We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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George Will, of all people, plants a couple of barbs in the leviathan in this column.
On May 24, 1945, just 16 days after V-E Day, Britain’s socialists were sanguine. A Labour Party firebrand, Aneurin Bevan, anticipating the Labour victory that occurred five weeks later, said privation would be a thing of the past because essentials would soon be abundant: “This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
But socialism rose to the challenge. Two years later, the coal industry having been nationalized and food still rationed, coal and fish were scarce. There are indeed some things that only government can do.
The segue into campaign finance reform is well done:
The government, by its restrictions on the amounts and conduits of political giving, has turned something that exists in wild abundance in America — money — into a scarcity. As the postwar Labour government did with coal and fish.
Speaking of fish, as in barrels, shooting in, the punchline is of course the hypocrisy of candidates bleating against the exercise of free speech and free association, via campaign contributions, of their opponents, while doing exactly what they decry.
So now [Dean] says that unless he abandons public financing, his money will be gone when the primaries are over. Then Bush could spend to speak to the nation all summer, while he, Dean, would fall silent until after the Democratic convention, when he would get a fresh infusion of public money.
But notice that Dean’s argument concedes what campaign finance regulators deny — that money is tantamount to speech, and therefore limits on political money limit political speech.
The fact that political speech, the very adamantine core of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and association, is very highly regulated, with the blessing (to date) of the Supreme Court, is perhaps the single most damning indictment of the utility of written Constitutions as a protector of individual rights.
James Lileks’ Bleat, usually devoted primarily to domestic bliss, today gets a little screedy. James has peeked inside the sausage factory that is the US Senate.
The spleen, she hurts. I think it had to do with listening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.
Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!
There’s more, on such perennial faves as the French, Michael Moore, and the angry anti-war lot. I started to excerpt, but when your cursor is hovering over “Select All” it is time to just say “read the whole thing.”
Well, well, well. The usually flaky and oft-overturned 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (the regional appellate court in the US that includes California and sits one notch below the Supreme Court) has lobbed a high hard one at the Supremes, a direct challenge to one of the linchpins of jurisprudence permitting the federal government to exercise almost unlimited “police” powers.
The 9th Circuit just ruled that the federal government has no power to outlaw homemade machine guns, because homemade guns are not in interstate commerce. The extraordinarily broad readings of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which permits the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, were adopted in a New Deal era case in which a farmer challenged federal rules dictating how much wheat he could grow. The case was beautifully positioned, with the wheat in question being fed to the farmer’s cattle and thus never leaving his farm, much less entering into commerce at all, never mind interstate commerce. The Supreme Court would have none of it, though, and ruled that this wheat was nonetheless in interstate commerce and thus subject to federal control.
Under this reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause, I don’t see how a homemade machine gun is not in interstate commerce. After all, it affects the global supply and demand for machine guns in exactly the same way that the wheat did. This case mounts a pretty direct challenge to one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever. Its a rare day when I root for the 9th Circuit, but all things come around in time, I suppose.
The Volokhs have a little more detail. The case (or another on the same principle) will almost certainly have to be taken up by the Supremes, as there is now a conflict between appellate courts on the issue.
The Instapundit, that wag, notes that, while he hasn’t read the opinion, any position is defensible with enough homemade machine guns!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
– 1st Amendment of the US Constitution
As I prefer to argue matters from first principles rather than on the basis of falsely self-legitimising artefacts of state such as legal documents, I rarely discuss, much less quote, the much vaunted US Constitution. Yet I think any reasonable reading of those lines above would say that the objective at hand when it was written was to safeguard the freedom to express views, particularly political views, in any manner, so long as it was done peaceably.
So I can only assume that Democratic Party Presidential wannabe Wes Clark1 takes the view that speech and press mean literally spoken word and mechanical press, and thus the Amendment does not actually refer to expression, and thus does not cover anything not literally speech or printed media produced with a honking great press, such as the Internet or anything else not literally speech or press. How else does one explain his support for prosecuting people who engage in political expression by desecrating US flags?
