D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

You may copy or borrow from the following letter . . .

I’m disturbed by Congress’s behavior last year . . .

* You passed fewer laws, but they were 3 times as large
* You created 3,486 pages of new laws, whereas the nine-year average is 2,160
* Your 2009 laws averaged 28 pages, whereas the nine-year average is 10!

Longer bills are far more difficult for either Congress or the people to scrutinize and understand.

Part of the problem is combining multiple bills and subjects into one package . . . http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plaws/111publ.html

* the 407-page “stimulus” bill (Public Law 111-3) was a bundle of spending programs, handouts, tax cuts, and unrelated laws
* the 466-page Omnibus Appropriations bill (Public Law 111-5) combined 9 different federal agency spending bills into one
* the 466-page Wilderness, Interior, and Ag bill (Public Law 111-11) created scores of new laws and programs that were unrelated to each other
* the pork-laden 656-page Defense and Military Construction bill (Public Law 111-84) contained the completely-unrelated Hate Crimes Act

I believe the intentions behind such gigantic bills were to . . .

* pass unpopular bills by combining them with supposed “must-pass” legislation
* provide opportunities for logrolling, pork, and other special favors
* deny time for scrutiny by the public and by conscientious members of Congress

With more gigantic bills such as healthcare and cap & trade on the agenda, 2010 could be even worse.

But I demand that you represent me better this year . . .

* cut down on the total number of pages of legislation you pass
* whenever possible, break down large bills into smaller, understandable bills containing only one subject that must pass or fail only on its own merits
* make these objectives mandatory by introducing and passing DownsizeDC.org’s One Subject At A Time Act

END LETTER

(NOTE the length of bills cited above are not based on large-print bill pages, but on the more condensed Public Law pages. For instance, bill H.R. 2647 was 1,158 pages, but is found here as Public Law 111-84 and is 656 pages.)

You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

We also want to thank the following people for donating to support our work last week . . .

1-Time Contributions: Alexander Gunkel, David Ripley, Perry Sheetz, Edward Hudgens, Chelsea Moller, Richard Linchitz, plus 5 donors who asked to be unlisted

New monthly pledges: Kristina L Shull, Daniel H Fylstra, Eli Sutton, plus 1 new pledger who asked to be unlisted

Please make a contribution or start a monthly pledge using our secure online contribution form.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
is the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation
Normally published 3 – 6 times per week.

CONTRIBUTE in support of the “Educate the Powerful System”

http://www.DownsizeDC.org is sponsored by DownsizeDC.org, Inc. — a non-profit educational organization promoting the ideas of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free markets, and small government.  Operations office: 1931 15th St. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223, 202.521.1200

IF you have difficulties or inquiries, simply hit reply to this message. We’re eager to help, including with requests to unsubscribe.

The Downsize DC Team would like to thank you for subscribing to the Downsizer-Dispatch, which you did by going to http://www.downsizedc.org/page/newsletter or by using our Educate the Powerful System to send a message. Your subscription comes to this email address: glennd7962@yahoo.com

You are encouraged to forward this message to friends and business associates, and permission is hereby granted to reproduce any items herein as long as attribution is provided for articles and the subscription instructions above are included.

If you do not want to receive any more newsletters (to unsubscribe), click this link

To update your newsletter preferences visit this link

Technorati Tags: bloated government, downsizer-dispatch, libertarian, libertarianism

Bernanke gave a speech this morning in which he called for more regulation to prevent prevent ‘bubbles’ from occurring. He went on to say that he didn’t believe that the Fed’s monetary policies were the cause of the recent housing bubble. For those of you who have been keeping track of this, I imagine you are as astounded by these statements as I am.

Let’s start with a reprise of other statements Ben Bernanke has made, to get a sense of how well the man who controls our monetary policy, and now also invests in private companies and securities (unlawfully), understands the economy. I know, it’s a bold statement, I mean, I’m just some blogger here, I haven’t shaved in a while, and I don’t have a degree in economics. However, I can read, which seems to give me a leg up on Bernanke.

Bernanke being questioned about the possibility of a housing bubble in July ’05

“I guess I don’t buy your premise. It’s a pretty unlikely possibility. We have never had a decline in housing prices on a national basis, so what I think is what is likely to happen is that housing prices may slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumer spending a bit…I don’t think it’s going to drive the economy from it’s full employment path though.”

“I am confident that the bank regulators will pay close attention to the kind of loans that are being made, making sure that loan underwriting is done right.” “I do think that this a localized problem and won’t affect the national economy.”

Bernanke on mortgage secuirites market in February ’07

“There is no indication at this point that the subprime mortgage issues have seeped into the broader mortgage market which still seems to be healthy.”

