It’s no surprise, in today’s race obsessed political environment, to find yet another instance in which race is being used to deflect from troubling behavior or bad news. This time, the entire idea of ethics is being challenged as racist. You see, there are just too many black members of Congress being investigated for corruption.
Politico reports complaining, and cries of racism, coming from the Congressional Black Caucus regarding the number of their members currently in the spotlight for ethics violations.
The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues
…The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations — but take no final actions — on such cases.
There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The article continues on without the authors ever once considering the most obvious explanation. Maybe CBC members are being “disproportionally” investigated because they are disproportionally unethical.
This explanation is not to say that blacks are more likely to be unethical than whites. Rather, I think there are other forces at work.
Politicians, as 
a general rule, are scum. It doesn’t matter what race they belong to. They would almost all commit the worst of crimes if they thought they could get away with them (and many do think this quite often, usually to be proven right). The question is, in so far as they do hold back from unethical behavior, what is the cause and why might it impact some politicians more than others?
The answer to the first question is easy. Politicians are interested in getting elected. If they think something will harm their electoral chances, they will usually refrain.
The next question, then, is whether there is any reason to believe that black politicians are less likely to be punished by their voters for ethical violations than white politicians.
Black politicians tend to be elected in overwhelmingly black districts, often gerrymandered for the purpose of ensuring “minority” representation. Their voters, having been inundated with destructive identity politics propaganda for generations, have come to believe that they can only be fairly represented by someone who looks like them. Race becomes the dominant qualifying criteria in these districts, much more so than other electorates. White politicians are hardly ever voted for simply for being white (it wouldn’t make sense to do so even if some voters were so inclined, as they are usually running against white opponents). The same is not true of black politicians. A corrupt black politician is still preferable to a white representative under this racial representation paradigm.
Black politicians are thus taught by their electorates that they are entitled to their positions. Nothing they do can justify removing them from office, for the simple reason that they can never lose their color, the defining characteristic in the world of identity politics.
While career politicians who routinely commit ethics violations are ultimately to blame for their actions, the voters who avert their eyes from such behavior have to take their share of the responsibility for creating politicians, like Charlie Rangel, who think that they are above the law. If the Congressional Black Caucus really wants to know why so many of their members are running afoul of what little ethics enforcement politicians can muster to bring upon themselves, maybe they should start by asking their voters to care more about the character of their representatives, instead of their color.
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Ray D. Madoff writes in the LA Times that failing to confiscate the acquired wealth of individuals when they pass away will “harm our democracy.” She reaches this odd conclusion primarily by arguing that, absent an intrusive government willing to pick the pockets of the deceased, our democracy would be harmed by “concentrations of wealth.” She buttresses this argument with the factually incorrect claim that, while “few Americans own an enormous amount … a large number of Americans own hardly anything at all.”
This is simply untrue. Owning a small percentage of American wealth is not the same thing as owning hardly anything. Madoff ignores that owning a small, or even “unequal,” share of the American pie is still much better than having a large, “equal” or “fair” portion of almost any other, for the simple reason that America creates far more wealth to go around in the first place. This is because America has historically rewarded risk-taking and innovation, while other countries have been more concerned with Madoff’s brand of fairness. The consequence today is that even our poor are better off than the middle and upper classes of other countries. To understand the backwardness of her agenda, just look at the year she cites as the pinnacle of redistributive fairness, 1976, which was also the heyday of stagflation and malaise.
She also attempts to wave away concerns about double-taxation by arguing that “there is no general principle that says income or property gets taxed only once.” She supports this claim by saying that the same money is often taxed multiple times as it is earned, spent and passed along. But each of these activities is economic in nature and represents a separate action. Paying sales tax while spending the same money one has payed income tax on is not the same as having one’s estate pillaged by the state upon death. Death is not an economic activity.
Contrary to her claims, death taxes are harmful to the economy. They discourage savings and investment by encouraging people to spend money before it is taxed away, leading to job loss and slower economic growth. Death taxes also hit hard small, family businesses, or those with significant assets tied up in land, like farms. Would anyone expect major corporations to stay competitive if they had to liquidate and sell off half their assets every few generations?
Madoff’s biggest failure, however, is that she completely ignores the important role of the family unit in economic life. Households have always been recognized as an economic entity because of the manner in which families work together to advance their economic condition. To say that a parent has no right to pass on the fruits of their labor to their children and grandchildren is to completely ignore the unique role of the family in economic life. There’s no more moral justification for taxing estates after death than there is for taxing the allowance a parent might give to a child. Death and taxes are both be said to be inevitable, but there’s no reason they have to come together.
