In a recent editorial, “The EPA’s Utility Men: Anticarbon regulations and the corporate rent-seekers who love them,” the Wall Street Journal notes that eight leading utility CEOs are cheering on the EPA’s new draconian, climate regulations and other policies because they stand to make huge profits by redistributing wealth to themselves. As the Journal notes:

[T]here are the utility CEOs cheering on the Obama Administration’s plans to wipe out large portions of U.S. electric power capacity.

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing an unprecedented torrent of air and other regulations that will force as much as a third of U.S. coal-fired power to retire in the coming years. This gambit is meant as an anticarbon backstop now that cap and trade is in the political morgue and it will cause huge reliability problems, but some electric executives claim all this merely follows the law and is nothing to worry about.

Eight leading utility CEOs responded recently to one of our editorials with a letter defending the EPA, claiming that the coal retirements are “long overdue” and that the regulations will “yield important economic benefits.” What they didn’t mention is that those benefits will mostly accrue to the businesses they happen to head.

As the Journal further reports:

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s John Rowe, one of the letter’s signatories and the chairman and chief executive of Exelon:

“Put simply, we expect some drop in 2012 earnings. But we believe by that time that the trough in our revenues will be nearing its end. This morning, I am going to cover three reasons why we believe that. First, EPA regulations will affect both capacity and energy markets, and will do so sooner than many think,” Mr. Rowe said on Exelon’s second-quarter earnings call in July.

This “welter of regulations that are coming to the nation’s coal-fired generation fleet,” he continued, means that “Exelon’s clean generation will grow in value in a relatively short time. We are of course positioning our portfolio to capture that value.” Gotta love the can-do lobbying spirit of that “of course.”

The EPA is trying to drive out carbon-heavy coal via activist regulation of traditional air pollutants. This won’t hurt Exelon because its electricity portfolio is mostly nuclear; only about 6% is fossil fuel based. But it’s more than that. As Mr. Rowe explained, these regulations “increase operating costs for the coal-fired generators”—that is, for his competitors—”and ultimately increase the clearing price for energy.”

As wholesale prices rise at the margin, Exelon’s revenues rise but its fixed costs don’t, juicing profits. On the earnings call, Mr. Rowe said “the upside to Exelon is unmistakable,” and he even estimated that every $5 increase per megawatt-hour translates into $700 million to $800 million in new annual revenue. The Chicago-based company will also be able to colonize those markets left without adequate capacity as coal plants are mothballed.

Exelon spokeswoman Judy Rader says the air regulations won’t be as harsh as we suggest and that coal plants will shut down for other reasons as well, including the inefficiencies of older plants and current low energy prices and demand. In March, Exelon said it is closing four Pennsylvania facilities for these reasons. “Exelon and other clean, forward-thinking utilities will benefit because they have already prepared for EPA action by retiring or investing millions of dollars to clean up their aging and inefficient plants,” she adds.

But another way to think about the EPA’s regulatory deluge is as a cap-and-tax consolation prize. A carbon price would have benefited nuclear generators, and we hear Mr. Rowe personally lobbied Members before the House vote on that bill last year.

Not that this was anything out of the ordinary. Frank Clark, who runs the Exelon unit Commonwealth Edison in northern Illinois, is one of President Obama’s largest fundraisers. Rahm Emanuel helped broker the $8.2 billion merger that created Exelon in 2000 when he worked at the firm then called Wasserstein Perella. White House aide David Axelrod was once an Exelon consultant.

But Exelon is merely the best connected company trying to cash in on the White House-EPA agenda. Take NextEra Energy, whose CEO Lewis Hay also claimed that we “mischaracterized” what’s going on. NextEra, which operates in 26 states, has expanded rapidly in recent years and is now the largest producer of wind and solar power in the U.S. But that’s nothing compared to the EPA windfall he expects.

“Even without legislation in Congress, the EPA is marching forward in terms of regulating carbon dioxide. So I think that puts us in a very good position,” said Mr. Hay at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Investment Conference in September. Right on cue, the EPA is rolling out new carbon “performance standards” next week.

