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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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.
Interesting story out of Oregon on their state health insurance scheme. Much to the relief of Oregon taxpayers, no doubt, some 40,000 people have dropped out of the Oregon Health Plan program, which provides state-subsidized health insurance.
The reason they dropped out? I don’t know, really, but it is interesting that the newspaper casts the story entirely in terms of the poor folk being dropped from the program. I say the participants dropped out because they apparently chose not to pay the premiums, which are as low as $6.00 per month. The response of “advocates” for the poor is just priceless.
Advocates for the poor say the premiums are too expensive for some people and the government may have overestimated the ability of people to mail a check.
“It’s an enormous barrier,” said Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action Committee. “Let alone the $6, there is the whole issue of writing a check or getting a money order, putting it in an envelope with a stamp and putting it in the mail to this place in Portland that must receive it by the due date.”
$6.00 a month too expensive? Give me a break. This sounds to me like a classic example of “I can’t afford it” as code for “I have other things I would rather spend the money on.” If you forego a single trip per month to McDonald’s, you will save enough to pay a $6.00 monthly premium.
Really, though, the notion that poor people are incapable of mailing a check has got to be the last word in condescension and infantilization. Believe me, anyone who can fill out the paperwork to qualify for Medicaid or other state-paid health insurance (or find someone to do it for them) is capable of writing a check or getting a money order and putting it in the mail.
I’m not sure what larger point this story illustrates, to tell you the truth. Perhaps the corrosive effect of the welfare state on its recipients. Perhaps that, if you support the welfare state, sooner or later you will start to sound like a total ninny.
Thanks to OpinionJournal for the link.
Herewith inaugurating a look at the “Annals of Bureaucracy”, a sad tale, via our friends at Hit & Run, of the government school bureaucracy in action.
Applications and letters of interest from idealistic teachers continue to pour into inner-city school systems across the country, and many candidates, like Cochran, are being ignored or contacted much too late to do any good, according to an unusually detailed study by the nonprofit New Teacher Project.
A new report on the study, “Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High-Quality Teachers Out of Urban Schools,” concludes that those school systems alienate many talented applicants because of rules that protect teachers already on staff and because of slow-moving bureaucracies and budgeting delays.
“As a result, urban districts lose the very candidates they need in their classrooms . . . and millions of disadvantaged students in America’s cities pay the price with lower-quality teachers than their suburban peers,” wrote researchers Jessica Levin and Meredith Quinn, who were given rare access to the inner workings of school districts in four U.S. cities.
It was standard procedure to let impressive applications sit in file drawers for months, the researchers found, while the candidates, needing to get their lives in order, secured work elsewhere. One district, for example, received 4,000 applications for 200 slots but was slow to offer jobs and lost out on top candidates.
It goes on and on, enumerating the ways unions, administrators, and legislators all contribute to a system that seems designed to insure that the best teachers do not get anywhere near the neediest kids.
President Bush just nominated a judge for elevation to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that I think I can really get behind. The DC Court is arguably the “first among equals” of the federal appellate courts that function one level below the US Supreme Court. Judge Janice Brown has had some very interesting things to say that I think many of a libertarian bent will find appealing:
In Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court (1999), for instance, she dissented from a decision upholding a rent control ordinance, declaring that “[a]rbitrary government actions which infringe property interests cannot be saved from constitutional infirmity by the beneficial purposes of the regulators.”
In a dissent in San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco (2002), which upheld the city’s sweeping property restrictions, Justice Brown expanded on that theme. “Theft is still theft even when the government approves of the thievery,” she declared. “The right to express one’s individuality and essential human dignity through the free use of property is just as important as the right to do so through speech, the press, or the free exercise of religion.”
She is, of course, rabidly opposed by the Democrats and by some “social” conservatives. Unless Bush is willing to go to the mattresses for her, she will likely be filibustered by the Senate Democrats and denied a seat on the DC Court. Still, the nomination is good news.
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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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