Edmund Burke on American Colonial History

All this was done by England whilst England pursued trade and forgot revenue. You not only acquired commerce, but you actually created the very objects of trade in America; and by that creation you raised the trade of this kingdom at least fourfold. America had the compensation of your capital, which made her bear her servitude. She had another compensation, which you are now going to take away from her. She had, except the commercial restraint, every characteristic mark of a free people in all her internal concerns. She had the image of the British Constitution. She had the substance. She was taxed by her own representatives. She chose most of her own magistrates. She paid them all. She had in effect the sole disposal of her own internal government. This whole state of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken together, is certainly not perfect freedom; but comparing it with the ordinary circumstances of human nature, it was an happy and a liberal condition.

— Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation,” 19 April 1774.

A great speech. I am not a Burke partisan, but I admire his strategies. Burke is the great Humanist who formed the gentler side of Thomas Hobbes’ absolutism, noting in Reflections on the Revolution in France that Englishmen would rather die than exercise the right to hire and replace public officials.

This prediction was not quite… fulfilled, as you may have noted. From the same speech, he discusses George Grenville and the habits of office:

He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences,—a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. Passing from that study, he did not go very largely into the world, but plunged into business,—I mean into the business of office, and the limited and fixed methods and forms established there. Much knowledge is to be had, undoubtedly, in that line; and there is no knowledge which is not valuable. But it may be truly said, that men too much conversant in office are rarely minds of remarkable enlargement. Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their common order; but when the high-roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office can ever give. Mr. Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of human legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and many conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade of this country was greatly owing to law and institution, and not quite so much to liberty; for but too many are apt to believe regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. Among regulations, that which stood first in reputation was his idol: I mean the Act of Navigation. He has often professed it to be so. The policy of that act is, I readily admit, in many respects well understood. But I do say, that, if the act be suffered to run the full length of its principle, and is not changed and modified according to the change of times and the fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief, and frequently even defeat its own purpose.

Austrian Economists and Fellow Travelers

Sweet. The Ludwig von Mises site has photos of various economists. Above we see one Friedrich August Hayek, author of many substantive works, and one massive hit: The Road to Serfdom.

This sounds like the crappiest movie in the world. The characters are: first grade teacher (at a private school, not one of those public school losers), a biographer of George Bernard Shaw, a social worker, and a non-profit service lawyer.

Who are these awful little people? The teacher should be teaching art and science, but “is better known for his musical adaptations.” Uh-huh.

No machinists. No IT techs. No insurance agents. Just soft little people in soft little jobs; the only thing post-modern Hollywood knows. Oh, and hey: the box office was soft, too. Odd, that.

Harry "Keynes" Potter and the Mindless Automatons

Via The American Magazine, Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims won the Nobel prize in economics:

The state of the economy was set by the intersection of aggregate demand and aggregate supply curves. An adept policy maker could, by pulling the right levers and twisting the right knobs, shift these curves and thereby set the economy on the proper course. Implicitly, to such a policy mastermind, the economy was populated with individuals who acted in reliable, predictable ways.

Some are accusing Sargent and Sims of finally recognizing that people aren't rational. This is not what they mean: the old Keynesian model did not utilize rational actors, but robots who acted according to simplified models without self-correcting behavior. In fact, some people are ahead of the curve, predicting the economists, and some people, well, some few people never learn. People are not perfectly rational, but neither are they mindless automatons.

Obama's marginal counter-revolution

But why should we worry about them? Imagine for a moment that Buffett’s sentiments are fairly common and that even 19 out of 20 employers would just pay the higher taxes and only one would throw in the towel. What does it matter if there were only one tax-sensitive outlier in the bunch? That would be a mere 5 percent; should it really drive the whole conversation?

Why, yes… yes it should.