“But,” Mr. Hay continued, “they’re regulating so many other things. They have rules and regulations coming out on mercury, NOX, SOX, coal ash. I’m probably missing one or two. . . . It’s not going to be economic to put the scrubbers and all the other things that one has put on to deal with this multitude of new rules and regulations coming down the pike. So, without question, we will have a large number of megawatts of capacity come out of the system over time.”

In other words, the EPA’s path of destruction for others is a growth opportunity for him.

Regulation always creates winners and losers, and energy businesses always try to game the process instead of allowing markets to shape power supply and demand. But this is an especially outrageous case.

The EPA is abusing environmental law to achieve policy goals that the democratic process has rejected, while also engineering a transfer of wealth to certain companies that will be extracted from the 25 states in the Midwest and South that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. These industry beneficiaries then pretend that this agenda is nothing more than a stroll around Walden Pond, when it’s really about lining their own pockets.

As long as they’re on the dole, the EPA’s apologists could at least be more candid about why they’re encouraging the government to expand its control over the wealth-producing parts of the economy. We’ll gladly print the letter.

Instead, we would recommend market-based and scientifically sound, energy and environmental reforms as discussed in the following Independent Institute publications:

Electric Choices: Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power, edited by Andrew N. Kleit

Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl Close

Cutting Green Tape: Toxic Pollutants, Environmental Regulation and the Law, edited by Roger E. Meiners and Richard L. Stroup

New Perspectives in Climate Change: What the EPA Isn’t Telling Us, by S. Fred Singer, John R. Christy, Robert E. Davis, David R. Legates, and Wendy M. Novicoff

Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate, by S. Fred Singer

In discourse about public affairs, words matter much more than most people appreciate. We live immersed in language so twisted and abused, in part by the design of interested parties and in part by the sloth of inattentive speakers and listeners, that we often fail to notice or object to linguistic miscarriages that pass for intelligent expression. The examples are legion, but here I have in mind a particular turn of phrase that American conservatives, especially neocons, have employed in recent years as a counterstrike against critics of U.S. foreign and defense policy:  They describe such critics as “blaming America” or sometimes as “blaming America first” for attacks against this country or its citizens abroad.

Thus, for example, those who fault U.S. Middle East policies for creating the conditions that caused Muslim fanatics to attack Americans, both at home and overseas, are said to be blaming America for what the policy’s defenders’ take to be the unprovoked acts of terrorists bent on imposing Sharia on the United States, destroying this country’s freedoms, or attaining another such farfetched objective.

Applications to earlier events and policies include use of the expression to fend off the arguments and evidence of those who maintain that the Roosevelt administration waged economic warfare in 1940-41 to provoke a Japanese attack that would justify and lead directly to full-fledged U.S. engagement in World War II; and use of the expression against those who argue that the Truman administration bore at least partial responsibility for the onset of the Cold War. People accused of blaming America are commonly called “America haters.”

Although this riposte to criticism is the rhetorical tactic of first resort for the more simple-minded, flag-waving species of self-anointed patriots, it is by no means their exclusive property. Neocons writing in such elevated outlets as the New York Times and the Washington Post have not been bashful about smearing their critics as people who “blame America.” I noticed this linguistic resort most recently in a commentary by an intelligent, reasonable economist and was shocked that he would embrace this trope while suggesting that “pacifists” and others who criticize U.S. foreign and defense policies are unrealistically imagining that international disputes and warfare can somehow be eliminated from human affairs.

In my view, replying to policy critics by accusing them of “blaming America” is worse than linguistically crude and ideologically twisted; it is stupid.

First, and most important, let us recognize that the U.S. government is not America. Notwithstanding the ease with which politicians and their speechwriters toss around the idea that “American needs X” or “America should do Y,” the word America has so many distinct referents that it is extremely ambiguous. In currently common usage, America may refer to, among other things, the geographic area within U.S. borders; the population residing in this area; the traditions, customs, social practices, and norms that these persons regard as uniquely their own; the ideals that they have long expressed as their foremost aspirations; or a specific group of persons representing the United States in international organizations or competitions (e.g., “America won more medals than any other country in the Olympic games).

