This weekend, economist Tyler Cowen made a post at his Marginal Revolution website entitled The Shape of Things to Come and Not to Come, which in turn was inspired by a Matthew Yglesias post, that has garnered quite a few responses. The Wizard felt inspired to write, especially by a response to Cowen's post by a visitor who observed that
We've finally jumped the shark. The State is now fixated on continuity of government for its own sake. All we can pray for is some cosmic justice where liberals are taxed into oblivion and their favorite programs slashed. May conservatives be investigated as enemies of the state for their bad attitude. Maybe tax evasion can be re-defined as an act of terrorism.
Maybe "the great filter" is when people worth proliferating finally say "f*** it."
And this is not idle talk. Over the past few weeks, the Wizard has been out and about, and has heard prominent Houston area leaders say some very interesting things in public. For example, Houston business man Jim McIngvale - aka Mattress Mac - told the audience at an event in his original store that he had recently had a conversation with another wealthy businessman who wondered whether America's best days were behind it. McIngvale, ever the optimist, said no. At the recent quarterly meeting of the Harris County Republican Party, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos spoke, and she told the audience that she was not of a mood to give up on America. She invoked history, telling the audience that Democracy in ancient Greece had lasted several hundred years, while it had lasted a similar amount of time in Rome. She said America was now in her third century, and she told the audience not to give up on her.
The Wizard, quite frankly, is starting to wonder whether America has finally jumped the shark, meaning that is the Tea Party movement an expression of the idea that we are tired of being pack mules for someone else and being looked at as simply being there to pay the bills! If a liberal tries to talk up the idea that we have mounds of poverty in America, then great. So what are you trying to tell me? Are you saying that you can't solve poverty even after the federal government has started spending the equivalent of 25 percent of the entire economy of the country? Are you saying that Social Security has to go on forever just because the first two generations got away like bandits off of the scheme? At what point are Americans going to be allowed to get off the merry go round? Never! In fact we have to continually tighten down the screws because it's all being done for your own good.
In the Summer 2010 issue of the Independent Review, scholar Anthony de Jasay wrote an article entitled The Maximizing State, whereby he concludes that not only does the state use "taxation and redistribution to elicit obedience and maximize its discretionary power," but Jasay argues that
Eventually, however, that power is dissipated through political competition of the state’s own making... Like the firm in a perfectly competitive industry that makes no profit, the state ultimately achieves only its own survival, and no one is satisfied by this relatively pointless result."
In other words, Jasay points towards an idea more and more groups keep fighting over who's going to get what, crisis situations result, but eventually people wake up to the realization that the state is nothing more than a redistributive drudge, and that's when the energy runs out. It's hard to imagine that happening to America, whose Founders created a purposefully energetic government, if it was needed to be energetic, but it even can happen to us.
If America is not to jump the shark, then she'll need to be saved. Britain's Daily Telegraph ran a story yesterday asking whether the Tea Party is more powerful than President Obama? That may be so, but the real question is whether the Tea Party movement is more powerful than the AARP, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex that's resulted from Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care, along with the countless other social programs and interest groups that have arrayed in Washington? If the Tea Party movement can't beat this vast array of interest groups, then that will be the signal that America really has jumped the shark.
Wizard
The Tea Party movement has been (with justification) been labeled as just another branch of the Republican Party. The Wizard thinks, however, that the real fidelity of a Tea Party person should be to the principles embodies in the United States Constitution.
Long time readers will know that the Wizard spent some nine months of his life back in 2007 - 2008, working with the Floodway Coalition of Houston, in their desperate property rights battle against Houston City Hall, to roll back revisions to Houston's Floodway ordinance, which if it were have been allowed to stand would have resulted in a $2 billion - $3.5 billion regulatory taking by the City of Houston of 10,000 properties along Houston's creeks and bayous. The ordinance was perpetrated by former Mayor Bill White (a Democrat, now running for Governor), and the Mayor was strongly backed by Republicans on City Council like former CM Toni Lawrence. The floodway regulatory taking represented a bi-partisan oppression of Houston's citizenry.
One of the Floodway Coalition's attorneys who conducted the legal battle against the City's uncompensated regulatory takings of the property of Houstonians was Bruce Mosier. Mr. Mosier, a long time property attorney and a Democrat, currently works for Harris County. The Wizard personally saw how Mosier defended the property rights of Houstonians (read one notable case here), many of whom were completely unaware of what had happened to them, and how important it was that a group of citizens and their legal counsel were working for them.
Yesterday, the Wizard attended the League of Women voters event at the George R. Brown convention center. I was wearing my Houston Tea Party society shirt, but I was also wearing a tag stating that I was supportive for Mr. Mosier. At one point I was stopped and harshly attacked by one woman, who I could tell was a Republican from some buttons she was wearing on her shirt. She said the Republican was well qualified, but the Wizard strongly stood his ground. There was no way that I was going to be budged from my support of Mosier.