Of course the argument often used is that burning a US flag pisses off some people in the USA so much that it is likely to cause violence. Funny how the same people who make that argument usually also oppose the same argument when it is applied to so-called ‘hate speech’… but being a left winger, I guess Wes Clark is at least being consistent in wanting political control over unpopular forms of expression unlike the more inconsistent conservative ‘hand on heart’ supporters who want to turn the US flag into an inviolate icon whilst insisting on the right to call a fag a fag and a spick a spick.
1 = British readers will be fascinated to know this is the same clown who wanted to start a shooting war between Russia and NATO in June, 1998. This is the guy who will save us from ‘that madman and threat to world peace, George Bush’. Aiyiyi… 
Paul Staines sees the same problem as David Carr… George Soros has gone off the deep end
I have a lot of respect for George Soros, not because he’s a muliti-billionaire, but because of his huge financial support for his Open Society foundations and for his articulating the intriguing concept of ‘reflexivity’ in financial markets. I found the philosophical excursions of the former student of Karl Popper interesting, even if professional philosophers tended to find them embarrassing. But his 2002 book George Soros on Globalization confirmed what was pretty clear from his 1998 The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered. He was getting messianic and becoming like a bootlegger turned temperance campaigner. Soros would deny that he is anti-capitalist, he is he says against market fundamentalism. Ironic given his phenomenal success in unregulated currency markets.
For the last decade Soros has been preaching a third way for international finance – seeking to update the international financial architecture is an intellectually respectable position. Keynes’ Bretton Woods structures have worked more or less, they may have even prevented a few disasters, but they can definitely be improved upon. Interventionist multi-lateral institutions intervening in markets to maintain the liberal market order may or may not work. After a little over half a century of experimentation it is hard to tell. The IMF, World Bank et al may have made things worse more often than they have been the cavalry coming into save the global economy. Sometimes, his argument goes, international capitalism gets so manically out of control it needs to be saved from itself. The jury is out on that. Soros is, in the tradition of Keynes, not an enemy of capitalism, but someone who wants to radically temper it.
Fair enough, it’s not crypto-Marxism, he means well, he may even have a point. But now according to the Washington Post, Soros is devoting his efforts to defeating Bush in 2004. So far he has given $15m towards anti-Bush campaigns, “It is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death.” He goes on to say “America, under Bush, is a danger to the world, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”
I think at 74, Soros is losing his grip, his self proclaimed ‘Soros Doctrine’ is delusional, his one-man foreign policy was fine when he was promoting democracy but is overstretched trying to re-fashion geo-politics. Now he is getting down and dirty in partisan presidential politics he may come to regret it.
Speculation, philosophy and philanthropy are much more gentlemanly affairs, the Republicans are already claiming he has bought the Democratic party. Soros is in danger of jeopardising his place in posterity. Shame.
Paul Staines
This sounds exactly like the kind of thing that should have an army of conspiracy-theorists hacking away at their keyboards in a veritable orgy of rumour-mongering. Are they? Will they?
After all, it is not every day that a gazillionaire, international financier buys up a political wing of an entire country:
George Soros, one of the world’s wealthiest financiers and philanthropists, has declared that getting George Bush out of the White House has become the “central focus” of his life, and he has put more than $15m (£9m) of his own money where his mouth is.
“It is the central focus of my life,” he told the Washington Post in an interview published yesterday, after announcing a donation of $5m to a liberal activist organisation called MoveOn.org. The gift brings the total amount in donations to groups dedicated to Mr Bush’s removal to $15.5m.
Other pledges of cash have gone to America Coming Together (ACT), an anti-Bush group that proposes to mobilise voters against the president in 17 battleground states. Mr Soros and a friend, Peter Lewis, the chairman of a car insurance company, promised $10m.
