PRESTOPUNDIT -- "Kerry in Cambodia" Wall-to-Wall Coverage

THE BUFFET LINE TO

SERFDOM.

The Baghdad road to serfdom in America.

George Bush is deeply committed to advancing freedom -- overseas in Iraq BUT NOT here at home in the U.S.A. AEI president Chrisopher DeMuth explains how Bush's passion for liberty through war has increased serfdom at home -- and for no good reason.

Serfdom - Are We There Yet?

Robert Formaini has an interesting examination of why we haven't yet lost all of our freedom. Note well: Formaini -- and George Stigler -- are making up a strawman position on the "inevitability of serfdom" which Hayek himself never held, one of the Hayek myths which makes my Top Ten Hayek Myths list.

The article includes this great Walter Wriston quote:

"Capital goes where it's needed and stays where it's well-treated."

60 Years -- The Road to Serfdom.

"Sixty years ago this month, in March 1944, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek was first published in Great Britain. For six decades it has continued to challenge and influence the political- economic landscape of the world. Hayek delivered an ominous warning that political trends in the Western democracies were all in the direction of a new form of servitude that threatened the personal and economic liberty of the citizens of these countries. At the time the book was released Great Britain and the United States were engulfed in a global war, with Nazi Germany as the primary enemy and Soviet Russia as the primary ally. In 1944 the British had a wartime coalition government of both Conservative and Labor Party members, with Winston Churchill as its head. During these war years plans were being designed within the government for a postwar socialist Britain, including nationalized health care, nationalized industries, and detailed economic planning of industry and agriculture. For the 12 years before America�s entry into the war Franklin Roosevelt�s New Deal had transformed the United States through a degree of government spending, taxing, regulation, and redistribution the likes of which had never before been experienced in the nation�s history. Many of the early New Deal programs had even imposed a network of fascist-style economic controls on private industry and agriculture; fortunately, the Supreme Court had declared most of these controls unconstitutional in 1935. At the same time, the Soviet Union was frequently portrayed as a model�however rough around the edges�of an ideal socialist society, freeing �the masses� from poverty and exploitation. The Nazi regime, on the other hand, was usually depicted as a brutal dictatorship designed to maintain the power and control of aristocratic and capitalist elites that surrounded Hitler. Hayek�s challenge was to argue that German Nazism was not an aberrant �right-wing� perversion growing out of the �contradictions� of capitalism. Instead, the Nazi movement had developed out of the �enlightened� and �progressive� socialist and collectivist ideas of the pre-World War I era, which many intellectuals in England and the United States had praised and propagandized for in their own countries. It was in Bismarck�s Germany, after all, that there had been born the modern welfare state�national health insurance, government pension plans, regulations of industry and the workplace�and a philosophy that the national good took precedence over the interests of the �mere� individual. In this political environment Germans came to take it for granted that the paternalistic state was meant to care for them from �cradle to grave,� a phrase that was coined in Imperial Germany. Two generations of Germans accepted that they needed to be disciplined by and obedient to the enlightened political �leadership� that guided the affairs of state for their presumed benefit. Beliefs in the right to private property and freedom of exchange were undermined as the regulatory and redistributive state increasingly managed the economic activities of the society for the greater �national interest� of the German fatherland. By 1933, when Hitler came to power, the German people not only accepted the idea of the �f�hrer principle,� Hayek argued, but many now wanted it and believed they needed it. Notions about individual freedom and responsibility had been destroyed by the philosophy of collectivism and the ideologies of nationalism and socialism. But Hayek�s main point was that this tragic history was not unique or special to the German people. The institutional changes that accompanied the implementation of socialist and interventionist welfare-state policies potentially carried within them the seeds of political tyranny and economic servitude in any country that might follow a similar path. The Ultimate Monopoly The more government takes over responsibility for and control over the economic activities of a society, the more it diminishes the autonomy and independence of the individual. Government planning, by necessity, makes the political authority the ultimate monopoly, with the power to determine what is produced and how the resulting output shall be distributed among all the members of the society. What freedom is left to people, Hayek asked, when the government has the ability to decide what books will be printed or movies will be shown or plays will be performed? What escape does the individual have from the power of the state when the government controls everyone�s education, employment, and consumption? He also warned that the more that government plans production and consumption, the more the diverse values and preferences of the citizenry must be homogenized and made to conform to an overarching �social� scale of values that mirrors that hierarchy of ends captured in the central plan. Even dissent, Hayek warned, becomes a threat to the achievement of the plan and its related redistributive policies. How can the plan be achieved if critics attempt to undermine people�s dedication to its triumph? Politically incorrect thoughts and actions must be repressed and supplanted with propaganda and �progressive� education for all. Thus unrestricted freedom of speech and the press, or opposition politicking, or even observed lack of enthusiasm for the purposes of the state became viewed as unpatriotic and potentially subversive. In addition, the classical-liberal conception of an impartial rule of law, under which individuals possess equal rights to life, liberty, and the peaceful acquisition and use of private property, would have to be replaced by unequal treatment of individuals by the political authorities to assure an ideologically preferred redistributive outcome. But, asked Hayek, by what benchmark, other than prejudice, caprice, or the influence of interest groups, would the planners make their decisions? Finally, in one of the most insightful chapters in the book, Hayek explained why, in the politicized society, there is a tendency for �the worst to get on top.� Fulfillment of the government�s plans and policies requires the leaders to have the power to use any means necessary to get the job done. Thus those with the least conscience or fewest moral scruples are likely to rise highest in the hierarchy of control. The bureaucracies of the planned and regulated society attract those who are most likely to enjoy the use and abuse of power over others. Hayek died on March 23, 1992, at the age of 92. In the 12 years since his passing, The Road to Serfdom has come to be seen as one of the greatest political contributions of the twentieth century. Indeed, it played a very crucial role in stemming the tide toward totalitarian collectivism in the decades that followed World War II."

