Who is John Galt?

where's scott brown?

Yesterday the Senate raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 Trillion.  This was a 60-40 party line vote.  Oh, wait, the Dems only have 59 votes in the Senate now, don't they...?

the blame game

You're no doubt seeing that healthcare remains in the news.  Think the Dems are going to pass something?  I don't.  Read this.  For the most part, I see distinctly different attitudes between Senators and Representatives.

What does it mean?  Well, it means that House Democrats don't want to take the blame for not passing the Senate bill.  Instead, they want to make passage contingent upon a Senate reconciliation fix that will never happen.  So libs in the House can blame it on the Senate, while libs in the Senate will blame it on the House.

The truth is, I think such a strategy has better odds of passing the Senate than the House.  Harry Reid can lose eight or nine Dem Senators and still pass a reconciliation fix, but Nancy Pelosi still needs all 218 votes for anything she presents to her chamber.  She only had 220 the first time, and she's lost the one Republican she had, and one Dem supporter has resigned.  To get 218, she has to hold on to votes from deep within Blue Dog territory -- there aren't enough liberals to do it alone.  And she lost some of that coalition when Scott Brown was elected and Congress learned that the public is determined to vote against liberal healthcare reformers.

I could be wrong, but I really think this is all just posturing.

the sotu

Talk is talk.  And it's cheap, too.  I was actually glad at Obama's visible frustration, but it's misplaced.

Obama railed against both parties over gridlock.  I think gridlock's good, of course, but the truth is that Republicans deserve little credit for it.  Dems have had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate since Al Franken took office, and Scott Brown hasn't even been seated yet.  The only reason the Senate's not playing "Beat the Clock" to get healthcare reform through right now is because Democrats refuse to play along.  And the most destructive thing the House has passed -- Cap and Trade -- got a few Republican votes.

I don't want to sound elitist.  But taking Obama's speech seriously requires buying into the premise that government exists to solve problems.  That's not why government exists, and it's not what government does.

Ultimately, it is individuals who solve problems, usually working for their own benefit.  A doctor cures a chef's cancer in exchange for some good food.  Or perhaps he cures it in exchange for a Mercedes, and the chef prepares meals for the assembly line workers as part of a more elaborate arrangement that lands the doctor a car.

Government exists because the doctor, the chef and the assembly line workers want to protect their arrangement.  If I work hard, someone else could take the product of my labor by force, denying me whatever benefit I was seeking when I labored.  I work for carrots, and the government carries a stick to ensure that my carrots remain mine.

That stick is all government has going for it.  And that's important, because as soon as we start to think that government should "solve problems," then we are saying those problems should be solved with sticks rather than carrots.  Government goes from protecting your sovereignty over your labor to assuming sovereignty over you.

As I said, ultimately it is individuals who solve problems, working for their own benefit.  You benefit from what I do, and I do it in exchange for whatever benefit you offer me.  Putting government in charge of solving problems means that some people must work for the "benefit" of staying out of jail -- while others receive a benefit without earning it.  Government's not solving problems at all -- that's still being done by individuals -- but the benefit system is radically altered in the process.

Obama wants you to see the left and right squabbling over the fruit of your future labor.  But in reality, you benefit the most when both sides are unable to reach an agreement on seizing it from you in the first place.

And while Obama complains about partisanship, obstructionism and gridlock, to those of us who know better he might has well be up at the podium for an hour and a half chanting, "Four legs good, two legs better."

Which, in fact, is pretty much what he was doing.

matthews forgets

I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.
                           --Chris Matthews

Which begs the question: Do you notice it the rest of the time, Chris?  Is it something that's always in the corner of your mind?

I have to admit, the matter of Obama's race does come up when I try to understand the motives of a radical socialist.  But it's the socialism I see when I look at him, because it's the socialism that threatens us.

Still, it's always interesting to hear the little clues that sometimes slip out when liberals talk -- clues that tell us how they really think.  And obviously that applies to Obama as well as Matthews.

hayek vs. keynes

gridlock

How about a Gridlock Party?  A political party, but not for politicians -- for voters. 

What if there was a movement that sought to keep the government so conflicted it couldn't pass anything but the most essential bills?  After all, if you believe government should be doing only the bare minimum, then what better way to start than a government structurally incapable of doing more?