Only in discussions of international relations do we automatically understand America to be the same thing as the U.S. government. Thus, when we say that “America entered World War I in 1917,” it is understood that the statement means “U.S. government officials, specifically members of Congress and the president, declared the U.S. government to be at war against the German Empire and its allies in 1917.” And when we say that “America ratified the United Nations Charter in 1945, we mean that “a majority of the members of the U.S. Senate voted in favor of this treaty.”

Notice, however, that if one were to presume that the foregoing use of “America” – that is, the international-relations usage that takes America to be identical to all or part of the U.S. government – were the one being employed, it would make no sense to say that critics of U.S. policy are “blaming America,” because that statement would amount to saying that critics of U.S. government policies are blaming the U.S. government, which is obvious and redundant.

However, it is equally senseless for defenders of U.S. policy to suppose that the policy’s critics are blaming America in any of the senses specified in the third paragraph before this one. Critics are not blaming the geographic area, the resident population, the people’s traditions and customs, or their foremost ideals.

Critics who are said to be “blaming America” are in fact simply blaming the U.S. government, and defenders of the government’s policy who wield this polemical sword are implying either that the government and the people are one and the same or that the government indeed bears responsibility for adopting and implementing the policy in question, but should not be faulted for doing so. Either way, the defenders are standing on quicksand.

The government – the collection of politicians, soldiers, hired bureaucrats, and assorted flunkies who devise and carry out U.S. policies – makes mistakes. Of course, many of the actions and policies that sooner or later are generally regarded as mistakes were not mistakes at all, but merely actions and policies that, contrary to official declarations, did not serve the general public’s interests, although they served well enough the interests of key government officials and their major supporters. But set aside that class of actions. The government makes mistakes even in its attempts to attain objectives it truly seeks to attain. It cannot help but make such mistakes because its decision-makers have limited information, often poor judgment, biases of various sorts in the evaluation of information they do possess, and other shortcomings too numerous to recite.

So, why should anyone suppose that the government simply cannot be mistaken, and hence legitimately criticized for its mistakes? So far as the bulk of the American people are concerned, a great many U.S. foreign and defense policies – from the very beginning of the United States, but especially since the late nineteenth century – have been mistaken. For example, it is very difficult to argue honestly that U.S. engagement in World War I served the general interest of Americans. In ways great and small, Woodrow Wilson’s bid to play the role of global messiah had negative repercussions so horrifying that some of them continue to wreak harm to this day (e.g., the creation of artificial, unsustainable state boundaries in the Middle East). It is similarly difficult to argue that the U.S. war in Vietnam was a positive event for the American people at large. And how can anyone mount a strong argument that U.S. engagement in the Middle East since the early 1950s has not served to antagonize and destabilize the entire region and turn some of its young people into fanatics bent on revenge against Americans? Indeed, for some of us, who are not flying on pro-government autopilot, it seems that the bulk of the more important U.S. foreign and defense policies, particularly in the past hundred years, has been adverse to the general interest of the American people, however hyped up most of those people might have become when the government plunged into unnecessary wars and the people rallied round the flag, at least in the beginning.

Ambrose Bierce observed in The Devil’s Dictionary, “In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.”  H. L. Mencken amended Johnson’s dictum by saying, “But there is something even worse: it is the first, last, and middle range of fools.” So, no one who criticizes U.S. foreign and defense policy should feel pushed onto the defensive when told that he is “blaming America” or acting as an “America hater.” Indeed, it might be best if he broke into laughter to indicate that such a response to his criticism betokens either a juvenile mentality or a shameless willingness to serve as a running dog of the U.S. regime.

I hold myself second to none in my adoration of the amber waves of grain and the purple mountain majesties. I revere the ideal that this nation should serve as a beacon of freedom to the world and a refuge for its huddled masses yearning to breathe free. I weep with pride each time I watch the ailing Lou Gehrig tell the crowd at Yankee Stadium, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.” I don’t blame these beautiful, decent, and admirable aspects of America in the least for the chronic failure of U.S. foreign and defense policy to serve the general public interest.

With regard to the fools, mountebanks, unscrupulous opportunists, and psychopaths who have long played the greatest roles in devising and implementing U.S. foreign and defense policy, however, I hold a quite different and decidedly less favorable opinion.