Clive Barker and the Dearthly Imagination

Anyone else read Clive Barker? I'm halfway through Imajica. Is there a reason why the fiendishly creative author of the Books of Blood, the most inventive horror since H.P. Lovecraft, has done nothing in The Great and Secret Show and Imajica but re-write Weaveworld, only not as well? Damn it, “In the Hills, the Cities” almost made my brain explode. Ian made me read it while he sat there so he could watch me experience the reading of it. Imajica makes me feel like I'm forever reading with the next clause pre-ringing in my head, already surfing the next sentence I haven't read yet.

(Not to mention Hellraiser, the single greatest re-imagining of Hell since Dante Alighieri. That is why an ex-girlfriend scorned sequel Pinhead in the Catholic church: the Cenobites were miles away from Christianity.)

Hitchens on “The Personal Is Political”

Christopher Hitchens on the most awful catchphrase ever:

As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as “anticlimax” began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself. People began to intone the words “The Personal Is Political.” At the instant I first heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was—cliché is arguably forgivable here—very bad news. From now on, it would be enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic “preference,” to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or to ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: “Speaking as a…” Then could follow any self-loving description. I will have to say this for the old “hard” Left: we earned our claim to speak and work. It would never have done for any of us to stand up and say that our sex or sexuality or pigmentation or disability were qualifications in themselves. There are many ways of dating the moment when the Left lost or—I would prefer to say—discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time that I was to see the sellout conducted so cheaply.

The Dead Horse theory

From the Steitz for Senate page, the Dead Horse theory:

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However, in government and education more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course....

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

US Congressional term limits

Recently on Facebook, I wrote:

Actually, I am opposed to a balanced budget amendment. Simply, I call it a “tax-hike amendment;” better by far to pass a “flat tax amendment:” if the “proles” want a 50% tax rate on the rich (I do not think the U.S. has many proles, nor do I think they want a rate this high), let them pay it, too. Under this amendment, any deviation from the flat tax would last 2 years and require a 3/5 majority in Congress to pass.

The idea is to make tax laws written for special interests more expensive. Only the broadest exemptions will be allowed (e.g., personal and dependent exemptions, &c.).

But someone asked about term limits. Will we weaken the Legislature against the bureaucracy if they are too low? Yes, but I have no idea how low that effect would begin. (Perhaps low term limits would simplify procedural rules, or not.)

That being said, I think 30 years is a good start on eliminating the Robt Byrds. Go to the Wikipedia page on the U.S. Senate members: click the small graphic under the column header “First took office.” We would eliminate 9 Senators: Inouye (D-HA), Leahy (D-VT), Lugar (R-IN), Hatch (R-UT), Levin (D-MI) (a sacrifice I will gladly make), Cochran (R-MS), Baucus (D-MT), Grassley (R-IA), Bingaman (D-MN). 5 Dems, 4 Repubs: 9% is not bad. We could also allow a Senator to serve less than half an extra term if raised to office in a special election.

The House should be lower, but how much? Let's try 28 as a start. Let's look at the House membership lost: Dingell (D-MI), Conyers (D-MI), Young (R-FL), Rangel (D-NY), Young (R-AK), Stark (D-CA), Miller (D-CA), Waxman (D-CA), Markey (D-MA), Killdee (D-MI), Dicks (D-WA), Rahall (D-WV), Lewis (R-CA), Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Petri (R-WI), Smith (R-NJ), Dreier (R-CA), Rogers (R-KY), Hoyer (D-MA), Frank (D-MA) (YES!), Hall (R-TX), Wolf (R-VA), Berman (D-CA), Burton (R-IN), Levin (D-MI), Ackerman (D-NY), Towns (D-NY), Kaptur (D-OH).

17 Dems, 11 Repubs. 6.43% of the total. Sadly, Frank would still have been around to cover Fannie and Freddie and get a job at the former for his then current butt-buddy. (I'm bisexual, I can say it.) So this amendment, as I noted, will not guarantee good government: we're basically eliminating deadwood.

Boehner is serving his 10th term and Pelosi was well under 28 years when she served. McConnell (who opposed McCain-Feingold) is fresh on his 5th term. McConnell could be replaced by Shelby, McCain, Hutchison, Kyl, Inhofe; all have 15+ years in the Senate right now, and more would accumulate that experience in the next 4+ years. Going back to the Nixon era, all Senate Majority Leaders were serving under 30 years during their leadership tenure, so leadership would not be affected.
 