-- Richard Ebeling.

JOBS.

Overregulated businesses cutting back on highly taxed employees? Sen. Hillary Clinton has a solution -- create another goverment agency. And of course, what the spontaneous order of the free market really must have is a government strategy, claims Mrs. Clinton and -- can you believe it! -- this country has no plan! No government plan for the free economy. Shocking!

But this might be a good idea -- Clinton calls for a 10 percent across the board cut in corporate taxes.

Why Business Bankrolls Socialism. "Within the past few weeks, a handful of large companies have reported they expect to collectively save more than $2.5 billion over time, thanks to the new government subsidy for employers that offer prescription-drug benefits to retirees.

These include estimated savings of $572 million at BellSouth Corp., $415 million at AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, $300 million to $400 million at Deere & Co., $190 million at Alcoa Inc., $450 million at U.S. Steel Corp., and $500 million at Delphi Corp .. ". (via the Mises Blog)

When it comes to drugs George Bush is all about subsidizing big business and harming the market -- Bruce Bartlett. Quotable:

The worst example of subverting conservatism to aid business is the recently enacted Medicare drug benefit, which the Bush administration rammed through Congress with unprecedented pressure. This legislation will cost trillions of dollars. A key reason for the high cost is that it applies to all elderly, including those who already have drug coverage from their employers or private insurance. It would have cost a fraction as much to aid only those without drug coverage.

The incredibly more expensive option was chosen exclusively to benefit big businesses. The universal option justified the inclusion of large business subsidies in the legislation in order to keep companies from simply dropping their retiree drug coverage and dumping it all on the taxpayer. Some large companies are anticipating hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government in coming years -- funds that go straight to their bottom lines because it relieves them of a liability they already have.

A Feb. 3 report in The Wall Street Journal notes that Delphi, an auto parts manufacturer, expects to reduce its future retiree health care costs by $500 million as a result of the drug legislation. And it has only 14,000 retirees and dependents to cover. Much bigger companies like General Motors and Lucent Technologies will save vastly more. The former has 440,000 retirees and dependents to cover, and the latter has 240,000.

I predict that when the federal government starts mailing checks for tens of millions of dollars to big corporations to subsidize them for keeping health coverage they have already promised their retirees, the excrement will hit the fan ..

John Fund asks "Is Congress's GOP majority becoming as corrupt as the Democrats were?". Quotable:

Republicans should view .. the [$2.5 million] bidding war for [Rep. Billy] Tauzin on K Street as warning signs of ideological dry rot. No matter how well gerrymandered their districts, the GOP majority could be in jeopardy if it develops the same reputation for ruthlessness and selfishness that burdened the Democrats in the early 1990s. If Republicans consolidate their control over Washington while failing to reduce the size of government, they will inevitably be caught up in the care and feeding of the state. Industries that want favors or protection from government will seek out and hire powerful people to move the levers of power. F.A. Hayek warned decades ago against the dangers of a creeping corporate welfare state: "As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of the directing power."

Radley Balko explains why the growth of a massive global warfare state inevitably promotes the growth of a massive centralized nanny state. Quotable:

.. the very mindset that deems it appropriate for the United States to have troops in over 120 countries, as is currently the case, is a mindset wholly inconsistent with the notion of �limited government� -- at home or abroad. It�s simply not realistic to assume that the same government which feels the need to exert its influence all over the globe will, at the same time, voluntarily restrain its influence at home.

The nation-building efforts we�ve undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and could potentially undertake elsewhere -- also give rhetorical fuel to advocates of more socialist government at home. In the coming years, expect to hear questions like,�why are we building schools in Iraq when our city schools are so dilapidated,� or, �shouldn�t we make sure all Americans have health insurance before we start paying for health care for Iraqis?�

The road to serfdom marriage a permanent Federal "marriage encouragement" bureaucracy. Quotable:

The Bush proposal to spend zillions to supposedly improve marriages is being sold mostly in the name of "saving" the marriages of low-income Americans. It's a classic case .. of Mises's theory of interventionism: The welfare state has wrecked millions of marriages .. and high taxes and inflation have created unbearable financial pressures that have destroyed many other marriages. Therefore, the natural response is even more interventionism.

I think this pretty much defines a broken governmental system and an essentially corrupt political class:

Total federal revenues have declined for three consecutive years .. But in those years, from 2000 to 2003, total federal spending has increased .. more than 20 percent .. .

Part of a story with the "worthy of ScrappleFace" headline Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs. Via the indispensible DrudgeReport.

Massively expanding the central power of the Federal government in Washington, eroding the local power of the States and the people. It's what we elect Republicans to do, right? Well, it's what they are doing, no-matter why you are voting for them.

This folks is simply thievery. Quotable:

Once upon a time a Republican candidate for president named George W. Bush painted his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, as a reckless big spender whose fiscal policies would mean that "the era of big government being over is over."

Elect Gore, the Republican predicted, and before you know it the federal government would be as bloated and malodorous as a beached whale under a hot sun. "He is proposing the largest increase in federal spending . . . since the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson," Bush warned. "His promises throw the budget out of balance. He offers a big federal spending program to nearly every single voting bloc in America."

So where do things stand three years later? Federal spending is growing faster than at any time since LBJ, the budget is hundreds of billions of dollars out of balance, and the president appears to support new or expanded government programs for just about every voting bloc in America.

It all calls to mind a political joke that made the rounds in the late 1960s: They told me that if I voted for Goldwater, we'd have race riots in our cities and half a million troops in Southeast Asia. Well, I voted for Goldwater � and they turned out to be right!

