Libertarian Thoughts on the Government “Shutdown”

First off, it’s not really a shutdown. At best, it’s a slight shutdown. Only a small fraction of government workers are sent home and only a fraction of government activities are reduced or stopped. I am not aware of any regulations or taxes that will cease. Worse, it’s not clear that we will come through this paying less net taxes. Government workers may well be getting a paid vacation, depending on what Congress does.

In other words, this shutdown is hardly libertarian in the end- certainly nothing to get too excited about. We’ll have to see what happens. At the same time, it doesn't seem to be anti-libertarian. And the longer it lasts, the more ridiculous media and government hysteria will look. We frankly don’t miss what is shut down as much as they would like us to. And the only reason Americans will miss it at all is because the state has monopolized some services we want, not allowing them to be provided in the private sector.

Republicans, including Rand Paul, sadly want to fund all of the government except Obamacare. Anyone that wants even a small move towards libertarianism is foolish to put their hope in the GOP. The party is nowhere near ready to deliver anything except more government.

It is, however, not accurate to hold Obama and the Democrats blameless for the shutdown, as many try to do. The fact is, Republicans have offered to fund just about everything and the Democrats have taken up the role of obstructionists and absolutely refused any compromise. Republicans have even offered to reduce their demands but the Democrats won’t budge from my way or the highway. An objective look at this situation leaves the majority of responsibility for the shutdown on the shoulders of Democrats.

Every talking point offered by the Democrats crumbles easily, usually by flipping it around. The GOP is holding us “hostage”, they say. Yeah, just like Democrats are holding us “hostage”, by preferring shut down over giving up even part of Obamacare. But Obamcare is a “law”, they say. It’s also the law the House can fund what it wants. But funding the government is too important and should never be connected to other agendas. Cute opinion, but it can be, so deal with reality. If funding the government is so important you wouldn't prevent it over not getting everything you want on Obamacare.

Now that Republicans have gone this far, they had better go all the way and actually get something in return. If they cave now, they did the shutdown for nothing. The longer Democrats refuse negotiation, the worse they will look. If Republicans have any political smarts they will wait and get something out of this. Hopefully, they manage to get something libertarian, even if just a delay of Obamacare.

As for really shutting down the government, we will accomplish that one mind at a time. Ron Paul’s new curriculum and book is another exciting development in that process.

Democrats: Delusional and Destructive

In my last post I questioned the point of being a Republican, since the record shows nothing but increasing government power for decade after decade. Republicans always promise “smaller government”, but clearly are not delivering. In this post I will turn my attention to the Democrats.

The only good thing about Democrats is they aren’t very dishonest about their goals. They say they want to grow the government, and they do just that. Actually, no; they are dishonest too. They were supposed to be the party to stand for civil liberties and less militarism. This illusion has enabled them to get away with the opposite, institutionalizing radical republican policies are introducing new extreme policies, including codifying indefinite detention, due-process-free assassination of American citizens, and war without any Congressional approval.

So maybe there is nothing good about the Democrats. One would surely think so after considering what happened at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Someone went around asking various delegates and other attendees if they would support a federal ban on corporate profits. Repeat, a federal ban on corporate profits. Easy, that proposal was roundly rejected, right? Wrong. About a quarter of them said yes. Another quarter said meh, let’s go halfway and just cap profits. It’s stunning that so many Democrats are willing to embrace such an extreme, idiotic idea without thinking at all.

This episode highlights the where Democrats are most delusional. Democrats and economics are like water and oil. What they want is destructive to everyone, including the people they always talk about helping: the poor, the middle class, seniors, college students, women, African Americans, and all other groups they pander to. Democrats do help some people, though; and ironically, it’s the rich (or some of them, anyway) and big business. A perfect example of this is the minimum wage- which outlaws jobs for those with the least skills and eliminates some competition for those higher up the ladder.

The Democrat’s concept of liberty is a confusion of liberty with the freedom that comes from affluence. They think it’s about equality and having enough to enjoy some minimum standard of living. I have nothing against these ideas but they are not what liberty is.

There is no room for real private property in Democrat world, where a massive, centralized, hyper-interventionist state is needed for survival. For them, it’s even okay for the government to prevent a business from selling a 20 oz. drink to a customer. Which just serves to highlight that nothing is off limits, in principle they have conceded absolute power to the state. Their complaints about people wanting to end their sacred ‘right’ to kill the unborn rings hollow for this very reason, not to mention the question of whether abortion is murder (it is). “It’s her body”, they say. Well, it’s her restaurant, too.

