Category Archives: Regulation

Oh Contradictory Canada!

Canada, Economy, Free Speech, Homeland Security, Law, Liberty, Regulation

“Canada’s balance sheet is healthier than those of other developed nations,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Canada’s federal deficit is just 1.9% of gross domestic product,” and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty “aims to reduce that to zero by 2016 with new cuts in his annual budget, expected next month.”

Unlike the states stateside, the Canadian provinces are aiming to balance their books, as they ought to. “Ontario, the largest province in terms of population, released an independent report recommending 362 spending cuts, from increased school class sizes to fewer hospitals, to rein in a 16 billion Canadian dollar (US$16 billion) budget deficit and balance its books in five years.”

Alas, a show of responsibility on the part of some Canadian leaders has met with opprobrium from mooching members of the public. “Critics of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party have accused the government of using austerity to push through one of its political goals: smaller government.”

OMIGOD. What could be worse than shrinking the state , which invariably grows society? Those arguing against cutting the “oink sector,” so as to ensure these strong fundamentals persist defer to Keynesian political economy, of course. The need for the state to stimulate the delirium of demand, rather than allow the necessary slowdown in consumption that is associated with liquidation of bad investments and increased savings.

…austerity threatens jobs and saps demand at home. It also shuts down a source of global demand that the world needs more than ever amid slower-than-expected growth almost everywhere else in the developed world.

Ludwig von Mises, who wrote the “Theory of Money and Credit” (1912) well in advance of Keynes’ “General Theory,” showed that the Keynesian cure—inflating the money supply in order to stimulate demand—causes depressions.

Writes Peter Schiff: “Stimulus merely numbs the pain of economic contraction, as the underlying trauma gets worse. Austerity might slow an economy down, but at least the wounds are able to heal. America has chosen the former and Europe the latter, albeit not quite as large a dose as needed. The fact that in the short-run Europe is suffering more than the US does not vindicate Washington’s approach. On the contrary, this is exactly what is to be expected.”

Economic good news aside, Canada, on the other hand, boasts draconian anti-free speech laws. One of the most oppressive instruments in the Canadian state is the Human Rights apparatus. “The Human Rights Commission, a Kangaroo court, operates outside the Canadian courts, affording its victims none of the defenses or due process the courts afford. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention: the absence of the intent to harm is no defense in this ‘court.’ Neither is truth.”

To top that, as RT reports, “Lawmakers in the Great White North are debating a bill that will pulverize what’s left of online privacy for Canucks.”

The Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (Bill C-51) is legislation that isn’t new to Canadian Parliament, but after a series of additions and other changes, lawmakers there are expected to begin discussion on it this week. If passed, law enforcement there will be able to monitor all Internet and telephone activity from anyone, anywhere in the country, without having to obtain a warrant.

Barry Soetoro Frankenstein (Reply From The Man Who Will Be President)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Constitution, Economy, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Political Economy, Propaganda, Regulation, Republicans, The State

The following is excerpted from “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein,“ my new weekly column:

In Obama’s simplistic scheme of things—as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, “for the third straight Address, the President’s speech was written at an eighth-grade level”—to recreate the glory of America, it is thus essential to continue to reinvent the state. …

In the spirit of brute-force statism, the POTUS promised a Trade Enforcement Unit to police “unfair trading practices,” and a “Financial Crimes Unit to “crack down on large-scale fraud.” …

Il Duce’s next derring-do? Send him the bill, and the Divine One will even instruct the provinces to incarcerate local kids in high school “until they graduate or turn 18.”

Having used the military to great political effect, Obama now intends to deploy the Department of Defense, no less, in the “clean energy business.” In Obama’s very elementary thinking, the DOD is bound to do a bang-up job.

… From financial aid (for foreign students, no less) to an affirmative-action placement in Harvard Law School, Barry Soetoro is a Frankenstein of the state’s creation. If not for government, Obama would have never managed to write himself into history. As a product of the state, Barry Soetoro sees it as the source of all possibilities. …”

Read the complete column, Barry Soetoro Frankenstein, now on WND.com,

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help this cause.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): Sen. Paul Delivers State of the Union Response – Jan. 24, 2012

UPDATE II: Dispatch from Third-World Washington State

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Private Property, Regulation, Socialism, The State

Today, once again, the lights went out in my neighborhood, just as I was preparing to file my weekly column and meet my deadline. The outage was protracted, so the generator needed to be rolled out and powered up. Those of you who’re fortunate enough to be able to remain in the dark about generators—that was me back in South Africa, ironically—should know this: Until such time when you wire up your home (as one ought to do in Third World WA), there are lots of things to do, not least of them lugging extension cords upstairs and unpacking heaters again.

