Wire Report

Jack Hunter, The Southern Avenger: Host/Commentator
	The “Southern Avenger” Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator WTMA 1250 AM talk radio and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina.

(WIRE/TAC) -In the wake of the Haiti earthquake tragedy, something unusual has been happening amongst conservatives. On talk radio, the blogosphere and elsewhere, some have been wondering how our government can afford to help Haiti given the current economic crisis in the United States. Considering the magnitude of the tragedy in Haiti, I found this to be a rather insensitive question. It’s also a good one.

Republican opposition to the Democrats’ national healthcare agenda is in large part due to the exorbitant cost, perceived inefficiency and intrusive, bureaucratic character of the plan. Still, argue liberals, there are too many Americans suffering for government to do nothing. Conservatives argue that there is only so much government can, or should, do. It’s time for conservatives to apply their argument more comprehensively.

In 2007 during a FOX News interview, when Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that the US was involved too much militarily around the world, talk host Sean Hannity asked “Are you saying then that the world has no moral obligation, like in the first Gulf War, when an innocent country’s being pillaged, and people are being raped and murdered and slaughtered, or in the case of Saddam, he’s gassing his own people, are you suggesting we have no moral obligation there? Do you stand by and let that immorality happen?” Paul responded “We have, on numerous occasions.” Hannity’s co-host Alan Colmes chimed in “the fact is the Reagan administration stood by while the Kurds were being gassed, it happened in 1988, we didn’t do anything.” Paul followed up “And what did we do with Pol Pot, what did we do with Moscow, what did we do at the time? We stood by while they did it to their people.” Flustered, Hannity replied “We got it, Ron, you would stand by and do that, I would not… I think that’s immoral.”

President Obama and the Democrats believe it’s immoral for government to stand by and not help uninsured Americans receive healthcare. Hannity disagrees and devotes a significant portion of his radio and television programs to opposing national healthcare. Is Hannity being immoral? Or is he simply taking the conservative position that despite the suffering that exists, government benevolence has its limits?

A nation possessing the wealth and power of the US should be in a position to help Haiti, at least temporarily, and this is something countless Americans have already done privately, donating millions. But these same Americans might not think it’s a good idea to provide government healthcare in their own country. Does this mean they simply do not care? Americans who donated to Haiti may not believe, for instance, that we should send our military to stop the genocide in the war-torn nation of Darfur, something liberals have long advocated using the same “we can’t stand by and do nothing” logic many conservatives used with Iraq. In continuing to just stand by, does this make the US “immoral?” Will Hannity soon devote significant portions of his radio and television programs to highlighting Darfur, a country that’s “being pillaged, and people are being raped and murdered and slaughtered?”

Haiti is close to the US in proximity and the earthquake was so overwhelmingly disastrous that it makes sense to most Americans to lend a helping hand, something that occurred even without government prompting. The US should be able to afford to help Haiti and the extent to which we technically are not—our government operates on a monstrous debt—is due in large part to the hyper extension of our supposed benevolence in other areas. Yet, how many conservatives who now oppose national healthcare due to the cost, or even more strangely, now question the US’s ability to send dollars to Haiti given our own bad economy, didn’t blink an eye over spending trillions on wars in the Middle East, often citing humanitarian reasons as an excuse?

This week the US Senate is debating whether to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion, totaling a whopping $14.3 trillion, which is about the same size as the nation’s overall economy. Some estimate the cost of national healthcare would be in the ballpark of $1 trillion. The initial relief donation to Haiti by the US government was a relatively measly $100 million while the cost of the Iraq war alone has been estimated at $3 trillion dollars. Regardless, our government, and the debt to maintain it, keeps growing astronomically.

The old fashioned, biblical concept of charity is that it begins at home, and once a man has taken care of his family, property and immediate surroundings he can then afford to address greater concerns. Increasingly and sometimes tragically, America can no longer afford to address greater concerns—not that affordability will prevent our government from continuing to do so. The conservative’s task should be to prevent it from doing so, or “limiting” government–and not promoting its unlimited use at home or abroad, and certainly not to save the world.

Copyright © 2010 The American Conservative – All Rights Reserved

Wire Report

Sheldon Richman, Editor “The Freeman”

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, published by The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of FFF’s award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and FFF’s newest book Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: “I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank… . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility…” Mr. Richman’s articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. A former newspaper reporter and former senior editor at the Cato Institute, Mr. Richman is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia.

WIRE (FFF) – Last week’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the ban on corporate and union spending at election time is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, removing a legal barrier to free speech is always a good thing in itself. Government shouldn’t dictate who can speak or from where people may get their information. This is more than a matter of abstract freedom; it’s also a practical matter. More contentiousness in politics is better than less. Free-wheeling debate is more likely to produce good outcomes than a controlled flow of information.

But there is a downside to the ruling that we should freely acknowledge. If history and recent times are any indication, big corporations and unions will use their new freedom of political speech to promote bad ideas. By “bad ideas” I mean proposals for more government interference with our lives and liberty. (Not that the spending ban kept them from doing that in other ways.)

It’s a great myth that businesses, especially big prominent corporations, want less government intervention in the economy. On the contrary, they love government power because it provides things they can’t achieve in a freely competitive marketplace where force and fraud are barred. Corporations support and lobby for interventions that benefit themselves by hampering their competitors, both foreign and domestic. You often find companies asking for tariffs and other restrictions on imports that compete too effectively with their products. Agribusinesses welcome government (taxpayer) help in selling their products abroad; they also love subsidies, price supports, and acreage allotments.

