David Boaz

Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer and friends Don Boudreaux and June Arunga debate free trade with the legendary Lou Dobbs around John Stossel's anchor desk on tonight's edition of "Stossel." 8:00 p.m. and midnight EDT on the Fox Business Network. Stossel's weekly column also interviews Tom Palmer.

Tim Carney has a blog post at the Examiner that's worth quoting in full:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican. Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.) I wrote about this phenomenon last year, when the divergence was even greater between the Chamber’s agenda and the free-market agenda:

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

I suspect that on issues such as free trade agreements and immigration reform, I might be closer to the Chamber's position than to Ron Paul's. But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies -- or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush's 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout -- certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between "pro-business" and "pro-market." Instead of "Spirit of Enterprise," the Chamber should call these the "Spirit of Subsidy Awards."

Tim Carney has a blog post at the Examiner that's worth quoting in full:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican. Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.) I wrote about this phenomenon last year, when the divergence was even greater between the Chamber’s agenda and the free-market agenda:

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

I suspect that on issues such as free trade agreements and immigration reform, I might be closer to the Chamber's position than to Ron Paul's. But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies -- or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush's 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout -- certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between "pro-business" and "pro-market." Instead of "Spirit of Enterprise," the Chamber should call these the "Spirit of Subsidy Awards."

Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute writes in the Wall Street Journal about Andy Stern's retirement from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). He noted that Stern's

principal legacy will be having headed up a union that managed to add 1.2 million members during a time when overall unionization rates continued to plunge in the U.S. But it's important to understand how Mr. Stern pulled this off, because his union's story is really the story of the transformation of the labor movement in America. The SEIU did not win its most significant victories on the picket lines, but rather in backroom political deals with legislative leaders, especially in states like California where the political class is already union-friendly. Those deals helped the SEIU to organize workplaces that are nominally considered part of the private sector but actually are heavily controlled and influenced by government regulation, most especially in health care.

The article mentions Malanga's forthcoming book, Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer. Which is not to be confused with Shakedown: How Corporations, Government, and Trial Lawyers Abuse the Judicial Process, published by Cato Institute chairman Robert A. Levy in 2004. Then again, there probably are some points of overlap.

It was a good idea to get science and democracy from the ancient Greeks. It's not such a good idea to get fiscal policy from the modern Greeks. But that's the way we're headed. Greece has a budget deficit of 13.6 percent. We’re not in that league -- ours is only 10.6 percent, the highest level since 1945. Greece has a public debt of 113 percent of GDP. We’re not there yet. But the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports show the combined unfunded liability of these two programs has reached nearly $107 trillion. Under President Obama’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. It could rise to 215 percent of GDP in 30 years. Welcome to Greece. Here's a graphic presentation of the official debt and real net liabilities of various countries, including the United States and Greece at the right. (From the Telegraph, apparently based on Jagadeesh Gokhale's report.) And here's a Heritage Foundation chart on where the national debt is headed in the coming decade: Paul Krugman wrote, "My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar." Now he was writing in 2003, when a different president was in office, but he was also warning about the possibility of a ten-year deficit of $3 trillion. Presumably the same warnings apply to today's much larger deficit projections. And he was absolutely right to fear that government would turn to inflation as a supposed solution.

Concern about the pay, benefits, and performance of government employees seems to be growing. Chris Edwards's articles on how government pay is outpacing private-sector pay have generated media attention, cartoons, and angry rebuttals from the head of the federal Office of Personnel Management. Steven Greenhut has a new book, Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation, and is writing lots of newspaper articles on the high costs of government unions, also the topic of a recent Cato Policy Analysis. New Jersey unions are not finding much sympathy as they try to hold on to their raises, benefits, pensions, and work rules in the face of Gov. Chris Christie's attempt to cut the budget. Liberal journalist Mickey Kaus is running for the U.S. Senate, trying to warn California's voters and the Democratic Party about the excessive power and destructive influence of public employee unions. And now Saturday Night Live. The zeitgeist-riding comedy show had a truly harsh sketch this weekend about the "Public Employee of the Year Awards." It touched every element of popular resentment toward government workers: "people with government jobs are just like workers everywhere -- except for the lifetime job security, guaranteed annual raises, early retirement on generous pensions, and full medical coverage with no deductibles, office visit fees, or copayments" -- "retirement on full disability" by an obviously young and healthy worker -- "Surliest and Least Cooperative State Employee" -- "3200 hours [a year] on the job, all of it overtime" -- New York school janitors living in Florida -- employees with two current jobs and full disability -- an entire workday at the DMV without serving a single customer -- no-work contracts --  surprisingly early closings -- and "he's on break." Time for unions to start worrying?

General Motors chairman Ed Whitacre is appearing in ads on all the Sunday morning shows repeating the message of his Wall Street Journal op-ed, titled "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," and the company's full-page newspaper ads:

We're proud to announce: We've repaid our government loan. In full. With interest. Five years ahead of the original schedule.

