On Thursday January 21st, the Supreme Court of the United States dramatically departed from past court decisions, by declaring McCain/Feingold’s restrictions on corporate speech prior to elections as unConstitutional.

In doing so, the court not only overturned parts of  McCain/Feingold, but went further in overruling prior courts which held that even with respect to speech, corporations can be seen as uniquely different from individuals and therefore while individual speech could not be regulated, corporate speech could be.

In a close, 5-4 decision, the court returned to its Constitutional roots, by removing an arbitrary distinction prior courts added to the Constitution years ago.  I’m not positive how prior courts held “congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech….” actually meant:

Congress shall make no some laws abridging the freedom of speech, based on the arbitrary notion that corporations spending money towards speech is different from individuals spending money towards speech.

Readings from around the web would have you believe however that this is a travesty of justice.   From the Baltimore Sun, an op ed entitled Supreme Court tramples the little guy giving you a heads up to what they believe:

The 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court allowing corporations to pour millions into federal elections is frightening and dangerous (“And now, the deluge,” Jan. 25). Even more alarming is that many of us never saw it coming….

The NY Times holding up Justice Stevens dissent (here) to make their point:

…But there was no mistaking his basic message. “The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law,” he said from the bench. “The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of Americans.”….

Indeed, allowing corporations to speak is equivalent to putting the mentally retarded to death:

That was the plainspoken style of the last years of Justice Stevens’s tenure. In cases involving prisoners held without charge at Guantánamo Bay and the mentally retarded on death row, his version of American justice was propelled by common sense and moral clarity, and it commanded a majority….

The Huffington Post (of course…. here):

…With the Supreme Court ruling by the “Fabulous Five,” Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a single corporation will be able tap into its deep pockets and disfranchise a million citizens. A group calling itself “Citizens United” has just won a fight to give huge corporations more control over our politics….

& a little more thought out, but the same basic premises @ NewsWeek (here):

…The Supreme Court’s five conservatives are properly protective of American citizens’ First Amendment rights to spend as much of their money as they wish on political speech, both individually and by funding nonprofit advocacy groups. But this was no justification for the court’s blockbuster, precedent-smashing Jan. 21 decision unleashing corporate executives to pour unlimited amounts of stockholders’ money—without their consent—into ads supporting or attacking federal candidates….

From just these few examples, you can see most of the talking points against the decision.

#1 is the “conservative” court has radically departed and conservatives are against activism.

First, the attempt to make “conservative” somehow interchangeable with radical change is transparent and childish.  Either the evidence stands by itself or it does not.

But… for the radical departure… let’s look at the majority opinion written my Justice Kennedy:

…In this case we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell. It has been noted that “Austin was a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles,” Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449, 490 (2007) (WRTL) (SCALIA, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). We agree with that conclusion and hold that stare decisis does not compel the continued acceptance of Austin. The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether. We turn to the case now before us….

Indeed it’s idiotic to think that stare decisis, the principle of following court precedent, should compel them to vote in any particular way and I think most people would agree.   I think it intuitive that the opponents of this decision don’t believes that relying on stare decisis would have been a good argument for continuing separate but equal, but they do act here as if all the sudden, stare decisis is as immutable as the law of gravity.

#2 Corporations will now poor billions into campaigns, distorting politics, and overall damage our way of life.

To begin with, this basic idea has so many non-proven assumptions built in, it can be easily dismissed with logic alone.  The theory has to hold these things to be true:

a)  Corporations will automatically jump into advocacy of political ideas through spending.

This fails because as we all know, you don’t talk about politics in polite company.  Businesses are not stupid enough to advocate for candidate X, when they know 50% of the country is for candidate Y.  There is simply not enough pay off they can get from candidate X that would suffice for the loss of revenue for those supporters of candidate Y.

b)  Even if corporations do spend millions to influence elections…

It does not follow that corporate money would somehow be more nefarious than individually spent.  Is it not possible that a corporation’s political interest might also be the interest of the people?

It also does not follow that this money would automatically influence any specific election.  This assumes  a sizable  percentage of people, enough to effect the outcome of a vote, can be swayed by ads to vote against their own self interests.

It might be unwitting or without malice, but the thought that you’ll be ok, but the masses will be swayed into some corporate slavery is insulting and arrogant.

But that’s just me – what say Justice Kennedy?