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I take a look at Obama’s Oval Office speech on the Market Center blog:
Leave a commentPresident Obama used his first televised speech from the Oval Office, ostensibly on the topic of the BP oil spill, to run through his usual speech-making checklist, which includes blaming Bush and beating up on idealogical straw-men, like his long ago debunked contention that there was significant “deregulation” during the previous decade. He also continued his pattern of declaring every problem to be unprecedented, though he’s also undermined that same argument by making a bizarre comparison between the spill and 9/11.
The heart of his speech, however, was no doubt inspired by Rahm Emanual’s famous, or infamous, exhortation to let no good crisis go to waste. As such, Obama thinks the oil spill is a perfect time to revive his job killing, economy destroying cap-and-trade bill, though he dared not call it that…
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Whenever big disasters strike, opportunists jump at the chance to lampoon their political opponents. In response to the oil spill in the Gulf, we’re seeing just that as many on the right begin to construct the narrative that Obama’s response was slow or deficient. In so doing they are following the playbook successfully executed against Bush after hurricane Katrina.
There may well turn out to be fa
ults in Obama’s response to the oil spill. No doubt there will be investigations, inquiries and fact-finding panels aplenty after things have settled down. Right now, however, I’m concerned that conservative critics are falling into a big government trap.
It may well be that conservatives can do the kind of harm to Obama that Katrina helped liberals do to Bush. But this is only a short-term benefit. In the long run conservative critiques only feed the view that government should be responsible for all things, and that the President is essentially a King who must only snap his fingers and see his will done.
Far more productive for small government advocates would be to point out that, as we saw with Katrina, government simply cannot and should not be counted on to respond with quickness and efficiency in the event of catastrophy. Bureaucracies are simply not designed for the purpose, and blaming Obama only spreads the myth that with the right kind of interventionist President government can be made into something it is not.
The incompetence of FEMA was not primarily the fault of Bush and any incompetence in wake of the oil spill is likely not the fault of Obama. It’s the fault of all Presidents and Congresses that have contributed to the growth of such a behemoth government in the first place, and the fault of all of us here perpetuate the idea that the first place to look for assistance in time of crisis is the federal government.
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Unable to pass “net-neutrality” legislation through the normal democratic process, those looking to expand government control of our lives to one of the last remaining bastions of freedom, the internet, turned to the unelected bureaucrats at the FCC to take action. Without statutory authority, they eagerly leapt forward to take charge of regulating the internet. The courts have now rebuffed this illegal powergrab.
Net neutrality rules are a “solution” seeking a problem. No one has shown any cause for why they are needed. But that hasn’t stopped liberals from responding with doom and gloom to the courts rightful ruling that the FCC’s attempted reach exceeded its grasp. Megan Tady, a Google lobbyist at the Huffington Post, calls the ruling “the biggest blow to our nation’s primary communications platform,” quixotically warned the courts not to “take away our internet.” As if maintaining the exact same rules which has allowed the internet to grow and thrive would somehow suddenly threaten its very existence. She didn’t bother to explain how that could be so.
The hyperventilating at Mother Jones was even worse. There, we were ominously warned that the FCC is the “last hope” of the internet. Give me a break.
The left just cannot believe that there is any mechanism other than government to provide institutional accountability. There is and it’s called free choice. Why do they have so little faith in American consumers that they assume anyone would tolerate censorship on the internet? If a company were to block websites people want to see, then they would use a different company. Clean, simple, and no expensive government rules necessarily.
If you look at who actually practices censorship of the internet throughout the world, you’ll see that it is only governments. Why are American liberals so intent to hand the wolves the keys to the hen house, under the guise of protecting the hens, when there isn’t even any evidence that they are in danger?
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David Leonhardt of the New York Times has discovered that health care is not a free and unlimited good. Some way or another, a certain amount of demand will not be met. People cannot get all that they want because it is a scarce good and is restrained by the same laws of supply and demand – and physics – as all goods.
What is interesting, though, is that the New York Times suddenly finds denying care to be a great development. But isn’t this exactly what the left has long condemned insurance companies of doing? What they could not afford to admit before the bill passed they now find commendable: government is taking over the function of insurance companies as the primary mechanism for determining the allotment of care. For those of us who understand not only that government is least qualified for this role out of all possible institutions, but also that political power is uniquely corruptible, this is a frightening prospect.
It’s not that the author is wrong that we often times overuse health care. We overtest, overtreat and just generally overreact to every possible physical ailment. What he fails to do is recognize the fundamental reason behind this: the patient is not the consumer. Current “insurance” is more like a medical prepayment plan, often taken out of our paychecks with little choice. At no point does the patient have to consider the costs versus benefits of expending resources on a particular test, because the resources being expended have long ago been forfeited by him. He lost them as soon as the government gave a tax advantage to businesses for providing employee insurance, making a dollar of health care compensation less expensive than a dollar of wages.