Mr Soros has also helped to bankroll a new liberal think-tank, the Centre for American Progress, to be headed by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta, which will aim to counter the rising influence of neo-conservative institutions in Washington.
Excuse me, but ‘liberal’? MoveOn.org are hardcore socialists who are about as ‘liberal’ as Fidel Castro.
The 74-year-old investor, who made a fortune betting against the pound in the late 80s and against the dollar this year, is to lay out the reasons for his detestation of the Bush administration in a book to be published in January, titled The Bubble of American Supremacy, a polemic which he has half-jokingly dubbed the ‘Soros Doctrine’.
Which means that he at least half-serious (and that is generally serious enough).
Of course, Mr Soros is free to do what he pleases with his own money but is this plutocratic takeover of the American left really all about George Bush? Or are there more lavish plans afoot? Mr. Soros has mind-boggling amounts of money, an army of political footsoldiers at his disposal and a ‘doctrine’. All he needs to complete the picture is a monocle and a persian cat.
I am always rather embarrassed when I find myself in the position of defending George Bush. He is a machine politician of the kind I have learned to mistrust on principle. But looking at the respective profiles of these two Georges, which one sounds more like a demagogue?
update: ‘AK’ has sent us a very… revealing image!
click for larger image
The Drug ‘War’ continues to dement US society in new and innovative ways that even a cynic such as myself find hard to credit. This is truly staggering:
Gun-toting police burst into a South Carolina high school, ordering students to lie down in hall ways as they searched for drugs. The commando-style raid has parents questioning the wisdom of police tactics. The raid occurred Wednesday at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, S.C. Surveillance video obtained by CBS Affiliate WCSC in Charleston shows the police waving their guns and searching lockers as students lie flat on their stomachs or sides. The school’s principal defends the dramatic sweep, caught on the school’s surveillance tape. Police came into the school with guns at the ready, ordered all students to lie on the floor and then handcuffed anyone who apparently didn’t comply quickly enough.
I am sorry, but some square headed jerks in blue shirts start waving guns around a bunch of children who are just going about their business at school, and it is reported that parents are “questioning the wisdom of police tactics”? Questioning the wisdom of police tactics? To quote that wit and sage Eddy Murphy, get the fuck outa here. I would be looking for some heads-on-spikes if a child of mine was subjected to that sort of treatment. How this incident has not resulted in angry mobs in the streets throwing rocks is beyond me. What does it take to really piss these people off?
So… attention all parents in Goose Creek: are you starting to have second thoughts about the wisdom of entrusting your children to state ‘care’ yet? Unbelievable.
And now class, today’s important lesson:
The state is not your friend.
Any questions?
via Catallarchy.net
It seems likely that we will soon see a resolution of the government’s prosecution of Martha Stewart. Aside from the leaks from the negotiations regarding a possible plea deal, the most reliable of all possible omens has been sighted: Barbara Walters will conduct one of her patented powder-puff interviews with Martha.
From day one, I have been saying, based on my rusty recollections of securities law, that the feds have no case for insider trading against Martha because she is not an insider. I was delighted to read this article confirming my suspicion that the whole Martha Stewart thing has been an abuse of power by headline hungry New York lawyers and DC regulators.
You have regulators continuing to apply a legal theory on insider trading that has been repeatedly rejected by the courts, and which is ungrounded from any public policy other than class envy. You have prosecutors skipping over a whole raft of more culpable people to target Martha because they know they will get better headlines from attacking her.
It is interesting to note that, even under their rejected and discredited overbroad theory of insider trading, the feds were unable to put together a case against Martha, and are not pursuing insider trading charges.
What, then, is Martha being charged with?
The most serious criminal charge against her is not perjury or insider trading but securities fraud, based on the fact that she denied to the press, personally and through her lawyers, that she had engaged in insider trading. This was done, the feds say, not for the purpose of clearing her name, but only to prop up the stock price of her own publicly traded company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. In other words, her crime is claiming to be innocent of a crime with which she was never charged.
