As the “big three” U.S. auto manufacturers have lost market share—and two of the three have gone into bankruptcy, only to be rescued by the federal government—foreign manufacturers have filled the void.  Many of those foreign auto manufacturers now make many of the cars they sell in the U.S. in U.S. factories.  The United Auto Workers (U.A.W.), which has unionized the workforce at the big three but has been unsuccessful in their efforts to unionize the U.S. auto workers employed by foreign manufacturers, has now come up with a plan to make the factories of foreign auto companies located in the U.S. uncompetitive, and eventually push all automobile manufacturing overseas.  Their plan is to unionize the auto workers in those foreign-owned U.S. factories.

A big reason the big three have suffered losses to foreign competitors is that the U.A.W. has bargained for high wages, but more significantly, high non-wage benefits and inefficient work rules, which have made American auto manufacturers uncompetitive.  Unionizing the foreign-owned plants in the U.S. would make them uncompetitive too, and would push those firms back toward manufacturing their automobiles in Japan, Korea, and Germany, rather than moving more of their operations into the U.S., where they are selling cars.

Bob King, U.A.W. president, said “If we don’t organize these transnationals, I don’t think there’s a long-term future for the U.A.W., I really don’t.”  Sure, because auto workers are pricing themselves out of the market.  King ought to realize that he can price the workers of the “transnationals” out of the market too, and that as foreign firms, it would be even easier for them to move jobs overseas than it has been for the big three.

In a dissent from a denial of cert. in Alderman v. United States, Justice Clarence Thomas highlights just how far the Government is willing to take the Commerce Power.  The issue in Alderman was whether Congress may prohibit a convicted felon from possessing body armor. See 18 U.S.C. section 931. The vest had been sold in interstate commerce when the California manufacturer sold it to a distributor in Washington State. Somehow Alderman, a convicted felon, came into possession of the vest and was wearing it when arrested. Because the vest once traveled across state lines, the federal government claims the power to regulate who may purchase or possess it. 

So how far does this federal power go?  According to the appellate attorneys for the Government: Congress could ban possession of french fries that have been offered for sale in interstate commerce. That’s right. Because those Idaho potatoes once traveled from a farm in Idaho to a Mickey D’s in Flint, Michigan, Congress could ban the restaurant from selling the golden fries. 

If this is the case, are there any real limits and Congress’s powers?  Representatives from our own Government say no and we have little reason to doubt that this logic will continue to hold up in Court.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked:  for whatsoever a central bank soweth, that shall it also reap.

The legislator that is without sin among you, let him cast the first vote to outlaw victimless actions.

Given that more than 4,500 actions are now considered federal crimes, blessed are the merciful federal prosecutors, for they will be shown mercy after the revolution.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for if against all the odds, any such persons should be elected president, they shall be called the children of God.

And seeing the multitudes, Barack Obama went up into a mountain; and when he sat down, his disciples came unto him; and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, “We have to get our most important schemes in place before the people’s sense of crisis subsides.”

Thou shalt have no other gods before me—and that includes smooth-talking presidents, in particular.

Honor thy father and thy mother, because chances are that they deserve to be honored more than any politician who ever lived.

Thou shalt not murder, not even the hapless natives of faraway places where U.S. forces have no good reason to be in the first place.

Thou shalt not commit adultery with interns who wear dark blue dresses.

Thou shalt not steal—that means you, Congress and the IRS!

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, regardless of what the Kelo decision says.

The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness just as presidential advisers, especially the economic and foreign-policy advisers, usually do.

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” And the assembled federal bureaucrats replied, “At this point, we really don’t have much to lose along those lines.”

The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; There is none that doeth good. Yet once such a fool hath been elected to Congress, he is virtually certain to be reelected.

For the love of money to be used in reelection campaigns is a root of all kinds of evil.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them—which is to say, all of you government officeholders had best resign pronto before your chickens come home to roost.

For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me. I was sick, and ye visited me. Then, after several years, ye finally cut off my unemployment benefits. How am I supposed to get by now?

And the woman said unto the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden after it has passed USDA inspection.”

And the serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die anyhow; ye have Obamacare now.”

 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech: bad English.

Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, but strange to say, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area prospered mightily despite its even greater wickedness.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, as all the big defense contractors know very well.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man and decided to run for public office, I had to speak, understand, and think in exactly the same way, lest I suffer defeat at the hands of an electoral opponent who expressed an even more childish view of the world.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. And bear this admonition in mind should anyone propose to build a wall across the border with Mexico.

And the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in the United States of America, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the welfare-warfare state.”

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger, especially at a TSA checkpoint.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a government official to enter into the kingdom of God.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge of political economy increases sorrow.

Sudeep Reddy, writing on the front page of January 11th’s Wall Street Journal, claims that one of the “ugly” legacies of the current economic crisis is a “lasting drop in wages”. Following National Public Radio’s modus operandi for reporting “news”, he supplies some human-interest stories recounting the experiences of former money managers and other high-income people who have been forced to take jobs at hourly pay rates far less than needed to support the lifestyles to which they had become accustomed.

