Great Moments in Government Overreach

DOJ Accuses San Diego Public Library of Discrimination

by mark perry

The Sacramento Public Library Authority partnered with Barnes and Noble on a trial basis to provide at least one NOOK e-book reader to each of its 28 libraries, pre-loaded with 20 books in a variety of genres.  Sure seems like a sensible,  innovative, market-based, consumer-friendly option now that so many people do their reading using Kindles, NOOKs, and iPads instead of print copies. 

So what's the problem? According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the pilot e-reader program violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it discriminates against blind patrons of the library, who can't use NOOK e-readers.  The library reached a costly settlement that requires it to purchase iPod touch and iPad devices, which read e-books aloud with a computerized voice.  DOJ has also directed the library not to buy any additional e-readers that exclude blind or disabled people; and it requires the library system to train its staff on ADA compliance.

Read the  whole story here.

Question: Doesn't the Sacramento Public Library's entire collection of books, magazines, and newspapers in hard copy also discriminate against its blind patrons?

Rediscovering Justice

Justice is the end of civil society

by JOSHUA D. HAWLEY

Americans are in a disagreeable mood. Polls show pessimism about the country's future at record highs, trust in government at record lows, and a deep distaste for political incumbents of both parties. It is tempting to attribute this discontent to the economy, and surely the jobless rate has much to do with Americans' disquiet. But more than unemployment troubles America. Voters have been telling pollsters for years, well before the epic economic collapse, that they believe the country is far off track. It is not just that middle- and working-class Americans cannot seem to move ahead or that too many schools are failing. It is not only that we seem persistently unable to face our ruinous budget deficit or reform our ill-designed entitlement system.

Americans increasingly feel there is a profound and widening distance between our most cherished ideals and the reality of our national life. In some fundamental way, Americans believe, the nation is disordered. Barack Obama's promise to address that disorder — to practice a reformist, even transformative politics — is what got him elected three years ago. Instead, Obama pursued an agenda of government aggrandizement. Americans want that aggrandizement reversed, but they want more. They want to put their country back in order and make society reflect again their deepest moral commitments, to recover a shared sense of belonging and purpose.

Justice, Inequality, and the Poor

We cannot help the sick by injuring the fit

by RYAN MESSMORE

After a financial crisis, a deep recession, and a stalled recovery, it should be no surprise that poverty in America is on the rise. This fall, the Census Bureau reported that a record 46 million Americans — 15% of the population — were living below the poverty line. This is a troubling figure, and it should certainly move us to act to help the poor as we strive to grow the economy.

But efforts to address poverty in America are frequently derailed by misguided ideology — in particular, by the notion that poverty is best understood through the lens of inequality. Far too often, policymakers succumb to the argument that a widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans is the fundamental problem to be solved and that poverty is merely a symptom of that deeper flaw.

Such concerns about inequality are not baseless, of course. They begin from a fact of the modern American economy, which is that, in recent decades, incomes among the poor have risen less quickly than have incomes among the wealthy. And such growing inequality, some critics contend, is both practically and morally dangerous. A growing income divide can foster bitterness and animosity between classes, threaten democracy, and destabilize the economy. Above all, they argue, it violates the cherished moral principle of equality.

Implicit in much of the critique of our income divide is the assumption that inequality per se is inherently unjust, and therefore that the gap between rich and poor is as well. That perceived injustice in turn spurs support for redistributionist policies that are intended to make levels of prosperity more equal across society.

President Obama commonly uses the language of justice and equality to advance such an agenda — speaking, for instance, of "the injustice in the growing divide between Main Street and Wall Street." Other left-leaning politicians, commentators, economists, and activists say much the same. Some religious figures have even used their moral concerns about inequality to justify the imposition of specific redistributionist economic policies. For example, Jim Wallis, president of the liberal religious organization Sojourners, has said that inequality in America — "a sin of biblical proportions" — necessitates a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich, and increased welfare spending.

Which Way, George Orwell?

He was a socialist who saw through socialism and its inherent dangers

by Nicholas Farrell

The BBC has just rejected a proposal to erect a statue in honor of George Orwell outside its new London headquarters.

The reason? As the nation’s public broadcaster, the BBC is supposed to be unbiased and objective, so to erect such a statue would be regarded as “far too left-wing.”

That is what the BBC’s Mark Thompson apparently told Lady Joan Bakewell, a former BBC presenter and Labour member of the House of Lords, who had proposed the idea backed by a consortium of her radical-chic friends.