Of Wine and Whiners

We read in Althouse some manufactured Talking Points Memo rage after Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) tablemate ordered a bottle of $300-plus wine. Ryan had a glass and insisted on paying his share. Please note this prevents Ryan from being indebted to this acquaintance, you'll be a step ahead of the game. (The Leftie and her Enraged Ovaries do not mention Pelosi One and the $100,000.00-plus liquor bill she racked up.)

Althouse notes:

TPM should be ashamed of itself passing along this embarrassing story and for the way it presented this material. In the middle of the piece, TPM informs us of Congressional ethics rules barring expensive gifts from lobbyists. I was thinking: Oh, maybe this is a serious problem. But if you keep reading, much further down, you see that Ryan paid for the meal with his own credit card, and TPM saw the receipt. Ridiculous! What hackery from the once-respectable Talking Points Memo!

Why is this so surprising? My mom listens to Rush Limbaugh religiously, so one day, when I read Josh of TPM babbling about how good he was to complain about Bush putting troops into Afghanistan, since righties were complaining about US involvement in Kosovo, I wrote him to tell him I had heard Limbaugh (mentioned specifically by TPM as one of these Cassandras) assuring his listeners not to be worried if the US military needed to put boots on the ground in the Balkans. His response? "Well, he probably said something else like it, so it doesn't really matter!"

Once a dirty, lying shitbag, forever a dirty, lying shitbag. Why so surprised?

Democratic Astroturf and false flag operations

I have just gotten some Democratic false flag astroturf in an email from some outfit calling itself the National Tea Party Alert. These people are busy trying to convince us that the Gipper loved tax hikes, just like Joe Biden. Email follows:

Throwing The Gipper Under The Bus

It's impossible to overstate both the importance and impact that President Ronald Reagan had on the modern conservative movement. Actually, one could be forgiven for definitively stating that Reagan was the founder of the modern conservative movement. The problem with holding such an exalted position is that it's easy for people on both sides of a debate to co opt your legacy for their own purposes.

Reagan is rightfully exalted for being the godfather of supply side economic theory. He didn't develop it (Economist Arthur Laffer did), nor did he even modify it, but he was certainly his most enthusiastic supporter (with former congressman Jack Kemp coming in a close second) and the economic growth that his policies helped create were unprecedented in American history.

The problem with the Reagan presidency is separating fact from fiction, and nowhere is this problem more evident than in the current debate over extending the national debt ceiling. House republicans, led by John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan have insisted that no tax increases are up for discussion, with Speaker Boehner saying, "...tax increases are unacceptable and are a nonstarter"

Oddly enough, the record shows that supply side cheerleader Ronald Reagan himself incorporated tax increases into his economic recovery plans, most famously into 1982's Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, though there were four more tax increases in the remaining six years of his presidency, with a total of $190 billion (in today's dollars) in revenue increases coming from those tax hikes. That's an amount significantly above what Vice President Biden is calling for during the recent deficit talks with GOP leaders.

In hindsight, one of Ronald Reagan's most enduring legacies was the economic recovery from the 1970's "malaise" and it's staggering, long-term positive impact on both our economy and our society as a whole. No one is doing Reagan's legacy any favors by misstating it's essential truths.

Ronald Reagan's revolution, despised and fought by, at the time, 95% of America's media establishment, was and is incomplete, and in the same way that America's revolution is incomplete. All men are not yet free. All are not guaranteed their rights, due by Nature and Nature's God, of life, liberty and property. Reagan famously said, "Better to get 80% of what you want now and go for the rest later." Reagan, working with a Democratic Congress after 1982, managed to rein in government growth. I appreciate the man for what he did, against all headwinds. But we must surpass the teacher, not repeat his mistakes and forced strategic retreats. Ronald Reagan is dead. Long live Reaganism.

And political death to tax-and-spend Leftists and con men.