…The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate. See Buckley, supra, at 46. The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials. This is inconsistent with any suggestion that the electorate will refuse “‘to take part in democratic governance’” because of additional political speech made by a corporation or any other speaker. McConnell, supra, at 144 (quoting Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 390 (2000))….

…The McConnell record was “over 100,000 pages” long, McConnell I, 251 F. Supp. 2d, at 209, yet it “does not have any direct examples of votes being exchanged for . . . expenditures,” id., at 560 (opinion of Kollar-Kotelly, J.). This confirms Buckley’s reasoning that independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption. In fact, there is only scant evidence that independent expenditures even ingratiate.  Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption….

Furthermore, Congress can’t fix a supposed problem by removing rights:

…When Congress finds that a problem exists, we must give that finding due deference; but Congress may not choose an unconstitutional remedy. If elected officials succumb to improper influences from independent expenditures; if they surrender their best judgment; and if they put expediency before principle, then surely there is cause for concern. We must give weight to attempts by Congress to seek to dispel either the appearance or the reality of these influences. The remedies enacted by law, however, must comply with the First Amendment; and, it is our law and our tradition that more speech, not less, is the governing rule. An outright ban on corporate political speech during the critical preelection period is not a permissible remedy. Here Congress has created categorical bans on speech that are asymmetrical to preventing quid pro quo corruption….

#3 Corporations are not humans and therefore are not afforded rights.

This fails the basic test with the rest of the bill of rights, as while it’s true that a corporation is nothing more than a legal entity and not a human, removing a corporations’ rights results in real human damage.

For instance, because corporations are not human and therefore don’t have rights, then it would follow corporations also don’t have rights to a speedy trial or protection from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.

I’m not positive, but I don’t believe these opponents honestly want the government to be able to seize financial records or phone records simply because they belong to a corporation which has no rights.

& lastly #4 Shareholder money should not be spent on political campaigns for which shareholders’ disagree.

This is actually an idea that I’m semi-sympathetic to… as a libertarian, ethical capitalism standards as spelled out by Milton Friedman, and even in a legal sense, I believe that corporate profits of public companies should either be reinvested into the business or paid out to the owners or shareholders.

But I can also view reality for what it is and notice the obvious:  corporations are routinely spending a portion of their profits on their pet charities, often at the behest of liberal groups proclaiming loudly that corporations have a responsibility for being good social citizens.  I’m not sure why PETA should be able to get corporate dollars, but a specific candidate…. but here we are.

Having said that, so long as shareholders aren’t being forced to buy stock and so long as they are able to freely sell when they want, then forced to invest in political speech with which they disagree, is an abuse of the word force.

Additionally, the same logic which holds true with consumers holds true with investors.  If a corporation went out of their way to play into specific political campaigns, investors just as consumers, can look elsewhere.

Justice Kennedy?

…The Government contends further that corporate independent expenditures can be limited because of its interest in protecting dissenting shareholders from being compelled to fund corporate political speech. This asserted interest, like Austin’s antidistortion rationale, would allow the Government to ban the political speech even of media corporations. See supra, at 35–37. Assume, for example, that a shareholder of a corporation that owns a newspaper disagrees with the political views the newspaper expresses. See Austin, 494 U. S., at 687 (SCALIA, J., dissenting). Under the Government’s view, that potential disagreement could give the Government the authority to restrict the media corporation’s political speech. The First Amendment does not allow that power. There is, furthermore, little evidence of abuse that cannot be corrected by shareholders “through the procedures of corporate democracy.” Bellotti, 435 U. S., at 794; see id., at 794, n. 34….

Going further, he points out how the law doesn’t fix what they claim to disagree with here:

…Those reasons are sufficient to reject this shareholder protection interest; and, moreover, the statute is both underinclusive and overinclusive. As to the first, if Congress had been seeking to protect dissenting shareholders, it would not have banned corporate speech in only certain media within 30 or 60 days before an election. A dissenting shareholder’s interests would be implicated by speech in any media at any time. As to the second, the statute is overinclusive because it covers all corporations, including nonprofit corporations and for-profit corporations with only single shareholders. As to other corporations, the remedy is not to restrict speech but to consider and explore other regulatory mechanisms. The regulatory mechanism here, based on speech, contravenes the First Amendment….