But the fiscal debauchery of the Bush administration is no joke. Even before signing a huge expansion of Medicare into law this week, Bush was presiding over record-busting levels of federal spending. Brian Riedl, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, points out in a new monograph that government outlays in 2003 � a staggering $2.15 trillion � came to more than $20,000 per household ...

To be sure, some new spending was necessitated by Sept. 11. But as Riedl notes, most of the Bush budget bloat has had nothing to do with the war on terror, homeland security, or military operations. Between 2001 and 2003, the federal budget exploded by $296 billion, of which $100 billion (34 percent) was for defense and $32 billion (11 percent) was for 9/11-related costs, including compensation for victims and reconstruction in New York. The remaining $164 billion � 55 percent � went for programs and projects unconnected to 9/11.

What is even more outrageous about this Republican immoderation is how much of it is devoted to pure pork � local projects that have no national significance or constitutional justification. As recently as five years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 pork projects, or "earmarks," in the federal budget. In 2003, there were more than 9,300, and the number will be even higher in 2004. The pork-packed omnibus appropriations bill now making its way through Congress, for example, contains hundreds of earmarks, including:

To accommodate the extra costs of the war, the president and Congress could have cut back on nonsessential spending. Instead they lavish more money on both. The entire spending spree, meanwhile, is being financed with borrowed funds, which is why the Congressional Budget Office forecasts a deficit of $401 billion this year, $480 billion in 2004, and nearly $1.5 trillion over the next five years. (And that doesn't include the new Medicare drug benefit, which will add tens of billions of dollars to annual federal outlays). Sooner or later, every penny of those deficits will have to be repaid � if not by us, then by our children.

What is even more outrageous about this Republican immoderation is how much of it is devoted to pure pork � local projects that have no national significance or constitutional justification. As recently as five years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 pork projects, or "earmarks," in the federal budget. In 2003, there were more than 9,300, and the number will be even higher in 2004. The pork-packed omnibus appropriations bill now making its way through Congress, for example, contains hundreds of earmarks, including:

$725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia;

$1.8 million for the Women's World Cup tournament;

$325,000 for the construction of a swimming pool in Salinas, Calif.;

$220,000 for the New Mexico Retail Association in Albuquerque;

$270,000 for "sustainable olive production";

$400,000 for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky.;

$2 million for the First Tee golf program in St. Augustine, Fla.;

$315,000 for Formosan Subterranean Termite research;

$270,000 for potato storage in Madison, Wisc.

Long, long ago, in what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, Republicans opposed this kind of fiscal gluttony. The GOP was the party of budgetary sobriety � the party that believed in local responsibility for local budgets and that didn't raid the federal treasury to buy off special interests. Back then, Republicans criticized Democratic profligacy. Now they seek to outdo it.

When Bill Clinton was president, Republicans in Congress fought hard to cut spending and balance the federal budget, with the result that government outlays during Clinton's first three years rose only 3.5 percent. But once there was a Republican in the White House, the GOP's fiscal discipline evaporated. Spending during Bush's first three years has skyrocketed nearly 16 percent, a record of fiscal irresponsibility we haven't seen since the Johnson administration.

-- Jeff Jacoby.

Bloomberg on the outrageous Republican spending orgy:

President George W. Bush is presiding over the biggest growth in U.S. government spending since 1990, as a Republican-led Congress provides money for programs [such as] a dried plant exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden.

Federal spending rose 7.3 percent to $2.2 trillion in fiscal 2003 and 7.9 percent the year before, the most since George H. W. Bush was in the White House. Congress will vote this week on a $328 billion bill to fund such projects as an $18 billion loan guarantee for an Alaska gas terminal that may benefit ConocoPhillips Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp ...

``The big boom you're having right now might not be sustainable if the deficit continues to be large,'' said Steven Hess, an analyst with Moody's Investors Service.

The U.S. government's credit rating may be in jeopardy in the next decade unless lawmakers limit spending and reduce the deficit, Hess said. Merrill Lynch & Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc economists say White House projections are too low. They forecast the fiscal 2004 shortfall may be at least $600 billion.

Bush II's spending orgy seems to follow a well-practiced re-election strategy perfected by Republican presidents:

Reagan won a second term in 1984 with 58.8 percent of the vote after government spending increased by more than 8 percent a year in his first three years in office. Richard Nixon also won a second term after spending rose by higher percentages each year of his first term, reaching 9.8 percent in 1972 when he won with 60.3 percent of the vote.

Here's more on how the Republicans are burning money like a bonghead burns up weed:

Bush also is pushing for an energy bill, intended to reduce U.S. dependence on the resources of other nations, that stalled in the Senate last month. The funding for that bill has grown in Congress to $31 billion, almost quadruple the amount Bush requested.

``The deficit is manageable, but no one in Congress or the White House is doing anything to manage it,'' said Bixby, of the Concord Coalition.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who heads the Commerce Committee, said the Medicare bill, which Bush signed today, will cause the 38-year-old program ``to go broke,'' and the energy bill is ``just one pork-barrel project larded on to another.''

Lawmakers secured about $24 billion in taxpayer money for "hometown projects" in the fiscal 2004 budget, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington group. That's a record, equal to the combined budgets of the Justice Department, Small Business Administration and National Science Foundation.

Bush has criticized lawmakers for funding hometown projects, such as $400,000 for the New York Botanical Garden's virtual herbarium, a collection of dried plants. Still, Bush has never vetoed a spending bill. The rising cost of such projects shows Congress lacks the will to cut spending, said David Williams, vice president of policy at Citizens Against Government Waste ...

``The math is really unforgiving: you either address entitlements or raise taxes,'' [professor Glenn Hubbard] said.

Make no mistake folks, Republicans can keep pretend as long as they want, but the fact remains -- there is no free lunch. The Republican tax increases are coming -- and they will be truly enormous HUGE. Like nothing Bush I every hit us with.

