Category Archives: The Welfare State

Tax Hike Mike Threatens To Take His Toys And Go Home

Former Arkansas Governor “Tax Hike Mike” Huckabee was a guest on the American Family Association’s “Today’s Issues” program where he ripped into the Supreme Court’s decision this week to not hear gay marriage cases, which essentially increased the number of states in which gay marriage became legal to 30 plus the District of Columbia.

Here’s a video of Tax Hike Mike threatening to leave the GOP over gay marriage:

For those of you who prefer to not watch the Huckster, Rare has transcribed what he said:

“If the Republicans want to lose guys like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing Bible-believing people, go ahead and just abdicate on this issue,” Huckabee said.

“And go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter, either, because at that point, you lose me, I’m gone, I’ll become an independent, I’ll start finding people that have guts to stand. I’m tired of this,” he said.

Poor Tax Hike Mike is not getting his way so he’s going to take his toys and go home. Well, the problem for Tax Hike Mike is that the Republican Party and the country are changing and it’s not to his liking.

Young Republicans are overwhelmingly in support of gay marriage for example. Pew Research Center found that 61% of young Republicans support gay marriage.

Gay marriage isn’t the only issue where young Republicans are bucking social conservatives. Young Republicans are also bucking social conservatives on marijuana as the AP reported back in May.

Beyond being a generational issue, young Republicans say their positions stem from the party’s belief that government shouldn’t intrude on people’s lives. Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign got most of its following from younger Republicans attracted by his libertarian message that allowed for gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana.

It’s not just Tax Hike Mike’s increasingly out of date positions on social issues that should stop anyone who loves liberty from shedding tears over his departure from the GOP, it’s his terrible positions on just about everything. Here’s a brief summary:

  • There’s a reason why we call him Tax Hike Mike around here, because as Governor of Arkansas, he loved to raise taxes
  • Tax Hike Mike increased spending by 65% as Arkansas governor and Cato gave his overall reign a “D” on their grade for fiscal policy.
  • Tax Hike Mike continues to defend his fiscal progressivism.
  • Tax Hike Mike has supported cap and trade in the past and says “God wants us to fight global warming.
  • Who can forget Tax Hike Mike’s support of Common Core
  • Oh social conservatives, do you know that Tax Hike Mike signed a law in 2005 that mandated contraception coverage, even for religious organizations?
  • For more goodies about Tax Hike Mike, please visit this blog that has compiled a list of the numerous times Mike Huckabee has supported big government.

    After the disaster that was the presidency of George W. Bush and “big-government conservatism”, the last thing the Republican Party and the country needs is for that banner to be carried to victory in an election. It’s time to show Tax Hike Mike and those who support the big government nanny state the left does, except their own version of it, the door.

    I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

    Jason Lewis Goes Galt; Quits Halfway Through Show on Air

    Over the past week, talk show host Jason Lewis has been letting on that something big was going to happen on his show. July 31, 2014 he dubbed “Judgement Day.”

    Being an avid listener of his, I thought it probably had something to do with his political activism site Galt.io* and probably something to do with his cause called “Starve the Beast.” Was he going to announce that he was going to move his show from the high tax progressive state of Minnesota to a more tax friendly/liberty friendly state?

    As it turns out, I wasn’t too far off but he took his “starve the beast” thing a step further. You could say he had “gone Galt” on the air halfway through his radio show.

    The following was his epic final monologue:

    All over the continent of Europe there are castles. Castles that children are taught to admire. But these monuments are not shrines to liberty but are a stark reminder of an oppressive past that we are quickly forgetting. These elaborate fortresses were built to honor the riches of royalty. Such wealth was not derived from the cooperation of capitalism but from the conquest of collectivism. It was stolen through taxes and fees collected from the serfs. It was not earned.

    We have apparently learned little from history for today we have our own royalty dressed up in the robes of compassion. A false altruism that merely enables the mob and crushes the individual. We have erected a shrine called the welfare state and as a result, we now resemble a nation with more takers than makers. Crony capitalists who preach the virtue of community service while acting like economic parasites who live off the system. Indeed the real entrepreneurs are no longer valued. Only the political ones who loathe them. Profit is a dirty word while one’s obligation to society regulates the most productive to second class status. We are it seems endlessly told to live for others. Endlessly told. Taxes are patriotic. We are told to apologise for our own existence. The pursuit of happiness has been replaced by the mandate of self sacrifice. This is not freedom, it is tyranny.