While one would have to possess a heart of stone not to be moved by such personalized accounts of job losses and tragic career disruptions, the fact of the matter is that economic recovery cannot begin until markets for labor—and for real estate and other assets—have adjusted prices downward to reflect their now-lower values.

It was a fundamental mistake of the presidential administrations of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to respond to the unprecedented economic contraction of 1929–1933 by adopting policies intended to prop up wages and prices at a time when market forces were driving them to new, lower equilibrium levels. By delaying necessary adjustments, those policies actually deepened and prolonged the Great Depression.

The rational ignorance of ordinary voters grants politicians discretion to adopt postures suggesting that they can somehow short-circuit the purgative (and salutary) operations of freely functioning markets. They cannot do so, except by undermining the capitalist system that heretofore has allowed the United States to generate the highest average standard of living in all of humankind’s recorded history.

If wages and prices are allowed to fall in the short-run, economic recovery will be more robust and growth will return to its long-run path much sooner than otherwise.

According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and other Kennedy-friendly biographers, the young president was a victim of the political atmosphere, not Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald. Conservative criticism of Kennedy led a disturbed young man (Oswald) to kill Kennedy and The Dream. Man, this is an old left-liberal script:

Go straight to Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965).

He quotes a local: “’the spirit of assassination’ had pervaded the city.” Dallas was inhabited by ‘”people who have hate in their hearts and who seem want to destroy.”

For other sixties-era, “conservative hate killed Kennedy” accounts see here.

Search this book for “hate” and you’ll find other biographers echoing the theme.

This fit with the Liberal Establishment’s psychoanalysis of conservatism: Richard Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style in Politics found paranoid conspiracies under every conservative bed (to steal the phrase about communists under every bed). Yet left-liberals seem to possess their own paranoid style, not that they would ever admit such.

At any rate, here is today’s history lesson:

Oswald did not kill Kennedy, “hate” in Dallas did!

In the aftermath of the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in which at least a dozen people were shot and at least six have died, some commentators have placed at least some of the blame on what they see as extreme Tea Party rhetoric that has created political divisiveness.  Pima County, Ariz. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said people like the gunman Jared Lee Loughner “are especially susceptible to vitriol.”

(I add, parenthetically, that news accounts are calling Loughner a “suspect” in the shooting, when after the shooting people took the gun away from him and held him for the police.  What kind of Orwellian use of language calls him the suspect, rather than the gunman?)

I’m not a Tea Partier, and I don’t listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly (not that I have anything against them), but as far as I know, Sarah Palin, Fox News, and Tea Partiers have not called for any kind of violence, let alone gunning down people with whom they disagree.

What would be the point of gunning down elected officials, when they would just be replaced with others who have similar political views?

The point of the Tea Party, and others who engage in “the ‘vitriol’ that has infected political discourse,” has been to elect people who hold political views more in line with the words of the Constitution of the United States, to replace office holders who have been creating a government that intrudes even more into people’s personal and economic lives.

That shooting was a tragedy, to be sure, and I have yet to see anyone paint it any other way.  But I don’t see it as a signal that people who disagree with the direction our elected officials are taking our government should tone down their rhetoric.

In the past decade the federal government’s share of GDP has gone from 18.4% to 25%, and its regulatory intrusion in our lives has increased in similar fashion.  Those who believe that the moral and economic strength of this country rests on the productivity of the private sector of the economy should speak out against this massive expansion of government that threatens our prosperity and our way of life.

That Tea Party rhetoric is about using the electoral process to replace elected officials who favor big government with those who believe in smaller government and individual freedom.  I’m very uneasy with critics who argue that the Arizona shootings imply anything about toning down that rhetoric.  Looking at what has happened to our government in the past decade — and especially in the past two years — I’d argue that we need more of that rhetoric, not less.

Whenever someone commits a particularly shocking crime with firearms—especially a horrific mass murder—there are calls for gun control. The reasoning seems to be that a law prohibiting the ownership or carrying of certain weapons will prevent or reduce the number of such atrocities. Although most other laws targeting ownership of contraband—such as drug laws—do not really work in keeping the barred items out of determined people’s hands; and although people bent on committing mass murder do not tend to be the more law-abiding members of society; we are supposed to believe that the way to stop violent crimes is simply to make it illegal to be armed.

On the other hand, government commits violence against the innocent on a daily basis. In foreign lands, hundreds of thousands have died in the last decade, in a killing spree unleashed by the U.S. government in response to 9/11. On the local level, police frequently brutalize the accused and taze, beat and shoot innocent people. The TSA has become an agency of routine sexual molestation. In detention centers at home and abroad, the criminal justice system has become an accessory to mass rape and gang violence. The feds commit torture.

