Reality. Reason. Rights.

Here is a great video from a BBC show called The Joy of Stats which shows the changes of human health and wealth over the last 200 years. Like time-lapse photography of a flower, this video shows the beauty of what happens when you water humanity with a little bit of capitalism.

The video does a great job of showing the last 200 years, but it’s very important to consider what the video would look like if extended 100,000 years back in time. If we took it that far back, we would have a boring video indeed. In time-lapsed terms, it would show well over a day’s worth of unchanging video before anything noticeable happens. The health and wealth numbers would sit stagnant in the lower left corner of the graph, because for the majority of human existence, everyone was poor and unhealthy. But upon the birth of capitalism, close to where this video begins, these numbers take off upwards and to the right as everyone gets richer and healthier.

From Reason.com.

Here’s a nice video from the Institute for Justice about the absurd amount of hoops our government requires our entrepreneurs to jump through to start and run their businesses.

Last night’s elections could help define the Tea Party. Of the candidates backed by the Tea Party, those who stuck more to the “tallest pole” values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets won (Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee), while those who spent more time on issues like immigration, abortion, and religion, lost (Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck). I hope this serves to solidify the movement around the core values, leading it to field candidates that have the proper focus.

This brings me to Rand Paul’s excellent victory speech from last night. He didn’t waste much time with pleasantries or celebration. He went on the offense immediately, serving notice to the Senate exactly what he will have them “deliberate upon” which was a list of free market ideas and calls to personal responsibility.

A couple of recent stories reminded me of the time my brothers and I had a grape slushy stand when we were kids.


The outcomes of these two stories are a little different than that of ours. While we were lucky enough to get a simple write-up in the local paper, these other children were threatened with fines and asked to shut down operations by the government. Kids (and businesses) stay the same, but government reach continues to grow.

Please vote today for candidates that believe in fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets, and who understand that a child’s lemonade stand is simply none of the government’s business.

Senator Jim DeMint hits a lot of nails on their respective heads in his Op-Ed at the Washington Post. But the most important point is about the principles of the soon-to-be incumbents.

These men and women are coming to Washington to join the fight, not the club. Their principles are clear: free-enterprise economics, limited government and individual liberty. These views are based on 200 years of American history and written into our founding documents. [I'd go a bit further; these views aren't just written into our founding documents, they are the reason those documents were written in the first place.]

These are the principles of the incumbents because these are the principles of Tea Party movement and its members who will be sending them to Washington. As others try to paint the Tea Party as a racist fringe movement, or try to push it toward their brand of social conservatism, it’s great to see politicians who get what it’s all about. Representative Paul Ryan has it right saying we’ll have to “agree to disagree” on other issues while rallying “around the tallest pole in our tent: fiscal conservatism, economic liberty.”

The 19th of last month was Cost of Government Day. This is a variable date put out each year by the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Center for Fiscal Accountability where they determine the day on which the average has worked enough to pay for his share of government imposed spending and regulatory burdens.

In 2010, Cost of Government Day falls on August 19. Working people must toil 231 daysout of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government - 8 days later than last year and a full 34 days longer than 2008.

In other words, in 2010 the cost of government consumes 63.41 percent of national income.

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Cost of Government Day serves as a tangible reminder of the burden the encroaching cost of government places on taxpayers. Click here to read the entire report.

You might say that today, the 6th of September, is a bit late to be talking about this. But it isn’t old news just yet. This day they calculated is a national average. If you’re unlucky enough to live in Connecticut you have nearly two more weeks of government theft before you can keep your money, as your state’s COGD is September 17th.

The report is a must read. It’s a veritable checklist of every fiscally irresponsible thing the current administration is doing to add to the hole this country is in. Here though, is the most important takeaway.

Many focus on the danger of an impending deficit, leading politicians to clamor for higher taxes in order to fix the problem. But the deficit is not the problem—it is a symptom of the problem of unchecked government spending. Profligate spending fabricates justifications for expanding the current tax regime to include more onerous, expensive costs on taxpayers. [Emphasis added.]

Bingo – unchecked and unsustainable government spending and theft. And here’s an example of how absurd it is getting.

In 2009, the government spent $3.9 trillion dollars, and took in $2.1 trillion dollars in taxes. That is, the government spent beyond its means by $1.8 trillion—almost as much as it takes in on a yearly basis. This would be like a household that earns $100,000 annually spending $190,000 while it is $700,000 in debt. [Emphasis added.]