Orwell—too left-wing!

Yes, George Orwell was a socialist, but above all he believed in liberty. He was well aware that the trouble with socialism is that it leads inevitably to tyranny.

If Orwell were alive today he would despise the modern left, especially for its doctrine of political correctness, which denies freedom of speech and via the state inflicts on our lives numerous petty tyrannies.

Income Confusion

Ideology vs Reality

By Thomas Sowell

Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating. Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the Census Bureau, which seem to indicate that.

On the other hand, income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005.

The top one percent -- "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left -- saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent.

Meanwhile, the average taxpayers' real income increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005.

How can all this be? How can official statistics from different agencies of the same government -- the Census Bureau and the IRS -- lead to such radically different conclusions?

There are wild cards in such data that need to be kept in mind when you hear income statistics thrown around -- especially when they are thrown around by people who are trying to prove something for political purposes.

The Regulatory State

The Enemy Within

By CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH

Washington is in a regulatory growth spurt. Hundreds of rulemaking proceedings are underway or impending under the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), both enacted in 2010. The Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing many hugely expensive pollution-control initiatives. The Federal Communications Commission wants to regulate the internet. Agencies are tightening highway fuel-economy standards and banning the incandescent light bulb. Price controls are making a comeback in health insurance and debit cards.

Congressional Republicans are up in arms, and their charges of over-regulation are justified. The Obama administration's confidence in central planning is as manifest in its regulatory policies as in its taxing and spending policies. The administration is clearly comfortable with executive government, as in its dispensation of waivers from the requirements of the Obamacare and No Child Left Behind statutes, as well as in its $20 billion compensation program for people affected by the BP oil spill (a program that had no statutory basis at all). The administration uses regulatory authorities to pursue unspoken policies, such as hobbling carbon-based energy production (evident in the rejection of the environmentally benign Keystone XL pipeline) and promoting labor unions (demonstrated by its campaigns to stop Boeing from building airplanes in South Carolina and to overrule state constitutions that guarantee the secret ballot in union elections).

Business and the Literati

American literature hates American business for what it has done to the souls of the rich, the poor, and the middling alike

By ALGIS VALIUNAS

For as long as the culture of business has been an integral part of American life, it has also been frowned upon by important sectors of our society. Among our intellectuals especially, the business world has been the subject of many brutal caricatures, portraying corporations large and small, and the people who run them, as heartless, soulless agents of greed. These caricatures have shaped our implicit understanding of the nature of the business world, so much that they have come to pass for conventional wisdom.

In recent years, one of the clearest expressions of the reigning caricature was that offered by the commencement speaker who addressed the graduating class of Arizona State University in May 2009. Warning the students away from what he described as the familiar American formula for success, the speaker put forward what he took to be the ethic of the business world:

You're taught to chase after all the usual brass rings; you try to be on this "who's who" list or that top 100 list; you chase after the big money and you figure out how big your corner office is; you worry about whether you have a fancy enough title or a fancy enough car. That's the message that's sent each and every day, or has been in our culture for far too long — that through material possessions, through a ruthless competition pursued only on your own behalf — that's how you will measure success. Now, you can take that road — and it may work for some. But at this critical juncture in our nation's history, at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go; it displays a poverty of ambition.

Cuba is walking a delicate line on health

Cuba campaign takes on 'free' health care

by PETER ORSI

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's system of free medical care, long considered a birthright by its citizens and trumpeted as one of the communist government's great successes, is not immune to cutbacks under Raul Castro's drive for efficiency.

The health sector has already endured millions of dollars in budget cuts and tens of thousands of layoffs, and it became clear this month that Castro is looking for more ways to save when the newspaper voice of the Communist Party, Granma, published daily details for two weeks on how much the government spends on everything from anesthetics and acupuncture to orthodontics and organ transplants.

It's part of a wider media campaign that seems geared to discourage frivolous use of medical services, to explain or blunt fears of a drop-off in care and to remind Cubans to be grateful that health care is still free despite persistent economic woes. But it's also raising the eyebrows of outside analysts, who predict further cuts or significant changes to what has been a pillar of the socialist system implanted after the 1959 revolution.

"Very often the media has been a leading indicator of where the economic reforms are going," said Phil Peters, a longtime Cuba observer at the Lexington Institute think tank. "My guess is that there's some kind of policy statement to follow, because that's been the pattern."