Businesses, despite public impression, routinely support regulations imposing product standards and other requirements. Why? Burdens from government rules don’t fall uniformly on all firms. Major corporations with big legal and accounting departments can handle regulations far more easily than small firms can — or one that is still only a gleam in the eye of an aspiring entrepreneur. Moreover, when government dictates product standards, say in the name of safety, it removes that factor from the competitive arena, giving companies less incentive to outdo their competitors along that dimension. This means fewer threats to the market share of incumbent firms and less chance for new challengers to make headway. It also means inferior and more expensive goods for consumers.

CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION 01/21/2010 Slip Ruling PDF 2.56Mb

In American history big companies were behind virtually ever advancement of the regulatory state. Things are no different today — even under Barack Obama. It’s easy to be fooled by appearances. Banks may balk at a new regulation, but only because they prefer their government privileges with as few restrictions as possible. Major corporations lobby for new controls on and subsidies to energy production not out of concern for the environment, but because they stand to gain profits. The government is literally seen as a tool for enhancing their investments. Instead of decisions being made by entrepreneurs trying to anticipate what consumers will want, they are made on the basis of cronyism and other political considerations.

Often big companies and unions are on the same side of regulatory issues, as when the heads of Walmart and the Service Employees International Union stood shoulder to shoulder to support Obamacare. But even when they disagree, it is usually over how government should manipulate the economic system. The debate is never between regulation and hands-off.

Admittedly this is not the way the story is usually told. Business is thought to favor deregulation, while progressive forces favor enlightened government guidance. But in fact, big business (and a lot of small business too) would panic at the thought of thorough laissez faire — the end to all guarantees. The books of conservative writer Timothy Carney fully document this. Others have an interest in portraying business as pro–free markets because without the charade the public might catch on to the scam.

So here’s the dilemma: limits on free political speech for corporations and unions offend our sense of justice, but they will use free speech to pursue unjust ends. What shall we do?

There is only one answer. We must strip government of the power to dispense privileges to anyone. If we can pull that off, the problem of money in politics will evaporate.

© 2001-2009 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All rights reserved.

The Smoking Argus

OFFICIAL STATEMENT – Senate Homeland Security Committee discusses the Obama administration’s failures in dealing with the Christmas Day bomber. Sen. Collins expresses her incredulity that the bomber was interrogated for only 50 minutes before getting his Miranda rights. (FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Address, Senator Collinf (ME) January 30, 2010 TRANSCRIPT

Source(s): Republican National Committee • GOP Weekly Address YouTube Channel

The Smoking Argus

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama promised to rein the deficit, citing three specific steps to this end. He praised the Senate for restoring the pay-as-you-go law, which in the 1990’s contributed to the $236 billion surplus at the end of the decade. It is no coincidence that after ending PAYGO, that surplus became a $1.3 trillion deficit. He has also proposed a freeze in discretionary spending, which will increase investments in jobs creation and middle class tax cuts while cutting spending for redundant or ineffective programs. And finally, the President called for a bi-partisan Fiscal Commission to hammer out concrete deficit reduction proposals.
(Full Transcript)

Related Material(s)
	President Obama Weekly Address: Reigning in Budget Deficits TRANSCRIPT 01/30/2010 (PDF 18.3Kb)

Source(s): The White House • White House YouTube Channel

The Smoking Argus

For his first Texas Straight Talk of the New Year, Dr. Ron Paul discusses the dangers of continuing to listen to Keynesian economists, thus relying on government as the only growth industry, and their belief that government can spend its way out of a recession via printing more money out of thin air. Dr. Paul urges us to consider listening to the Austrian economic school and its teachings as a hedge against runaway inflation due to the destruction of the currency, which will, lest we change course, ultimately lead to the destruction of the middle-class in America.

The full audio and transcript of this week’s Texas Straight Talk are available for your consideration.

Related Material(s)
	Representative Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk for January 4th, 2010 TRANSCRIPT (PDF 15k)

Souce(s): Representative Ron Paul, House Web Page • Minnesota Chris YouTube Channel

Wire Report

Steven Horwitz, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He is the author of two books, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2000) and Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order (Westview, 1992), and he has written extensively on Austrian economics, Hayekian political economy, monetary theory and history, and the economics and social theory of gender and the family. His work has been published in professional journals such as History of Political Economy, Southern Economic Journal, and The Cambridge Journal of Economics. He has also done public policy research for the Mercatus Center, Heartland Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Cato Institute. His current project is a book tentatively titled Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of the Modern Family. Horwitz currently serves as the book review editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and as an academic advisor for the Heartland Institute and a contributing editor to Critical Review and Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society, he completed his MA and PhD in economics at George Mason University and received his A.B. in economics and philosophy from The University of Michigan.

FUTURE of FREEDOM FOUNDATION -  On December 2, 2009, Steve Horwitz gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed below in its entirety.

The Smoking Argus

OFFICIAL STATEMENT – In the Weekly Republican Address, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell [Kentucky] discusses the hope that a new year brings and the challenges Americans still face.

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Address, Senator Mitch McConnell (KY) “Challenges We Face in the New Year” TRANSCRIPT (PDF 0k)

Source(s): GOP Weekly Address You Tube Channel

The Smoking Argus

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL STATEMENT / WASHINGTON D.C. – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama discussed his solemn responsibility to protect the nation and the steps the administration has taken to that end. From ordering reviews into the attempted act of terrorism in Detroit to a comprehensive strategy that has refocused our efforts on the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and strengthened international partnerships to keep unrelenting pressure on extremists across the globe, the President will continue to do everything in his power to uphold the nation’s security.

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	President Obama Weekly Address: President Obama Outlines Steps Taken to Protect the Safety and Security of the American People TRANSCRIPT (PDF 13.4k)

Source(s): The White House Briefing Room