manunderstress.com

I have latched on to the GOP-are-statist-hypocrites meme and I am not letting go. I fucking love it when Libertarians rip on the GOP! If the Republitards were in power right now we would have a similarly sized stimulus package with a different name. Something like, “Heterosexuals, Guns n’ Freedom- Why Do You Hate America Act?”

Under Bush and a Republican Congress we had an explosion of growth on all fronts: spending that put Lyndon Johnson to shame, huge deficits and a doubling of the national debt, corporate bailouts, further centralization of education, protectionism, expansion of Medicare, increased regulation, undeclared wars, civil-liberties violations and other unchecked executive power, and more. Bush did not veto a single spending bill in eight years. His cutting of tax rates in 2001 and 2003 has to be judged in the context of growing spending. Milton Friedman pointed out that the level of spending, not taxation, is the truer gauge of the government burden. The money has to come from somewhere. Removing it from the economy through borrowing is as economically damaging as taxation — more so when you figure that the government will perpetrate inflation to manage the debt.

That was bad enough, but the Republicans added rank hypocrisy to the mix by claiming to favor free markets.

What’s worse than a man-child? A child-man. The new face of the Republican party:

Perhaps there is no getting around pork when it comes to a good redistribution of wealth sandwich.

When congressional leaders began to assemble the mammoth economic stimulus bill, top Democrats and the Obama administration decided that there would be no earmarks: no “special projects,” no pork-barrel spending. In so doing, they gave up some control over how the money is spent, leaving the decision to public servants around the country.

“Someone has to decide how money gets spent. It’s either going to be Congress or the executive branch or states or municipalities,” says Fred Wertheimer of the congressional watchdog group Democracy 21.

Good Obama, pleasing even some of those curmudgeon libertarians already. And nerds everywhere are inspired by the recent changes to the whitehouse.gov robots.txt, and the Obama Team’s more savvy use of internet technologies. Plus, dude will get to keep his blackberry AND use a Sectera Edge for more presidential matters. Imagine that…a president that wants to do work efficiently.

We know that neither candidate approaches the Libertarian purity of Ron Paul, but here is the libertarian case for Obama by Reason’s Terry Michael:

1. Sen. Obama has met at least one war he doesn’t love. His early pronouncements against the criminal enterprise in Iraq are enough reason, in themselves, to vote his way on November 4. Anyone paying the least attention must conclude that Lt. McCain’s “cause greater than self” always involves the Army, the Navy, and the United States Marines (not necessarily in that order.)

2. The election of an African-American will end liberal racism as we know it. If an overwhelmingly white nation chooses a black leader, the Jesse Jacksons and other Mau Mauers for identity-based group preferences will be put out of business, as I explained here.

3. One word: Osmosis. You couldn’t live in Hyde Park or teach at the University of Chicago with the intellectual curiosity of a Barack Obama without gaining at least some understanding of libertarian economics. That can’t be said for most of the reactionary left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party dominating Capitol Hill. But I believe Obama is educable on free markets and I’m convinced that Democrats are ripe for a return in the next decade to the liberalism of our party’s founder, Thomas Jefferson (I made this case two years ago in my libertarian Democrat manifesto.)

4. Obama is the best hope for keeping government out of your bedroom and away from your body. As would any Democratic standard-bearer, the senator from Illinois represents the pro-choice, pro-gay rights side of the cultural divide. And he has at least made interesting soundings about reducing America’s status as the world’s number one jailer, much of which is tied to drug offenses and other crimes without victims. No libertarian can feel comfortable with a Republican candidate who doesn’t echo the personal choices demanded by his supposed hero, Barry Goldwater.

5. The hidden hand did well this month punishing stupidity. But libertarians committed to free markets, not corporate oligarchs, must pause to consider the need for field-leveling regulation. More precisely, we should ask whether there was sufficient enforcement of reasonable restraints already in place. We need Republicans to stand against excessive tinkering in markets, of course. But my modest retirement fund may be safer with Democratic regulators in charge than rogue elephants.

6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Yes, we need to restore America’s reputation around the world. Anybody who’s traveled beyond the Atlantic and Pacific in the past eight years knows America needs a makeover. Whatever you think of Barack Obama—unless, like the mindless U!S!A! crowd, you don’t care what the world thinks—he will restore much of the goodwill we have lost when he raises his hand on January 20, 2009. That’s significant for libertarians who believe in the importance of the nation most committed to free markets and free minds—ours—leading by example. More-of-the-McSame in foreign policy is something we can’t afford.