Leonhardt offers a “three-step process” so that government institutions can learn to “say no.” “The first,” he says, “is learning more about when treatments work and when they don’t.” Next is giving patients more information and facts about treatments. These two issues are closely related. The problem is that neither is solved by introducing government into the equation.
The question of information in health care is inherently problematic. Often times we don’t know what works best. Other times, what works best for one might not for another. Yet other times, what we once thought worked best turns out to be quite harmful. This is simply the nature of the beast. Government is in no better position to deal with this than anyone else, and will necessarily run into the same issues, along with introducing its own inherent inefficiencies.
As for giving patients more information, that’s a laudable goal. But why do they not get more information now? Ultimately, it’s because it doesn’t matter. Their choice simply isn’t important. The choice of insurance companies to approve or deny treatment is what matters to doctors, and so they are the ones who are most informed. This, again, will not be solved by government bureaucrats. It can only be solved by making the patient important.
Finally, he suggests “changing the economics of medicine, to reward better care rather than simply more care. Health reform doesn’t go nearly far enough on this score, but it is a start.” I agree completely. Where we differ is on how to accomplish this.
Replacing insurance companies with government will not fundamentally change the economics of the system, nor produce the reforms Leonhardt desires. It is simply not capable of it. Rather, it will make government bureaucrats the new bad guys instead of insurance companies. Real innovation in health care would mean empowering consumers with the choice on how to direct their resources, while consigning insurance to its proper role as that of mitigator against catastrophic financial risk. More importantly, it would return the responsibility to consume health care thoughtfully and diligently to the only person with the incentive to do so wisely: the patient.
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We give too much power to those who take offense. When people claim something is “upsetting,” they are attempting to use their own emotional state to define the intrinsic quality of something else. This is dishonest. Something may or may not be likely to give offense, but whether it does is dependent on a particular individual and their state of mind, and not the thing itself. Sadly, more and more these days what people are finding “upsetting” is merely a different point of view.
That’s exactly what happened at Duke, where a pro-life event was abruptly canceled after a number of students said it was “upsetting and not OK.”
As part of a “W
eek for Life” series of events held at Duke over March 15-19, DSFL had reserved a Women’s Center space for a “Discussion with a Duke Mother” on March 18. A Duke student and mother was to speak about motherhood and the challenges of being in both roles. But the day before the event, the reservation was abruptly canceled in a voicemail to the group.
Meeting with the group on March 18, Duke Women’s Center Gender Violence Prevention Specialist Martin Liccardo said that because the event was associated with the Week for Life and DSFL, the event could not be held at the Women’s Center.
Liccardo told the group that the prospect of holding a pro-life event in the Women’s Center during Week for Life was too upsetting for some students: “We had a very strong reaction from students in general who use our space who said this was something that was upsetting and not OK. So based on that, we said, OK, we are going to respond to this and stop the program.”
This is a similar form of suppression as the heckler’s veto, but instead of verbally disrupting an event, the outside party feigns emotional trauma from merely being exposed to the speaker or event. The result is the same: a growing inability of society to engage in dialog at any level.
At issue is not whether anyone has a right to be offended, but the expectation that anyone else should care or react to protect your sensibilities. Unfortunately, such reactions from school administrations and event organizers are all too common. Their cowardice in the face of the umbrage-industry only encourages them to continue on through life taking offense at anything which doesn’t confirm to their narrow ideology.
UPDATE: Duke University has reversed course and will allow the event to go forward.
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To close out my coverage of CPAC 2010, I’ll finally give you my thoughts on Glenn Beck’s keynote address.
The speech was quite enjoyable. Beck takes a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, for his seemingly erratic behavior. But it only serves to enhance his sincerity, which really comes across. It is clear that he believes passionately in what he is saying. He’s certainly not doing it just to win votes, since he isn’t running for anything. Neither does one get the impression that he is doing it to sell books and boost his ratings. He just believes it.
I was very happy to see him target Progressivism as the source of America’s ills. The Progressive Era, which continues to influence left-wing thought today, is too little understood. What turn of the century Progressives promoted was essentially fascism. They cheered European fascists like Hitler and Mussolini, only turning on the former when he betrayed their other buddies in the USSR. Like other fascist movements, they believed in the perfectibility of man through social policy, which lead to disasters like Prohibition. The redistributive income tax was a Progressive reform brought about under Wilson. The Progressive Era also essentially rewrote our Constitution.
Photo by The Patriot Room
With this understanding, I was simply delighted to see such an intellectual challenge to the source of today’s problems from a speaker like Beck. It would have been so easy for him to just claim that it’s all Barack Obama, but he didn’t do that. Kudos to him.
