How it's done

Goodlatte Says House Will Act on Gun Legislation

Goodlatte, in one of his first interviews about gun violence since taking over the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee in January, said the administration’s recent enforcement of gun laws has been “pathetic.” He noted that the Justice Department rarely prosecutes those who attempt to buy firearms illegally by lying on federal forms that ask prospective buyers to assert that they are not among a group of prohibited purchasers. He pointed to statistics, cited in the Judiciary Republicans’ letter to Obama, that the Justice Department prosecuted just 62 of more than 76,000 such cases in 2010.

The formula for growing the Raw Power of Government:  (1) Pass laws and regulations; (2) Fail to enforce those laws and regulations; (3) Use that failure as the excuse to pass even more laws and regulations; (4) Repeat, starting with (2)...

This toxic loop guarantees that before long there will be enormous numbers of laws and regulations on the books, which Government can choose to enforce, or not enforce, according to its purposes at the moment -- such as punishing or destroying a particular organization, some individual person, a business or company, etc.

Call it "soft tyranny" if you want, but it's tyranny nevertheless.  Ask anyone who's got on the wrong side of some bureaucrat and been put through the Government wringer.  Even if you at long last finally win, there is no victory; your life and your assets will have all been bled away by then.

Byron

P.S.  Those with no such experience need not feel left out, because ObamaCare is coming -- with its myriad ambiguities, unresolved regulatory details, endless complications, and armies of state and Federal bureaucrats who will be under intense pressure to cut costs. If you don't think it's going to get ugly, well, that's just nature's way of telling you to cut down on the recreational pharmaceuticals.  Forget the cost in money, which is going to be a helluva lot more than advertised, and just ask how many hours of your life are going to be devoured. Here's my estimation formula: Take the hours you've spent on the phone -- including the time spent on hold and just trying to reach the right person or office -- to get a problem resolved with (a) IRS, (b) the Social Security Administration/Medicare, and (c) your current health insurer, and multiply that sum by the two-digit number of your choice. Too bad there's no good way to add in the quantities of frustration, anxiety, and anger that will accompany every iteration of this scenario.  With ObamaCare, you won't need a hobby.

Terrifying

Really frightening:

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

This issue sat there festering year after year after year, getting nothing but worse.

The GOP sat back and sat back some more, until finally Obama and the Democrats took it -- and rammed through ObamaCare, which will do nothing to control costs.

If Republicans were any dumber they'd forget to breathe.

The stumbling wreck that is the GOP has to be rebuilt from top to bottom. Its message is a muddled melange of bits and pieces that don't fit together, a diffuse, incoherent jumble of demands for individual liberty and free market economics on the one hand, and for compulsory enforcement of religion-based moral absolutes on the other.

This is not a theocracy.  Promoting Christian virtues is the job of Christianity.  It is not a proper function of Government.  The fact that Christianity has not been able to make the sale in some area or other cannot be an excuse to call on the power of Government as faux savior.

The religious right clearly has become a crutch for the GOP, and far too many Republicans are content to continue hobbling along on it. But they ignore the damage from religion-intoxicated screwballs like Todd Akin who emerge from that quarter in every election to throw away perfectly winnable races -- with lots of collateral damage to the GOP brand in every direction, especially among women and the young. "I am not a witch!"  Oh, yes, you are.  I just saw you demonstrate your powers by -- abracadabra -- turning a GOP seat into a Democrat seat.  Poof!

What change is possible, and from what quarter?  One possibility might be a libertarian takeover of the Tea Party movement.  The Tea Party as it exists now is strong on fiscal/economic issues, but its religious emphasis limits its appeal. In its present form it shares the mainline GOP's main problem, in other words.

Byron

The Three Positions

"Liberalism" originally meant what we now call libertarianism -- limited government, free people, and free markets.  Its opposite was "conservatism," which sought to preserve traditional institutions of government, religion, social class relations, etc.

The core of what's called liberalism today is the creation and enforcement of equality through the power of government; that's the essential socialist position, and it's antithetical to liberalism in its original, libertarian meaning. Today's liberals want to enforce equality of results, while the original liberal understanding was that the power of government should only be used to create greater equality of opportunity by lowering the barriers to individual accomplishment.

