Dealing with Police
Yesterday Cato hosted the premiere screening of the new film, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, produced by our friends at Flex Your Rights. The Washington Post has a nice piece about the film and event here. And the Washington Examiner covered the event here.
10 Rules is a gold mine of useful information (both legal and practical) for handling police encounters. Legal books are too often impenetrable and just too time-consuming for laypersons. 10 Rules is a media-savvy vehicle that can alleviate the problem of constitutional illiteracy in America.
In less than 45 minutes, you acquire the information you need to know. Get the dvds and encourage others to show them at high schools, colleges, and other venues.
Catch the trailer below:
Wednesday Links
- Idea of the day: Repeal the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to lay and collect taxes. Replace it with an amendment that requires each state to remit to the federal government a certain percent of its tax revenue.
- Economist Richard Rahn on the necessity of failure in the market: “When government becomes a player and tries to prevent the failure of market participants, its decisions are almost invariably corrupted by the political process.”
- Read up on Goodwin Liu, Obama’s nominee for a seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: “Liu’s confirmation would compromise the judiciary’s check on legislative overreach and push the courts not only to ratify such constitutional abominations as the individual health insurance mandate but to establish socialized health care as a legal mandate itself.”
- Nuclear arms treaty set for April. It’s a long time coming.
- Podcast: “China, Currency and Trade Demagogues” featuring Daniel J. Ikenson.
Lawrence Lessig’s Constitutional Amendment
Lawrence Lessig has proposed a constitutional amendment in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. It reads:
“Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power to limit, though not to ban, campaign expenditures of non-citizens of the United States during the last 60 days before an election.”
In Citizens United, the Court said that the First Amendment concerns speech rather than speakers. Congress has no power to discriminate against speakers; hence, a source of speech – people organized as a corporation – could not be prohibited from speaking (or funding speech).
Professor Lessig hopes to introduce a discrimination among speakers into the First Amendment. His proposed discrimination will not lose a popularity contest. He wishes to allow Congress to control the speech of non-citizens. He follows two lines of argument in support of his amendment, one less rational than the other.
The less rational line of appeal to the reader is both implicit and predictable. The Chinese are invoked along with the Chamber of Commerce. A denial of xenophobic intent follows immediately, and “We the People” appear near the end. Carl Schmitt would recognize the rhetorical construction of “friend and enemy.” Rather cleverly, Lessig manages to equate the foreign devils with the internal demons of the liberal mind. Corporations (including the Sierra Club?) and the Chinese (or other foreigner) are on one side of political struggles while “We the People” are on the other.
Who I’m Not Voting For
It’s that time of year again, when friends start telling me about this or that candidate I should support because he or she is a dedicated defender of liberty and limited government. I’m a political junkie, so I love getting these recommendations. But I don’t end up supporting or contributing to many candidates. In my view, it’s not enough for a candidate to say that he’s ”committed to slashing wasteful spending, providing tax relief, and eliminating red tape.” What’s your actual tax plan? What spending do you propose to cut or eliminate? Not many of them offer clear answers to that.
And liberty involves more than just economics. Often I’m told, “Congressman X is a libertarian.” I always check, and then I say, “He voted for the war, the Patriot Act, and the Federal Marriage Amendment. Sounds like a conservative.” Now a conservative who opposed President George W. Bush’s trillion-dollar spending increase, his Medicare expansion, and his stepped-up federal involvement in education is a lot better than your average member of Congress. But those votes do not a libertarian make.
This year I’m looking for candidates who stand for freedom across the board, who want government constrained by the Constitution, who believe in the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
And that means I don’t want to back candidates who support
- the war in Iraq
- the war in Afghanistan
- war with Iran
- the war on drugs
- the constitutional amendment to override state marriage laws and make gay people second-class citizens
- the president’s power to snatch American citizens off the street and hold them without access to a lawyer or a judge
- new restrictions on immigration
So don’t everybody write at once. But I’ll be looking out for political candidates who support liberty and limited government across a wide range of issues.
Moody’s Mulls Downgrading U.S. Debt
The U.S. isn’t Greece. Yet.
Moody’s is no longer so sure about the quality of Uncle Sam’s debt. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:
The US needs to make significant government spending cuts or else risk losing its gold-plated credit rating that has made extensive borrowing so affordable, Moody’s Investor Service said late Monday.
The announcement was a sobering warning that the country’s burgeoning debt has weakened the country’s economic standing, and that US Treasury Bonds, traditionally a bullet-proof investment, could lose their sterling Aaa-rating if Washington cannot control its federal debt.
If Moody’s were to downgrade the country’s rating, the impact could be severe. It would signal to lenders worldwide that the US is no longer one of the safest places to invest money.
That, in turn, would threaten the country’s ability to borrow freely and extensively from other countries on favorable terms. Investors would likely demand a higher interest rate to finance US debt, which would push federal debt higher still.
“There’s a profound effect in this announcement,” says Max Fraad Wolff, a professor of economics at New School University in New York. “The US has always been the gold standard … and this begins to signal a fall or weakness in US global economic position. That’s a bit like a sea change.”
Obviously we are long overdue for some fiscal responsibility in Washington. And that means cutting spending across the board. Lawmakers might start by considering what programs are authorized by the Constitution–and the far larger number which represent unconstitutional political power grabs.