In the real world, a household with spending habits such as these wouldn’t be able to keep spending. Their credit rating would have taken a nose dive long ago. They would be seen as an obvious financial risk, and no one would extend them credit. But in our system, we are the creditors and we don’t have the authority to cut our debtors off. And without that authority, there is no end in sight.

The President’s proposed FY 2011 budget suggests that this outlandish profligacy is not going away anytime soon: while total spending in 2005 was $2.5 trillion, spending in 2015 will be $4.38 trillion. In other words, within the space of 10 years the federal budget is slated to nearly double in size.

Government spending is the big theme here, but the report doesn’t skimp on the details. Here are a few gems.

Government employment has increased by over 500,000 jobs since 2009.

That’s right. While the private sector has lost millions of jobs and has been making other difficult decisions to reign in costs, our government has been on a hiring and spending spree.

The report also asks, “did the stimulus work?” The answer, of course, is no.

The massive spending package passed under the guise of economic “stimulus” fails to acknowledge that the government does not exist in a vacuum—each dollar spent is extracted from the economy in the form of taxes, and then redistributed vis-à-vis spending policy. It is hardly surprising, then, that the “stimulus” succeeded in none of its intended goals. [Emphasis added. This reminded me of Tracinski's Law of Bailouts which states that "government money drives out private money. That is, every dollar in government funds pumped into the economy during a bailout wipes out at least one dollar in private funds, both through taxes and inflation and through the fear and uncertainty caused by government intervention."]

…

In the wake of the “stimulus” failure to spur employment and recovery, the White House has launched a public relations blitz to drum up support for the spending boondoggle. However, while the administration continues to make the clever—because it is unverifiable—claim that the bill “saved or created” three million jobs, the economy remains at the highest unemployment rate the country has seen in almost three decades.

And what about Obamacare? It’s supposed to bring costs down right? Wrong.

President Obama’s ambitions to remake the health care system of the United States have been clear since the beginning of his administration. His appeals to “bring health care costs down” began when he was a candidate, and intensified upon his inauguration. He was going to provide high-quality, low-cost healthcare for every American, and simultaneously reduce healthcare spending.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed into law in March of 2010; instead of innovative solutions to difficult health care problems, the American people got a package of regulations, subsidies, and penalties. Critics predicted that the legislation would not reduce health care costs on the basis that taxation and regulation increase costs—and they were right. Within a month of the passage of the bill, AT&T announced that it was forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, followed by similar announcements from other companies: Deere & Co. ($150 million)8 Caterpillar ($100 million) and 3M ($90 million).9 The costs of this legislation are quickly piling up.

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All told, the bill will cost taxpayers about $2.3 trillion in the first ten years of implementation. Future costs are more difficult to estimate, though it seems clear that they will certainly grow rather than shrink. Indeed, Douglas Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office, recently said:

The central challenge is straightforward and stark: The rising costs of health care will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond.

In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure. In fact, CBO estimated that the health legislation will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care (which CBO defines as the sum of net federal outlays for health programs and tax preferences for health care) by nearly $400 billion during the 2010-2019 period.

In other words, it does not seem as though the growth of health care costs will be reduced by Obamacare, but in fact, will be increased steeply.

Of course, I agree with the report that the government needs to get out of the way so the market and actual competition can drive down health care costs. And two pieces of that idea are allowing the interstate purchase of health insurance and removing the tax penalty for purchasing individual health insurance.

Despite this warning system, Senator Chris Dodd recently said “This legislation can’t prevent the next crisis from coming. No legislation can…” Despite the fact that federal regulators and the SEC failed to avert the mortgage crisis or monitor firms like Lehman Brothers, the bill doubles their power and budgets.

So the author of the bill admits that it won’t really work, but that he still wants the power to try anyway? That, my friends, is government in a nutshell.

I previously posted about something Charles Johnson said that had me worrying that he thought individual rights are granted by government, rather than being unalienable. Unfortunately, a recent post of his about the Kagan hearings exacerbates that concern.

Let’s watch the subject of his post first, shall we, before looking at Johnson’s comments.

The video starts with a question by Sen. Grassley where he asks, “do you believe the 2nd Amendment codified a pre-existing right, or was it a right created by the constitution?” This is an excellent question to ask a nominee to the Supreme Court to see what they think about natural rights versus legal positivism. Does Kagan think we have unalienable natural rights, or do we have them at the discretion of the Constitution and the majority? Is the Declaration of Independence the founding document of the country that the Constitution relies on for moral support, or, being the law of the land, does the Constitution render the Declaration irrelevant?