    And so we, I, you are faced with a choice. The choice that all people in all times must make: to fund the beast or to starve the beast. To host the parasite or walk away. To participate in the system that punishes the value of your own existence or boycott that system.

    Ladies and gentlemen, I have now chosen the latter. They can now feed off one another.

    I quit.

     

    Just after Lewis uttered the words “I quit” there was silence followed by his confused producer getting on the air “Um…Jason?” and then announcing that Jason had left the mic. They then went to commercial and found another talk host to fill the remaining hour and a half remaining in the show.

    From there there was a flurry of calls and people going to this website and the Galt.io homepage. Was this some kind of stunt? Did Jason Lewis really quit halfway through his syndicated talk show?

    Personally, I wasn’t sure. It does now seem that Jason Lewis indeed did quit and decided he was no longer willing to keep feeding the beast.

    Okay, so a talk show host who would likely be retiring soon quit in dramatic fashion, what’s the big deal?

    For me, it is a bummer. Jason Lewis was one of the few talk show hosts that didn’t tow the party line or spend three hours a day attacking Barack Obama for everything under the sun. Its true that he did attack Obama’s policies with gusto but he didn’t spare the Republicans either. He brought insights that no other syndicated show offers.

    And maybe this going Galt is more symbolic than anything else. But what if his message resonates to other high achievers who could stop the motor of the world if they followed this example?

    I for one hope this inspires such a revolution even if its on a smaller scale than what took place in Atlas Shrugged.

    *I have a cause and a group that I started within Galt.io: The Non-Aggression Principle (educates people about the NAP) and my group called Restore Everyone’s Property And Individual Rights (REPAIR). Contact me via Twitter @s_littau if you would like to join Galt.io and these and other causes.

    Bye Bye 4th and 5th amendment: Obamacare info may be used for Law Enforcement and Audit activities

    Well… we knew that the 4th and 5th amendment meant nothing to them… never mind HIPAA… but really?

     

    Obamacare Marketplace: Personal Data Can Be Used For ‘Law Enforcement and Audit Activities’

    Maryland’s Health Connection, the state’s Obamacare marketplace, has been plagued by delays in the first days of open enrollment. If users are able to endure long page-loading delays, they are presented with the website’s privacy policy, a ubiquitous fine-print feature on websites that often go unread. Nevertheless, users are asked to check off a box that they agree to the terms.

    The policy contains many standard statements about information automatically collected regarding Internet browsers and IP addresses, temporary “cookies” used by the site, and website accessibility. However, at least two conditions may give some users pause before proceeding.

    The first is regarding personal information submitted with an application for those users who follow through on the sign up process all the way to the end. The policy states that all information to help in applying for coverage and even for making a payment will be kept strictly confidential and only be used to carry out the function of the marketplace. There is, however, an exception: “[W]e may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities.” Here is the entire paragraph from the policy the includes the exception [emphasis added]:

    Should you decide to apply for health coverage through Maryland Health Connection, the information you supply in your application will be used to determine whether you are eligible for health and dental coverage offered through Maryland Health Connection and for insurance affordability programs. It also may be used to assist you in making a payment for the insurance plan you select, and for related automated reminders or other activities permitted by law. We will preserve the privacy of personal records and protect confidential or privileged information in full accordance with federal and State law. We will not sell your information to others. Any information that you provide to us in your application will be used only to carry out the functions of Maryland Health Connection. The only exception to this policy is that we may share information provided in your application with the appropriate authorities for law enforcement and audit activities.

    The site does not specify if “appropriate authorities” refers only to state authorities or if it could include the federal government, as well. Neither is there any detail on what type of law enforcement and/or audit activities would justify the release of the personal information, or who exactly is authorized to make such a determination. An email to the Maryland Health Connection’s media contact seeking clarification has not yet been answered

    The second privacy term that may prompt caution by users relates to email communications. The policy reads:

    If you send us an e-mail, we use the information you send us to respond to your inquiry. E-mail correspondence may become a public record. As a public record, your correspondence could be disclosed to other parties upon their request in accordance with Maryland’s Public Information Act.

