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I thought our readers might wish to celebrate the end of a very long and arduous road that Carla Howell and her friends have trod. I have heard they have just passed the last hurdle and their initiative to end the income tax in Massachusetts will appear on the ballot this fall.
If you are in Massachusetts, help spread the news. This is your chance to roll back the State like it has never been rolled before.
Get out there and give the Massachusetts government a good extra hard kick in the goolies for us here at Samizdata!
In 2004 anti-leftists were determined to prevent the Democrats capturing the Presidency. “No Child Left Behind” and all the rest of the Bush’s absurd wild spending (opposed by John McCain and a some other Republicans) were forgotten about. Even Saddam turning out not to have stockpiles of WMDs (although, yes, he had plans to get them) was downplayed by people trying to prevent a President Kerry, and lots of evidence of serious mismanagement of the war in Iraq was ignored (apart from by McCain and a few others). Total focus was on winning the election.
However, even if Senator Kerry had won – the Republicans would still have controlled Congress. Now in 2008 there is the most leftist leadership of House and Senate there has ever been. Speaker Pelosi (who has shown that the “Blue dog” moderate Democrats are either a myth or a joke) and her friends in the House (such as Barney Frank). And a Senate in the hands of people like Senator Durbin – with pathetic “coal makes you sick” Harry Reid acting as front man.
Yet no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats – indeed a Democrat whose record and background is of the hard left.
Total power over every part of government (from the FCC to the IRS) via control over the Executive and the Legislature – and power over the appointment of judges. And there is no focus – no will to prevent it happening.
“But they are corrupt, Paul”.
Someone can be corrupt and still work for a cause.
For example Senator Dodd is corrupt (and in the most old fashioned sweet heart loan from a corporation way), but this is not stopping him putting a housing bill into law that will send yet more millions upon millions of tax Dollars to leftist activist groups. Think how much more the left will be able to do when they have total power.
Or stay as you are and do not think – after all thinking about it might mean it would occur to you that you should do something.
I make a point of looking at the Economist each week, in order to see what this part of the establishment are thinking. I can not normally stand to read it for than a couple of minutes (as it makes me feel unclean), but that is enough time to find some utter absurdity with which amuse people.
However, this week I think I have come upon the worst Economist article of all time:
The title, featured on the front cover, is “McCain’s lurch to the right”… For those who do not know British “political speak”, “lurch to the right” is what the Labour party (and so on) have long said whenever a Conservative party politician gives any sign of not agreeing with everything the BBC and Guardian newspaper hold to be correct.
However, in the case of John McCain the Economist goes overboard.
First he is, as normal with the Economist, damned with faint praise – for example we are told that although it “may be wrong-headed” he does genuinely believe in the right of individuals to own firearms – so at least he is an honest lunatic. We are to forget the basis of freedom in the right of freeman to be armed, in both Classical Civilization and in English (and other Germanic) Common Law – only a few insane Americans believe in the right to keep and bear arms.
But McCain is worse than wrong-headed – he is also a liar.
For example, he has “recently” been saying that there should only be immigration reform after the borders of the United States are secured – which everyone knows is impossible.
Actually it is not a recent “lurch to the right” as McCain has been saying this (over and over again) for more than a year. And everyone clearly does not include the vast majority of Americans who support securing the borders.
On taxation the evil McCain now supports the Bush tax rate cuts – which he once wisely opposed (no mention of John McCain also opposing the Bush spending increases of course), and the crazy man even wants more tax cuts.
The Economist of course does not mention that the American tax code is absurdly complex and something like a voluntary flat tax would be sensible – but it is more than this.
According to what is implicit in the article this recent “lurch to the right” by McCain, actually – again something he has been saying for ages, is wrong (indeed obviously wrong) – McCain should come out and support higher taxes. Which is what “ending the Bush tax cuts” actually means.
So the Economist holds that taxes should be increased at a time of economic weakness – this is a position that even Lord Keynes would have had trouble with. Even a few months off the Federal fuel tax is an insane thing that the all-wise Senator Obama “cleverly opposed”.
Finally we are told that McCain’s support for off shore drilling, if the States agree, is the sort of thing that centrists and moderates would never go for.
This is odd on two grounds:
Firstly as John McCain’s main task at this election is to bring out the conservative, or rather conservative and libertarian – i.e. the anti left, base (a lot bigger than the Republican base) which includes many people who really dislike him. The stay-at-home threat is a terrible one for McCain.
Secondly – the Economist folk simply do not know what they are talking about.
In reality, with the price of fuel being what it is – and set to get a lot higher over time, about 70% of American voters support an end to the Federal de facto ban on new off shore drilling. Nor does the Economist even mention alternatives like opening up the areas of the Western States for oil shale, and allowing new nuclear power stations (both of which McCain has supported and Obama has not).
So by “centrists and moderates” the Economist in fact means “committed hard core leftists who would never vote for McCain if their lives depended on it”.