Yeah, uhh, okay, well, Ben, I really think that you might just want to revisit your economic model in light of your complete failure to understand what is actually happening in our economy, but once again, what do I know?

Ben went on to say, as he often does, that predicting bubbles in the early and middle phases is hard to do (I’m paraphrasing here, but am doing so accurately). The fact is that the economists of the Austrian school (in other words, Libertarians, for those of you just joining the fray) were predicting the meltdown that occurred, so one might ask Ben to consider if his perspective is somewhat skewed. Of course, as all social scientists do these days, he has some data to support his contention that the Fed didn’t actually create the incentives for mal-investment that the Austrian’s predicted. He’s no dummy, but the analysis doesn’t seem to hold up. Click on this link to see the Austrian case, with a criticism of the technical fig leaf Ben is hiding behind. http://mises.org/story/2936

I think there is a deeper lesson here for Libertarians. No matter what happens, the current institutions we’ve created are not going to change their behaviors. Regardless how completely we expose the failed policies of politicized, fiat money and monopolistic, fractional reserve banking practices, both politicians and technocrats won’t be swayed from their beliefs in these practices. Why is that? Well, many on the right suspect a great, corrupt conspiratorial cabal of supra-national bankers, corporate titans and politicians gaming the system to their advantage, but always, somehow, they are just out of our view. Others claim vast personal corruption is occurring, which of course impugns the character of many folks in positions of power, claiming they are enriching themselves. I think both of these claims simply aren’t supported by the evidence.

Rather, I believe we live in the  ‘Age of the Social Scientist’ wherein the last one hundred years many very smart people have become convinced of the unlimited power of government as THE tool of societal management.  It’s so seductive to those who want to change or run the world to believe that the instruments of governmental power can help them achieve their goals, that along the way, somehow, the actual results of their failed policies don’t seem to dissuade them from their strongly held beliefs. Critical to this effort is the underlying weakness of the “science” being used. Economics can hardly be called a science, although many treat its aspirations to such as revealed truth. For my money, the Austrian school of economists has been correct about the current crisis and this should bolster its credibility amongst economic oracles, but sadly, this doesn’t seem to be so. If they were to admit the weakness of their models, many institutions and players in the policy making apparatus of government would cease to have value. These institutions have become so detached from reality that they now serve themselves primarily, rather than the people. I believe that this is an ideological corruption that is much more dangerous than lining one’s pockets, and is a symptom of a much greater intellectual corruption. Theoretically, I’ve seen rights/entity analysis which lay out this case very nicely, and point to its inevitability. Simply put, at a certain point, government and its attendant institutions exist to serve themselves and break loose of any constraints we try to impose on them.

I’m coming much closer to the position held by many of my Libertarian brethren that financial collapse is the only possible way we’ll rid ourselves of these horrific practices. However, I’m not at all convinced that what will replace it is desirable at all. I believe there are those on the Left, who hold much greater power than Libertarians, who are preparing for this eventuality, and that some true radicals are hastening it. Given this, I have to conclude that it’s much more likely that we’ll see a more totalitarian state emerge, not a lesser one.

Technorati Tags: ben bernanke, Federal Reserve, libertarian, libertarianism

I’ve seen the ranting on right-wing sites about Obama’s executive order granting immunities and privileges to Interpol. The line of thinking is this is just another step in subjugating the U.S. to international law, and that the “police officers” of the Interpol will be free to operate with impugnity, in the U.S. , out of the reach of our courts and will be the enforcement arm of the ICC when Obama signs the U.S. up for it.

The entire argument is wrong, meaning factually incorrect. First of all, the same privilege has been given to the International Red Cross and seventy other NGOs and international entities, so really, they should calm themselves. Second. Interpol has no police officers and doesn’t operate under the color of any law other than the country in which it is present. It’s “agents” are police officers or special agents from member countries whose only authority is that granted to them in their home jurisdictions. In other words any law enforcement activity undertaken is by law enforcement in a member country, under that countries control, jurisdiction and discretion.

It gets worse. Interpol’s mission is intelligence and record keeping, essentially operating as an interchange between countries and a clearinghouse for warrants and other criminal records and information. If you bother just going to its website, and read its charter, that’s as plain as day. Interpol does have some core competencies, including art theft and it will advise local law enforcement on cases from time to time. Oh yeah, the worse part – Interpol has never arrested anybody, so the right wing paranoids once again have taken a kernel of truth and turned it into a lie.

As a Libertarian, of course I’m concerned about U.S. sovereignty, but sadly, by continuously raising the alarm over this issue, the right is only diminishing their credibility which is needed for truly substantive issues. By ranting and raving without apparently any fact checking, or by intentionally lying, how can they expect to be taken seriously?