And here is a little political bone to chew -- how many don't think that all it would take woud to end the administration of Bush II is a [non-crazy] Ross Perot on the ballot? If someone like Sen John McCain got pissed off enough and ran for President as an independent it would be lights out for George Bush II, just as it was for George Bush I.

Bush and the Republicans are pro political corruption, not "pro market" -- and even The New Republic's Jonathan Chait gets it:

The way you tell the difference between a free-marketer and a servant of business is how he behaves when the interests of the two diverge. And all the evidence, including the Medicare and energy bills, points to the conclusion that Bush is happy to throw free-market conservatism out the window when business interests so desire.

Consider, for instance, the $180 billion farm bill signed by Bush in 2002. The notion that taxpayers should subsidize farmers rather than, say, butchers or t- shirt salesmen represents the most archaic and unjustifiable kind of government intervention. But farmers have lots of clout in Washington, in part because they're relatively affluent (farm households earn more on average than non-farm households) but mainly due to the disproportionate representation of rural states in the Senate and electoral college. In the course of showering federal largesse upon farmers a year ago, some senators tried to mitigate their shame slightly by limiting payments to $275,000 per farmer. Republicans removed this modest measure ...

A cornerstone of Bush's domestic policy is his aptitude for economic giveaways that are supported by neither liberals nor true conservatives--indeed, that are supported only by those who profit from them monetarily or politically. Take the energy bill, which lavished subsidies upon favored industries ...

Last year, the Associated Press conducted a remarkable study showing how federal spending patterns had changed since the GOP took over Congress in 1995. Republicans did not shrink federal spending, it found, they merely transferred it, from poorer Democratic districts to wealthier Republican ones. This, the A.P. reported, "translates into more business loans and farm subsidies, and fewer public housing grants and food stamps." In 1995, Democratic districts received an average of $35 million more in federal largesse than Republican districts, which seems roughly fair given that Democratic districts have more people in need of government aid. By 2001, the gap had not only reversed, it had increased nearly twentyfold, with GOP districts receiving an average of $612 million more than Democratic ones.

The OC Register's Steve Greenhut explains why George Bush is a disaster for an America retaining any meagre semblance of the Founder's vision of limited government. Quotable:

By almost any measure, George W. Bush has abandoned limited-government conservatism ...

the president, even though I believe him to be a decent man, is busy expanding government power at a pace that would have been unthinkable even under Bill Clinton's horrible administration ... We need to be hardheaded and evaluate this president in the same way we evaluated Clinton, Jimmy Carter and other presidents ...

Government must be limited. Growth in government is not good, because government is based on coercion. Individuals do a better job spending their own hard- earned money than government, which lavishes its ill-gotten gains on special interest groups and constituencies that whine the loudest ...

Compared to this ideal, President Bush is a disaster. Even compared to other modern conservative politicians, he has been a huge disappointment. Compared to this ideal, President Bush is a disaster. Even compared to other modern conservative politicians, he has been a huge disappointment. In fairness, the president has [done some things right]. But mostly it has been one sellout after another ..

This president has not vetoed a single bill, which means he has signed into law every big-spending project that has come down the pike. Federal spending, even on non-military matters, has soared ...

under President Ronald Reagan, non-defense discretionary spending fell by 13.5 percent but increased by nearly 21 percent under Bush II. How is that for a contrast? ...

It's time for those who had supported the president to make their criticisms heard.

Also, don't miss Doug Bandow's "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush" -- the cover story of this month's American Conservative.

David Berstein -- how Canadians lost their right to FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Quotable Doug Bandow:

Republicans no longer believe in limited constitutional government; their primary role in Washington is to enact Democratic programs veiled in conservative rhetoric. Americans might as well vote Democratic: then, at least, they would benefit from truth in advertising.

Ain't it the truth, sad to say.

Christopher Caldwell on the decline of France. Quotable:

Today France has the highest youth unemployment in Europe, at 26 percent ... Its employment rate of 58 percent is at the bottom of the developed world ... And this grim employment picture is worsened--some would even say caused--by a political inequity. Over the past decade, public-sector employees have been able to enrich themselves in ways that private-sector ones cannot. Government employees can retire after 37.5 years on the job, versus 40 for private workers; they get 75 percent of their salary as a pension, versus 62 percent in the private sector; and the salary in this calculation is based on the best-paid six months for government workers, versus an average of their last 25 years for workers in private industry. So the latter wind up subsidizing the former ...

Gridlock -- it beats the heck out of one-party rule by Republicans.

Bush's Budget Betrayal. Enough said.

Dan Peruchi, father of four, enjoyed fixing up old cars and reselling them. Because the dealers he worked with dealt mainly in cash, he usually had lots on hand. Peruchi was driving home to Ft. Worth, Texas when he noticed the flashing lights of a police car behind him. After pulling him over, the officer asked to search Peruchi's car. Peruchi had about $19,000 in a satchel, but nothing criminal to hide, so he consented. The officer found Peruchi's cash, and immediately suspected Peruchi was involved with drugs. He called in drug-sniffing dogs, who then reacted suspiciously to Peruchi's satchel (most all of the U.S. money supply carries faint amounts of drug residue, mostly cocaine).

The dogs' reaction, no more, was enough for the West Memphis police department to seize Peruchi's money. When Peruchi protested, the police officer retorted, "Carry checks next time."

Peruchi was never arrested. He was never even charged. But his money was gone, under the absurd premise that property can be guilty of a crime, even if its owner isn't. The police department deposited Peruchi's money into its own operations budget, as it was permitted to do under Arkansas' drug forfeiture laws. Peruchi was told that if he tried to fight the county, his case would be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Try fighting the feds," he was told. Even if Peruchi had won in court, his legal costs would likely have amounted to more than the $19,000 he was fighting for, and it's improbable that he would have been reimbursed for his legal fees.