Of recent human rights abusers, the liberal left points with great frequency to Augusto Pinochet, the military dictator of Chile—and for Arnold Harberger’s memories as one of the “Chicago boys” during Pinochet’s regime, see here—whose immunity from prosecution over his “disappeared” victims was dramatically challenged by the investigative crusade of a Chilean judge—as documented in “The Judge and the General“—and a Spanish magistrate who swore out a warrant for Pinochet’s arrest while he was getting medical attention in London.

So when this same crusading Spanish magistrate subsequently turned his attention to the human rights abuses of Spanish captives held at Guantanamo under the Bush administration, one would expect the liberal left to lend their strong support. But when it comes to executive branch immunity from prosecution, the Obama administration is apparently not so eager to see a precedent set.

Among recent Wikileaks documents is this message from the Obama administration to Spain: Don’t indict the “Bush 6” for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees.

Acting under Spain’s principle of universal justice, which holds that grave crimes like terrorism, genocide, or torture can be prosecuted there even if alleged to have been committed abroad, the Spanish judiciary says it will drop its case—based on what a U.S. diplomat called a “well documented” 12-inch-tall dossier compiled by a Spanish human rights group—if the U.S. government plans to open its own investigation.

But by the time Spain’s Association for the Dignity of Prisoners filed the torture complaint that U.S. diplomatic circles found so troubling, the Obama White House was resisting calls to set up a Truth Commission or assign a special prosecutor to examine the legal framework that set up Guantánamo and permitted “enhanced interrogation techniques” that included waterboarding high-value detainees.

Proving that once again, it matters little who is elected president: candidate Obama promised to shut down Guantanamo, end war and torture, operate transparently, and to generally undo the Bush years. President Obama not only continues and extends all these practices, holding on mightily to every executive power Bush grabbed, but now heads an administration “trying to influence an independent judicial system to bend its laws and own rules. And it’s the Obama administration doing it to protect Bush people.” No, not just to protect Bush people—to protect Obama people wanting the same powers, and more.

The answer lies not in electing a “good man” (or woman), but in revolt: revolt against an imperial presidency laying claim to a right to torture, a right to state secrets, a right to immunity from the Rule of Law in any matter.

Magna Carta 2011 anyone?

Recently, I have written a couple of short op-eds (see here and here) arguing that commerce, to the Framers and ratifiers of the Constitution, did not mean economic activity, gainful activity, etc.  It means trade–among the states or with foreign nations, or with Indians.  The purpose of the  interstate Commerce Clause, which should guide interpretation, is creation of a national free trade zone.  I have recently been reading through the Anti-Federalist Papers and came across this argument by “Brutus” regarding the power to tax: 

It was observed in my last number, that the power to lay and collect duties and excises, would invest the Congress with authority to impose a duty and excise on every necessary and convenience of life. . . . Cider is an article that most probably will be one of those on which an excise will be laid, because it is one, which this country produces in great abundance, which is in very general use, is consumed in great quantities, and which may be said too not to be a real necessary of life. . . .  It might be necessary, in order to collect the excise on cider, to grant to one man, in each county, an exclusive right of building and keeping cider-mills, and oblige him to give bonds and security for payment of the excise; or, if this was not done, it might be necessary to license the mills, which are to make this liquor, and to take from them security, to account for the excise; or, if otherwise, a great number of officers must be employed, to take account of the cider made, and to collect the duties on it.

Porter, ale, and all kinds of malt-liquors, are articles that would probably be subject also to an excise. It would be necessary, in order to collect such an excise, to regulate the manufactory of these, that the quantity made might be ascertained or otherwise security could not be had for the payment of the excise. Every brewery must then be licensed, and officers appointed, to take account of its product, and to secure the payment of the duty, or excise, before it is sold. . . .

In other words, Brutus feared that Congress well might use its power to tax along with the Necessary and Proper Clause to not only tax cider or ale, but also to regulate the manufacturing process, to license distilleries, etc.  Congress does today use its enumerated powers in such a manner, but under the guise of commerce and not taxation.  So why didn’t Brutus make his argument with the commerce power rather than the power to tax?  Based on what has happened in America, such an argument would have been spot on.