Technorati Tags: libertarian, libertarianism

Perhaps our federal government is just too busy meddling in health care, or energy or making sure that bailed-out bankers can still get huge paychecks, but really, I cannot believe what I’m reading about the terrorist attempt that barely missed killing three hundred or so Americans on Christmas day!

We need to be outraged by this. Apparently there were numerous operational failures by DHS and possibly some other agencies. It’s one thing if the attack circumvented our security measures, but in this case, it seems we just screwed up – again! Did our government not learn anything from 9/11? Below I categorize the screw-ups that we know about already. In and of themselves, they are damning evidence of failure by those who are supposed to protect us.

1. The Brits had already banned him from their shores in May of this year. Check here for deets. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950280,00.html

2. He was on a ‘watch list’ that contains 500k names. Tell me this, what good is a list with half a million names? This brings up the bigger mess of the ‘no fly list’, which has become so full of false positives that it regularly breeches the rights of completely innocent people who cannot seem to get themselves off the list. Btw, that list costs us about one hundred million dollars per year to maintain! How can the underwear bomber not have made it on that list? Here’s a link for more on the list. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/03/nofly-list-100-milli.html

3. There was an interview of an eyewitness of Abdulmutallab’s boarding process in Amsterdam on Breitbart.com today. This eyewitness claims, very credibly, that Abdulmutallab was escorted to the final ticket checkpoint in Amsterdam by a well dressed Indian man in his 50s, telling the gate attendant that his companion, Abdulmutallab, didn’t have a passport, was from the Sudan and that he needed to get on the airplane. See the link here http://www.breitbart.tv/interview-witness-says-sharp-dressed-man-aided-terror-suspect-onto-plane-without-passport/

4. He traveled that day on a one way ticket purchased with cash and no checked luggage. That alone in the U.S. will get you excess scrutiny before boarding any flight, even if you are a crippled grandmother. How come we don’t have systems in place to catch any international passengers with these characteristics? If we do, how come this guy wasn’t interviewed and discovered before boarding? If he was interviewed, who did the interviewing and what transpired?

5. His father warned us about him over a month ago. A well known Nigerian banker, he had great credibility and clearly was going against his own personal interests by warning us that he felt his son’s radicalism had become a danger. What happened to that report? What did we do about it? I would like to think that the close to a trillion USD or so we spend on intelligence, defense and federal law enforcement would result in his father being immediately interviewed by capable operatives, with his son at least being interviewed, if not being put under surveillance immediately. I mean, if we aren’t put on alert when a credible person comes to our embassy and reports a threat, what are we doing?

Where is the accountability on these failures? Who is losing their job? I know for a fact that Janet Napolitano’s focus at DHS is political correctness – not our security. Her office communicates to DHS employees all the time – but rarely about national security. She is a bureaucrat – not a warrior! We need a warrior in charge of our battle against these terrorists.

This is what happens when we empower government to do so many other things than just protect us. Secondary concerns, administrivia and internal politics get cloudier and cloudier as the organization grows larger – and DHS is a huge mess. We need congressional hearings on this immediately and we need personnel changes as senior levels of DHS – starting with Napolitano to make sure everyone there knows that this is their number one mission. If we can’t nail terrorists like this, with so much foreknowledge, then nothing else they do is worth talking about.

Technorati Tags: homeland security, libertarian government, libertarianism

I’ve spent years trying to understand the case for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the substantial criticisms of it. I’m a skeptic, so I’ve listened to the criticisms, hoping to find the truth and while I’ve seen valid criticism by the likes of Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels and Richard Lindzen (to name but a few credible climate scientists who are highly critical of the IPCC science), I’ve also seen the rebuttals by AGW proponents that seem to be sensible – but I truly don’t have the scientific training to really evaluate any of it. I’m sure many of you find yourselves in the same boat. Worse yet,  it seems that actual dialog has broken down. The AGW camp has closed off debate, saying for years that the science is settled, and at this point, I’m only sure of one thing; the science isn’t settled. Even the IPCC report from ’07 states that the probability of their predictions being correct is 90% and in science, 10% leaves a lot of room for doubt. It certainly means things aren’t settled. Gravity is settled (sort of), thermodynamics is settled – and even these fields are subject to further refinement. It’s the height of arrogance for the scientists, politicians and activists to keep repeating this lie.

Furthermore, the politicization of this issue, at first from the left and more recently from the right has me deeply suspicious of all comers. I mean, Al Gore is a very poor spokesperson for AGW as he is a partisan and is not a scientist, and his movie was a filled with inaccuracies and exaggerations. For those of you not aware of it, the only impartial review of his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, took place in a court in the UK and the fact based evaluation of its content concluded that the movie was filled with hysterical exaggeration and outright lies. Just as appallingly, as of late, the loudmouths on the right have taken to saying that AGW has been disproved and that it’s all a hoax with, frankly, less credibility than Al Gore. For me, when I see a ‘true believer’, flushed with his/her righteousness about a topic like this, I run for the hills, particularly when they are a partisan and non-scientist. To make matters worse, many greens have blended this cause with their socialist/communist leanings and conclude that AGW is proof that capitalism is ruining the world, with the likes of that thuggish despot, Hugo Chavez getting a standing ovation in Copenhagen for dissing capitalism. We’ve managed to make this a left/right issue and it’s pretty scary for those of us who actually want to know what’s going on.