The whole disgusting saga reads like a textbook example of abuse of power by regulators and prosecutors.
A few days ago I came across this in a post by The Dissident Frogman. An online boycott targeting companies that would buy advertising during the planned mini-series about Ronald Reagan broadcast by CBS. Those wishing to support could join the battle by signing up for email alert informing them which companies advertise on the CBS series.
Today, I saw the news that the mini-series has been cancelled. CBS said the four-hour final version of the film did not present a balanced portrayal of Mr Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and that proposed cuts did not address those concerns.
Over the past week, CBS has been under relentless attack on talk radio and the Internet, and boycottcbs.com had signed up over 100,000 members. It has also been speculated that the network had bowed to pressure from Washington where it is entangled in a contentious battle with the House and Senate over the relaxation of media ownership rules. So, is it a ‘victory’ for internet grassroots or just the usual political quid pro quo?
George Bush, in the upcoming election, will take at least 45 States. To a 70% confidence factor, he will sweep all but his Democratic opponent’s home State. The reasons for this are as one might expect:
- Even the liberal media and Democrats in Congress are beginning to admit the war on terror overseas is going well.
- All the contenders for the Democratic nomination, with the exception of Joe Lieberman, who’s candidacy looks quite shaky, are turning strongly away from the center.
- With no need to spend any money on a primary campaign at all, Bush will go into the general election with an unprecedented war chest, which may exceed $170,000,000.
- Bush’s one possible Achilles’ heel, the economy, is showing strong signs of recovery.
In a press conference yesterday, I heard President Bush proclaim (and he is likely correct) that the increased propensity of terrorist factions within Iraq to perpetrate ever more vicious attacks on ever softer targets is evidence that, like a wounded and dying beast, they are lashing out in their death throws. My words, not his.
We are seeing similar behavior from terrorist factions within the United States government – those promoting and carrying out the Evil War on Drugs. With both their mantra and their life’s work coming increasingly under question, and unable to strike any significant blow against their enemy’s core, they have turned their attentions more and more towards its soft periphery, and proceed to attack it in an increasingly vicious manner.
The most glaring example of this is the Justice department’s ‘Operation Pipe Dreams’, and its selectively harsh enforcement against actor and comedian Tommy Chong. → Continue reading: Free Tommy Chong
Bruce Bartlett has an interesting perspective at National Review Online on when and how the next round of tax increases will be foisted on the American public. First, he reviews the legacy of that famous tax-cutting President, Ronald Reagan.
The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect. According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today’s economy.
Then, he looks at how past tax increases have been foisted on the US.
But when all the political and economic elites of this country gang up on a president to raise taxes, history shows that they always get what they want. Indeed, they were even able to get Bush’s father to raise taxes in 1990, even though his political advisers knew that it would likely lead to his defeat in 1992, which it did.
How do the elites break down presidential resistance to tax increases? They do so by promising the moon. Tax increases, they say, will lead to huge reductions in interest rates, which will power economic growth and reduce unemployment. The rich only pay them anyway, which makes the president look like a populist. And tax increases are the price that must be paid to get spending cuts.
This last point is especially laughable.
Actually, all the points are laughable, but the last one is the worst. Giving someone who is overspending a big raise is the best way to cut back on their spending, right? How dumb do they think we voters are?
Pretty dumb, obviously. Too bad the voters as a class don’t do anything to prove them wrong, like voting the duplicitous bastards out.
The article ends by noting that:
It will be interesting to see how Bush reacts when his staff tells him that taxes need to be raised.
Very interesting indeed. President Bush has shown no spine whatsoever on domestic issues, with the sole exception of his tax cut. I will predict that he stood up for his tax cut because his father lost his reelection bid due to a tax increase. After next year’s election, when he is in his final term (assuming he wins), I don’t see any reason to believe that President Bush will resist the pressure for a tax increase.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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