The simple answer is that Brutus and other Americans did not understand “commerce” to be so broad to be susceptible to these house-that-Jack-built arguments.  Like most Anti-Federalists, Brutus believed that Congress needed a power to regulate internal and foreign trade.  But he did not dream that this power over trade would be transformed into a power over any action or inaction that potentially could affect the national economy.  Thus, he saw the taxing power as more dangerous—more likely to be used to regulate intrastate, local matters that are no business of the national government. 

Hence, Brutus provides more evidence as to why no one in 1787-88—not even the Anti-Federalists—thought that “commerce” was broad enough to give the federal government a general police power.  Commerce to them meant trade.  This should guide our interpretation of commerce as we consider the constitutionality of Obamacare.

Ronald H. Coase, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, turns 100 today, still publishing.

As The Economist magazine pointed out in its recent tribute to his work on firms:

He has long chided his fellow economists for scrawling hieroglyphics on blackboards rather than looking at what it actually takes to run a business.

He similarly refused to fall in line with the much-vaunted economic practice to “assume” when it came to other economists’ use of the lighthouse as the example of a quintessential public good—leading our founder David Theroux to choose the lighthouse as our logo 25 years ago:

The Independent Institute’s logo was inspired by Ronald Coase’s renowned 1974 essay in the Journal of Law and Economics, “The Lighthouse in Economics,” (reprinted in the book, The Firm, the Market and the Law, by Ronald Coase). Until that time, conventional wisdom from John Stuart Mill to Paul Samuelson had claimed that the lighthouse was the quintessential “public good,” which allegedly had to be provided by government due to the inherent free-riding of those who could not be charged for the services being provided. Coase showed, however, that in Britain, “contrary to the belief of many economists, a lighthouse service can be provided by private enterprise… The lighthouses were built, operated, financed and owned by private individuals, who could sell a lighthouse or dispose of it by bequest. The role of the government was limited to the establishment and enforcement of property rights in the lighthouse.” Only later did the British government consolidate all lighthouse services under its own monopoly in order to eliminate competition and directly reap the financial benefits developed by private entrepreneurs.

In addition to exposing the fallacies of a favorite public-goods rationalization, Coase’s essay rescued the lighthouse as a symbol of courage, enlightenment and independence.

The one occasion on which I was fortunate to meet Dr. Coase was at a dinner shortly after he won the Nobel Prize. He told the story of how the Nobel Committee had had some difficulty locating him to inform him of his winning. As it turns out, he was in Tunisia, buying a bird cage. It so happens that David and I have a Tunisian bird cage hanging in our entry, a present from my sister Julie, and after the dinner told Dr. Coase that we shared his admiration of the exquisite Tunisian bird cages. Whereupon he pulled from his breast pocket a photo of himself standing in front of the shop in Tunisia, with his newly purchased bird cage in hand: the moment he won the Nobel Prize.

Thank you, Dr. Coase, and may up-and-coming economists follow your shining example of getting out of their models and into the real world!

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Rapoport (“Bailed-Out Banks Slip toward Failure”, 12/27/2010, p. C1), 98 U.S. financial institutions, which collectively were granted $4.2 billion in handouts under Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), are in danger of going belly-up.

The commercial banks imminently in peril, such as the Legacy Bank of Milwaukee and CommunityOne Bank of Asheboro, N.C., are in general “small”, i.e., less than $500 million in assets, “significantly undercapitalized” and saddled with nonperforming loans financing investments in commercial real estate. In the opinion of the General Accountability Office, the at-risk institutions are much “weaker than other [TARP] recipients and should have gotten more scrutiny before receiving taxpayer funded infusions”.

Why should we not be surprised?

In the rush to avert what was portrayed as the impending implosion of domestic financial markets, the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury asked for and received congressional approval of a program aimed at bailing out lenders that had made loans to homeowners and other investors in real estate that they could not plausibly be expected to repay. As my Independent Institute colleague Robert Higgs has so well documented, the government-inspired atmosphere of “crisis” supplied ideal conditions for expansionary governmental intervention at the expense of ordinary Americans.