And yet, and yet  – this is really serious stuff, right? I mean, if the AGW folks are right, well we are in desperate straits.  Indeed, if their worst predictions are correct humanity itself is threatened when you look out over the next several hundred years, with some impacts being felt much closer such as ocean acidification, to name one. This issue is far more important than many of the issues that get the attention of our leaders but by allowing this issue to become so politicized, they have insured that creating consensus will not be achieved, preventing us from moving forward with policies that are sober and meaningful. As a Libertarian, I’m very nervous about the breadth and width of proposed government interventions that are being proposed, as once again, the left has conflated issues, continuously prattling on about ‘green jobs creation’ when the real examples we have of such policies in Spain and Germany have been abject failures (even though some people are brash enough to simply ignore the facts and claim victory). For those of you who don’t know, the Spanish program, in place for some years, has only created 1/8th the jobs it was supposed to yield. This again makes the policy prescription of many on the left about AGW solutions very suspect to me as a Libertarian. Btw, any free marketeer could have predicted the failure of these initiatives. Now we are embarking on a similar course, and there is no reason to think that our results will differ.

I also have witnessed outright hostility to those who suggest that we look at engineering solutions to solve the problem, which again makes me wonder, why? I mean, if we could reduce CO2 via technology while we gradually reduce emissions too,  this would be a ‘silver bullet’. Now the technology isn’t there yet and there is no guarantee that it will be, but one would think a dispassionate analysis of the solutions to this problems would conclude this is certainly the most desirable path. I’ve also witnessed this dialog morph into a familiar Manichean dyad, with the U.S. and the rest of the west owing the developed world payment for our CO2 glut. This is now being referred to under the rubric of ‘climate justice’ by the likes of that bleating idiot, Naomi Klein, as well as many others. If we are tallying up global financial scores, I do ask myself what are we owed for fighting back the tyranny of Germany, Japan, Russia and China in the last century? What is the west owed for the over one trillion in aid it’s spent in the ‘developing world’ over the past 40 years? Mind you, I’m not getting into whether we should have given the aid (my answer is a resounding NO) but when we are doing a financial accounting, it does seem that the ‘climate debt’ we supposedly owe the undeveloped world comes from pretty strange accounting. Once again, it reeks of anti-capitalist, anti-western, anti-development worldviews and while that may be a valid perspective, it diminishes the credibility of those claiming science is on their side.

So, given all of the above, my suggestion is that we should do the following:

1. Sponsor independent verification of the IPCC science – The recent CRU email scandal is only one of many episodes that have led a large number of scientists to question the validity of the science underlying the IPCC findings. I think that even if you wholeheartedly agree with everything that the IPCC claims, you should realize that to create government policy of this magnitude,  bipartisan and public consensus needs to be achieved. At this point, without some policing of this effort and independent verification, folks like me who want to do the right thing, as well as those ‘deniers’ out there, will never get on board. If the problem is as dire as its made out to be, and the necessary solution is as drastic as proposed, then spending a bit more time by opening this up to get more people on board is warranted.

2. Have a real debate – I wonder why major media outlets, policy institutions and others haven’t shamed both sides into publicly debating these issues. One would think that a PBS series or CNN forum on an ongoing basis would draw a solid audience. I would stipulate that no hacks or politicians can participate and rather, would only allow scientists to participate. I think we all would quickly realize that there is serious disagreement about AGW and it’s impacts, but I also think the right course of action would become apparent to a majority of policymakers and the voting public.

3. Adopt a ‘precautionary’ stance for policy – Given that the consequences of ignoring AGW are devastating,  even if the probability that the AGWers are right is low, we should be taking sensible steps that are low to moderately disruptive/expensive to gird ourselves against AGW as a precaution. I know, you true believers already claim ‘it’s too late’ and the only solution is massive policy shifts now, but the reality is that these policies will not be implemented until the AGWers bother to get the majority of folks on board. So until that time, government should be prudent by taking some significant actions, but stop short of destroying the economies of the West.