Remember, Bill Clinton's "surplus" was also Newt Gingrich's surplus.  Since all spending must originate in the House of Representatives, I'd like to see a House that's ideologically opposed to big government.  And then a Senate and/or a White House that's ideologically opposed to the House, making it damned near impossible to get anything enacted.

Of course, this is quite different from a Congress with a Republican agenda.  Yes, I'd rather have the GOP in charge than the Democrats, but what I really want is a government so filled with in-fighting that it couldn't climb out of Grover Norquist's bathtub.  I'd like a government that can't even agree on what the agenda is. 

Naturally, this would require strategically putting liberals into positions where they would whine a lot.  I'm not normally inclined to vote for Democrats, but I do think their ideas need to be voiced -- and properly ridiculed -- in the public forum.

Basically, I'd like to see the types of arguments the Republicans in the Senate raised against healthcare being used against every big government idea -- and used by a caucus with the power to reject them.  And I'd like to see it all done in government with just enough Democrats to reject big Republican government schemes as well.

When the Constitution's checks and balances don't go far enough -- or when they've been discarded -- let the voters institute some checks and balances of their own.

the common good

The morning after Martha Coakley lost, Roy Edroso's headline at the Village Voice read:

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

And it turns out that's true -- if Republicans stay on the right side of the issues.  I'll explain.

Consider the way Democrat legislation works.  Liberals are all about special interests.  Their legislative efforts center around correcting "injustices" that occur when the free market -- free will -- doesn't produce the results Democrats would have.

Liberals don't represent everyone -- they represent victims.  When liberals vote in favor of any group, they do so at the expense of everyone else.  It's not just Democrats sacrificing the constituents of Republicans -- they're sacrificing a lot of their own constituents, too.  Even liberal voters -- who fundamentally agree with this application of government, and who feel guilty for not being victims themselves -- get sacrificed.

Democrats can demonstrate unity, but only to the extent that they can unite around favoritism.  They make it politically correct to help a cause or a group, and then they challenge voters to support that cause or be accused of being unjust, cruel, or at the very minimum indifferent to the plight of the suffering victims.

Very few people benefit from these policies, but nearly everyone pays for them.  And right now, only 60% of Senators are necessary to institute them.  Think about it: Filibuster opponents now want it to take only a bare majority to compel everyone to provide for their special interests.  Could that possibly make things any better?

On the other hand, conservatism is about the rule of law.  Unlike a Congressional mob whose favor is curried from every direction, conservatism is about policies that benefit everyone.  We want the game to have better rules -- not better outcomes.  Results are up to the individual, and good policy is about heightening the relationship between the individual's actions and the results he experiences. 

For conservatives to prevail -- with only 41 votes -- they only have to concern themselves with the common good.  Not what's good for this special interest or that one, or why things should be better for some "victims" than for everyone else.  By common good, I mean policies that are good for everyone, rather than policies which pit smaller, popular interests against the majority.  What matters is what's best for everyone -- how can a law be written such that nobody is sacrificed?

In fact, the filibuster could be about a minority of Senators defending nearly everyone from the tyranny of politically-protected special interests. Government shouldn't be a process that distributes the cost of one person's good over everyone else -- it's supposed to seek the solutions with the most good for everyone.  The common good -- not the "greater" good.

And yes, I think 41 Senators is enough to do that.  In fact, I don't think it should take that many.

the deficit death panel

I'm seeing a trend here.  This "deficit task force" represents an attempt by Congress to abdicate its fiscal responsibility to an unelected body.

The way I see it, if these people can't make the tough decisions themselves -- or if they don't want to be responsible for making them -- then the obvious solution is not to run for office.  Supposedly, these people are all in Washington because they have ideas.  And now, at the top of their agenda, the idea is to let someone else tell them what to do?  I don't think so.

I'm particularly bothered by this because like many others I expect that for Democrats this is a mechanism for raising taxes while blaming some anonymous commission.  For them it's not even about tough choices -- it's a plan to make the easy Democrat choice somebody else's idea.  Pathetic.

fill in the blank

An opportunity for our friends on the left to win some converts:

Liberalism sets people free from ______________________.

And "capitalism" -- the notion of free markets and the idea that private property can be accumulated and put to use as the means of production -- is not something people can be liberated from.  You'd have to be more specific.

stossell: serious about crony capitalism