I do not expect to influence some people to vote for McCain with the above, John McCain has too much baggage (McCain-Feingold, the amnesty bill for illegals, and so on) for that.
However, I do hope to have finally have convinced the die hards that if the Economist is a “free market” publication then I am the Emperor Augustus.
The Economist is written by a group of people who were taught a lot of semi, and not so semi, collectivist doctrines at university – and simply trot them out each week in vague connection to the events of the time.
I have been perhaps less fascinated by the current political season than some, but despite my loathing for one media darling and disregard for the other, I have watched the rather normal campaign season unfold.
It is all so predictable. The Democrats are running a Chicago politician, and that means someone who knows ‘machine’ politics inside out. Whatever Obama does, Obama does for political reasons. “Change” is just a nice meaningless word with which to whip up the party workers. One can well imagine that each ‘problem’ has been orchestrated to make some faction of the Democratic base feel he is ‘their’ man and is being ‘pushed’ toward the middle. Instead of seeing campaign events through the lens you are accustomed to, start looking at it from the viewpoint of “which constituency does it play to?”
Take the Reverend Wright bruhaha. It simultaneously solidified support for him amongst the radical black constituency, made him appear to them as an oppressed victim, and allowed him to move toward the center. That is one brilliant bit of maneuvering, a double play that would do Karl Rove proud.
Democratic candidates have a certain problem to deal with. The activists who will get out and work and who will secure the nomination are significantly (consider that an understatement of British proportions) to the left of the general population. Without their support, a candidate will have a difficult time getting the money and workers required for a successful nomination. Then comes the problem: once nominated they must be positioned for electability. That requires a bit of legerdemain.
The best way to handle it is to appear ‘forced’ to the right. The base believes they ‘know’ what the candidate really believes and continues to support them. There is always enough new blood around that either did not learn through a previous election what happens next or else is gullible enough to believe it will somehow be different this time.
My prediction? By September Obama will be so centrist and mainstream you will be hard pressed to find light of day between him and the polled positions of the American public.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
From the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
It is a melancholy thought that in much of the Anglosphere today, the concepts of classical liberalism: natural rights, limited government, private property, free trade, freedom of speech, rational enquiry, and the pursuit of a happy life, are under attack. The US has been and still is an imperfect exemplar of those values, but in my mind it still is the best of them, amd I wish my American Anglosphere cousins a very happy Fourth of July.
Fire up the barbecues!
I am watching a number of videos in which our candidate Bob Barr has been interviewed and he sounds pretty good. You may enjoy this one in which he talks extensively about Statist spying and the way in which the government is destroying the privacy of the individual.
So the Supreme Court’s opinion in Heller really has me wondering. Will this have any effect on the practice of so many police departments, especially big city ones with bright shiny SWAT teams, to use middle of the night no-knock raids when a less dramatic approach might have been a better choice? Will it encourage better investigations of exactly who’s home they are breaking into before they begin battering down doors?
I suspect but haven’t checked that most of these raids occur in jurisdictions that do, quite likely to soon be ‘did’, not permit armed self defense in one’s home. I further suspect the unspoken reasoning was too often, ‘Don’t worry about it. If they’re not bad guys, they won’t be armed’.
As the US television journalist John Stossel points out, when politicians start calling for “windfall” taxes on oil or other evil firms for making “obscene” profits (which begs a question of what the right level is), they ignore the fact that such taxes will reduce dividends and shareholder returns, including those of pension funds. And the pension fund members – us ordinary Joes – lose out when politicians decide to come a-lootin’.
Part of the trouble is the vocabulary. “Windfall”, like “windfall apple”, implies that a good – such as a juicy apple – has fallen to earth and the acquirer of said has done nothing to earn it. It is, so the argument goes, just dumb luck that the chap who found the apple did so. And so, to switch to those Big Oil firms, there is no merit in clocking up monster profits when the oil price spikes. But this ignores the fact that oil firms and their investors took a risk in seeking to find, process and sell oil products and those risks could easily have gone wrong. We tend to forget how risky, both physically and economically, investing in oil is. When Brent crude was trading below $10 a barrel in the mid-90s, did those politicians who want to chase a few votes by bashing Big Oil cry any tears for the oil firms that were taking big losses at the time? No, of course they did not. And frankly, given that petrol is so heavily taxed in many major nations today, it is, to put it politely, rank hypocrisy for any politician to strike attitudes on the supposed venality of oil firms at all.
By the way, John Stossel is a marvel. If only we could have a few of him in the British television media.
The efforts to slay the tax dragon in Massachusetts have advanced past the last of the expensive hurdles. According to Carla Howell and Michael Cloud:
We collected over 22,117 raw signatures from around the state, sufficiently distributed to meet the state’s requirement that no more than 25% of them may come from any one county. We should end up with plenty to meet the 11,099 certified signature requirement – with a kevlar cushion to slow the challenges from the teachers’ union.