Can you imagine if Obama came out and called for this approach? His approval would skyrocket, but more importantly, he would signal that he understands the there are legitimate concerns about AGW, and that he realizes the case needs to be built based on facts, not rhetoric. It would be consistent with his campaign promise to be post-ideological and the right would be frozen for good on this issue, but unfortunately, I think Obama is going to go full steam ahead. The recent EPA decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant presages AGW reduction policies being implemented via fiat versus legislation. This may turn out to be a huge mistake, because it opens up all AGW science to legal challenge and it will likely not hold up under a finding of fact in a court of law.

As a Libertarian, I think the underlying problem with all of the environment is the ‘tragedy of the commons’, wherein the lack of private ownership stakes in this outcome causes the neglect in the first place. Accordingly, I think that our approach should focus the following.

1. Fighting the corporatism that creates truly stupid solutions like ethanol subsidies and the other hundreds of pork projects being funded by the Federal government.

2. We should support mechanisms such as ‘cap and trade’ which have worked in other problem areas, once a real scientific finding is reached, as in intermediate step to monetize environmental outcomes.

3. In the end, we should support policies that encourage the most local and voluntary solutions, which take advantage of individual actions from the bottom up instead the top down model we have, which are hugely wasteful, coercive and usually wrongheaded.

Most of all, Libertarians need to speak up loudly on this issue because we are mostly not really participating yet. One could make the case that a Libertarian society would not suffer from these problems in the first place, but that is the topic for another article.

Technorati Tags: global warming, libertarian, libertarian thought, libertarianism

December 15, 1791. A group of mostly rich, white men created a document that enobled the human condition in a dramatic way by passing the Bill of Rights (maybe being rich, white and male don’t exclude one from doing good after all?).

While the U.S. constitution itself embraced the concept of individual sovereignty quite broadly, the ten constitutional amendments that form the Bill of Rights built on that foundation, guaranteeing that the people would be served by government rather than the people being subjects or servants of their government. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, the press and the rights of peaceful assembly and petition. Other amendments guarantee private property, fair treatment of those accused of crimes, such as unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from self-incrimination, a speedy and impartial jury trial, and representation by counsel.

The ideas embedded in the Bill of Rights have taken the world by storm over the past two hundred plus years, but I think that many Americans don’t really think about how radical a departure from the status quo this was for humanity. It’s certainly true that we don’t spend enough time discussing how these developments were the cause of the explosion of creativity, productivity and wealth creation that have ensued. It’s not a coincidence that since this time, humanity has doubled its life expectancy, increased the security of all people and has created a world which our founders would find incomprehensible. If Thomas Jefferson was alive today, and just arrived here I think he would feel as if he had landed on Mars. And from what I can tell, we’re just getting started. The next one hundred years will change civilization utterly yet again, and I see the seeds of this change in the simple little idea that human beings should be free to do as the please as long as they don’t impinge on other’s rights.

Sadly, we live in a time and regime where supposedly smart people don’t seem understand this basic truth. Instead, group rights and consequent government action impede your individual rights each day. The government now can punish you for hate speech or thought, takes private property for no good reason (it already owns over thirty percent of the land in the U.S.), and confiscates large chunks of your wealth for purposes it considers far more important than your sovereignty and freedom. Only libertarians are railing against these encroachments, while the Democrats and Republicans haggle over the details of your surrender.

You may think I’m being dramatic, but let’s take a moment and look at how government is acting in your behalf as you read this:

1. Militarism – We have over seven hundred foreign military bases operating in one hundred and thirty countries today.

2. Money – The Federal Reserve tosses the wealth of Americans in the garbage by inflating the currency (twenty three percent expansion in the past fourteen months – it’s simply unprecedented) and by giving trillions of capital to favored corporations and institutions.

3. Criminilization – Millions of Americans are in jail for offenses that have in no way impeded the rights of others. The Federal Criminal Code contains more than four thousand criminal offenses – so many that there isn’t even an accurate count of them, and many are so vague that the actual threshold for violating these laws rests solely in the mind of a U.S. Attorney. It’s more than doubled in the past forty years, and the pace of expansion of the Federal government is accelerating as we speak.

What better day to rededicate yourself to your’s and your fellow countrymen’s freedom? Take a moment and think about it – what more valuable possession do you have than your civil rights? Everything we know as freedom emanates from these ideas. They are worth protecting, hell, they are worth fighting and dying for.  Click here for more information on these rights and how they are being stolen from you.

