Reason.tv makes some great videos. Here’s a recent one with Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch interviewing Rand Paul of Kentucky. It’s a little long (23 minutes) but it’s worth your while.
As Matt Welch says in the interview, you have to remind yourself that Senator Paul’s a Republican. He doesn’t sound much like your typical Republican senator (with the possible exceptions of Senators Coburn and DeMint).
Recently I came across James Taranto’s interview of Randy Barnett about health care reform.
Is ObamaCare constitutional? “If you ask any constitutional law professor whether Congress can do something, the answer is always yes,” says Randy Barnett. But Mr. Barnett, who teaches legal theory at Georgetown, isn’t just any law professor. A self-described “radical libertarian,” he is the author of a 2004 book, “Restoring the Lost Constitution,” that argues for a fundamentally new approach to jurisprudence. […]
“If you’re talking about the regulation of economic activity, the presumption of constitutionality is for all practical purposes irrebuttable,” Mr. Barnett says. […]
“What is the individual mandate?” Mr. Barnett says. “I’ll tell you what the individual mandate, in reality, is. It is a commandeering of the people. . . . Now, is there a rule of law preventing that? No. Why isn’t there a rule of law preventing that? Because it’s never been done before. What’s bothering people about the mandate? This fact. It’s intuitive to them. People don’t even know how to explain it, but there’s something different about this, because it’s a commandeering of the people as a whole. . . . We commandeer people to serve in the military, to serve on juries, and to file a return and pay their taxes. That’s all we commandeer the people to do. This is a new kind of commandeering, and it’s offensive to a lot of people.”
I think Mr. Barnett points puts his finger on the point. The health care bill takes us another step closer to the Everything That’s Not Forbidden Is Compulsory state of affairs. Faced with the prospect of increasing health care costs, the solution proposed is for citizens to surrender a little more autonomy and accept more limits on their choices.
So I was very pleased to learn that Missouri voters had approved Proposition C this week.
ST. LOUIS • Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.
“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.”
The overwhelming margin the proposition passed by was good to see. I don’t know if it means much politically, though. The White House says it has ‘no legal significance’.
I think Senator Cunningham is right that many – maybe a majority of – Missourians don’t want health care that’s managed by bureaucracy. But she overstates the result quite a bit since Proposition C only addressed the individual mandate part of health care reform act and not whether the bill as a whole would apply in Missouri. Further, the Proposition just expresses the Sense of the House. It doesn’t create a new law nor does it oblige the Missouri General Assembly to create such a law.
There was very little electioneering on Proposition C. I didn’t hear anyone advocating against it (or for it). I only saw a few small signs urging Yes votes and those didn’t appear until Election Day. I take this to mean that those who would normally be against it were ignoring it. Nobody was mobilizing the union members to canvas for its defeat, for example. (Such mobilization is common in St. Louis during many elections.)
And there’s already speculation that the Federal government will sue the state to block any implementation of this proposition; that is, to block in the courts any Missouri law which overrides the individual mandate provision.
Nonetheless I thought it was great news that there’s a large number of people here who resent the overbearing power of the Federal government.
Maybe the Tenth Amendment will get a little more respect now. (See also Ninth and Tenth Amendment Society.)
As if to illustrate the complaint in my About page that all three branches and both major parties are all agents of expanding government, here’s some interesting commentary at National Review Online. (Click the graph to embiggen.)
Do Not Trust Cornyn or McConnell on Spending Cuts
July 18, 2010 7:39 PM
By Kevin D. WilliamsonSen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, sounds like a reasonable guy when he says that Republicans aren’t against extended unemployment benefits, but merely want them offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. In some circles, that’s the very definition of moderation: I’ll go along with your program, but you have to find the savings.
Don’t buy it.
[…]
Check out the spending under your guys, Senator McConnell. Notice how it doesn’t go down? This is why nobody trusts Republicans on spending: because Republicans have not earned anybody’s trust.
This snippet comes from an editorial in the L.A. Times by Mickey Kaus (of Kausfiles fame). The most interesting thing is that he’s running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.
This bit is part of his summary but you should read the whole thing. He takes the Democrats to task for their knee-jerk support of government unions. I hope the people in California will vote for him – or at least with someone who shares his common sense attitudes.
As the private economy has faltered, we increasingly have a two-tier economy: If you’re an insider, a unionized government employee, you’re in good shape. Even if you don’t do a very good job, you won’t be fired. Even in hard times, Washington will spend billions in stimulus funds so that you don’t get laid off. You won’t even have to take much of a pay cut. And you can retire like an aristocrat at taxpayer expense. But if you’re an outsider, trying to survive in a world of $10-an-hour jobs, competing with immigrant labor, paying for your own healthcare, forced to send your children to lousy public schools run by unfireable teachers and $100,000-a-year bureaucrats — well, good luck to you. But be sure to vote Democratic.
How in the world did we end up with unionized government workers anyway? Who thought that was good idea – aside from the union members themselves)?
I just came across Eric Raymond’s post about Social Security’s ‘fiscal event horizon’ today, where he links this AP story.
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.
The problem of Social Security holding only IOU’s instead of assets is hardly news. People have been pointing it out for years now. And if – like me – you nurtured some small hope about GWB’s move to reform Social Security, then you’ll be disappointed – but unsurprised – to see that we’re still standing in the middle of tracks while the locomotive bears down on us.
Social Security is only part of the problem. Medicare’s another; state pension funds are still another.
We can’t blame this wreck on the train. Many countries that have similar programs have faced similar crises and solved them: Chile and Australia come to mind. Why can’t we?
So it was a bit of a coincidence that a friend sent me a link to a video at Real Clear Politics yesterday. It’s a clip of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) talking about entitlement spending. In the clip he says, “[…] if you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.” See for yourself.
To hear a member of the majority party say this tells you all you need to know about its being a matter of fact. It’s straight from the horse’s mouth, folks: ain’t no "Republican name calling" going on here. (Not that it would matter; there are plenty of Republicans who supported the status quo that got us in this position.)
When are we going to do something about this?
After the surprising election of Scott Brown as senator from Massachusetts (an effort I supported), you can probably find any number of pundits or talk radio hosts to tell you what you want to hear about the event – from either party’s point of view.
But this clip is different and more interesting than some pundit’s commentary. While it is moderated, it’s basically Massachusetts voters talking about how they voted and why they elected Mr. Brown.
Here’s a question for Senator McCaskill, one of our Missouri senators: If the voters in Massachusetts – a Democratic Party stronghold – are steamed about the health care reform bill and want to "send a message to Washington", then what kind of message do you think the voters in Missouri want to send?
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No Truce With Kings 