We’re jumping through the last legal hoops necessary to get on the ballot.
We already told you about the legal hoops we had to jump through last fall to get the first 76,000+ certified signatures.
We turned in these additional 22,117 signatures to 319 different town clerks June 18th.
Now we’re waiting for the town clerks to certify those signatures so we can turn them into the Secretary of State by July 2nd. That wouldn’t be very hard – except the town clerks don’t have to give us back our petitions until just two days before July 2nd.
Massachusetts signature drives are hard as hell. Ask the Republican U.S. Senate candidate who just failed to make the 2008 ballot.
We’re almost done. Finally.
it appears they have our enemies quaking in their boots this time around. According to
The North Attleboro Sun Chronicle:
In the meantime, legislators said the ballot initiative has an excellent chance of passing, considering a similar proposal got 45 percent of the vote in 2002.
Poirier said voters feel there is nothing they can do to lower gasoline or food costs and may see wiping out the income tax as the only step they can take to save themselves money.
This is the November contest I look forward to with glee. The passage is likely enough and the libertarian impact great enough that not even MSM will be able to ignore it. If we win this one, it will only be the first of a cascade with which we will sweep the nation.
So if you are in Massachusetts or nearby, get out there and help Carla and Michael fight the teachers union front organization and the AFL-CIO and other hard-line socialist organizations who will be out defending their God, the State.
Ron Paul and his campaign workers are still out there taking on the dirty job of rebuilding the Republican Party. If you are interested in what they are up to, you can watch this speech.
I might also add that I read “The Revolution: A Manifesto” while I was on the road for a month. It was pretty much as I expected: I disagreed with him on Iraq and vehemently agreed on almost everything else. It is a very readable tome and I will go so far as to say it will be seen as a classic. It should be on the shelf of every libertarian.
Blogger Timothy Sandefur has an interesting item questioning the argument that the inefficiency of using slaves rather than free labour would have gradually eroded the institution anyway, such as in the Old South of the US. He makes the point that as far as the owners of slaves are concerned, maximising wealth may not be the only reason why they keep slaves, so the inefficiency of this repulsive institution may not prove fatal to it. In other words, it would be naive for defenders of say, the Confederacy, to argue that a war was not necessary to get rid of this institution.
Sometimes, oppression does not just wither away. A loathesome institution or regime can endure for a long time. You need action, sometimes involving bullets, to remove these evils. For those of a pacific nature, this is not a comforting conclusion.
Here is an article I wrote some time back celebrating one of the great British campaigners against slavery, Thomas Clarkson, who is a lot less well known than William Wilberforce. Reading through the comment thread reminded me that a lot of people imagine that free marketeers like me claim that capitalism will inevitably weaken slavery. There is nothing inevitable about the demise of any human institution, certainly not one that satisifies the human lust for power over others.
The Libertarian Party convention has, as most of us expected, selected Bob Barr as our candidate. As I have been on the road the last month I have not had an opportunity to do much in the way of research on the man. I intend to correct that in the ensuing weeks.
The major party election landscape is about as dismal and disgusting as it has ever been. I would not support John McCain (author of the infamous anti-First Amendment limitation on political speech McCain-Feingold Act) if he were running against the Satan-Cthulu ticket. Had Hillary Clinton been the Democratic winner, I might have given her luke warm support simply because she is a rational political animal and thus predictable. She would be less likely to do something immature and stupid. True, she would have been as bad for our ideals as McCain, albeit in different areas, but at least she is not John McCain.
I might add that the bitter pill would have been considerably sweetened by the probable ascension of a very old and dear friend to top policy wonk in space affairs. There is barely day light between her ideas and mine on what has to happen to NASA over the next 20 years. It would have been a joy to have her in a high position, but that is not to be.
So… I am firmly back where I have been as a voter for the majority of my majority: it is the LP candidate or nothing. So who is Bob Barr? Is he a suitable carrier of our banner?
For those who know even less than I about the man, he is a former Republican Congressman from Georgia who became a card carrying Libertarian about a year and a half ago and seems to have accepted our ideas and platform in toto. His legislative history prior to that has some flaws from our perspective but he does not appear to have ever been a truly hard core statist. He does indeed appear to be someone who was philosophically close to us on many issues and finally crossed the line, decided some of his prior stands were in error and ‘outed’ himself as one of us.
We know we are not going to put our man in the Oval Office so our candidate requirements are different from those of the Republicans and Democrats. We need a communicator and a teacher. We need someone who will attract reasonable media attention. Our candidates job is to move another slice of the citizenry towards a belief in the importance of individual liberty. He must educate the electorate on the death of a thousand cuts the ‘major’ parties have been applying to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Purity is not as important as effectiveness.
I will naturally make up my own mind but at this point it is Barr or stay home. I am leaning towards supporting him and I am interested in the views, pro and con, of other libertarians. Can Bob Barr reap what Ron Paul has sown for us? Can he consolidate those gains and extend them over the next five months?
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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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