    Since emails to the marketplace could conceivably involve private matters regarding finances, health history, and other sensitive issues, the fact that such information could be made part of the “public record” could prevent users from being as free with their information than they might otherwise be. However, as noted, any requests for such emails would still be subject to Maryland’s Public Information Act which contains certain exceptions to the disclosure rules.

    Read the fine print eh?

     These are such clear 4th and 5th amendment violations I can’t believe anyone didn’t immediately say “uh guys… we cant actually do this”…

    … but as I said, we know that our elected and selected “lords and masters” don’t give a damn about the 4th or 5th amendments (or really any of the others ones any time they become inconvenient).

    So while I’m sure they were told they couldn’t do it, I’m sure they said “ahh well the disclaimer and release is enough, we’ll be fine”.

     Yeah no.

     And as far as HIPAA goes… In reality these terms of use are not anywhere near an adequate HIPAA disclosure release, so using any of this data in any manner other than for healthcare purposes would be a federal offense.

    I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

    Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

    Don’t Bail the Democrats Out By ‘Defunding’ Obamacare

    If something isn’t done to stop the train wreck known as Obamacare before next year, the healthcare system and the economy will suffer. Tea Party Republicans in the House and Senate have vowed to “defund” Obamacare even if it means shutting the government down. Obviously, opponents of this law should do everything possible to stop this from happening…right?

    Maybe it’s not so obvious.

    Obamacare cannot truly be defunded because the spending is built into the law itself but for the sake of argument, lets say there was some loophole that would make defunding possible. Why would Republicans want to bail the Democrats out? The Democrats own this legislation because not a single Republican voted in favor.

    Let the Democrats suffer the consequences at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016. If the Republicans somehow managed to delay, add exemptions from some of the laws worst aspects, or alter Obamacare’s implementation, the Democrats would then have an out. President Obama could resort to his usual demagoguery in the campaign season the “Affordable Care Act would have worked if the Tea Party extremists hadn’t screwed it up!” The Obama media would be more than happy to echo this party line.

    There is a better way. What if allowing Obamacare to be fully implemented as scheduled would lead to its ultimate demise? Far from trying to soften the blow or delay the law’s implementation, opponents of the bill, especially Republicans in positions of leadership should call the president’s bluff and let the train wreck occur. Over the many objections from many of us, Obamacare passed, failed numerous repeal efforts, and prevailed in the Supreme Court.

    Also, consider that Obama was reelected. Its time for the American people to take their medicine and live with the consequences. We keep hearing about how the progressives have a better plan than those of us who believe in smaller government and free markets; let’s find out together just how wise they are!

    No delays to save incumbents in the 2014 election. No waivers for employees, employers, the labor unions, for Congress, or for government workers. No waivers for anyone. How many times have we heard progressives say “we’re all in this together”? We should call their bluff on this as well.

    To the extent that President Obama is trying to selectively enforce the law, Republicans should challenge his authority to do so in the courts and ask the president why he wants to delay his signature accomplishment as president.

    Let the American people experience the broken promises of Obamacare for themselves. Let the Democrats defend the law in the 2014 campaign when voters see their work hours cut to less than 30 hours a week (if they are lucky to keep their jobs at all), their premiums rise, and/or lose the insurance plans they already have.

    If after the American people (and I mean all of the American people) experience this pain sooner than later and still decide that Obamacare is the way to reform health care then I suppose we are getting exactly the system we deserve.

    Embrace Burke? No thanks, Mr. Dionne. I’ll take Coolidge instead.

    In his never-ending campaign to weaken those who oppose a progressive state, E.J. Dionne has attempted to give American Conservatives (including, in his flawed formulation, libertarians) a new idol: Edmund Burke. Embracing Burke, Dionne posits, would “clip the wings of modern conservatives”:

    It’s to Norman’s credit that he recognizes how “Burke also clips the wings of many contemporary conservatives.” While he “helped establish modern conceptions of nationhood and national allegiance,” he “rejected military adventures.” He “celebrated religious observance, but despised moral absolutism.”