In fact is appears as if all opposition to this decision is based upon a fear that by allowing normal people to be subjected to political speech paid for by corporations, freedom as we know it is ending.

Just like religious fundamentalists who want to ban books because the mere availability of fictional smut can lead to the downfall of man, without a hint of irony these people demonstrate their religious-type devotion to the exact same thought:  you are neither  strong nor smart enough to handle a free and unfettered marketplace of ideas.

Justice Kennedy concludes:

…Speech would be suppressed in the realm where its necessity is most evident: in the public dialogue preceding a real election. Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make thi political speech a crime. Yet this is the statute’s purpose and design.

Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to be neither high art nor a fair discussion on how to set the Nation’s course; still others simply might suspend judgment on these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. “The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.” McConnell, supra, at 341…

Read entire opinion here.

It’s almost embarrassingly easy to pinpoint the talking points or narratives that will prevail with any story, but if fish in a barrel don’t want to be shot… they should get out of the barrel.

Starting sometime last week, you could see the narratives shaping up in anticipation of a Brown victory based upon the trends of the poll data.  On January 9th, people still believe in Coakley (here):

…Buoyed by a huge advantage with independents and relative disinterest from Democratic voters in the state, Republican Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 48-47….

…All that said Coakley can certainly still win this race, perhaps even by a comfortable margin….

Indeed, Real Clear Politics shows polling from various sources starting in September (here), showing a 30+ lead for Coakely being worn down to a tie in early January, then to a 9+ lead leading into the election.

However, the expected Brown win, was still an upset.  Both the fact that MA is a Democratic state that Barak won by 28 points and the fact the vacant seat was a Democratic torch bearer who is recently deceased… any way you wish to view this, it is a failure on the part of the Democratic party to have lost.

The narratives of course focus on “who” to blame – for the Republicans, this is sure sign that Barak’s agenda is being pushed to the side by the American people (here):

…Seeing President Barack Obama reverse course and make a last minute/last ditch effort to save the Coakley campaign brings back memories of November, when Obama put his prestige and political capital on the line in an unsuccessful attempt to save the gubernatorial campaigns of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and Virginia’s Creigh Deeds.

Combined, those two elections were a stinging rebuke of the Obama Agenda–higher taxes, government control of health care and out of control spending….

While for the Democrats, Barak isn’t hurt in the least by the pathetic showing from Coakley (here):

…The usual blame Obama faction in this community were quick to criticize the President for being the reason Martha Coakley lost her bid to replace Ted Kennedy in his long held Senate seat….

…If anything, the media spin had a lot more to do with the ascendency of Scott Brown than anything Barack Obama or Democrats had done….

Even going so far as to blame the media:

…The first year of the Obama Presidency has been a year of spin.  He has been scrutinized more than any other President in history. In some respect, this extreme coverage has created an anxiety about this President that, at times, has verged upon negative fanaticism, where daily hurdles are created and expectations have become increasingly unrealistic. For some on the fringe, Obama seems to have become the cause of all that ills America….

As usual, the truth is somewhere in the muddled middle… though I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the faulty logic associated with the Daily Kos (I know, I know… fish in a barrel…).  The idea that the media pushed a fringe blame Obama group to result in 52% of the population voting for Brown is almost too stupid to analyze.

On the other hand of course, the idea that this was a direct and total Obama failure is less certain than it appears as well.  Even the President has his thoughts about a “mood” (here):

…The president suggested the same forces that elected Brown “swept me into office” in 2008. People are frustrated “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”…

With more to come:

…White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at his daily briefing, “That anger is now pointed at us because we’re in charge. And rightly so.”

Gibbs said Obama would address the Massachusetts results “and what they mean” in his State of the Union address next Wednesday….

Odd that the President plans to use the State of the Union speech to discuss one senate race in MA, but I digress.

The truth is, given the numbers, the percentage of independent voters who voted for Brown, the state, the Senate seat itself, basic voter demographic information… this is surely a failure which can be place @ the President’s door.

However… this doesn’t mean that Brown’s election is necessarily a referendum to oppose health care reform or a mandate to filibuster everything.   All politics is local is still true for the most part in that anybody other than a Democrat was not guaranteed a victory based solely on Obama’s agenda.