Peruchi is but one of many similarly outrageous stories told the new book Mugged by the State, by Randall Fitzgerald ...

-- just one of several nightmare stories teased by Radley Balko.

Goverment agency in Britain wants government ban on "junk food" event sponsorship -- e.g. Pepsi would be prohibited by law from sponsoring a Britney Spears concert. My question -- if the government can ban "junk (food) speech", why can't they turn this equation around and ban "junk music", i.e. the Britney Spears concert full stop? Britney Spears and her music can't be good for you, can it?

Americans call for increased governmental protection. Quotable:

NEW YORK�Alarmed by the unhealthy choices they make every day, more and more Americans are calling on the government to enact legislation that will protect them from their own behavior.

"The government is finally starting to take some responsibility for the effect my behavior has on others," said New York City resident Alec Haverchuk, 44, who is prohibited by law from smoking in restaurants and bars. "But we have a long way to go. I can still light up on city streets and in the privacy of my own home. I mean, legislators acknowledge that my cigarette smoke could give others cancer, but don't they care about me, too?"

"It's not just about Americans eating too many fries or cracking their skulls open when they fall off their bicycles," said Los Angeles resident Rebecca Burnie, 26. "It's a financial issue, too. I spend all my money on trendy clothes and a nightlife that I can't afford. I'm $23,000 in debt, but the credit-card companies keep letting me spend. It's obscene that the government allows those companies to allow me to do this to myself. Why do I pay my taxes?"

Beginning with seatbelt legislation in the 1970s, concern over dangerous behavior has resulted in increased governmental oversight of private activities. Burnie and Haverchuk are only two of a growing number of citizens who argue that legislation should be enacted to protect them from their own bad habits and poor decisions.

Anita Andelman of the American Citizen Protection Group is at the forefront of the fight for "greater guardianship for all Americans."

"Legislation targeting harmful substances like drugs and alcohol is a good start, but that's all it is�a start," Andelman said. "My car automatically puts my seatbelt on me whenever I get into it. There's no chance that I'll make the risky decision to leave it off. So why am I still legally allowed to drink too much caffeine, watch television for seven hours a day, and, in some states, even ride in the back of a pick-up truck? It just isn't right."

Rev. Ted Hinson, founder of the Christian activist group Please God Stop Me, said he believes that the government will listen ..

More.

Russian Prime Minister defies Putin, defending markets and opposing the siloviki.

Bush's new agenda -- "ensuring economic security". The war paradigm takes over domestic thinking once again -- Robert Higgs has written a great history of how all this has happened before in his excellent Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. The federal government has not seen this sort of domestic growth since the age of Roosevelt. Higgs edits The Independent Review. It's also worth a look.

Conservatives taken to the cleaners.

By Jerry Taylor & Peter VanDoren

The passage of President Bush's ten-year, $350 billion tax cut has put a bounce in the step of conservatives while casting a pall of gloom upon their liberal brethren. Yet it's unclear to us exactly why devotees of limited government are cheering while advocates of activist government are booing. Our view of the facts suggests that both the Left and the Right are reading off the wrong political scripts. The Left should be popping the champagne bottles and the Right should be wondering how they ended up being taken to the cleaners.

The president sold the tax cuts as a good-old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus measure. "My proposal," Bush said, "is based upon this principle: If your economy is slow, you need to increase the demand for goods and services." While Bush's tax cut is admittedly not a particularly muscular attempt at providing this short-term stimulus (one of the few facts that both liberal and conservative economists agree on), the Left can cheer the fact that � rhetorically at least � the leader of the Republican party has repeatedly and publicly embraced the one macroeconomic theory that justifies big government in spades.

Ironically, this GOP stamp of approval comes at a time when most academic economists have already quit this school of thought. If ideas indeed have consequences in politics, Republicans � by further cementing public opinion behind Keynesian orthodoxy � will find it difficult if not impossible in the future to replace the big foot of government with the invisible hand of capitalism in course of managing future business cycles.

Then there's the curious deficit fight. While the Left pounds away at the red ink, most of them are happy to preach the Keynesian gospel to justify increased spending. But big-time deficits are part and parcel of the orthodox Keynesian prescription for moving sluggish economies out of the doldrums. You can't be a Keynesian in the morning and a Monetarist at teatime.

The Right's total abandonment of balanced budgeting is even more curious. Sure taxes are unpleasant to pay. But someone, someday has to pay for the government we're buying every year. Deficit spending just puts off the day of reckoning � but with interest. Trading off smaller taxes today for larger taxes tomorrow is a curious position for anti-tax conservatives to take.

Machiavellian conservatives usually fall back when pressed on this to what we'll call "The Milton Friedman Hypothesis." That is, the only way to restrain the growth of government in the long run is to starve it of revenues. This is certainly a plausible argument at first glance, but where's the beef? Government this year will be about $400 billion in the red but spending will increase nonetheless by at least 7.4 percent. Republicans control the House, Senate, and presidency and we're in a non-election year. If political planets aren't properly aligned now for an attack on government spending, then when will they ever be?

Moreover, the Friedman Hypothesis is testable. If one runs a regression analysis and controls for the business cycle, no relationship can be found between the growth of federal spending and the size of the federal deficit since World War II. It might well have held in earlier days, but the public's tolerance for debt over the past six decades demonstrates that, if deficits are a restraining factor on politicians, we're a long way from crossing that threshold of red ink.

Conservatives may well be right to argue that the Bush tax cut will enhance long-term economic efficiency by reducing the double taxation of dividends and reducing the marginal income tax rate applied to high wage earners, but such reforms do not require deficit spending. Whether the modest gains in economic efficiency will offset the long-term damage done by exploding deficits and new distortions introduced to the tax code is anyone's guess.