What does Johnson have to say?

Sen. Grassley: God Wanted Us to Pack Heat

My goodness. Goodness gracious. Goodness me.

Watch as GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley hopelessly confuses the Declaration of Independence with the US Constitution, and declares that the right to bear arms comes directly from God.

In his haste to disparage the right for it’s history with the religious right, Charles really misses the mark with this one. The point of the line of questioning eludes him and he ends up looking like the one who is confused.

Senator Grassley never confuses the Declaration with the Constitution at all in the video. He may not quote the Declaration very well (it’s “unalienable rights” not “individual rights”), but there is no mix up. In fact, Grassley takes the time to distinguish between the two.

“I know the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land, but it does express the philosophy of why we went to war [with the British] and why our country exists.”

Also, Grassely doesn’t say that the right to bear arms comes directly from God, nor is that the point of his questioning. Given the language of his first question, a direct quote from the Declaration is entirely appropriate to back it up, and it is clearly used to see what Kagan’s views on natural rights are. Does quoting from the deistic words of our Founding Fathers in the Declaration Independence, with its intentionally nebulous “Nature’s God / Creator,” make you a theocrat these days?

Grassley could have worded his question differently, as the natural right we have is to self-preservation in general, not to arms specifically. A better question would have been “do you believe we have a natural right to self-defense, or is it a legal right granted by the Constitution, and how does the 2nd Amendment relate?” The correct answer is yes, we do have a natural, pre-existing, and unalienable right to self-defense and the 2nd Amendment restricts our government from banning the common weapons we use to protect ourselves from others that wish to infringe upon our rights.

So what are Kagan’s views on natural rights? Tony Blankley has the answer at RealClearPolitics with a telling contrast of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the matter.

Abraham Lincoln: “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

Kagan: Senator Coburn, to be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution. And my job as a justice will be to enforce and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

Actually, to be picky, the enforcement of the Constitution and the laws is the job of the Executive Branch. Your job as a justice, Ms. Kagan, would be to determine if the laws of the land and the actions of its people are constitutional, based on your interpretation of the Constitution. And what better way to inform your interpretation of the Constitution than by studying it along side of the ideas and philosophy that made it possible and necessary?

Let’s go back to Blankley’s article for more on that philosophy (read the whole thing).

Apparently unbeknownst to Ms. Kagan [and to Mr. Johnson], from the very beginning, it was the inalienable rights of the people that made the people sovereign and thus permitted the people to form the Constitution and continue to guide its application.

The very reason for the American experiment was — and is — to establish the principle and the reality that no man or government may alienate a person’s life, liberty or pursuit of happiness… [These unalienable rights] are the animating purposes of all our laws — of the law. They are the soul of our Constitution. Without those rights, the body of law is a corpse — a soulless, purposeless, manipulable, disposable, dead, material thing. If Ms. Kagan does not know that, then she knows nothing of our law. [Emphasis added.]

… [All government powers] subordinate to the undergirding sovereignty of the people.

THIS!

George Will tells us that candidate nobody is not to be underestimated in this year’s election. The article is a profile of a candidate who may unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but the point to take from it is that this is the time for “candidate nobody.” Or as I might call it, “candidate zero.”

With the growth of the Tea Party and disarray of the established parties, along with the promotion and communication advantages of the internet, this is the time for grassroot candidates who understand that deficit spending, bailouts, and the erosion (or the jackhammering, bulldozing, and wrecking-balling from the last couple of years) of individual rights and representative government need to stop.

I guess I was on to something when I announced my campaign:

Much has been said about experience this election season. But aren’t you sick of experienced politicians? I am. I am tired of people who have been bought and sold, who owe favors for favors received, who have been sullied by the process of rising through the political ranks, and who have compromised their values while violating individual rights at every turn. I don’t want leaders with a lot of political experience. I’ll trust an honest person with an honest job before an “experienced politician” any day of the week.

So here I am, an absolutely inexperienced politician, starting his campaign and public life at zero; zero political experience, zero financial backing, zero recognition…This will be an internet experiment to see if an honest and intelligent person can come out of nowhere and compete with established politicians on the national stage.

Independence Day Game at Wrigley

It’s a little late to say “let’s get some runs.”