Down the hill, the crew from Puget Sound Energy was visible as the men worked to pry electricity cables from the thicket of trees and branches. As I said before, the grid and power lines suffered mostly tree damage. In this part of the world, the trees are everywhere intertwined with the cable. Why? Why isn’t a wide, tree-free swath maintained around these vital structures? Why are trees not chopped back, in the name of civilization and the sanctity of property, pets and human life?

Here’s why—in all likelihood—we suffer the same severity of damage, year-in and year-out, when snow, ice and wind arrive: the self-defeating dementia of tree fetishists and “Watermelon” legislators — green on the outside; red on the inside.

For one, your property is not your own. You are prohibited from felling unsafe trees. Each request must be backed by a letter from an arborist and a hefty shakedown “baksheesh,” exacted by the goons at the municipality. Such regulation is probably responsible for loss of life, as most people cannot afford to pay the hundreds charged for a permit to chop down an unstable tree on their nominally owned property.

Again, the “Watermelon” worldview creates more havoc than it prevents, and results in loss of life and livelihoods. For instance, because of wood fires, the usually pristine air in our part of the world resembled, at one stage, the air above the shanty town of Soweto. The resources and energy spent–and the lives lost–because of this mess are many times the cost or worth of a few thousand trees.

Alas, one look at Puget Sound Energy’s Facebook Page tells you that the average customer is unquestioning in his supine gratitude to the utility for merely wiring him up again—some after a week. He or she thinks like subjects, not customers.

As long as I’ve lived in WA, PSE has been ill-prepared for our weather. And unless it is beavering away behind the scenes, the utility has been, seemingly, unwilling to lobby the gang of greens in Olympia on behalf of its long-suffering customers; lobby to let it, PSE, maintain a tree-free grid. Puget Sound Energy should petition the gangsters in the Capital on behalf of its customers, who, due to regulation, are catapulted back to the Dark Ages almost every other winter.

And yes, privatization and private property rights that allow all the above would be just swell.

UPDATE I: Welcome to new reader Orin Blomberg. Here on BAB, we all huddle around the epistolary fires of freedom.

UPDATE II: We all love and respect the natural world. Let us look after it as private property owners. Any resources that fall to state control suffer the tragedy of the common. As was explained in this article:

Regulation is always the culmination of agreements between the regulated and the regulators, to the detriment of those left out of the political loop. The state and its corporate donors will invariably come to a consensus as to what constitutes reasonable damages to them, not to the aggrieved. Thus regulation always works to the advantage of the offenders. …
The root of environmental despoliation is the tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights in the resource. One of my favorite running routes wends along miles of lakeside property, all privately owned, and ever so pristine. Where visitors dirty the trail that cleaves to the majestic homes; fastidious owners are quick to pick up after them.
In the absence of private ownership in the means of production, government-controlled resources go to seed. There is simply no one with strong enough a stake in the landmass or waterway to police it before disaster strikes. …
Entrusted with the management and regulation of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know , only pretend to care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your performance plummets?

Moreover, in case newcomers to this site doubt this writer’s commitment to the humane treatment and welfare of animals, please read posts like “Who Own the Food Chain,” “A Halibut’s Heart In A Harpy’s Hand,” as well as the many other articles under the “Environmentalism and Animal Rights” categories.

Rand Paul Manhandled

Homeland Security, Regulation, Relatives, Republicans, Rights, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State

I far prefer Ron Paul’s strident response to the TSA’s assault on Rand Paul than the son’s watered-down words. To CNN’s Erin Burnett, Rand said, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading.

It is not the first time special interests—House and Senate representatives, for example—suggest a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power. Patrick Smith, the author of Salon’s “Ask the Pilot,” has implied that because of his professional position, he should be entitled to “preferential, alternative checkpoints for pilots.”

Such cloistered concerns typified a 2,000-strong, flight attendant’s union, which has been fielding tons of complaints from its members, who were, nevertheless, none too concerned for their customers, the manhandled passengers.

Noelle Nikpour, contributor to Mr. Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel, is another. Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategist who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh as they scurry to their important appointments.

Rand seems to have joined these special-case pleaders in asking for wavers for frequent fliers who’ve been willing to share more personal data with the goons of the TSA.

I prefer the Ron Paul presidential campaign’s “strongly worded statement Monday afternoon, blistering the TSA for its practices”:

“The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe,” it said.