In fact, I think the President is correct when he “suggested” the country is just angry… not only at the current administration, but also the last 8 years.  Unwittingly he might have pinpointed the main issue people are having trouble dealing with, and that’s the continuous growth of government regardless of the idiot in charge.

So just like the ’08 election which swept Obama to office on the anger of Bush – it wasn’t a mandate for Obama’s policies so much as a punishment for Republicans, though a lesser politician would have still lost to McCain… just as a crappy GOP candidate would’ve likely lost to Coakley, even with a high level of anger towards the current administration.

& last but not least, let’s not forget that since 1862, there have been 36 midterm elections held during the first or second terms of an administration. In 33 of those 36 elections, the opposition party gained seats in the House.

All in all, it’s really no consequence to most of us as to “why” this or that person was elected in a state/district in which you don’t vote.   Your vote should be based upon your preferences and your candidates & hopefully the person you want to win does (assuming that person is pro-individual freedom of course, I’ll join in on your wish).

All the rest of this crap is just a narrative… IE – the standard tit-for-tat spin-game politicians play with the media as willing participants.

Brown & Coakley election in MA:

Exit polling with race showing high turnout @ Boston.com

Does a loss affect Obama or is it just Coakley’s problem? @ LA Times

Or is “all politics local” still true? @ US News

Healthcare Reform:

Reason Foundation: Beware Of The ObamaCare Revolution

TCS Daily: Medicare Rationing Begins in 2011

Taliban Attacks in Afghanistan – what does the coordinated attack show?

Rueters via Yahoo News: Taliban attack shows tactical skill, military limits

Stratfor: The Kabul Attack: A Postmortem

AFL-CIO & Democrats – a revolving door of money – Unions give to Dems, Dems give to Unions:

Detailed Abstractions: Unions – Unionized Against Freedom

Cato:  No Taxes, Please, We’re Democrats

Will we continue to try to fix government caused crises with more government (re: Finance Reform)?

Reuters: Watchdog’s fate in Senate key to financial reform

Cato: Reforming Previous Reforms, ad Infinitum

Via Buzz.Yahoo.com (because I refuse to send people to the Huffington Post), the Huffington Post reports (here):

President Obama will unveil on Thursday a proposed levy on the nation’s biggest financial firms structured not just to repay taxpayers for the bank bailout, but to recoup some of the public subsidy that “too big to fail” banks have enjoyed on account of their implicit government backstop, a senior administration official tells the Huffington Post….

First, I honestly have a problem with senior administration officials lending their knowledge to such a highly partisan propaganda site as the Huffington Post.   They long ago stop pretending to care about being news or even being accurate and moved straight into MoveOn.org territory.

Now, I’m not saying the President or his staff must chose the outlets I would prefer, but they could definitely send out press statements or use seemingly “real” and more honest news organizations.  It’s not like the NY Times isn’t on the President’s side – why go to Huffington?

Either way – regardless of the merits (or lack thereof0) for this specific  marketing strategy – it seems quite obvious that Mr. Obama and his team lacks a fundamental understanding of economics.  Their continued reliance on government solutions to all economic problems, demonstrates a misunderstanding of the dynamics needed to keep this economic engine and society moving forward.

It seems they have an idea that they can model the economic behavior of institutions they define as “Too big to fail” as if this equilibrium is: A) possible to spot & B) static enough to allow the slow moving government the ability to legislate in a helpful way.

Indeed the current economic crisis itself lends credibility to the idea that the government is in no position to grasp the complexities that exist when dealing with so many interconnected businesses (here):

…”We are here to examine what happened in the public sector, what happened in regulatory agencies, what happened in enforcement agencies,” said Phil Angelides, the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission….

While investigating the public portion of the failure:

…Questions focused on failures around regulatory decisions to loosen bank leverage and capital limits, faulty credit rating agencies, a warning about epidemic of mortgage fraud and a decision by Congress and the FDIC to stop collecting vital insurance fees from ‘well capitalized” banks between 1996 and 2006….

They grilled DOJ:

…Panel members asked Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct an investigation into what, if anything the agency did after the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2004 warned that mortgage fraud was so rampant that it was a potential “epidemic.”…

& the SEC:

…SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro was inundated with questions about the agency’s failure to oversee credit rating agencies, which provided overly rosy debt ratings for problematic mortgage securities….

The FDIC & Congress:

…Meanwhile, the FDIC and Congress were criticized for its decision not to collect deposit insurance premiums from well capitalized banks for roughly a decade between 1996 and 2006….