A recent federal government assessment crows that TARP has been a good deal for taxpayers, estimating that it will cost us “only” $25 billion. But that figure includes repayments of TARP funds by recipients that didn’t want them in the first place. Perhaps taking lessons from his (inattentive) study of the Great Depression, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke thought he could avoid the political firestorm that followed disclosure of the identities of the banks receiving loans from President Herbert Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) by forcing all of today’s big players to accept them. (Taking advantage of RFC largesse was interpreted at the time as evidence that recipients were in dire financial straits and, hence, may have precipitated “runs” by depositors on them.)

Soon after the bursting of the housing bubble became evident in December 2007, he and Treasury Secretary Paulson therefore convened a meeting of the representatives of major Wall Street financial institutions at which all present, regardless of financial condition, were told in no uncertain terms that were would be participating in TARP.

Meanwhile, the Fed’s second program of “quantitative easing” (QE2) has, by raising bond prices and lowering their yields, shifted investment capital to the generally more risky stock market (Jon Hilsenrath, “For Tough Fed Call, Even Hindsight is Not 20-20”, Wall Street Journal, 12/27/2010, p. A2).

To be fair, the Fed’s dual mandate, under the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, demands that it foster price stability and full employment. Given its policy tools, it can accomplish one, but not both goals. Many respectable commentators have recommended that the Fed be abolished. Given that that objective is in all likelihood not yet politically feasible (although I support it in principle), repeal of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act would restore a modicum of sanity to current monetary and fiscal policy, the point of which should be to allow competitive market forces, not governmental policy, to sort winners from losers.

The New York Times now reports that exactly contrary to its earlier claims, the Obama administration is now quietly seeking to sneak back in by regulation the provision of “end-of-life planning” (“death panels”) that were dropped from the Obamacare bill that was signed into law. The Times article reports that the regulations have been issued by Dr. Donald Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who is described as “a longtime advocate for better end-of-life care.”

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.

Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.

While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress.

In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of end-of-life planning.

. . . .

Opponents said the Obama administration was bringing back a procedure that could be used to justify the premature withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from people with severe illnesses and disabilities.

Section 1233 of the bill passed by the House in November 2009 — but not included in the final legislation — allowed Medicare to pay for consultations about advance care planning every five years. In contrast, the new rule allows annual discussions as part of the wellness visit.

Elizabeth D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, which describes itself as “a pro-life Christian educational ministry,” said she was concerned that end-of-life counseling would encourage patients to forgo or curtail care, thus hastening death.

“The infamous Section 1233 is still alive and kicking,” Ms. Wickham said. “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”

As a result, Cong. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), author of the original “end-of-life proposal,” stated the following in an email to supporters, urging them to keep the new regulations hidden from public view:

“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth. . . . We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded. . . . Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it. . . .”

Sarah Palin led the criticism of the “end-of-life proposal” in 2009 and Cong. John Boehner (R-OH) said that, “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” In response, Obama claimed that his bill would not “pull the plug on grandma.” More recently, prominent liberal economist Paul Krugman called for the use of “death panels” as a solution to the U.S. deficit.

For why government regulations, subsidies and bureaucracies should be removed from health care and competitive markets should instead be freed to operate, please see the following:

American Health Care: Government, Market Processes and the Public Interest, edited by Roger D. Feldman

Failure to Provide: Healthcare at the Veterans Administration, by Ronald Hamowy

“The Modern Health Care Maze: Development and Effects of the Four-Party System,” by Charles Kroncke and Ronald F. White (The Independent Review)

“Health Insurance Before the Welfare State: The Destruction of Self-Help by State Intervention,” by Pavel Chalupníček and Luká Dvořák (The Independent Review)

“The Anatomy of Social Security and Medicare,” by Edgar K. Browning (The Independent Review)

Panelists David Friedman and Judge Alex Kozinski had a lively exchange in response to a question about the doctrine of jury nullification during the Q&A portion of our recent Independent Policy Forum, “Is U.S. Justice Broken? Overcoming Government Legal Failure“, based on our book, The Pursuit of Justice: Law and Economics of Legal Institutions, edited by Edward López.