A wonder of the modern world

The London Underground

Andrew Martin does a fine job in celebrating the history and experience of the Tube, a pioneering railway that embodies all the characteristics - good and bad - of our capital city.

by Neil Davenport 

The closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was notable for its groaning reliance on tourist-shop icons - all black cabs, bowler hats, Houses of Parliament, red pillar-boxes and Mini Coopers. In a dreary way, what could we expect? A tourist-shop portrayal of Britain is still internationally recognisable and, for the organisers, safe enough to avoid party-pooping controversy. Curiously, though, one famous figure of the capital was noticeable by its absence: the London Underground. With its roundel logo, distinctive trains and elegantly functional map, few landmarks of London are as richly iconic as this. Indeed, as a character player in umpteen films, novels and pop songs, no London setting would be complete without the Underground.

Throughout the network’s history, though, Londoners’ relationship with the Tube has often been uneasy and aggravating: overcrowding, delays, cancellations, the fare’s dent on the wallet and, for the middle classes, striking tube workers and their ‘inflated’ salary. Nevertheless, it is only when the Tube is not working properly that we become aware of its magnitude. Unlike Tower Bridge or Beefeaters, the Tube isn’t a remote or mythical symbol of London. It’s the living, working and organic lifeblood of the capital. It is the way in which millions of Londoners are able to work and play and thus, unlike Parliament, has meaning to ordinary people’s lives.

The Unseen Class War that could decide the presidential election

The New Political Geography

by Joel Kotkin

Much is said about class warfare in contemporary America, and there’s justifiable anger at the impoverishment of much of the middle and working classes. The Pew Research Center recently dubbed the 2000s a “lost decade” for middle-income earners — some 85% of Americans in that category feel it’s now more difficult to maintain their standard of living than at the beginning of the millennium, according to a Pew survey.

Blaming a disliked minority — rich business folks — has morphed into a predictable strategy for President Obama’s Democrats, stripped of incumbent success. But all the talk of “one percent” versus “the ninety nine percent” misses new splits developing within both the upper and middle classes.

There is no true solidarity among the rich since no one is yet threatening their status. The “one percent” are splitting their bets. In 2008 President Obama received more Wall Street money than any candidate in history, and he still relies on Wall Street bundlers for his sustenance. For all his class rhetoric, miscreant Wall Streeters, particularly big ones, have evaded big sanctions and the ignominy of jail time.

Field of dreams

Israel’s natural gas

By Tobias Buck

After decades of importing every drop of fuel, Israel has struck it rich, uncovering vast reserves of natural gas in the Mediterranean

The black and yellow helicopter heads north from Tel Aviv, passing over empty beaches, a yacht harbour and a string of sprawling seafront residences that house some of Israel’s wealthiest families. After a few minutes the pilot makes a sharp turn to the left and steers his ageing Bell 412 towards the open sea.

For more than half an hour, all there is to see is the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Then suddenly a hulking mass of brightly painted steel rises from the midday haze. Towering more than 100m above the water, this is the Sedco Express, a drilling rig that has been operating in this stretch of ocean for almost three years. As the helicopter touches down on the landing pad, we see a small blue and white Star of David flag fluttering in the wind. It is the only sign that the Sedco Express sits atop one of the greatest treasures that Israel has ever found. Far below, connected to the rig by a slender steel pipe that runs through 1,700m of ocean and another 4,500m of rock and sand, lies a vast reservoir of natural gas known as the Tamar field.

Ben Bernanke And His Merry Band Of Thieves

The Real Reverse Robin Hood

Away from the stifling media crush, staid Ben Bernanke is dashing Reverse Robin Hood, lackey pawn of the Neofeudalist Financial Lords who shamelessly steals from the poor to give to the parasitic super-rich.