Technorati Tags: bill of rights, liberatarianism, libertarian thought

That’s right, just in case you had any doubt whether federal bureaucrats were out of touch with the rest of us, here comes this gem.http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/12/11/federal-salaries-explode/ Anyone with a libertarian thought in their head should see this as a ‘canary in the mine’. It is mostly due to the unionization of government labor, which in term has created the civil service pay system that escalates ever upwards. In addition, people game the system to their own benefit with professional gusto that would make most in the private sector blush. It’s now outrageous and should be curtailed – but it won’t be. Most of these people, btw, are unemployable in the private sector – except as consultants who will charge the government double what they cost when they were employees. Happens every day.  I wrote a piece on it a while ago, here it is for those of you who care. http://libertariancomment.com/government-workers-are-the-new-rich/

Technorati Tags: federal government, government employment, libertarian thought

Technorati Tags: obama cabinet, pjtv, policy addicts

Why stop at just health care? The current debate on health care has become so detached from reality that it’s become impossible to have a rational discussion about it. Just visit HuffingtonPost or Daily Kos to get a whiff of the tone. It goes something like this.

“If the current bill isn’t going to cut insurance company executives pay, lower fees for doctors and hospitals and stop insurance companies from gouging consumers, what’s the point?”

“Single payer federalized health care is the only way to stop insurance companies from raping the American people – any bill without it is useless. We need to punish every ‘moderate Democrat’ who doesn’t support it.”

On the right at such places like American Thinker or Atlas Shrugs, comments are more along the lines of:

“85% of people like their health care, there is no crisis that needs to be addressed.”

“This is the part of Obama’s conspiracy to socialize America – it needs to be stopped at all costs.”

And so it goes (to rob a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

My point? Both sides are dealing in political food-fights rather than serious discussions of the philosophy and policy of our government in this crucial area of our society. For some time I’ve been reluctant to write a piece on health care reform because, as a libertarian, it goes without saying that I’m opposed to the government being involved in health care delivery in any way. Just as importantly, however, I also believe that elections have consequences and Obama ran on a  promise to reform health care with a heavy federal hand, so I’m not freaked out that he and the Democratic congress are pursuing this course. As well, the hypocrisy of the Republicans on this issue is stunning to me. This is clearly a sector of our economy in which cost is spiraling out of control and is a very important need for people that is being met less and less adequately as time goes on. The Republicans had several years to take meaningful action on this front, and other than to create a new entitlement for the elderly for prescription drugs, privatize a bit of Medicare and support for health savings accounts, they did little to alter the fundamental problems of cost and access for most Americans.

As for the Democrats, they may be even more repugnant, given their dishonesty regarding their actual policy goals. It’s clear that the Democrat’s goal is to wrest away what little control of the health care is left in the private sector and give it to the Federal government, yet its initial efforts and rhetoric are intentionally designed provide a pretense that our system will remain private under this system (if you don’t understand this, read the bill). When you strip away their rhetoric, you’re left with a menu of mandates, subsidies and price controls that are a recipe for disaster, and it’s very likely their policies will end up giving us a situation like the U.K. has, where the public health service employs almost as many bureaucrats as caregivers, with rationing and declining quality a given. The Democrat’s tactics are built upon the worst kind of hate-mongering, class warfare and budget gimmickery that only a fool couldn’t see through.

For me, the choice seems to be whether I want to be eaten alive slowly or quickly. Each is its own unique nightmare and I’m at the point where I simply cannot take what either side has to say seriously, based on reason and facts, rather than emotion or hyperbole. So what should we do?

I’d like to start with a couple of observations. First, our health care ‘system’ isn’t much of a system at all – if by use of that word one means that there is some kind of overall design to it. It’s a patchwork of incredibly inefficient systems that together create an expensive, massively inefficient mess. Government already controls sixty one percent of health care spending, regulates insurance companies and providers in thousands of ways, and creates incentives for uneconomic behavior across the entire ‘system’. When observers cite the health care sector as an example of free-market economics gone wrong, they couldn’t be further from the truth! No, it is an example of what can happen when government runs amok.

Second, the American public has been conditioned to believe that they should be able to access as much health care as they want at any cost from the cradle to grave, with no concern for the cost. Whether it’s the employer payment of health insurance and it’s cost being hidden from most plan participants or the fact that any hospital which wants to get paid by Medicare for any procedure (see my post on this mandate) has to offer free lifesaving care to anyone who walks through the door without any assurance of getting paid, the net effect has been to make American’s completely uneconomic when it comes to health care decisions. Because someone else is always paying the bill, we don’t watch fees carefully or think about wasting health care on lost causes (which goes on every day in every hospital in the U.S. – just ask any Cardiac Care Unit nurse). As a result, demand spirals upwards and this demand is met by private sector supply innovation in drugs, therapies, devices and other techniques that serve to increase demand in a symbiotic dance that, if left unchecked, will continue to consume even greater portions of our wealth.