Today's conservatism is problematic because it tries to do two things at the same time: To allow maximum economic freedom, which inevitably creates lots of inequality, but also to use government power to enforce a social agenda. It's hard to be convincing in your talk about liberty when you are also out to control people's private reproductive behavior.

The terminology is incoherent because, as Hayek pointed out, there are not two positions -- Liberal vs. Conservative, to be distinguished as if they are the end points of an ideological straight line, with perhaps its center point labeled "Moderate."  In reality there are three positions, and when you try to cram the three into two, you get a mess.

The three positions are (1) Conservatism, (2) Socialism, and (3) Libertarianism.  Imagine a triangle with those three as its corners. Any point inside the triangle will be some different mix of the three. Any attempt to squash the triangle into a line only creates the terminological mess we have, which makes all political discussion incoherent.  This is why both sides constantly complain that their position is being treated superficially, and why both sides end up talking past each other.

I like to think about the differences in evolutionary terms:

Conservatism is anti-evolution:  What exists has by definition succeeded even if it is not perfect. History demonstrates that change runs the risk of making things worse, perhaps much worse, so we need to recognize good enough as good enough.

Socialism is guided evolution:  Only certain kinds of change should be encouraged or allowed, specifically change that creates or promotes greater equality. If we ever achieved perfect equality, there would be no need or reason for further change -- Marx's "End of History."

Libertarianism is free market evolution:  Our information is so limited that we only stumble around in the dark when we try to stop change or direct it. We may believe that equality is the highest social good, but we may be completely mistaken about that. The best we can do is to encourage the widest possible experimentation and innovation, treating every status quo as provisional pending future developments and data. The best way we have so far found to do that is to let the profit motive function in a free market -- which is basically how natural selection operates in nature.

In a nutshell

It's an interesting experiment, having our first economically illiterate president.

It's the Land of Utopian Dreams, a region you eventually reach as you move further and further leftward on the political scale.  One result you can count on is a wrecked economy, and if you continue far enough in that direction you get vicious government repression and huge piles of corpses.

George McGovern would have been our first presidential economic illiterate, at least in my lifetime, but fortunately he was defeated in a massive landslide.  Maybe Americans were smarter then, or maybe just less bought-and-paid-for by the Entitlement State.

(I voted for McGovern, btw, back in my Left days.  As I sobered up I transitioned to Libertarian, never did at any point find much to like about Conservatism.  Still don't, other than as a last-ditch lesser of evils.)

Byron

Comedian in Chief

Obamanomics on parade: Hey, how about a minimum-wage hike to help the middle class?

Perfect:  Guaranteed to raise prices and kill jobs.

It's the economic equivalent of a whoopee cushion.

Hey, Obama!  Genius!  Why not make it $20 an hour?  Hell, $30.

Just price-administer us to prosperity!

It's like a Three Stooges skit -- so abysmally stupid you can't help laughing in spite of yourself.

Raising the minimum wage seems like a really good idea to Obama.

In fact, it's a bad, stupid idea that will hurt the people Obama says he want to help.

Then again, maybe he only cares about its value is as a political pander and doesn't care about its actual effects.

So, Obama as deeply clueless?  Or Obama as deeply cynical?

Take your pick.

Minimum-wage hike the wrong way to lift working poor

Self-defense

A SubReddit Devoted To Reporting Defensive Gun Use

Good. This is way overdue.  But the political posturing will continue regardless.

Joe Biden admits gun control will not stop mass shootings or save lives.

This guy is good

Not a note or a teleprompter in sight:

Dan Bongino @ Guns Across America Rally in Annapolis, MD

Having lived in Maryland for 21 years, I can assure you that his message resonates only with a minority. What most Marylanders want is a benevolent, all-caring Government that solves every problem, creates and sustains community, protects and improves the natural environment, and does it all with other people's money. Marylanders are constantly demanding action on some front or other -- this or that needs to be done, must be done --  and by action they always mean Government action.  Everything must be done by or through Government. As individual citizens, they have grown comfortable in the role of subject; they have, through time and experience, become disabled.

Byron