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Amidst electioneering chatter about a "reverse Robin Hood" who steals from the poor to give to the rich, it's important to identify the real Reverse Robin Hood: Ben Bernanke and his Merry Band of Thieves, a.k.a. the Federal Reserve. It's especially appropriate to reveal Ben as the real Reverse Robin Hood today, as the Chairman is as omnipresent in the media as Big Brother due to the Cargo-Cult confab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Please answer the following questions before launching a rousing defense of the All-Powerful Fed and its chairman:

1. What is the nominal yield on your savings account, thanks to the Fed's zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP)? (Answer: 0.25%)

2. What is the inflation-adjusted yield on your savings account? (Answer: - 2.25%)

3. What is the rate of interest the Fed charges banks for "free money"? (Answer: 0%)

Gold Is A Barbeque Relish

There was nothing wrong with my weight, I just wasn’t tall enough

by Mark McHugh

My Doctor’s an idiot.  A few years ago, he started expressing concerns about my weight, pointing at this chart supposedly showing how much a man of my height should weigh.  One glance at his stupid chart and it was clear to me that he had completely misdiagnosed my condition.  There was nothing wrong with my weight, I just wasn’t tall enough.  Clearly I needed to grow my way out of this. So I went home and googled “how to stimulate growth.”  Once I got past the all the baldness cures and penis pumps (it’s not my bag, baby), I found hundreds of papers so incredibly boring I knew they had to be true.  In no time, I was able to design and implement my own stimulus plan based on the irrefutable scientificky principles of Nobel prize winners and other people so smart they never had to do an honest day’s work in their lives.  Despite the difficulty climbing stairs, I was feeling pretty good about things until my last check-up….

“Hi, Doc.”

“Hi,” he said, examining my file.  He looked up, “You’ve put on twenty pounds since the last time I saw you”

“Thanks for noticing,” I beamed.

He frowned.  “I remember now.  You’re the guy on the diet designed to make you grow.  What’s that called again?”

“The Keynesian Plan.”

“Is that the one where you eat bacon and cheese, but not vegetables?”

The New Endangered Species

Liquidity & Reliable Income Streams

by Charles Hugh-Smith

The causal relationship between scarcity, demand, and price is intuitive.  Whatever is scarce and in demand will rise in price; whatever is abundant and in low demand will decline in price to its cost basis.

The corollary is somewhat less intuitive, but still solidly sensible: the cure for high prices is high prices, meaning that as the price of a commodity or service reaches a threshold of affordability/pain, suppliers and consumers will seek out alternatives or modify their behaviors to lower consumption.

We talk about the demand for commodities being elastic or inelastic, meaning that some commodities such as oil and grain are so essential that the demand for them is less elastic than demand for discretionary goods and services.  Despite its essential role in the global economy, the demand for oil is not fixed; as prices rise, demand falls. Since all commodities are priced at the margin, the price of oil is actually quite volatile, despite the supposed inelasticity of demand for oil.

Public Power, Private Gain

The Abuse of Eminent Domain

By John Kramer

The Current Issue

For most of her 36 years in Atlantic City, Vera Coking, an elderly widow, ran a tidy little boarding house just off the Boardwalk. She convinced her husband to buy the property because she loved the house, the beach and Atlantic City. There, long before gambling was legalized and towering casinos rose up around her, she greeted guests from around the world with one of the six languages she speaks. She raised three children in the house, and one daughter still lives with her.

Retired now, the house is her only residence and only asset. But if tycoon Donald Trump has his way, a New Jersey government agency will use its power of eminent domain to condemn Vera's property, take it away from her at a bargain-basement price, then transfer the ownership to Trump for a fraction of the market value. Trump then plans to park limousines where Vera's bedroom, kitchen and dining room now stand. In short, New Jersey will take from one private owner and transfer that property to another private owner for his exclusive gain.

Unfortunately, Vera Coking is not alone in this battle. Other private property owners in Atlantic City and nationwide find their property rights under attack from unethical marriages of convenience between developers, local governments and state agencies. The result is an erosion of a fundamental constitutional right. And the legal landscape-especially at the federal level-is stacked against the land holders.

On December 13, 1996, the Institute for Justice joined Vera's attorney, Glenn Zeitz, in asking the New Jersey Supreme Court to reverse an appellate decision allowing the condemnation of Vera's property and to hold that the condemnation violated the New Jersey and federal Constitutions

Inconceivable Complexity

A market economy is indescribably vast and complex

By Donald J. Boudreaux

We’ve all seen old photos and film clips of people trying to fly like birds. Each of these aspiring aviators has wing-like things strapped to his arms. But no amount of flapping, however furious, ever gets him airborne like the birds he’s trying to imitate.

The man dressed in wings observes a flying bird and then analogizes his own limbs and muscle movements to what he supposes, from his observations, are those of the bird. But the human is misled into thinking that because he’s intelligent and has some body parts that are more or less analogous to a bird’s body parts, he can easily enough mimic the bird’s body and movements and thereby achieve flight.