The Tea Party movement needs above all to remember that you need to watch what individuals who are in office or on the bench actually do on issues while they hold office, no matter whether they have an (R) or a (D) behind their name. The Wizard will never support Toni Lawrence, for example, if she ever again tries to get elected. It is when it comes down to the issues where the party labels become murky and break down, and it is where politicians stand on issues that really matter. Just ask Delaware Senator Mike Castle, whose loss to Tea Party upstart Christine O'Donnell this past week rocked the national Republican establishment.
So, the Wizard is going to make his pitch to his Tea Party and Republican friends not to vote straight ticket, but to cross party lines and vote for Bruce Mosier for County Civil Court at Law No. 4 of Harris County, Texas in the November 2010 election.
******
The Wizard's crossing of party lines to support a political or judicial candidate should not leave open my motives, but rather it should open the question of the information that the citizenry has available to them when they are being asked to vote in elections. Someone recently told the Wizard that the upcoming November 2010 elections in Harris County are going to feature the longest ballot in the history of the American Republic. There are literally over 70 judicial races (civil, criminal, family court, and state district), as well as congressional races, state representative races, school board races, a bond issue out in Katy Texas, three propositions on the City of Houston ballot, as well as the race of Texas Governor. The Wizard himself didn't even know that there was the judicial position that Mr. Mosier was running for until a few months ago, and if someone as active as the Wizard didn't know, then what hope does that leave for the citizens who choose not to be active?
Some of this is self inflicted. The State of Texas has created this complicated, bifurcated system of justice, whereby judges are elected in the state. Civil cases are shunted off in one direction, while criminal cases go down another pipeline. Then the civil cases are subdivided into several different categories. Then top that off with all the political races, and it quickly becomes apparent that the political classes are dumping a horde of questions on the citizenry.
In the face of this, it's easy for citizens to simply throw up their hands and not participate, perhaps thinking that it doesn't matter (or make a difference) in many cases how they vote or what they do. For many who are not politically active by choice and do not have their noses pressed up against the glass, the short cut they take in the face of this overload of politics and information is to simply to roll into the voting booth, vote straight ticket along the party line, and then they're outta there. If someone like myself crosses party lines for a candidate, they are immediately thought of with suspicion by those who seek to rope me in on the party line, and find that we have to explain ourselves when in fact it should be the other way around. It is the politicians and parties who are the ones that need to be explaining themselves.
The Wizard has long resigned himself to the insanity of the decision making process of politics, having long ago encountered the public ignorance literature, as well as the public choice literature. The Wizard also started reading through the Anti-Federalist papers, where the Founding generation experimented with various forms of government before settling on the U.S. Constitution. Some of the questions the Founders had to confront had to do with justice, and whether it was better for judges to be elected or appointed? There is a tension in American political life, whereby it was declared that Americans have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but on the other hand there is a concept that the power lies with the people and that government rules with the consent of the governed. An answer the Founders came up with was to divide power, keep many matters of liberty off limits (through the Bill of Rights) and to temper and refine decisions through several different means, such has having two legislative bodies and judicial review.
The Wizard suspects that a big problem for American political theory in today's America is that many are thinking that they were (or are) not consenting to what's been shoved down their throats over the past several years (the TARP, the ARRA, ever expanding federal power, liberal victories that last forever while conservative ones that come with an expiration date, etc), and that they are preferring Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The tension between the two ideas has once again reared its ugly head, and what remains to be seen is whether all this can be resolved peacefully. The Wizard foresaw years ago that the tensions of our times might come to pass.
Wizard
The Wizard apologizes for not getting a blog entry out and published on Sunday night. Missed that self imposed deadline again.
News has slowly been percolating through the blogosphere and social networks about the mislabeled as usual Livable Communities Act of 2009. Briefly, the bill is being pushed by Senator Chris Dodd, through the Urban Affairs committee in the Senate. According to GovTrack, the bill is to
to establish the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, to establish the Interagency Council on Sustainable Communities, to establish a comprehensive planning grant program, to establish a sustainability challenge grant program, and for other purposes.
The bill is to burn through spend $3.75 billion in federal grants to cities across the country to enact the Smart Growth agenda. Some of my friends have made noises of this bill being the vehicle through which U.N. Agenda 21 is to be enacted in America, but there really isn't a reason to get conspiracy minded about shadowy international forces being behind the legislation. Actually, if you simply visit the GovTrack website, readers can see who is in favor of the legislation:
U.S. Green Building Council
National Leauge of Cities
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
American Institute of Architects
American Public Transportation Association
American Public Works Association
Children's Defense Fund
Habitat for Humanity
National Association of Area Agencies on Aging
National Association of Realtors
National Housing Trust
Policylink
Sierra Club
Trust for America's Health
U.S. Conference of Mayors
In other words, this bill is a handout and make work program to the central cities, one of the primary parts of the Democratic coalition for the past century, as well as to the "Smart Growth" crowd, to reshape American cities if they dance to Washington's tune.
