Samizdata

There has been a lot of loose talk that it does not much matter if the Democrats take the House of Representatives, the Senate or both.

“President Bush will still have the veto” and/or “the Democrats will not want to raise taxes, or do other bad things, because this will ruin their chances in 2008”.

This talk assumes that President Bush will somehow turn into Captain Veto if the Democrats win – an assumption for which there is no evidence in George Bush’s record. It also ignores the fact that many of the tax rate cuts that have been made are temporary – i.e. unless there is a vote to make the cuts permanent taxes will go up automatically.

Such hopeful talk also ignores the power of the media and of academia: The Democrats are already talking about increasing taxes on ‘the rich’ and the media and academia will present any tax increase as ‘only’ a tax increase on the rich.

The Democrats also have planned a set of new regulations (for example regulations designed to make unions stronger – and thus undermine American industry and increase unemployment). The media will present all such regulations as ‘fair and just’ and academics (such as the ‘economist’ Paul Krugman) will rush to agree – just as they will rush to justify any tax increase.

People who think that “well the Republicans have not been much good, and the Democrats will not be able to do much harm – so it does not matter if they take Congress” are deluding themselves.

Even the ‘likely voter’ defense may not save the Republicans. As many people are fired up to vote by the state of the war in Iraq, and many conservative and libertarian minded people are upset with Republican failure to control government spending (although nonmilitary spending growth has been much lower than it has been in Britain).

With the elections only a couple of weeks away America may well be sleep walking over a cliff.

I can see why people have their doubts about celebrities-turned-politicians, but my goodness, it is hard to resist the appeal of someone as funny, and as sharp as Kinky Friedman (I love Americans’ names). Jesse Walker has a brief look at his campaign to be governor of the Lone Star State. He concludes that Friedman will do Texan voters a favour by annoying the usual political parties. My main doubt would be his ability as a manager, but then frankly how much worse could he be than a professional politician who has probably not done a hard day’s honest toil since leaving college?

He may not get to the governor’s mansion in Austin, but boy, the election will be fun to watch.

Am I the only person not to be surprised by the news that the US government’s extensive jihad against onine gambling has now culminated in outright prohibition?

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (which now only requires President Bush’s signature to become law) actually outlaws credit card payments or funds transfers from US citizens to ‘illegal’ internet gambling sites and also gives the US authorities draconian powers to extradite non-US citizens suspected of accepting or handling such payments from anywhere in the world.

Online gaming shares have plummeted as a result.

Of course, there are laudable moral reasons for these actions:

Senator Kyl has described online gambling as a unique threat, where “players can gamble 24 hours a day from the comfort of their home; children may play without sufficient age verification; betting with a credit card can undercut a player’s perception of the value of cash, leading to possible addiction and, in turn, to bankruptcy, crime, and suicide; and there is no enforcement commission, such as those that exist in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, to protect consumers from excessive losses or fraud.”

Or perhaps not. More likely is that this is good, old-fashioned protectionism dressed up in save-the-children type rubrics. The real problem is the British and European online gambling sites were rapidly eroding the profits of American casinos and I expect that the cost of buying a couple of senators is a mere trifle in comparison to the potential losses that this foreign ‘immoral’ gambling was destined to inflict.

I expect that the man behind the man behind the man will turn out to be some guy whose middle name is “the”.

“Undermine human dignity” – this is the sort of language that the Geneva Convention is written in. Very noble to want to stop such things no doubt, but what do the words actually mean? Is it undermining human dignity to make enemy captives dress in prison uniforms? Some of the IRA prisoners in Ulster certainly thought so – and starved themselves to death to make their point.

How about being questioned by a women – Islamic prisoners may well hold that to be undermining their dignity. What is a tough interrogation and what is torture? Should the line be left vague (perhaps to be decided by some international “court” hearing a case against American interrogators later) or should the line be set down clearly in law in advance?

If the line should be explained, in law, in advance – what words should be used? President Bush suggests using the words already used in the anti-torture statute passed by Congress last year. Those words were thought up by Senator John McCain and the opposition to using these words (indeed any words) to define what the vague Geneva Convention means is being led by – Senator John McCain.

The above is what is going in Washington DC in relation to the Geneva Convention. But you are not likely to see such a report on any British television station, or hear on any British radio station or read it in any British newspaper (no matter how ‘conservative’), as far as the British media are concerned President Bush is a beast (as well as a moron) who wants to torture people and hates the Geneva Convention, and Senator McCain is a saint.

As for the arguments of Senator McCain and company – they are uniformly worthless.

“President Bush wants to modify the Geneva Convention” – no he does not, he wants to define what its vague words mean in terms of law.

“The United States does not define treaties in terms of its laws” – wrong, it has done so many times.

“The world will hate us if we do this” – the “world” (i.e. the leftist establishment) has hated the United States since President Truman decided to be Joe Stalin’s door mat. And this is not going to change – no matter what the United States does or does not do.

“If we do this American prisoners will be treated badly by their captors” – American prisoners will be tortured and killed regardless of whether Islamic terrorists are put into orange jumpsuits or whatever else is done. The idea that by being nice to the Islamic terrorists (or whoever) they will be influenced to be nice to Americans is crap.

If Americans do not wish to be tortured or killed they had better avoid being captured, nothing that America does or does not do will influence their treatment in any way.

Of course, you are not likely to see, hear or read this in the British media either.

Recently the Democrat Mayor of Chicago (Richard Daley) vetoed the higher minimum wage law proposed by the (Democrat) city council and they have failed to overturn his veto.

The proposal was quite wrong headed, both because it discriminated against large employers (such as Walmart) who were the only employers who were to pay the new ‘living wage’, and on the general grounds that (all other factors being equal) increases in minimum wage law (over the amount of money already being paid) levels cost jobs (in accordance with the law of demand).

However, the Democrats are making great play in the mid-term elections with both Walmart bashing and with minimum wage level law increases generally (if they get their way, most States will have higher minimum wage level laws than the Federal level) and for the best known Democrat Mayor in the country to veto such an increase (and an increase linked to Walmart bashing) both points to the absurdity of Democrat policies and shows the Democrats to be disunited as well.

Meanwhile in California the Democrats are pressing for universal government health-care (basically a version of the plan Mrs Clinton proposed in the early 1990’s) and the Republican Governor is pledged to veto the proposal.

This may seem to be a winner for the Democrats, but people who support universal government health-care (with all the increase in taxes, health rationing and the decline in the quality of health care that it means) would vote Democrat anyway. Whereas many Republicans were considering not voting for ‘Arnie’ on the grounds of his wild spending on building projects. The Democrats in California have given the Republicans (and independents and moderate Democrats) a reason to turn out and vote – vote against the Democrats.

Also by beating the drum for more government health care (on top of Medicare, Medicaid, and all the rest of it) the Democrats risk turning attention to places where it has already been tried. Such as Louisiana (where the long established system of government hospitals are a terrible mess) or Tennessee where even the Democratic party Governor has admitted that ‘TennCare’ did not turn out too well.

If they go on like this the Democrats could well save the Republican House of Representatives. Otherwise the Republicans’ wild spending (on the ‘entitlement programs’ and other such) might well have led to many pro-liberty voters staying at home (giving the Democrats the House, if not the Senate).

They would probably be better off just unplugging Hollywood but:

California is set to introduce tough new legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions under a deal reached by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It would make California the first US state to impose a cap on expulsion of carbon dioxide and other gases.

And when their energy bills start to climb, Californians will blame (a) George Bush and (b) the “so-called free market” while demanding state intervention and subsidies.