008 and 2009. Continue reading →

More on Rand Paul’s Filibuster

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics ,

Anthony Gregory explains its importance in this short video.

Making Whistle-Blowing Pay

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

The federal bureaucracies are hard at work churning out rules to implement the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” act. In May the Securities and Exchange Commission announced rules for its new whistleblower program, which rewards individuals who provide the agency with “high-quality tips that lead to successful enforcement acts.”

The minimum amount of recovered funds that can earn a reward is $1 million, but the sky’s the limit on the upside. The whistleblower gets to keep 10 to 30 percent of the amount collected, including fines, interest, and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains. We’re talking about big game here, with awards conceivably topping $100 million.

Eric Havian, an attorney with a law firm that represents whistleblowers, noted in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kathleen Pender that the securities laws cover a “huge category of bad conduct,” such as illegal insider trading, cooking the books, market manipulation, stock option back-dating, false or misleading disclosures, and the deceptive sales of securities. Almost anything potentially can be illegal, and these vaguely defined offenses leave much room for government mischief. As for insider trading, this is a practice that does little harm and may actually provide benefits to small investors. (See my January/February 2011 Freeman article, “Inside Insider Trading.”)

If corporations felt they needed limits on insider trading or other conduct to attract shareholders, they could write prohibitions into their bylaws so that violations, if not settled internally, could be remedied under civil law. Continue reading →

Shoot the Shorts

Warren Gibson Economics, Law , , , , ,

European bank stocks have dropped sharply in recent days, presumably because they hold large amounts of shaky debt issued by the governments of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy.  Several European governments have found someone to blame for their financial problems, and their target is that perennial favorite, speculators. And not just any old speculators, but the darkest of that shady lot, short sellers. Short sales of major European bank stocks are banned for a period of time so that traders can’t spread false rumors and trigger a downward spiral in these stocks.

(To sell short means to sell borrowed stock in the hope that the price will decline.  If the stock does fall, sellers buy the shares cheaply, return them to their original owner, and pocket the cash difference.  If the shares rise instead, short sellers have to pay a high price and suffer a loss.  When a number of short sellers cover their positions out of  fear of rising prices, it’s called a short-covering rally.)

What a dreary and stupid move the Europeans have made. They might have learned from the ban instituted in 2008 by U.S. authorities, which accomplished nothing.

Real Fears

There is good reason to fear for the European banks – the problems with European sovereign debt are evident.  Rumors are hardly necessary when the banks’ exposure is well known.  And if false negative rumors justify intervention, what about false positive rumors? Why not ban purchases of stocks when the all-knowing regulators determine they were boosted by bullish rumors? Continue reading →

Bank Deregulation: Friend or Foe?

Warren Gibson Economics, History, Law , , , , ,

Banking has changed a lot during my lifetime—for the better. The changes are partly due to technology (ATMs, online access), but also to deregulation that subjected banks to a lot more competition. What were the major deregulatory moves and how might they have contributed to the recent crisis? Before addressing those questions, a little personal history.

I got interested in money and banking at a very young age. My mother often took me along on shopping trips, explaining what money was, why we needed it in stores, and how my father got it for us. Trips to the bank were a special treat. The Cleveland Trust branch near us was an imposing affair, with a limestone façade, high ceilings, and tellers ensconced behind ornate barred windows. The architecture was intended to instill confidence, but to me it was just a magic place.

Later, my sixth-grade class operated a student branch of another bank, the Society for Savings. Twice a month our classroom was rearranged like a bank branch. Tellers (all boys, as I recall) would accept student deposits of a dime, a quarter, or sometimes a whole dollar. Assistant tellers (girls) would write the amount of the deposit in the student’s passbook, while the boys handled the cash. After closing we tallied the deposits and packed the loot—perhaps $50—into a canvas bag, and a privileged student would trundle it off to the principal’s office under the watchful eyes of two “guards.” What great lessons we learned: thrift, honesty, attention to detail!

By the time I was 14 I was earning good money shoveling snow, raking leaves, and mowing lawns. I had become something of a saving fanatic. I soon found out that the local savings and loan (S&L) offered higher interest than commercial banks, so I opened an account there. Savings passbooks seem quaint in hindsight, but mine was a treasured possession, a tangible reminder of my growing nest egg. Continue reading →

Equal Pay for Equal Work: The New/Old Trojan Horse; Unfairness

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

I am a sore loser. Thoughts of re-emigration dance around in my head. However, I am too old. And the very mechanism that I fear is trapping this whole society has entrapped me: I am dependent on Medicare which is not transportable. I am a ward of the federal government which took loads of my money for forty years and turned it against me, like a two-bit dope-dealer. Like other conservatives I know, I am tempted by the option of personal, psychological secession from the new Obama Peronista United States. But, finally, there is nothing to do right now but to continue to sound a voice of reason and of conscience in the hope that it will reach some of the inner children Pres. Obama has been singing to.

(Personally, I make it a practice to take my inner-child out every so often and to beat his ass.)

President Obama won re-election handily not by winning arguments but by side-stepping deftly vital issues of the solvency of this society, present and future, and of the role of government in restricting our freedoms. (There was also quite a bit of slime he threw at hapless Romney but that was secondary in his victory, I think.) After his inauguration speech I wonder if he is going to succeed in side-stepping central matters again by raising silly issues such as that of homosexual marriage. (I don’t use the word “gay” because it carries a political agenda. I am not against homosexuals, however. I don’t even think they have a greater chance of burning in Hell than I do, for example.) Continue reading →