“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
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Author: Redactor
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First Wright brothers flight attempt
On Dec. 14, 1903, the Wright brothers made their first attempt to fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
On Dec. 14, 1825, Russian liberals rise up against Tsar Nicholas I in the Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg and are put down.
On Dec. 14, 1799, George Washington, the first president of the United States and the father of his country, passed away at his home at Mount Vernon.
For nine years, from 1999 until 2008, Newt Gingrich worked helping Freddie Mac, the government–created, bubble-creating housing corporation. Newt’s outfit, The Gingrich Group, knocked down more than $1.6 million dollars in consulting fees during that time.
Newt says he warned the government-sponsored giant that the bubble it was busy blowing up would burst badly.
For all those years? He was either mind-numbingly repetitive or must have really drawn out his words. He is from Georgia, but still.
Folks at Freddie tell a different story. They say former Speaker Gingrich helped “build bridges” to Republicans on Capitol Hill, hoping to prevent congressional efforts to rein in the mortgage giant. Those efforts proved successful — there was no powering down of the Frankenstein mortgage monster. The Gingrich Group’s contract wasn’t canceled until the 2008 crash, when the U.S. Treasury took control of Freddie Mac and his sister housing financier, Fannie Mae.
In last weekend’s GOP presidential debate, Congressman Ron Paul argued that Newt Gingrich’s position with Freddie Mac is “something people ought to know about.”
“While he was earning a lot of money from Freddie Mac,” explained Rep. Paul, “I was fighting, over a decade, to try to explain to people where the housing bubble was coming from.”
Newt responded that, like Dr. Paul, he wanted to audit the Fed. As for his Freddie role, “I offered strategic advice,” claimed Newt, adding, “I was in the private sector.”
Laughter erupted throughout the hall. Even Mr. Gingrich couldn’t keep a straight face.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Rape of Nanking
On Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese armed forces entered Nanking, the capital of China, and General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. Much of the city was burned, and Japanese troops launched a campaign of atrocities against civilians in what became known as the “Rape of Nanking.” The Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process. After the end of World War II, Matsui was found guilty of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed.
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George Orwell
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
Some “unintended consequences” aren’t.
The order of the market is an unintended consequence of market participation. By buying and selling, we’re just trying to get what we want. But we also send signals that help other folks accommodate our values and plans, which then allows markets to form some semblance of orderliness.
In government, on the other hand, laws get advanced to help this person or that, or whole groups of people. But economists often note that the actual consequences of many policies are at great variance with their advertised benefits. These often negative outcomes we term (following F.A. Hayek) the “unintended consequences.”
It’s worth noting that sometimes politicians do intend those hidden, bad consequences.
Economist David Henderson brings up an instance of this:
One insurance agent I spoke to speculated that politicians and other government officials who support these regulations not only understand these effects, but also like them. Why? Because they cause more people to go without insurance and thus create a demand for government-provided insurance.
Henderson then cites a provision of Obamacare, now kicking in: Regulations mandating medical insurance companies to spend a prescribed percentage of premiums “on actual medical care.” The result will be, almost certainly, the demise of whole hunks of the health insurance industry.
Thereby increasing political demands for government-provided insurance.
Some of the folks who concocted this regulation, and some who voted for it, certainly knew the likely result. And welcomed it.
Politicians are not equally clueless.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Jay – Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794
“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
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Jay born; PA ratifies US Constitution
On Dec. 12, 1745, John Jay was born. He later became the first Chief Justice of the United States.
On Dec. 12, 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, five days after Delaware became the first.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them.”
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn born
On Dec. 11, 1918, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Stavropol Krai, Russia. His books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich helped raise global awareness of the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.