The biggest driver of costs isn’t insurance company profits (well below average for business in general, btw), it’s fees and the growth in utilization. Whether it’s depression or erectile dysfunction, American’s are demanding more and more medical treatment – in fact, lots of folks want insurance to pay for their completely unproven ‘alternative medicine’ now. What about end of life care? How many hundreds of thousands of somebody else’s dollars are you willing to spend on futile care at the end of life? What if it were your money? I would gladly trade a few weeks or even a month or two of hospitalized life to pass along a meaningful inheritance to my daughter versus pissing it away, but when it’s Medicare – well who really cares? These are hard questions but necessary to ask – yet we haven’t discussed any of them and these are the real drivers of cost. I know for sure that I don’t want some Federal government bureaucrat making them for me – and that I don’t want to bankrupt our nation.

So, where do we start? Well, I’d like to see some basic philosophical conversations happen. Let’s start by asking a simple multiple choice question. Which will kill you first? 1. Lack of food? 2. Lack of shelter? 3. Lack of health care? Obviously it’s a rhetorical question, but the obviousness of the answer somehow evades so many Progressives who seem to view health care as something that shouldn’t be sullied by laissez faire market economics. The first thing we have to get through our heads is that there is nothing special about health care: it’s a need that we all have and at times is crucial to our survival but by no means is it the most crucial aspect of our lives or even the most expensive (although it’s getting there). There seems to be an underlying sense that health care is a right and this thinking needs to be explored. The creation of a positive right like this is something we should do with great care. A positive right is one where you are being granted an entitlement by the state, versus having a statutory right to not have a personal, civil or property right infringed on by others. I think that to even consider it a ‘right’ is to get it wrong from the start. It’s axiomatic that the fulfillment of this right will necessitate taking property from someone else to fulfill it in certain cases, so it’s a privilege or an entitlement being granted to you. Of course, this ‘rights’ thinking is based on an entire pedagogy of ‘social justice theory’ and is being applied across society in many ways – witness the EU declaration that seeks to grant high-speed internet access rights to all European citizens (or should we start calling them subjects at this point?). What’s next, mandatory transportation? But I digress… because I can’t freaking believe it!

In my view, positive rights are very dangerous for a society that values personal liberty. That quaint document, the U.S. Constitution, seems to just go on and on about it for some reason, it’s just so pesky.  We should be terribly concerned when we empower government, particularly the Federal government, ensconced in its remote and rarefied salons in Washington DC, to take people’s property as a part of granting rights to us. But sadly, we’re not. This issue isn’t even up for debate, rather the conversation seems to be about how much of our freedom and rights will be impinged, not whether or not our liberty is worth preserving.

Let’s take the basic question I asked above a bit further. Why don’t we have the Federal government take over the production of food, since obviously the lack of food will kill you in short order?  The answer is that there is no real problem for the vast majority of Americans with respect to feeding themselves. The fact is that most American’s can get to a store in thirty minutes or less that contains twenty or more varieties of food for their dogs, no less the virtually unlimited assortment of cheap, fresh and safe foodstuffs that they can readily purchase, twenty four hours a day without much direct help from the Federal government. The very notion of a government takeover of food seems absurd, but you would die without food, right? What do we do when someone needs food but can’t get it? We provide support for those without the means to buy food so they can buy food via public and private welfare programs. We don’t mandate that everyone buy food – or food insurance. The notion that every aspect of food production, distribution and consumption should be mandated, regulated, supervised, subsidized and codified by the Federal government seems ridiculous, but it’s no less ridiculous than the application of the same policy apparatus to health care, and yet, here we are.

The real problem in health care is that we destroyed a functioning market for health care long ago, and both providers and consumers have responded to the uneconomic incentives that are in place. Whether it was the creation of ‘the Blues’ (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) which canonized the provision of health insurance as a non-profit activity, or by creating a health care monopoly called Medicare for seniors – the largest consumers of health care, or by making sure businesses could treat the payment of health insurance for employees as an expense versus compensation, which makes it tax free for the employees, we’ve done our level best to distort the health care sector. It’s economics 101 that when supply and demand are distorted by non-market forces, you will end up with inefficiencies.  Due to our government’s meddling, we have a lot of high prices, over-utlization and shortages, depending on which part of the health care sector you look at, but anyone who has the slightest knowledge of micro/macro-economics could predict the problems we have. As well, anyone in health care will tell you that the system has already gone haywire and is on the verge of collapsing under the heavy hand of our government. I hope that if you’ve actually read this far that you stop and think about this: the problems we have are easily diagnosed by any undergraduate economics student. All the rhetoric about evil capitalists in the insurance industry is just nonsense. If you buy it, you are either a Marxist and don’t limit your hatred of capitalism to just the insurance industry, or you don’t know anything about economics. To blame the ‘market’ for our problems is ridiculous – health care is nowhere near a ‘free market’.