Of course this man is deeply mistaken. Despite our smarts, we humans can observe only a tiny fraction of the details that enable birds to fly. We can with our naked eyes observe only the most obvious, large, “macro” details (“bird flaps limbs that extend from bird’s upper torso”; “bird’s flapping limbs are made of lightweight, flexible, overlapping things that we call ‘feathers’ ”). But the amount of detail that we don’t—that we cannot—observe through simple observation is overwhelming. The bird’s musculature; its cardiovascular system; the weight, positioning, and minuscule maneuverings of its tail—these and countless other relevant details aren’t observed.

We see only an animal extending itself horizontally, flapping its limbs, and then, voila!, it is safely and gracefully airborne!

The illusion of the frictionless State

The Unnoticed Deficit That Makes Us $6 Trillion Poorer

By James L. Payne

Politicians are busy these days trying to fix deficits, trying to close the gap between what government spends and what it takes in. It’s a difficult task, but it is assumed that in the long run some combination of spending cuts and tax increases will bring us to balanced budgets. If that day ever arrives, the politicians will toast each other for their maturity and leadership, and assume that the country’s fiscal problems have been solved.

Unfortunately, this self-congratulation would not be justified. In this balanced budget situation, with taxes fully covering expenditures, there would still be a huge negative number eating at the heart of national finances. This other “deficit” consists of the overhead costs, or waste, in government tax-and-spend systems. Though there is an element of redistribution in many spending programs, basically government is taxing people and then trying to return the money to them as some benefit they could have bought for themselves, such as education, housing, art, pensions, medical care, and so on. This cycling of funds through government involves enormous waste. My estimate of this loss puts it at $5.7 trillion.

Merkel wedded to euro and guilt

Long gone is the time when long-term thinking was still possible in Western Europe

By Gunnar Beck 

"If the euro fails, Europe fails." German Chancellor Angela Merkel's words remind one of her predecessor Helmut Kohl's dictum that "European integration is the other side of the coin of German reunification." And just as one set of words is reminiscent of the other, so both are equally devoid of logic. 

Yet, they signify a deep-seated and abiding commitment to European Union integration and the defense of the single currency which is not readily understood outside Germany. Merkel will defend the euro to the hilt, to her own peril, that of her country, and that of the euro itself - and the same holds for any mainstream German politician who might replace or succeed her. The reasons for this are many, but they all relate to Germany's historical guilt complex and the triumph of short-term calculus over long-term evaluation that is symptomatic of our Western democracies. 

First, Chancellor Merkel, like Helmut Kohl and indeed almost any mainstream German post-war politician outside Bavaria, is a convinced pro-European and pro-integrationist. For better or worse, that means she is committed to the euro. It also means that she will defend it for its own sake, not because it may be in Germany's narrow economic self-interest, debatable as even that no doubt is.

France to Hire 150,000 Subsidized Workers With Zero Qualifications

Why Stop There?

By MIKE SHEDLOCK

Looking for a loony idea to address unemployment in France? Look no further because I have a doozie.

Via Google Translate from El Economista, France will create 150,000 jobs for young people without qualifications

The French Government has today adopted a draft law providing for the creation of 150,000 subsidized jobs for young people with little or no qualifications, which are most affected by unemployment and employability harder.

The beneficiaries of these so called "jobs of tomorrow" will work for municipalities, hospitals, schools, social organizations, associations or, exceptionally, in private companies, and will receive a grant of up to 75% of their compensation.

The estimated cost is 500 million euros in 2013 and "more than 1,500 million" next year by the state budget, said Labor Minister Michel Sapin, at a press conference.

Frédéric Bastiat on Legal Plunder

The State is the mechanism by which a small privileged group of people lives at the expense of everyone else

By David Hart

Frédéric Bastiat’s unwritten History of Plunder ranks alongside Lord Acton’s History of Liberty and the third volume of Murray Rothbard’s Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought as the greatest libertarian books never written. Had he lived to a ripe old age, instead of dying at the age of 49 from throat cancer, Bastiat might have finished his magnum opus,Economic Harmonies, and completed his history of plunder. It should be noted that Karl Marx published the first volume of his magnum opus, Das Capital(1867), when he was 49 but lived another 16 years. Given the chance, Bastiat might well have fulfilled his great promise as an economic theorist and historian and become the Karl Marx of the nineteenth-century classical-liberal movement.