Questions for Thoughtful ObamaCare Supporters
What does it say that the American polity has consistently rejected a wholesale government takeover of health care for 100 years?
What does it say that public opinion has been consistently against the Democrats’ health care takeover since July 2009?
What does it say that Democrats are having this much difficulty enacting their health care legislation despite unified Democratic rule? Despite large supermajorities in both chambers of Congress, including a once-filibuster-proof Senate majority (see more below)? Despite an opportunistic change in Massachusetts law that provided that crucial 60th vote at a crucial moment? Despite a popular and charismatic president?
What does it say that 38 House Democrats voted against the president’s health plan?
What does it say that Massachusetts voters elected, to fill the term of Ted Kennedy, a Republican who ran against the health care legislation that Kennedy helped to shape?
What does it say that the only thing bipartisan about that legislation is the opposition to it?
What does it say that 39 senators voted to declare that legislation’s centerpiece unconstitutional?
What does it say that health care researchers — a fairly left-wing lot — think the Senate bill is unconstitutional?
What does it say that the demands of pro-life and pro-choice House Democrats, each of which hold enough votes to determine the fate of this legislation, are irreconcilable?
What does it say that House Democrats are actually contemplating a legislative strategy that would deem the Senate bill to have passed the House — without the House ever actually voting on it?
Given that ours is a system of government where ambition is made to counteract ambition, what does it mean that the only way to pass this legislation is for the House to trust that the Senate will keep the House’s interests at heart?
Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government
1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy. The bulk of federal spending goes toward subsidies and benefit payments, which generally do not enhance economic productivity. With lower productivity, average American incomes will fall.
2. As federal spending rises, it creates pressure to raise taxes now and in the future. Higher taxes reduce incentives for productive activities such as working, saving, investing, and starting businesses. Higher taxes also increase incentives to engage in unproductive activities such as tax avoidance.
3. Much federal spending is wasteful and many federal programs are mismanaged. Cost overruns, fraud and abuse, and other bureaucratic failures are endemic in many agencies. It’s true that failures also occur in the private sector, but they are weeded out by competition, bankruptcy, and other market forces. We need to similarly weed out government failures.
4. Federal programs often benefit special interest groups while harming the broader interests of the general public. How is that possible in a democracy? The answer is that logrolling or horse-trading in Congress allows programs to be enacted even though they are only favored by minorities of legislators and voters. One solution is to impose a legal or constitutional cap on the overall federal budget to force politicians to make spending trade-offs.
5. Many federal programs cause active damage to society, in addition to the damage caused by the higher taxes needed to fund them. Programs usually distort markets and they sometimes cause social and environmental damage. Some examples are housing subsidies that helped to cause the financial crises, welfare programs that have created dependency, and farm subsidies that have harmed the environment.
6. The expansion of the federal government in recent decades runs counter to the American tradition of federalism. Federal functions should be “few and defined” in James Madison’s words, with most government activities left to the states. The explosion in federal aid to the states since the 1960s has strangled diversity and innovation in state governments because aid has been accompanied by a mass of one-size-fits-all regulations.
For more, see DownsizingGovernment.org.
New Lawsuit against DC Government
Yesterday the Washington Post ran a nice profile about Tom Palmer and other DC residents who are challenging the constitutionality of regulations that make it a crime for people to bring their firearm outside of their residence for purposes of self-defense. Most criminal attacks occur outside the home (around 87%) and the criminals are armed and always have the advantage of choosing when they’ll strike — and that’s usually when there are no cops around.
The Census and the Constitution
The Washington Post profiles Daniel Weinberg, assistant director of the Census, who says:
“Since the decennial census is in our Constitution, it is the most important task a government statistician can undertake. The census is key to our democratic society by making sure that our congressional districts are equal in size so that we have representative democracy. To be involved in something that is central to our democracy is pretty exciting.”
Good point. The census is indeed in the Constitution, Article I, Section 2. The Constitution provides that every ten years an enumeration of the population of each state shall be made in order to allocate members of the House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, the census has been loaded down with intrusive questions not authorized in the Constitution and bearing no relation to the constitutional necessity of reapportionment. This year the Census Bureau is boasting of “one of the shortest forms in history,” which is all to the good. Still, it does ask respondents to list their race, which really should be irrelevant to government. And to tell whether they own their home or have a mortgage, in order “to administer housing programs and to inform planning decisions.” (That’s worked out well!) And of course they need age and sex data, in order to facilitate various government programs and mandates and to assist “sociologists, economists, and other researchers who analyze social and economic trends.”
Through the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau continues to ask Americans many more questions, from whether you’re on food stamps to how many bathrooms you have. All very interesting to sociologists and planners, of course, but hardly what Madison anticipated when he and his colleagues provided for an “actual enumeration” of the constituents of Congress.
Writing in Slate back in 2000, Tom Palmer complained that the Census Bureau was selling the census as a kind of Super Lotto: You can’t win if you don’t play! “The numbers are used to help determine the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal and state funds. We’re talking hospitals, highways, stadiums and school lunch programs.” Come on! Get your piece of other people’s tax dollars!
In 1990 David Kopel reviewed the Census Bureau’s promise of confidentiality.
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