    Norman also sees Burke as implicitly offering “a profound critique of the market fundamentalism now prevalent in Western society.” He thinks that Burke would “note the extraordinary greed and self-dealing seen over the past decade by the modern nabobs of banking and finance in a series of cartels disguised as markets.” And a Burkean conservatism would be wary of any ideology that “causes people to lose sight of the real social sources of human well-being and to become more selfish and individualistic, by priming them with ideas of financial success and celebrity.”

    The second paragraph is built on an entirely faulty assumption. It is simply beyond question that the FHA and its’ regulated GSEs were the key enabler of the housing bubble of the last decade in the US. These New Deal programs socialized the risk of mortgages while allowing private players to reap the profits. True market fundamentalists always railed against these distortions of markets. It is advocates of big government, such as Dionne himself, who are to blame for the situation.

    Even without the factual error, Dionne’s quote from Norman on Burke’s belief is wrought with other problems. It requires one to believe that greed is linked to individualism and ignore the parade of collectivists who sought to use the machinery of Washington to exploit others for the own gain. (Sadly, too many people actually believe this, but that’s another story for another time.) It requires one to believe that conservatives care deeply about celebrity as a part of a core ideology. Dionne perhaps missed the right’s revulsion to the concept of Barack Obama as a savior and a light worker. Or maybe he didn’t and just assumed it was a symptom of bitter clinging. In any case, he overlooks the fact that the left has a monopoly on personalizing politics in this country.

    Now that we have established that Dionne’s understanding of a conservative is already tenuous, at best, let’s read his vision of a model Burkean Conservative:

    Burke’s conservatism was based on a proper understanding of that word. He believed in preserving the social order and respecting old habits. He persistently warned against the destructive character of radical change. He was wary of ideology and grand ideas, rejecting, as Norman puts it, “universal claims divorced from an actual social context.” Burke saw the well-ordered society as a “partnership of the dead, the living and the yet to be born,” a nice formula for a forward-looking traditionalism — and not a bad slogan for environmentalists.

    Here, Dionne unwittingly uncovers a truth. Given that the modern social order in the US is built upon the legacy of the progressives and the New Deal, to be a Burkean conservative is to be a mainstream progressive. Libertarians are seen as radicals precisely because we want a social order that dispenses with the New Deal and its legacy. Meanwhile, modern Republicans play to shape a conservative social agenda using the rules and mechanisms put in place by the New Deal. Even the Constitution, the contract between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born in the United States, is interpreted through the ideology of the New Dealers.

    This insight brings us to the most laughable of Dionne’s assertions:

    Conservatism will flounder unless it remembers the imperative of addressing the interests of the many, not the few.

    Progressives have never done anything but address the needs of the few. Which few and to what degree are always in question. The need for an underclass of highly productive but exploitable people is not. This underclass was referred to by William Graham Sumner as “The Forgotten Man”:

    It is when we come to the proposed measures of relief for the evils which have caught public attention that we reach the real subject which deserves our attention. As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, but what I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

    Sumner’s appellation notwithstanding, members of this productive underclass are not forgotten by progressives. On the contrary, they are known to be a vital component of any progressive plan for society. In the Affordable Care Act, for example, they are the young and healthy who must be conscripted into the health insurance market so that their premiums might benefit the old and sick. In Social Security, they are the workers who pay taxes in so that retirees may get benefits. In Affirmative Action, they are the whites and Asians who lose opportunities granted to other minorities on the basis of skin color.

    For decades, progressives maintained the illusion that it was only a demonized few who bore the brunt of this exploitation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his political acumen to identify groups for benefit or demonization. He went so far in this endeavor as to hire photographers and writers to produce propaganda about those who benefited while launching vicious legal battles against innocent men just because they were in a group targeted for demonization. (This does have a familiar ring, doesn’t it?)

    However, that illusion has cracked in recent years. Eventually, millions of members of the productive underclass realized exactly what was going on. So born was the Tea Party, a so-called conservative movement. Distressingly for Dionne, this movement is far from the conservatism Burke preached and Dionne practices daily. It is radical, seeking to smash a social order built upon exploiting its members for the benefit of others.