So this is the "Great Tax Fight of 2003" in a nutshell. Both liberals and conservatives happily and without great argument sign off on the purchase of a $2.3 trillion dollar government (with more spending surely to come). But as a matter of high principle, liberals argue that we should put 11 percent of this year's tab on the national credit card while conservatives argue on high principle that we should put 17 percent of it on said national credit card. Conservatives are nearly drunk with glee over an "historic" tax cut that will reduce government's take on the private sector by all of 0.2 percent over ten years, while liberals bemoan that this minute reduction in federal revenues ushers-in a Dickensonian world of hellish squalor. How partisans of either side can get their blood up over such an argument is beyond us.

Once we clear away the political smoke, it is crystal clear that conservatives in Washington have completely abandoned their campaign against big government. Rather than tackle spending head-on, Republican politicians trot out tax cuts as a symbolic surrogate and Republicans respond with ideological gusto, forgetting the fact that tax cuts have nothing to do with the size of government. They have to do with how we pay for government.

Conservatives who are ambivalent about how we pay for government should be reminded that deficit spending invites more spending than would likely be the case if Republicans actually had to swallow hard and raise taxes to pay for the spending bills they're busily whooping-through the Congress. After all, you'll usually buy more of something when you think you're getting it at 20-percent off with payments due...probably not in your tax-paying or vote-getting lifetime (that's the next generation's problem).

This collapse of Republican principle shouldn't surprise. George Bush's 2000 campaign slogan of "compassionate conservatism" was a not-so-veiled call for the GOP to give up the green eyeshades once and for all, a call Bush made reality during the campaign when he excoriated House Republicans for contemplated cuts in the growth of domestic spending. Domestic-spending increases under President Bush, accordingly, are among the largest in postwar history. And all the while, many conservative activists happily cheer the administration on, either oblivious to the fact � or cynically all too aware of the fact � that political success is being achieved at the expense of the one thing � limited government � that supposedly divides the two parties. Annual tax-cutting campaigns, the White House hopes, will distract fiscal conservatives from the reality of what's going on here.

Liberals should revel in this little-noticed turn of events. If deficits no longer matter and fights over the size of government are off the table, how bad can things be? Conservatives who care about limited government, on the other hand, should despair over developments within the Republican party and the conservative movement as a whole. As long as fiscal conservatism is defined as taking a "no new tax" pledge as opposed to a "no new spending" pledge, the limited government crowd will find themselves increasingly irrelevant to American politics.

� Jerry Taylor is a policy director at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. Peter VanDoren is editor of Cato's Regulation magazine.

Forget about tax freedom day, what really makes a difference for our long term prosperity is cost of government day:

Today, July 11, is this year's "Cost of Government Day," the date in the calendar year when the average American worker has earned enough money to pay off his or her share of the burdens of government at all levels. Cost of Government Day falls five days later in 2003 than it did in 2002 .. This year is the third year in a row that there's been a Cost of Government Day increase, and the average American worker needed 17 additional days this year to pay for the cost of government than that worker did in 2000. .. [indeed] the increases of the past three-years have nearly wiped all the cost-declines achieved since 1992.

Free speech continues to be threatened by the Republican's unconstitutional -- and unAmerican --McCain-Feingold legislation. The sort of speech this unlawful "law" would stiffle includes the sort of speech which allowed democracy to work in the Davis recall effort. (via California Insider)

George Bush is no friend of free markets or the the folks who work and pay taxes. Take a closer look, for example, at Bush's drug-money-for-votes initiative -- it turns out to be all about shifting huge costs from big business to the little guy, as Bruce Bartlett explains. Quotable:

A good example of how businesses manipulate government for their own benefit is the prescription drug subsidy bill now before Congress. Although marketed as a benefit for seniors, the true beneficiaries are big businesses that would be able to greatly reduce the cost of their retiree health programs. According to a July 2 report in The New York Times, Ford Motor Co. alone would save $50 million per year.

The Times notes that the biggest companies are mainly those that still offer drug benefits to their retired workers and would save the most. In the aggregate, they would save billions of dollars per year if the federal government takes over a big chunk of their retiree health expenses by paying for prescription drugs. That is why they are lobbying very heavily for passage of the legislation.

By contrast, seniors are unenthusiastic about the new benefit that is to be showered on them. According to a Zogby poll for the Galen Institute, a significant majority of seniors are satisfied with the drug coverage they have now, and many fear that they would actually be worse off under a mandatory government plan. They are right. Many will be worse off.

In short, to increase their profits, many of our nation's largest corporations are pushing a budget-busting government spending program that eventually will lead to higher taxes on all Americans. Sadly, the Bush administration often supports policies that benefit big businesses at the expense of average people, as it did with steel tariffs and agriculture subsidies.

On top of all that, the the giant monkey wrench of government regulation gets heaved into the incredibly successful workings of the pharmaceutical industry. It's a rotten deal.

Bruce Batlett on Bush, Nixon and the "Gimme Generation":

.. this is the price we are paying for being in the midst of a foreign-policy crisis and having a Democratic party controlled by its most extreme elements. The former tends to make conservatives reflexively support the president, while the latter makes the White House think that the middle of the political spectrum is there for the taking. With the elderly occupying much of that middle ground, the goal is simply to buy their votes with prescription drugs.

Richard Nixon did the same thing back in 1972 when he boosted Social Security benefits by 20 percent and automatically indexed them to inflation. But while this did buy the votes of the elderly that year, it did not buy their loyalty. When Nixon got into trouble over Watergate, the elderly did not come to his defense because of the windfall he showered on them. They simply took what he gave them for granted and asked, �What else are you going to do for me?�

Political analyst Charlie Cook suggests that something similar could happen to Bush. No matter how big a prescription-drug subsidy is enacted into law, it will never meet the outsized expectations of today�s �Gimme Generation� of elderly, who feel they are owed unlimited benefits simply for living through World War II and the Great Depression. Therefore, they are guaranteed to be disappointed by the results and will chafe at any limitations on the government�s largess.