Democrats won’t like this post and will disagree with the adjectives I describe their ideas with, but it is fair commentary. Maybe I should have been friendlier? No, sorry, not with what they are doing to us. Democrats, your delusional ideology is destroying America.

What’s the solution? Democrats are unlikely to change their minds, so we should just agree to disagree. Don’t force your ideas on us through the government. Do what you want to yourselves, and leave the rest of us alone. Then I’ll have much more respect for you.

DOJ Memo Justifying Assassination of American Citizens Analyzed

Glenn Greenwald has published an important piece analyzing the White House’s attempt to justify its claim to powers of assassinating American citizens. It’s just incredible that so many Democrats and Republicans are silent or supportive of Obama and/or this extreme, dangerous policy of his. As delusional as the average voter and partisan voter is, up till recently I would have expected at least this sort of policy to face significant opposition.

This just goes to show how entirely partisan Democrats were being in their opposition to Bush’s unconstitutional actions. And Republicans’ minimal opposition is sure to dry up as soon as the next Republican enters office. Only libertarians and a tiny minority of others on the ‘left’ (like Greenwald) and ‘right’ are consistently standing against this trashing of a long tradition of critical checks on government powers .

Anyone that continues to support Obama and his ilk is an enemy of liberty and a supporter of present and, by creating precedent, future tyranny.

Democrats Work for the 1%

Democrats like to portray themselves as being for the "99%" while painting Republicans as being for the "1%". In reality both parties primarily work for the elite; however, yesterday, the Republicans acted in the interest of the people while a majority of House Democrats did the opposite.

Glenn Greenwald has a great piece "Protectors of Wall Street" out this morning. Here's the portion on auditing the fed:

If you believe the Federal Reserve has done a fine job of managing monetary policy and trust it to continue to exert vast power with no accountability or transparency, then you are probably content with the status quo. But yesterday, “a powerful left-right coalition” in the House of Representatives — defying the Fed as well as a likely White House veto — voted overwhelmingly to enact Rep. Ron Paul’s bill to subject the Fed’s monetary policy to audits by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan and independent congressional agency. As Dennis Kucinich, one of 89 Democrats to vote for the bill, put it: “It’s time that we stood up to the Federal Reserve that right now acts like some kind of high, exalted priesthood, unaccountable to democracy.” 

Despite the large bipartisan House majority in favor of the bill, it is almost certain, as Reuters put it, “to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.” That’s because “Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, at one time expressed support for an audit — though he reportedly has changed his mind.” Indeed, despite substantial Democratic support for the bill (including some from the progressive wing, such as Kucinich, Jerry Nadler and Raul Grijalva), “every top Democratic leader [in the House] voted against the bill, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.” As former Alan Grayson aide Matt Stoller documented yesterday, Democratic leaders did not merely oppose the bill but actively whipped against it, meaning they sought to pressure caucus members to stay in line and oppose it; but as he observes: “The Democratic leaders, despite whipping, barely got a majority of the caucus to vote no. This is a massive failure on their part, and shows how weak they are.” 

It was this same left-right coalition, led by Paul and joined by liberal Democrats such as Alan Grayson, that succeeded in enacting an Audit the Fed bill back in 2010. Even though that 2010 bill was substantially weakened by the same forces that oppose the bill now — the Fed, the White House, and party leadership — that audit, once completed, “revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations” and independently showed that the Fed ignored rules to aid the largest banks. Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose watered-down Audit the Fed amendment is what passed in the Senate in 2010, said this about the audit revelations:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. . . . “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

The argument has always been that the Fed must be able to act with independence and secrecy and that transparency would undermine its credibility and lead to political interference in monetary policy; especially now, the ostensible concern is that Republicans will impede necessary measures. But as Stoller points out, none of the parade of horribles about which the Fed warned resulted from the 2010 audit, and more to the point, the Fed — prime enablers of banks, crony capitalism and oligarchy — has proven that it deserves neither the trust nor the credibility which it had previously commanded. It’s remarkable to watch the Democratic Party become its most devoted defenders. As Stoller said about yesterday’s vote: “It’s so tiresome to see the Democratic leadership take the side of Wall Street, over and over and over.”

 Needless to say the Republicans are essentially as bad as the Democrats in general. But it's a myth that they work for the elite more than the Democrats.