Category Archives: Private Property

The CBOafs And Tax Cuts

Debt, Economy, Political Economy, Private Property, Reason, Taxation, The State

The prediction of the CBOafs (The Congressional Budget Oafs) with respect to the “cost” of tax cuts is only as good as their premise, which is faulty. That premise is that property stolen by the state from its rightful owners (taxpayers) will be used to pay down the debt and the deficit incurred by the same band of brigands.

And CBOafs will fly. (Apologies, by the way, to bandits for comparing them to government officials. As one libertarian wag once pointed out, highway robbers are fairer and more benevolent than government, because they rob you once, usually, and then leave you be.)

As the Congressional Budget Office warned today, “Last month’s bipartisan tax cut legislation will drive the government’s deficit to a record $1.5 trillion this year.” (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/26/federal-deficit-hit-trillion-budget-office-projects/)

In logic, a conclusion can be correct and untrue at once. The debt will go up—not because of tax cuts, but despite of them.

No matter how much these highway robbers take from the creators of wealth, the debts they incur will only go up. The lesson? Money is always safest with those who make it.

Power-Crazed Politicians

Crime, Democrats, Free Speech, Politics, Private Property, Regulation

Your sovereigns have some suggestions on how to eliminate any risk from their arduous, daily duties, and further insulate themselves from interacting with the peasants in the provinces of Rome. You can’t wait, right? Ban “bull’s-eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official.” That’s the brainchild of Rep. Jim Clyburn, third ranking Democrat in the House. “Make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against any federal official or member of Congress.” (Courtesy of Robert Brady, D-Pa.)

As the Boston Herald quipped today, “We’d rather take our chances with a crazed gunman than with crazed politicians.”

I’d be quite happy to stay away from all of them forever-after if they’d promise to keep their distance from me and what’s mine.

From Your Pocket To Union Pensions

Economy, Government, Political Economy, Politics, Private Property, States' Rights, The State

The compliant voter keeps electing local officials who’ll use their police powers to pick from the pockets of wealth creators so as to give to a more powerful constituency: members of the public sector unions. WSJ:

“Cities across the nation are raising property taxes, largely citing rising pension and health-care costs for their employees and retirees.
In Pennsylvania, the township of Upper Moreland is bumping up property taxes for residents by 13.6% in 2011. Next door the city of Philadelphia this year increased the tax 9.9%. In New York, Saratoga Springs will collect 4.4% more in property taxes in 2011; Troy will increase taxes by 1.9%.
… Some cities have also pushed unions to reopen contracts in an attempt to pare benefits or raise workers’ contributions for pensions and health care. They have faced stiff resistance from some unions that argue it’s unfair to penalize workers for a financial crisis that isn’t their fault. Others have agreed to some cutbacks.”

“WE ARE DOOMED.”

UPDATED: Net Neutrality Odyssey

Business, Constitution, Fascism, Free Markets, Internet, Private Property, Technology

If they are not, the FCC’s new Net Neutrality rules sound awfully like price fixing, or a kind of Internet Civil Rights Act, where everyone must be allowed access to everything without discrimination based on, well, what and how much you purchase.

Ruled by regulators we certainly are.

Article I, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, provides that:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

So what is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doing regulating the Internet? Nothing out of the ordinary is the answer. The FCC is just doing what all America’s extra-Constitutional government agencies do: manage all aspects of American life. Hence the term “The Managerial State.”

ROBERT M. MCDOWELL, a Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, calls the FCC’s unconstitutional power grab a “jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah”; a bypasses of “branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation.”

Let us not forget that the Net Neutrality odyssey began with that bastard Bush. As Wired reports, “In 2005, then-FCC chairman Michael Powell issued a set of principles, the so-called Four Freedoms, which said that internet users had the right to use the lawful software and services they want to on the internet, access their choice of content, use whatever devices they like, and get meaningful information about how their online service plan works.”

Note the Bush boy’s UN-like language: “Four Freedoms.”

This is important: “Both wireless and fixed broadband service providers will have to explain how they manage congestion on their networks. Cable and DSL companies will have to let you use the applications, online services and devices that you want to. Meanwhile, wireless companies will be prohibited from blocking websites and internet telephony services like Skype. Cable and DSL providers would be barred from ‘unreasonably’ discriminating against various online services.”

An Internet Civil Rights Act of sorts.

The one thing that bothers me is this: Is Comcast, for example, not a franchise (“a privilege or right officially granted a person or a group by a government”)? The kind of areal monopoly they enjoy and less-than-optimal service they provide in the market seems to suggest that possibility.

Franchise status might also explain why, as Wired observed, “There was one group … which seemed content with the new rules: the nation’s cable and telecommunications companies, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. They’ve been making the rounds in recent weeks signaling their support for Chairman Julius Genachowski’s compromise deal.”

UPDATE (Dec. 22): GREAT MINDS. Michelle Malkin also finds Civil Rights language to be the appropriate source of metaphor to describe the impetus of laws that’ll mandate equal Internet access to all irrespective of the cost of a product or service.

Under the FCC’s new regime, the market will be fattened and socialized and the price system sundered. This means worse service for all paying customers as the incentive to innovate are removed. When will Out “Overlords Who Art in DC” UNDERSTAND that the price and profit system is the key to prosperity? The correct answer is “never.”

VIA MICHELLE:

Undaunted promoters of Obama FCC chairman Julius Genachowski’s “open Internet” plan to expand regulatory authority over the Internet have couched their online power grab in the rhetoric of civil rights. On Monday, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps proclaimed: “Universal access to broadband needs to be seen as a civil right…[though] not many people have talked about it that way.” Opposing the government Internet takeover blueprint, in other words, is tantamount to supporting segregation. Cunning propaganda, that.

“Broadband is becoming a basic necessity,” civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks added. And earlier this month, fellow FCC panelist Mignon Clyburn, daughter of Congressional Black Caucus leader and Number Three House Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina, declared that free (read: taxpayer-subsidized) access to the Internet is not only a civil right for every “nappy-headed child” in America, but essential to their self-esteem. Every minority child, she said, “deserves to be not only connected, but to be proud of who he or she is.”