Yet rarely do people suggest that gun control is the answer to these atrocities. And of course, what would that even entail? Disarming the police? That would be part of it, yet even that would not suffice, for so long as there is political power at all, we can say that Mao was right that it flows from the barrel of a gun. Government is institutionalized violence.

The state will necessarily abuse the coercive tools we allow it to have. The overwhelming majority of private individuals, however, will use guns responsibly, and in many cases defensively. Violent private criminals can never be stopped with gun control, which only empowers the state and predators, both private and governmental, while disarming the victims. Despite all these truths, a truly terrible crime as the one that occurred in Arizona is used to bolster the case for tipping the scales of power further toward those who do not feel bound by the law. This, also despite the fact that the government did not fulfill one of its purported functions here in preempting or rapidly stopping a massacre. Trillions of dollars of government. Millions of prisoners. Thousands not returning from war. But safety as the government promises it is an illusion, and its inevitable failures to secure total safety will always be twisted into reasons for giving it more power.

What matter most are culture and a respect for innocent life. And the killer in Tuscon had no respect for innocent life—this, more this his alleged hatred of government, is the clear value that we can assume from his behavior. This is more important than his reported fondness for Ayn Rand, Mein Kampf, or the Communist Manifesto; his obsession with literacy or the fact that people can legally carry guns in Arizona. They cannot legally commit murder, after all, and that law didn’t stop him.

But the state does not promote a respect for life. Yet after an atrocity like this, few suggest that it be limited, controlled or disarmed.

Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central hilariously skewers the hypocrisy, authoritarianism, and foolishness of “progressive” San Francisco’s Nanny-State ban of Happy Meals at McDonald’s restaurants in the city.

HT: Carl Haberberger

With both the federal and state governments in the United States seemingly headed the way of Greece, Florida appears to have the best prospects among the states for limited government.

Florida already is among the lowest in per capita state government spending, and in state government employees per capita. and is one of the few states without a personal income tax.

The recession has hit Florida relatively hard.  The state has 12% unemployment, well above the national average, and the real estate collapse hit Florida harder than most states too.  But the legislature responded by cutting the state budget.  Four years ago total state appropriations topped $74 billion.  Appropriations fell as low as $66 billion during the recession, and are $70.5 billion this year.

Unlike some states, when revenues declined, the legislature cut expenditures to match, and opposed tax increases.  If you like limited government, Florida looks pretty good already.  But, things may look even better.

Florida inaugurated a new governor January 4: Rick Scott.  Governor Scott’s background is in the health care business, where he made a fortune, and used more than $70 million of his own money to finance his campaign.  He doesn’t owe big political favors to campaign contributors.  He says he wants to “run government like a business” (whatever that means), has proposed additional tax cuts, including eliminating the state’s corporate income tax, he wants to cut prison spending by reducing the prison population, he wants to eliminate regulations that stand in the way of business activity.  He wants Florida to have a smaller government and a business-friendly climate.  (The weather is already pretty good.)

It would appear that Governor Scott should not find much resistance in the state legislature, which is heavily Republican, and with both Houses headed by fiscally conservative leaders.  Senate President Mike Haridopolos unsuccessfully tried last year, before he was president, to place a constitutional tax and expenditure limitation on the ballot.  He’ll have more power this year, and has stated his intentions to try again.  Both Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon are committed to limiting a state government that is already lean by national standards.

To summarize, my arguments that Florida has as good a chance to reign in state government spending, taxation, and regulation as any state are that (1) it is already a small government state by national standards, and (2) the incoming governor and legislature have a sincere commitment to further limiting the scope and power of the state.

Because conditions are so favorable for limiting state government in Florida, the state bears watching.

If, a few years down the road, we see a more limited government in Florida, that points to the possibility that it could happen in other states.  That possibility must be tempered by the realization that few states will have a political alignment that is as favorable toward limited governemnt as Florida’s is now.

If, a few years down the road, we see politics as usual in Florida, and state policies are directed more by lobbyists, interest groups, and politicians trying to buy political support in future elections, that would be a sign that there’s not much of a chance for limiting the power of government anywhere.

Keep an eye on Florida.

From the front page of today’s New York Times, headlined “Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions:”

Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.

State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets.

From the front page of the October 22, 2010 Wall Street Journal, headlined “Campaign’s Big Spender:”

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME is spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats’ hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.

“We’re the big dog,” said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations. “But we don’t like to brag.”

Once again, the limit to which political favors can be repaid with taxpayer money is being reached. This time, big dogs: bloated union contracts have exceeded the ability of the tax base to bear them. Last time, fat cats: the bubble created by favorable regulations for yet another industry—Savings & Loan; Housing; Energy—burst, leaving the public holding the losses.

As the late Harry Browne used to say, if there are packs of wild dogs roaming streets strewn with raw meat, you don’t blame the dogs.

Take the ability to distribute raw meat away from the politicians and see how much concern remains about either fat cats’ or big dogs’ involvement in campaign finance.