It's really depressing to see the AARP as a backer of this legislation. Not content with making sure that $1,200,000,000,000 per year in wealth gets transferred to the old folks through Social Security and Medicare (not to mention having succeeded in getting Americans to pay for the pills for the old folks and coming out in favor of Obama Care), the AARP is now in the game for having my income tax dollars reshaping American cities.
From a Tea Party perspective, question number one about the legislation is that rather quaint one - namely, is this bill Constitutional? "What?!", cry the Progressives. "Of course it's constitutional! It's constitutional because it's - drum roll please - good public policy!" That's especially true if the New York Times editorial board believes it is, and this argument of it's constitutional because it's good public policy crap has been the mark of American jurisprudence for the past 100 years now.
No doubt that some are going to try to lay on the argument of, "well, the federal government enacted the Interstate Highway Act back in 1956, and that contributed to urban sprawl, so why can't we enact another bill to counter that." That argument smacks of the idea that one piece of state interventionism justifies the next one, and that's one of the reasons why government keeps expanding. Big Federal government leads to Big State government and Big Local government. And so it goes, unless the Tea Party can digest this, understand it, and put the heat on Washington to end it.
So what to do? Much of the problem with America is understanding who is responsible for what. Why not let private actors offer "livable communities?" Such an idea is more consistent with liberty. If interest groups are truly interested in reshaping cities this way, and demanding that the arm of the state act, then they should be taking this issue down to their local city councils and demanding that they raise property taxes on local taxpayers to reshape their city, rather than go plunder Washington like everybody else. Otherwise, take a few minutes out to bug your Senators and tell them to vote no, and tell them why.
Wizard
Addendum: Becky points out that statist resettlement of the populace, whether forcibly or by economic encouragement (the American way), is a staple of dictators, authoritarians, and the Left. Stalin, the Chinese Communists, Pol Pot, and other dictators resettled and herded people around.
Even worse, it rarely achieves anything worthwhile, but it often does get people very upset, as it did in Post WWII Britain, when the Labor Party built the New Towns to house the 3-4 million Britons who lost their homes in WWII.
Sigh. Another year, another Labor Day weekend - or is it?
Many Americans are no doubt going to celebrate Labor Day by doing what they usually do - have cookouts, perhaps enjoy a parade or some celebration with family and friends, or sit around the house like we used to as kids and watch the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon. Meanwhile the labor movement and the media will run the same old stories about how the labor movement was responsible for winning the 40 hour work week, health insurance benefits, campaigning for safer workplaces, and other legislative achievements from days gone by, when the labor movement was in its glory, doing much to bottle up the energy of the economic marketplace. One wonders whether or not the marketplace might have brought this about on its own without the labor movement.
But this year's celebrations of the Labor Day weekend holiday seem to be fraught with the irony that on the day we are supposed to be celebrating the contributions of the labor movement to the pluralism of American life, that unemployment by any measure remains high by historical standards. And in the background, the November 2010 elections loom.
Though many will no doubt be touched by the irony of many being unemployed on Labor Day, those aren't the real issues that America faces today. One problem that many Americans have with the labor movement is that the movement has become synonymous with escalating government employee pay and pension liabilities. Labor unions have become practically irrelevant in many sectors of the American labor market.
More to the point, singing all those self congratulatory praises for victories won long ago aren't the issues that American workers face today. The biggest threat to American workers today is that Americans are increasingly faced with the prospect that they are only allowed to keep less and less of the pay that they work for, and the threat of an all encompassing federal leviathan that threatens to turn everyday Americans into tax mules working for someone else.
Even worse, the U.S. Departments of Labor and the Treasury are going to be holding hearings on September 14th - 15thon the subject of lifetime income options for retirement plans. In other words, in non-bureaucratic speak, this is going to be a hearing on the prospect of nationalizing the 401-k and IRA plans of American workers. Gentle readers should be reminded that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obama Care) has a provision in it which - as a matter of interpretation - would allow the Feds to have real time access to your personal finances, ostensibly to check on financial responsibility at point of medical service and that Americans are carrying and keeping up with their required levels of health insurance. Of course Congress would never use the administrative apparatus from this to go after the retirement savings of Americans. Or would they?
So the Wizard is going to lay down the gauntlet to the labor movement of America. I don't want to hear about what unions did for me yesterday. The Wizard wants to know (as would many members of the Tea Party movement) is what the labor movement is going to do for me today, and what that means is answering the question of what are labor unions going to do that will allow me to keep my pay and keep the life savings I have worked for? America is coming to a point where answering those questions have become unavoidable.
Wizard