What aggravates me most is that there are very few effective advocates for liberty to be heard. The ground is certainly tilted in the favor of the collectivists, and is unlikely to to be thwarted.  What I can say is that pursuing more of the policies that got us into this mess should give everyone great pause. As Einstein said, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

As a libertarian, all I can really do is sit on the sidelines – I have no political representation in government. I’m left waiting for the inevitable collapse of our economic system, hoping that we will be able to rebuild it with an eye towards individual liberty. Sadly, I think that day is coming sooner than most of you realize, but I’m not at all convinced that reason will prevail even then. We need to start thinking instead of yelling – but hey, that’s not nearly as much fun, right?

Technorati Tags: health care, libertarianism

Our congressional representatives swear an oath under God (don’t get me started about why God needs to be involved) to “… support, defend… and bear true faith and allegiance…” to our Constitution. Yet, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asked publicly under what constitutional authority congress could issue a mandate for U.S. citizens to purchase health care insurance, she responded. “Are you serious? Are you serious?”. This has been widely reported by the media that is actually concerned about the constitutionality of aspects of the current ‘health care reform’ initiative lurching it’s way through the hallowed halls of our congress. However, as usual, the short memory of the media only gives you half the story, and as a libertarian, I feel compelled to expound on it.

It turns out there was already a mandate in place to provide health care for all people in the U.S. In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs. If a hospital is unable to stabilize a patient within its capability, or if the patient requests, an appropriate transfer should be implemented.

The effect of this legislation is a mandate that health care providers treat many people free of charge. For a moment, let’s set aside the morality of such a law. This legislation provides a great insight about how the congress uses it’s power to create the social outcomes it desires, with no respect for the private ownership of property. Note that the law only constrains “Medicare-participating hospitals” – i.e.; the institutions under which Congress controls reimbursement through the Health Care Finance Administration (the federal bureaucracy that controls Medicare/Medicaid). In theory, a hospital could refuse care if it chose to not participate in Medicare but that is completely impractical, given the amount of reimbursement Medicare controls for health care. This slight of hand technically gets around the taking of private property capriciously, which would no doubt wouldn’t survive a Supreme Court challenge but in effect is the same.

It’s worth noting that this law has another unintended effect. Most uninsured people in this country know that if they find themselves in need of lifesaving care, that they will receive it, so when deciding whether or not to carry insurance coverage, some individual’s make the calculation that they indeed have de-facto catastrophic insurance coverage provided by the government already. Even worse, these folks don’t get preventative care resulting in the eventual treatment for many ailments costing much more then it might have been otherwise. But even this isn’t my key point.

The very construction of this law illuminates the limits of Congressional authority. It knew that it didn’t have the authority to make hospitals provide care – I mean, if it could do that, it could tell hotels that it couldn’t turn away guests in bad weather if they didn’t have the money to pay, right? That restaurants couldn’t refuse to serve food to the starving too – got it yet? The congress can’t just capriciously take one group of societies property and give it to another to suit it’s whimsy, regardless of the merit of the cause. It simply doesn’t have the power.

So, where does the authority of the federal government to mandate  individuals to purchase health insurance come from? It doesn’t come from the “general welfare clause” – this has been widely litigated and explored by our courts and is a settled matter. No, the Congress claims that this power comes from the “Interstate Commerce Clause”, giving them authority to regulate commerce between states. That’s it – that’s the thin reed of justification that this law rests upon. Now remember, I’m not discussing the merits of ‘health care reform’ – that is a different issue. My point is that if we are a nation governed by the rule of law rather than the whim of politicians, we need to ensure that our government is acting within its legal authority. Regardless of whether you agree with the interpretation of Interstate Commerce Clause, it’s certainly worth discussing and explaining, yes? The Speaker of the House should not react with incredulity when asked about the legal basis for a law congress intends to pass, and if she does, what does it reveal about the condition of our republic?

I’ll close with a rather lengthy quote from James Madison, a founder of our country and legislator in our first congress. He made this statement in 1792, during a debate about whether the constitution granted the federal government the right to ‘cut canals’ – (the congress ultimately decided it didn’t.)

“I, sir, have always conceived—I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived—it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, that those who ratified the Constitution conceived—that this is not an indefinite government, deriving its powers from the general terms (to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare) prefixed to the specified powers—but a limited government, tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms. “

“The language held in various discussions of this house is a proof that the doctrine (of implied open ended general welfare powers) in question was never entertained by this body. Arguments, wherever the subject would permit, have constantly been drawn from the peculiar nature of this government, as limited to certain enumerated powers, instead of extending, like other governments, to all cases not particularly excepted.”

“In short, sir, without going farther into the subject, which I should not have here touched at all but for the reasons already mentioned, I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America; and what inferences might be drawn, or what consequences ensue, from such a step, it is incumbent on us all to consider.” (James Madison, Speech on the U.S. House floor, 07 February 1792. Quote in: Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. 4, p.428-429)

Technorati Tags: constitution, health insurance mandate, liberty