Since the speech he has taken criticism from some, such as Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, for giving Republicans little, if any, more credit than Democrats. While I agree with Rush on the point that it’s tiring to hear people say “there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats,” I didn’t quite get that from Beck’s speech. Nor do I think the speech itself promoted a third party just because it criticized Republicans. Criticizing Republicans from the right is what will ultimately keep them in line!
So yes, he criticized Republicans. Yes, he doesn’t think they are sufficiently apologetic for their past mistakes. That’s a valid criticism. As John Hawkins pointed out in reply to Bennett, Republicans like Mike Pence and Jim DeMint who do get it are the exception that prove the rule. They got it before when the rest of the party was spending big, so it’s not enough just for them to get it now. If anything is going to be different should Republicans retake Congress, the party establishment needs to get it, too.
I also agree with RS McCain that some of the criticisms of Beck stink of professional jealousy. How dare this upstart get a keynote, when so many other hard working conservatives have been paying their dues for much longer? Of course, these same conservatives balked at such logic when it promoted John McCain as the GOP nominee. I don’t ultimately know if that’s the motivation behind some of these criticisms, but it would explain the odd tirades of Mark Levin.
At the end of the day, I doubt much of the criticism matters. Beck was very well received by those who were there, and reached out to the Tea Parties and showed them that their voice is being heard in the broader conservative movement. That’s a good thing. That isn’t promoting a third party. In fact, it makes one less likely. Now let us all stop bickering and return to our united opposition to Obama’s radical agenda.
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Everyone is talking about Ron Paul’s win in the CPAC straw poll. Much of this talk is wrong.
From the left, we have Tom Schaller of FiveThirtyEight.com, who thinks that this is proof that both the conservative movement and the Tea Parties are driven by “ginned up former Ron Paul supporters.” He then bemoans the fact that the “kooky, historically revisionist, apocalyptic ideas of Glenn Beck and Ron Paul” are treated with the same seriousness as those of our Democratic Overloads. You know, the really deep thinkers like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and John Holdren.
On the right we have Mike Huckabee’s silly tantrum claiming that “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years.” And by “less Republican,” he means less prone to the nanny paternalism sold by populist snake oil salesmen like Mike Huckabee.
Now let me tell you what it actually means.
Only a quarter of attendees bothered to fill out the poll. It’s 3 years out from the election. No one has any clear idea who is even running, as most of the possible candidates are still playing coy. But guess who always runs? That’s right, Ron Paul. And I shouldn’t have to explain to someone from FiveThirtyEight what a selection bias is, right?
What the straw poll really tells us is as simple as it is obvious. Ron Paul continues to have enthusiastic supporters among young college students, who made up around half of the entire conference attendance. What it doesn’t tell us is anything significant about the legitimacy of the conservative movement, or the Tea Parties, or whether conservative ideas should be dismissed across the board by some twisted logic of guilt by association.
Here is my warning to the right: Do not dismiss the results completely. What the Republican Party in particular ought to take away is that young people are more interested in fiscal conservatism than the social populism desired by the likes of Mike Huckabee.
The next generation, having witnessed the failures of big government conservatism, or compassionate conservativism or whatever you want to call it, know that the most important challenge we face is the necessity of reversing the growth of government. Not slowing it. Not stopping it. Reversing it.
While I have never been a Paulite, and won’t ever support him in a primary in part because I refuse to give him a pass on playing footsie with the Truthers, the need to roll back the Leviathan is the message both he and Beck delivered, and explains why the two were so well received.
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It’s that time of year again. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, kicks off on Thursday! Last year’s convention was a blast, and I shared some of my impressions on this blog when I got home each day. But this year I’ll be covering the event live from the Redstate.com sponsored Bloggers Lounge!
Aside from meeting fellow bloggers and activists, recharging my political batteries for what will no doubt be another exhausting year of campaigns, and just generally enjoying the festivities, I’ll be covering the event with an eye toward the many debates within the conservative movement.
One of the things I like about CPAC is that it features many different views within the movement. Who will receive the best reception? The defense hawks or Ron Paul? The social conservatives or the more libertarian speakers? And then there’s the annual game of “who looks the most Presidential?”
In addition to making regular posts, I’ll be tweeting smaller updates and my impressions throughout the event. You can follow me on twitter here, or see them scrolling by on the right with the temporary widget I setup. You can also follow all the members of the Bloggers Lounge here. There’s even a CPAC app for your iPhone!
Finally, here’s CPAC in the news:
- Palin rebuffs CPAC, Keene
- ‘Tea Party’ Movement to Star at Conservative Conference
- CPAC Organizers Try to Turn Up Hip Quotient With Video Games, Rap
- Radio Personalities On Agenda At CPAC
- CPAC Session on Jihad, Free Speech Attracts Complaints
- Conservatives In D.C. Celebrate Comeback (Again)
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