Judge Alex Kozinski:

…juries do not have a right to disregard the law. In fact, juries are sworn to apply the law. If they can’t do that or won’t do that–and you would not want to be before a jury that is lawless. … It’s an abomination. It’s a crime. It should not be allowed to happen. The juries should be told in no uncertain terms that if they can’t apply the law as instructed by the judge, they ought to get off.

David Friedman:

…as a proposition in moral philosophy it seems to me clear that if I’m on a jury and someone is charged for something that I believe ought not to be a crime that my moral obligation is to acquit.

Judge Kozinski:

If you live in a moral society and you participate in the processes of government, in the processes of being members of society, then I think you have a moral obligation to adhere by those rules just like you have a moral obligation to abide by the law.

David Friedman:

I don’t think I have a moral obligation to abide by the law when the law is wrong. I may have a moral obligation to violate it, but this could be a very long argument.

To which David Theroux added:

It’s a natural law argument, and that is the point of nullification. The nullification argument is that you can’t just unilaterally declare that people can be licensed to do whatever they want to anybody else. It’s that there is some standard of the natural law tradition that you are judging the current claim of legal statute as legitimate or not, and that was part of the common law tradition…

You can watch the exchange towards the end of Part 5 of the video of the forum, here.

Meanwhile, potential jurors in Missoula, MT, acted as Judge Kozinski said they ought, and refused to agree to uphold the law in a recent drug case. As the defense attorney noted:

Public opinion, as revealed by the reaction of a substantial portion of the members of the jury called to try the charges on Dec. 16, 2010, is not supportive of the state’s marijuana law and appeared to prevent any conviction from being obtained simply because an unbiased jury did not appear available under any circumstances.

Concluding that he couldn’t seat a jury, the judge called a recess, during which the defense attorney and district attorney worked out a deal, and the case was dismissed.

Is mutiny the new nullification?

—-

HT: Ken Barnes

Seven states have no personal income taxes.  As a result of the 2010 census, four of them are among the eight states that will gain Representatives in the US House.

Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Washington will all gain at least one Representative.  The remaining three no income tax states are low-population states that only have one Representative: Alaska, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Ten states lost Representatives as a result of the census, and all of them have a personal income tax.

More than half of the states without personal income taxes will be gaining Representatives, while all of the states losing Representatives have income taxes.  Is this a coincidence?  Certainly there are other factors that come into play, but this is likely a significant factor.  It appears that when people “vote with their feet,” they like to move to states without income taxes.

You be the judge. You may base your judgment in part on the information contained in the following e-mail message that I received this evening. I post it here in full.

Press Release

12/20/2010

The Federal Grants and Loans Catalog is now available. This publication
contains more than 5000 financial programs, subsidies, scholarships,
grants and loans offered by the US federal government and foundations
across the United States.That is over 3000 pages of information !!!

Contents of the Catalog:

-Federal agency administering a program
-Authorization upon which a program is based
-Objectives and goals of a program
-Types of financial assistance offered under a program
-Uses and restrictions placed upon a program
-Eligibility requirements
-Application and award process
-Regulations, guidelines and literature relevant to a program
-Information contacts at the headquarters, regional, and local offices
-Programs that are related based upon program objectives and uses

   
Programs in the Catalog provide a wide range of benefits and services,
which have been grouped into 20 basic functional categories, and 176
subcategories that identify specific areas of interest. Listed below are
the 20 basic categories in which all programs have been grouped by
primary purpose.
   
Agriculture
Business and Commerce
Community Development
Consumer Protection
Cultural Affairs
Disaster Prevention and Relief
Education
Employment, Labor and Training
Energy
Environmental Quality
Food and Nutrition
Health
Housing
Income Security and Social Services
Information and Statistics
Law, Justice, and Legal Services
Natural Resources
Regional Development
Science and Technology
Transportation
   

CD version: $69.95
Printed version: $149.95

To order please call: 1 (800) 610-4543

Please do not reply to the sender’s email address as this address is only
for outgoing mail.

Please reply to webmaster@us-grantsguide.info for assistance.

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in the future please write “remove” in the subject
line and email it to: webmaster@us-grantsguide.info

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