What difference does the Benghazi disaster make?
Bill Maher doesn’t understand, but Greg Greenwald does?
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Ortega y Gasset
Life is fired at us point blank.
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Ortega y Gasset
Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.
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In the Zone
You’re a businessman. You see a need for low-cost apartments. A property owner is happy to sell you the plot on which the complex may be built. The local senior housing center has a long waiting list, so your units would clearly be snapped up just as soon as available.
Everything’s a go, except . . . your project is against the law. A zoning law. Therefore, you are out of luck, as are the persons who would rent from you.
Such bans don’t proliferate in a vacuum, of course. Enforcement of zoning laws is often ardently demanded by the residents of the neighborhoods in which developers wish to build.
That’s what happened a few years back in Darien, Connecticut, where townsfolk were up in arms over a proposal to build condos for seniors. Residents felt entitled to forcibly prevent others from moving in. (It is dangerous to play with fire, though. Zoning laws can be used against insiders as well as outsiders. Some Darrien dwellers recently learned, for example, that the eaves of their homes were “too big” for regulators’ tastes.)
Another zone-ified town mentioned in John Ross’s review of Lisa Prevost’s new book Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate is Ossipee, New Hampshire, where workers sometimes live in tents to save on rent. The zoning code prohibits the building of new apartment buildings.
Observes Prevost: “The market is hungry for apartments, condominiums, and small homes, if only zoning restrictions would get out of the way.”
Of course, “the market” is simply shorthand for the needs of lots of people, and the freedom to meet those needs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The business of business is to profit by helping others. The business of government is to make sure that businesses don’t profit by cheating others.
Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the governments that cheat.
Take the airline industry. Though substantially deregulated by the early 1980s, government has not treated it in an exactly laissez faire manner since. First there are the taxes, quite heavy. And recently the Department of Transportation decided that it must regulate the way in which airlines may advertise their prices . . . and the taxes. That is, the DOT insists that the “total price” — by which it means the price-plus-tax — must be shown prominently, with the tax portion “presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.”
Talk about regulatory micromanagement!
Now, this rule isn’t something Congress cooked up. It’s the result of a bureaucracy gone wild.
And the rule has one obvious effect: It shields government from consumer criticism, showing bureaucrats at their most self-serving. About one fifth of every airline ticket goes to the government, and folks in government don’t want you to know that.
This being the case, you might think — as George Will does — that the First Amendment would apply, especially since the First Amendment is now routinely held as protecting political speech more strictly than commercial speech. But, so far, courts have ruled for the taxing and regulating bureaucrats, not the competitive airlines. Or consumers.
Frequent fliers (I’m one) should hope the Supreme Court justices take up the case, which shows why economic and political freedom go best together.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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José Ortega y Gasset
Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations.
As the federal government lurches further out of control, wildly grasping to increase control over our lives, an old and controversial method of reining in our central government gains popularity: State nullification of federal law.
A recent Rasmussen survey asked whether “states have the right to block any federal laws they disagree with on legal grounds,” and 38 percent of likely voters surveyed said “Yes.”
Cutting to the quick of the Commerce Clause, a new Kansas law — Senate Bill 102, the Second Amendment Protection Act, signed by Governor Sam Brownback last month — states that firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas that do not cross state lines are not subject to federal law.
Of course, the Supreme Court thinks otherwise. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court allowed the federal government to regulate darn near anything on the grounds that any conceivable act of consumption affects demand, and thus “commerce.” Goofy ruling? Yes. But by tradition it’s the Supreme Court justices who get the final word.
Yet even that has been denied by many constitutional theorists, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — “Mr. Constitution” himself — both of whom supported nullification, as recently explained by historian Tom Woods. No compact joined into by multiple parties may only be interpreted by one of the parties alone, unless specified to that effect. The Constitution doesn’t even mention judicial review, so the tradition of the Supreme Court’s final word is itself a matter of dispute.
Standing up for the status quo, Attorney General Eric Holder has written to Brownback against the new Kansas law, citing the Supremacy Clause. Problematic? Yes. But not easily dismissed.
Brownback has volleyed back.
At least we can expect the old issues of constitutional law to gain a new and lively hearing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry David Thoreau
I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
That might as well have been the headline of the Spiegel Online article. What else could Der Spiegel mean by the words “Health Be Damned: Denmark Hopes Cheaper Soda Will Boost Economy” except that Denmark’s government is endangering the lives of citizens merely to promote their prosperity and to respect their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Letting individuals again govern their own beverage intake, unimpeded! How is that not tantamount to shoving them over a cliff?
On the other hand, if you live in Denmark, enjoy soda, and dislike being harassed for doing so — thank goodness for tax competition.
Steep new taxes on drinks like beer and soda have been sending Danes across the border for these items. They have long shopped in Germany anyway, but the “sinful drink” taxes have inspired an increase in the international jaunts. Research by a Danish grocers’ association suggests that over the past year, members of some 57 percent of Danish households have zipped over to Germany to buy beverages onerously taxed at home. Denmark officials therefore plan to phase out the new taxes.
The government has already abandoned a notorious “fat tax” on foods with saturated fats. It seemed that Danes disliked the higher prices and unemployment caused by the tubby tax.
At least for now, then, Denmark officials have declared defeat on key fronts in the paternalistic war on soda, fats and liberty.
So, take heart, victims of America’s nanny state! The incursions are reversible.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.