    The radical nature of the Tea Party prompted fear among the establishment. Both major parties in America are essentially progressive in mechanics, if not agenda. The angry, dismissive reaction from the Republicans and the downright punitive reaction from the Democrats highlighted how radical the idea of declaring one “taxed enough already” truly is. Since the Wilson administration, Washington has decided who was taxed enough already and who could pay more.

    The Tea Party, for all the good it has done in revealing the corruption in Washington (much through its own victimhood at the hands of the IRS), is still a movement lacking a positive idea. It is essentially a movement pushing for a cessation of activity. This will cause many to ask what shall be done instead. The Tea Party has no answer for this.

    Neither, it seems, do most libertarians. We tend to focus on the “no” too often as well. Government should stop doing this and not start doing that. We’re seen as a force of negativity. Unfortunately, in a world where we are opposed to both major parties and the mainstream media apparatus designed to enforce the status quo, negativity doesn’t sell.

    Respect and stability, however, do. Enter Calvin Coolidge. The concept of normalcy embraced by Harding and Coolidge is both simple and elegant. Here is a description of the concept by Amity Shlaes in an interview with Ed Driscoll:

    Ed, what did you learn normalcy was in school? I learned it was something kind of dull, right? Like the — normalcy doesn’t sound elevated or wonderful and that was the Harding motto.

    But what they meant by normalcy is not we should all be normal and cogs. Right? What they meant is the environment should be normal so that we can have fun and play with new ideas, which is something very different. Predictability, the reduction of uncertainty. Coolidge as a candidate even used the phrase “uncertainty” which you hear so much today and which is also the subject of Forgotten Man. It’s less uncertainty, please. He really — it’s a theme all the way to the end of his life. You can find it in his columns post-presidency. He spoke of uncertainty.

    If you’re reading this, you’re taking advantage of Coolidge’s concept of normalcy in a very different context. The internet is built on normalcy. Packets are packets, traffic is traffic, and different application protocols expect lower-level protocols to act as specified at all times. The creation built upon these simple ideas, upon normalcy, is easily humanity’s largest by a vast margin. Yet there is no edifice called “The Internet”, no building that makes it all work. It is a distributed network of components all playing by the same rules.*

    So it was with the American economy under Coolidge. After a decade of tumult resulting from progressive leadership, the US economy got eight blessed years of normalcy. With this diminished uncertainty, companies were free to invest. The economy boomed and even the poor man was better off in 1928 than in 1920.

    Then, in response to the crash of 1929, a round of “bold experiments” (to borrow FDR’s phrase) were undertaken upon the economy by Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Congresses of the era for the next decade and a half. These experiments caused untold economic devastation by distorting markets, increasing uncertainty, and causing those who had capital to hoard and protect it, eventually causing Roosevelt to pursue an undistributed profits tax to shake this capital loose from unwilling businesses. Even during the Second World War, while the US was not statistically in a depression, the standard of living was still poor in comparison to the normalcy of the 1920s.

    The experiments, in every empirical sense, were a failure. But with the help of writers like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (who Dionne quotes approvingly as an admirer of Burke), these failures were pawned off on the American people as successes and the role that predictability and normalcy play in prosperity forgotten.

    Today, we face an economic crisis built upon government interventions into and distortions of the private economy. Despite the Obama administration focusing on jobs, there has been no improvement for the millions who have been chronically unemployed for years. The Democrats’ bold experiment with banking, the Dodd-Frank law, has driven the poor away from banks as they killed off free services. The Democrats’ bold experiment with health care is already driving up costs for millions while making full-time jobs hard to come by for hourly workers. Look at any problem in the US economy today and at its root you will find a bold experiment from Washington, D.C.

    The message I have for all Americans is to ignore Dionne (good advice in any case) and his plea to embrace Burke. It’s time to embrace Coolidge and pursue a course of radical normalcy.
    .


    *For those who don’t remember, one of the major arguments against SOPA and PIPA were that they legislated a change in the architecture of the internet that broke the DNS protocol. This endangered the functioning of the entire network by disrupting the rules upon which countless other technologies depended. A perfect illustration of the need for normalcy in a complex, distributed system.

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