7. Finally, Barack Obama is smart enough to follow the aspirations of the Gen Y, Millenials, and Echo Boomers next up on the American political stage. They want choices in both their bank accounts and their bedrooms. I don’t have much empirical evidence for that, though the college students I teach suggest that such libertarian leanings are on the rise. After all, a generation growing up with an explosion of mega-data-informed choices literally at its keyboard fingertips will resemble the self-sufficient, liberty-loving founders of the Agrarian Age more than they’ll resemble the social welfare liberals of the Industrial Era who gave us one-size-fits-all central authority mandates.

The oldest candidate in American history won’t inspire such potentially libertarian change—but the senator from Illinois can. It’s change in which you and I can believe, whether or not we believe in any candidate, including Barack Obama.

Why regulation is stoopid.

It’s tempting to believe that government regulation of the Internet would be more consumer-friendly; history and economics suggest otherwise. The reason is simple: a regulated industry has a far larger stake in regulatory decisions than any other group in society. As a result, regulated companies spend lavishly on lobbyists and lawyers and, over time, turn the regulatory process to their advantage.

Via the libertarian aware Onion:

WASHINGTON—A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.
…
The current economic woes, brought on by the collapse of the so-called “housing bubble,” are considered the worst to hit investors since the equally untenable dot-com bubble burst in 2001. According to investment experts, now that the option of making millions of dollars in a short time with imaginary profits from bad real-estate deals has disappeared, the need for another spontaneous make-believe source of wealth has never been more urgent.

While I want to believe in such simple truths as the government always gets it wrong, plain old statistics wouldn’t support me. Even the government could theoretically get something right…by chance.

The latest libertarian leaning criticism of government is blaming the government for the subprime crisis, particularly, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Sounds reasonable at first glance:

But to earn high ratings, banks were forced to make increasingly risky loans to borrowers who wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage under normal standards of creditworthiness. The Community Reinvestment Act, made even more stringent during the Clinton administration, trapped lenders in a Catch-22.

But perhaps this is exaggerated to lay blame on the government when in fact it’s much more complicated than that.

Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure. Believing the bubble would never pop, lenders approved risky adjustable-rate mortgages, often without considering whether borrowers could afford them; families took on those loans; investors bought them in securitized form; and, all the while, regulators sat on their hands.

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn’t even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan’s Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

After your bingeing finale to 2007 you might want to exercise a bit, if you care about regenerating those brain cells that is. Wouldn’t want you to forget how to “deal with ambiguity.” I like that. They make alcohol related brain damage sound like some kind of existential psychosis.

Now on to my predictions for 2008:

1. More Republicans will be caught promoting “family values” in public restrooms, thereby inspiring the long awaited Log Cabin Republicans coup to take the GOP.
2. UBL will be brought to justice by Captain America (with possible assistance from Iron Man) and thereafter Iraq, the little democracy that could, will stabilize and flourish, quickly becoming the number one tourist destination on the planet. CNN’s Morgan Neill will be there to report it all, but will refuse to grow a beard to look “tougher.”
3. American football will be replaced by the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame, Ulama. Losers will be sacrificed. Dick Cheney will play some part in this.
4. Apple will release a product that no one knew they needed but quickly becomes seductively irresistible. Google will release “Google Sex” which allows users to upload their own “sex content” to share with friends and family.
5. All 80s throwback fashion trends will begin to give way to 90s throwback fashion trends. Yesterdays hipsters will begin to feel old.
6. The indoor helicopter craze will reach irrational heights as copters replace traditional pets.
7. Guerrilla open source hackers will replace abandoned pay phones with VOIP kiosks out of retro-nostalgic respect, yo.
8. Unintelligent people will continue to breed at an alarming rate. Intelligent people will continue to occasionally sleep with unintelligent people, for sport.
9. People will suddenly stop wearing sandals; Crocs will be made illegal.
10. Defective Real Doll prototypes will be secretly released into the population, creating an apocalyptic “Westworld” type situation (only much sexier), that only reincarnated Real Doll Yul Brenner can save us from.
11. Georgia will move to number 1 in national housing foreclosures and retain its championship in bank robberies. I predict some spectacular “Point Break” style bank robberies in Atlanta.
12. A new president will be elected. No matter who it is Americans will feel relief for a few weeks.