When Bush refuses to expand the program to their liking, Democrats will be more than happy to say they will. And should Republicans ever suggest anything in the future to restrain the inevitable growth of the prescription-drug program, Democrats will predictably attack them for slashing it and killing untold numbers of seniors by denying them life-saving drugs. These attacks will work, leaving Republicans as the bad guys once again, even though no prescription-drug plan would exist without Republican support.

In short, the political calculation is penny-wise/pound-foolish in the extreme. Any prescription-drug plan will be an albatross around the Republican Party�s neck for generations to come. It�s a bad deal.

A little dose of reality. The Bushes have always been Nixon Republicans -- willing to give limited government Republicans a stick in the eye and a shove-off whenever there are votes to buy or favored interests to coddle .. either through wasteful spending or deeply flawed laws and regulations. Remember -- it was Nixon who gave us racial quotas and Bush I who gave us the federally mandated wheel-chair access for handicapped strippers, alcoholism as a federally protected "disability", and other such absurdities. These weren't accidents -- they reflected deep-seated "go where the votes are" thinking, untroubled by worries of doing what is healthy for a free and liberal social order.

The Congressman from Boeing -- and other pork stories from the Land of Lincoln. I tell you, without constitutional reform, the taxpayer is doomed.

As Eric Rasmusen points out the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unequal treament of individuals for racial purposes is far worse a violation of the spirit of the 14th amendment than even Plessy v. Ferguson:

What made me think of Plessy v. Ferguson, though, was the recent Grutter decision . Plessy v. Ferguson, people rarely note, was not a pro-South decision. It did require equal treatment of different races, and merely noted that segregation did not imply inequality. The difference in Brown v. Board of Education was that Brown said that separate treatment based on race was inherently demeaning and discriminatory, even if the treatments were equal. O'Connor's majority opinion is more pro-segregationist than even Plessy v. Ferguson. On O'Connor's logic, separate treatment is clearly allowed, for "diversity" purposes. But it does not have to be separate but equal. Blacks (or, if the argument is anything but special pleading, whites) could get extra scholarship money, or other special treatment. Bakke's conclusion that quotas are illegal does not fit her logic. If a university claims that having a separate all-black luxury dorm has an educational purpose, that should be allowed, by her logic. As should a separate, all-white university. Thus, the U. of Mississippi was in the right in 1962, in the current Supreme Court's view.

Think about that for a minute.

Racial descrimination is constitutionally protected -- that's the bottom line truth of the matter coming out of the Supreme Court today. But only whatever sort of decrimination the particular members have a taste for at the given moment -- this might be different depending on what racial or social results each of the folks on this body might prefer at some different point in the future. Politics and institutional bureaucracies will largely determine who these people are and what racial descrimination preferences these folks will have at any point in time. None of this will rely on principles written or unwritten in our liberal constitution -- it will continue to be a matter of the personal social tastes of the particular members of the Supreme Court. What you have, in other words, is judicial pragmatism as explained and endorsed by Richard Posner in his new book LAW, PRAGMATISM, AND DEMOCRACY, which I discussed here. So if the personal tastes and concerns of the members of the Supreme Court lead them to prefer certain national security outcomes, there is nothing in principle to stop us from taking the road back to Manzanar. It's all a matter of the pragmatics of the moment, reflecting the personal wishes of nine men and women with a lifetime privilege to rule over the rest of us. And as you may have guessed, I don't think this is a really great idea.

Microsoft, America Online, Earthlink, eBay and Yahoo back national anti-SPAM regulations.

Doug Bandow on the 'tax break' for those who don't pay taxes.

Radley Balko
takes on the Bush administration's $1.5 billion "marriage promotion" legislation. Some of the basic truths about what it is to be an American are getting lost by those on "the right", i.e. conservatives are moving further left all the time. Good stuff, and some important reminders.

The Institute for Justice is studying government barriers to entrepreneurship around the country. A key finding, "More than 500 occupations � approximately 10 percent of all jobs in the United States � require that individuals have permission from the state, in the form of a license, before they can pursue their chosen occupation. "

"Tax refunds" for non-taxpayers -- it's a Republican thing. Bruce Bartlett explains how this mess got started.

Welfare geezers -- they will be the budget, pretty much the whole budget, and nothing but the budget:

the percentage of the federal budget spent on Social Security and Medicare will balloon from 41% in 2000 to 74% in 2040.

And this is without the new "free drugs for geezers" / loot-for-votes legislation. Bottom line, no reform means huge and constant tax increases.

It's time to get over the notion that anybody is going to be cutting your taxes. Medicare is is serious crisis. Not only must the country pay off its already staggering debt to lenders, it must prepare to pay the endless bills of the spoiled generation, as these fat and happy folks begin to fall off their slot-machine chairs and are taken to the doctor for tests and more test, pills and more pills. Money quote:

Today, Medicare consumes 12 percent of the federal budget and similar shares of most state budgets. By 2030, it will devour 28 percent to 38 percent of federal taxes, based on the latest projections from Medicare's board of trustees. This means substantial tax increases ..

Bush takes us down the road to Prescription Drug Hell.

