A Pox on Comprehensive Legislation

Eli,

This is from Ben Domenech's "The Transom," on the NSA's data capture program:

And why are we at this point? Because, in some sense, Congress never understood what it was authorizing in the first place when it came to the Protect America Act, which swept through Congress with bipartisan support. http://vlt.tc/wbe  “In reality, the PAA represented a sweeping change to American surveillance law. Before conducting surveillance, the PAA only required executive branch officials to “certify” that there were “reasonable procedures” in place for ensuring that surveillance “concerns” persons located outside the United States and that the foreign intelligence is a “significant purpose” of the program. A single certification could cover a broad program intercepting the communications of numerous individuals. And there was no requirement for judicial review of individual surveillance targets within a “certified” program. Civil liberties groups warned that the PAA’s vague requirements and lack of oversight would give the government a green light to seek indiscriminate access to the private communications of Americans. They predicted that the government would claim that they needed unfettered access to domestic communications to be sure they had gotten all relevant information about suspected terrorists.” 

I maintain Congress never really understood the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), nor Dodd-Frank, and probably doesn't understand the comprehensive immigration reform bill. It seems that much of the comprehensive legislation is more of a guideline for the regulatory state to fill in the details.

The result is the atrocity of the IRS targeting political speech,  HHS forcing the Catholic Church to violate its principles, hundreds of new regulations on banks, brokerages, and publicly traded companies and of course the NSA's collection of meta data on our phone calls and postings to the cloud.

Not to worry we are told, it's for our own good. Obama defends it saying this has caught terrorists, ignoring the point it violates our civil liberties. Comic relief can alway be found from the Burns and Allen of the Senate, McCain and Feinstein, who lecture us not to worry since the program has been ongoing for seven years.

The proponents of big government have a big challenge, in my opinion. Tell me again why I should favor these big programs when they appear to run amok in frightening ways.

Bill

How Dodd-Frank is Like the Iraq War

On 9/11 I watched people die. And I wanted retribution. Not my finest hour.

I would be lying to tell you I paid close attention to the decisions leading up to the Iraq War. Although I didn't pay much attention, I do know it was a popular decision. It had overwhelming support in Congress and among the people. For me, my rage still burned. Someone, somehow had wronged me and I wanted justice. Given the popular support for the war, I was far from alone in my feelings.

Dodd-Frank appeals to a similar sentiment. Somehow, someone almost ruined the country, or almost put us into a Second Great Depression. It was subprime lending, it was evil bankers, it was derivatives, it was deregulation, it was Greenspan, it was capitalism, it was Fannie, it was Freddie, it was the CRA.  It's similar to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. We just KNEW they were there. So to exact revenge we passed Dodd-Frank and continue to seek out the criminals who brought about our suffering.

But like our search for WMD failed, so too will our search for WMD that almost blew up our country. Our rage makes us blind to what happened, which means it will be mostly sheer dumb luck we come up with a right solution.

The Limits of Libertarianism

Bill

When  my kids were young we had a housekeeper named Mathilde Bosun. She was the second oldest of nine from a dirt poor family in Montserrat, and she left school at the age of 12 to help her mother care for the seven behind her. She made her way to Roxbury in middle age on a temporary visa and after her island home began exploding continuously an immigration judge granted her permanent residency status. She took care of my two like they were her own and she bought a 2 Decker in Dorchester from her earnings.

Then came one of those voluntary marketplace exchanges you honor so. In 2006 a couple of parasites called mortgage brokers convinced her trade her perfectly good 30 year fixed rate mortgage for an adjustable sub prime deal. I’m sure I don’t have tell you what happened next. The house is gone. She is gone.

So I’m not quite a libertarian yet. Perfectly transparent, voluntary transactions between equals in the marketplace are a wonderful ideal, but often a fantasy.  Knaves, like the vermin who brought us the subprime crisis that nearly destroyed the country are always out there. You can include Fannie and Freddie among the damned but they are a small part of what happened. So I say huzzah too. Huzzah for Dodd Frank with all its inevitable flaws. Huzzah for Richard Cordray. Huzzah for a government that cares about protecting our soldiers from the swindlers and cheats. Huzzah for balancing private and public interest . 

And finally, as I have argued previously, all transactions are not equivalent. You can do without an Ipad , like the vast majority of folks who don’t have 500 bucks to spare do. Some things you can’t do without. That never makes for a free an equal transaction.

BTW you’re pretty good at setting up those straw men yourself. Dennis Kucinich? Talk about a guy who doesn’t have a clue about the way the world works. If we let idiots like him run the show we’d have an economy that runs like this:

Eli