But wait: In the Wall Street Journal, Whitacre says the company has made a $5.8 billion payment to the governments of the United States and Canada. But don't I recall that the GM bailout was $50 billion? Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation explains the whole story in Forbes: First, part of the bailout went into an "escrow fund," and that government money is being used to pay back the small part of the bailout that was officially a loan. Second, GM is asking for another $10 billion loan to retool its plants to meet the stiffer Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and paying back one government loan -- with other government money -- will make it easier to get another government loan. And finally, of course, most of the bailout money was transferred to GM in return for a 60 percent stake in the company. And the taxpayers will get that money back if and when GM becomes a publicly traded company again, provided that the company's market capitalization is eventually higher than it's ever been in history. Don't hold your breath. These are called GM ads, but they could just as well be called BS ads.

Recently I wrote an article arguing that there never was a golden age of liberty and that in particular libertarians should not hail 19th-century America as a small-government paradise, at least not without grappling with the massive problem of slavery. Jacob Hornberger, author of an article that I criticized, responded in Reason, and I then responded here. Meanwhile, an interesting discussion took place on a email list of libertarian scholars, and I'm pleased to have gotten the permission of several participants to include some of that discussion here: Read more...

Today in Washington: actress Sigourney Weaver testifies before the  Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the topic of ocean acidification. Because, you know, she played an environmental scientist in Avatar. It's the best fit since Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek -- all of whom had played farm women -- testified on America's agricultural crisis. Congress doesn't have time to vote on presidential nominations. It doesn't bother engaging in serious oversight of presidential power and civil liberties abuses. It looks at the ceiling and whistles as the national debt approaches Greek levels. But members of Congress have time to listen to an actress discuss the topic of ocean acidification. This seems like a topic for "Really!?! with Seth and Amy" on Saturday Night Live. Really, Senate Commerce Committee? You think Sigourney Weaver has important information that you need to know? Really? And you're not just doing this to get yourselves on television? Really!?! And you think the most important thing members of Congress could be doing today is getting their pictures taken with Sigourney Weaver? Really!?! Of course, this is not just a one-day thing for Sigourney Weaver. She also traveled this month to Brazil to try to stop the construction of a dam. Because who would know better than a Hollywood-Manhattan actress how to make tradeoffs between energy needs and environmental risks in Brazil? Now let me just say that I'm not arguing that ocean acidification isn't an important topic. And I'm not criticizing Avatar or its defense of property rights. I'm just questioning whether Sigourney Weaver, Sissy Spacek, Jeff Daniels, Nick Jonas, and the Backstreet Boys have the kind of expertise that Congress ought to draw on in deciding how to run my life. Or then again, maybe planning the economy and running other people's lives is farce at best, and Congress should just hold hearings with Will Ferrell and John Cleese.

Julian Simon often wrote about the persistence of the belief that life was better in the past or that things are steadily getting worse. It takes many forms: people used to be more polite, the media used to be more literate, life is more dangerous today, we're running out of natural resources. Simon pointed out in many books and articles that, at least since the industrial revolution, life on earth is in fact getting longer, healthier, more comfortable, and less dangerous. Or, as the title of one of his books put it, It's Getting Better All the Time. He was mostly right. But in a review of a new collection of H. L. Mencken's writings, I found an exception: Nostalgia itself, the longing for a lost golden age, was at least more eloquent when Mencken was writing it back in the 1920s. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post quotes these eulogies for old Baltimore:

Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880 and lived almost his entire life in the house on Hollins Street where he grew up. "The Baltimore of the 80's had a flavor that has long since vanished," he wrote in a 1925 Evening Sun piece reprinted here. "The town is at least twice as big now as it was then, and twice as showy and glittering, but it is certainly not twice as pleasant, nor, indeed, half as pleasant. The more the boomers pump it up, the more it comes to resemble such dreadful places as Buffalo and Cleveland."... Mencken believed, as he wrote in 1930, that the great fire of 1904 was what killed the old Baltimore that he knew so intimately and loved so deeply: "The new Baltimore that emerged from the ashes was simply a virtuoso piece of Babbitts. It put in all the modern improvements, especially the bad ones. It acquired civic consciousness. Its cobs climbed out of the alleys behind the old gin-mills and began harassing decent people on the main streets."... "I am glad I was born long enough ago to remember, now, the days when the town had genuine color, and life here was worth living. I remember Guy's Hotel. I remember the Concordia Opera House. I remember the old Courthouse. Better still, I remember Mike Sheehan's old saloon on Light street -- then a mediaeval and lovely alley; now a horror borrowed from the boom towns of the Middle West. Was there ever a better saloon in this world? Don't argue: I refuse to listen! The decay of Baltimore, I believe, may be very accurately measured by the distance separating Mike's incomparable bar from the soda-fountains which now pollute the neighborhood -- above all, by the distance separating its noble customers (with their gold watch-chains and their elegant boiled shirts) from the poor fish who now lap up Coca-Cola."

Man, you just don't get nostalgia like that any more!