Let's face it folks, the party of Reagan is dead -- road kill. A "Reaganite" in Alabama is pushing through a huge tax increase . Worth quoting:

it was Reagan who understood, and warned against, the mantra of big-government: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Mark Levin on George Bush -- our Lefty president:

It appears that President Bush is not only a supply-sider who supports tax cuts, but he's a demand-sider who supports massive new government spending. President Bush opposed, and then supported, expanding federal spending for agriculture subsidies. He opposed, and then supported, repeated extentions of unemployment insurance. He joined with Ted Kennedy in massively increasing federal spending for education. He opposed, and then supported, federalizing tens of thousands of airport security personnel. He supported billions in subsidies to the airline industry. He opposed, and then supported, the establishment of a huge and cumbersome new bureaucracy to oversee homeland security. He's pressuring Republican House leaders to support a $10 billion gift to non-taxpayers in the form of child-tax-credit increases. He opposed, and now supports, an expensive expansion of the soon-to-be bankrupt Medicare program to include prescription drug subsidies to all seniors, regardless of ability to pay. Meanwhile, Social Security continues to pile up tens of billions in obligations, and the president has yet to submit to Congress a long-promised privatization program--once a domestic priority.

Jonah Goldberg on Lyndon Baines Bush. -- no, make that Franklin Delano Bush. Highlight:

the years 2000 to 2003 marked the biggest spending spree in the history of the United States, except for WWII. Total spending has gone up nearly 14 percent in Bush's first three years, and discretionary spending has gone up nearly 20 percent. Bush spent a pile not only on guns, but on butter. Non-defense spending has gone up by almost the same amount as defense spending, and defense spending constitutes barely a fifth of the total increase in spending from 2000 to 2003.

FTC seeks special SPAM powers. The government gets its foot in the door with this claim: "66 percent of spam contained obvious indicia of falsity". Who knew? And why do bureaucrats talk like that?

Boeing & Washington State -- let the little guys pull the tax wagon.

Tax privileges for the wealthy and powerful. You just have to admire the way a larger government and a larger tax burden always has a knack of slamming the little guy and working out cozy well for the big fish. The Leftiest are always promising just the opposite, but hard-lived reality is always a better educator than blow-hard rhetoric.

I'd missed this over the weekend:

the Bush administration is asking Congress to allocate .. $1.5 billion in welfare funds during five years for demonstration projects on marriage education and promotion

The Agitator has some thoughts. Here are my own. The most distructive force attacking the family structure over the past half-century has been the federal government and federal taxes. Case in point. Tax payments to the government by poor and middle income folks have increased substantially since the 1950s -- forcing mother and fathers to be apart from their families in record numbers in order to pay for the increased burned of the government. In many cases, the second income doesn't even cover the increased tax burden. Another $1.5 billion pulled out of the pockets of mom and dad for the sake of another extravagant government "test" program is kind of like spitting on the wound.

P.S. - don't miss The Agitator's Atkin's diet testimonial, including this:

I've even grown philosophically attached to the Atkins diet. If ever there were a "libertarian" diet, this is it. It's a finger in the eye to that dumb food pyramid the FDA has tried to shove down our throats for the last thirty years.

Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard very predicably endorses a government solution to the problem of Spam. Not to say that they have a solution, just that they know apriori were best to look for one. In the blogosphere, it's obvious that lots of folks haven't waited for the government to solve the problem -- they're fighting back with technology like spamarrest, or their own anti-spam hacks. The horizontal knowledge of the pack (not a herd) in action.

Arnold Kling takes on America's biggest mental health problem -- our insane health care system and the deranged thinking that has produced it.

Amtrak -- George Will gives up and learns to love the the unstoppable monument to tax injustice and democracy gone mad. Money quote:

"The marketplace .. has been completely distorted by government investment."

The typical member of Congress, now an older baby boomer, ought to wonder: What am I doing to my children (and their children)? From 2010 to 2030, the over-65 population is projected to rise by about 30 million; meanwhile, the working-age population (20-64) will increase by only 10 million. The pressures on younger families to pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits must rise. Piling new benefits atop the old -- today drugs, tomorrow nursing-home care and then who knows what -- compounds the pressures. We cannot know the full consequences of these larger burdens. But the possibilities must include slower economic growth and smaller families -- because the economy becomes less dynamic and because young couples feel they can't afford children. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the costs of today's Social Security and Medicare benefits will nearly double by 2030 -- from 6.4 percent of national income (gross domestic product) to 11.1 percent. Put differently, the increase equals 25 percent of today's federal budget. It implies a massive transfer from the working-age population that must occur through (a) higher taxes, (b) higher deficits, (c) cuts in other government programs -- or all three. Now, suppose Congress adds a drug benefit ..

Robert Samuelson, explaining the insufferable generation's new road to serfdom.

They have guns. They will use them if you don't obey. They want your money. You have no choice but to give it to them. And your money goes up in smoke. They aren't crack addicts or heroin addicts. Their are Congress, the President & their Federal minions. And they've just stolen your money, and they and their friends are having a ball with it.

From the land of George Orwell:

Smokers and overweight people will be asked to sign contracts with their doctors to agree a programme to quit smoking and lose weight under radical plans being drawn up by the [British] government .. In an attempt to remind people of their own responsibilities the health secretary, Alan Millburn, is examining plans for patients and doctors to agree a formal programme of treatment.

More on "self-responsibility" as imagined by the British Labor party here.

Instapundit links to blogger fiskings of the FT story on gigantic projected US gov. deficits. $36 trillion of the $44 trillion in deficits is a shortfall in medicare taxes needed to pay the medical costs of the Bill Clinton generation. Powerline points out that the Bush tax cut constitutes .008 percent of the projected $44 trillion tax shortfall.

Californian democracy -- given good and hard:

The [California] state Assembly's dominant Democrats had a choice Thursday: help the thousands of small-business owners who have been clobbered by extortionate lawsuits or lawsuit threats under the state's broad unfair competition law, or stand with personal injury attorneys who are among the Democrats' most reliable campaign contributors ..

"the envy zealots". Kind of has a ring to it.