But it’s ok, because the FDIC agrees with them:

…Both Schapiro and FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair agreed that an SEC decision in 2004, under its chairman at the time, William Donaldson, to allow banks to identify how much capital and leverage they must have on hand, based on their own model-based formula, was a mistake that allowed banks to expand their leverage to problematic levels….

Where the lead to the obvious conclusion they were searching for the entire time – government help:

…Bair said. “I think the only place to tackle that on a system-wide basis for both banks and non-banks was through consumer protection rules that gave the Fed the authority to apply rules against abusive lending across the board to both banks and non-banks.”…

Now it might just be me, but thinking federal regulators with new powers over banks and abusive lending standards will get it right next time seems a tad optimistic…. you know, especially considering their massive failure with the current crisis.

Which is of course only a portion of the story.  The government, through various GSE’s, exacerbated the problems with global capital flows, by giving banks incentives to make riskier and riskier loans (here):

…The actual causes of our financial troubles were unusual monetary policy moves and novel federal regulatory interventions. Regulatory distortions intensified in the 1990s. Poorly chosen public policies distorted interest rates and asset prices, diverted loanable funds into the wrong investments, and twisted normally robust financial institutions into unsustainable positions.

We can group most of the unfortunate policies under two main headings: (1) Federal Reserve credit expansion that provided the means for unsustainable mortgage financing, and (2) mandates and subsidies to write riskier mortgages….

Please don’t misunderstand me – just because someone leaves their keys in their car doesn’t mean you should take it – so immoral actions on behalf of lenders, home buyers, and an inaccurate understanding of the true risks were also present in the prelude to this tragedy:

…There is no doubt that private miscalculation and imprudence made matters worse for more than a few lending institutions and individual borrowers….

& therein lies the true rub.  This imprudence is something for which the market should bear the price of their mistakes.  Only through bearing the true cost will their incentives ever line up with true moral behavior.  If you think a local bank or lender wasn’t able to sell every single loan to a GSE, they would’ve continued to allow bad loans to be made which they knew would sink themselves… well, that’s just not very likely and not very rational.

But don’t worry – I’m sure with these new and smarter people, this time they’ll figure out which banks are too big to fail, do it right, and only tax them in the amount they need to insure against the risk.

To me, and indeed historically, that a fear society & freed society are mutually exclusive.

& like all consistent lessons from history, we haven’t seemed to have learned this lesson and seem to be determined to repeat it.

Towards that end, the Wall Street Journal online published two articles on Friday, under the shared title, Undressing the Terror Threat. The first article by Paul Campos & Nate Silver explains correctly:

…The world’s greatest nation seems bent on subjecting itself to a similarly humiliating defeat, by playing a game that could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who want to harm Americans; and

(2) If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or seriously frighten any of us, they win.

These rules help explain the otherwise inexplicable wave of hysteria that has swept over our government in the wake of the failed attempt by a rather pathetic aspiring terrorist to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. For two weeks now, this mildly troubling but essentially minor incident has dominated headlines and airwaves, and sent politicians from the president on down scurrying to outdo each other with statements that such incidents are “unacceptable,” and that all sorts of new and better procedures will be implemented to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Meanwhile, millions of travelers are being subjected to increasingly pointless and invasive searches and the resultant delays, such as the one that practically shut down Newark Liberty International Airport last week, after a man accidentally walked through the wrong gate, or Tuesday’s incident at a California airport, which closed for hours after a “potentially explosive substance” was found in a traveler’s luggage. (It turned out to be honey.)…

The authors make a very good point here, though I do object to the term “rather pathetic aspiring terrorist”… as I saw on a blog somewhere in retort “What you really need are suicide bombers with experience!”.

Beyond that, they then try to take some statistics too far.  Using murder & suicide rates to show how are fears aren’t lined up with a real assessment of risks, they write:

…The country’s homicide rate is approximately six times higher than that of most other developed nations; we have 15,000 more murders per year than we would if the rate were comparable to that of otherwise similar countries. Americans own around 200 million firearms, which is to say there are nearly as many privately owned guns as there are adults in the country. In addition, there are about 200,000 convicted murderers walking free in America today (there have been more than 600,000 murders in America over the past 30 years, and the average time served for the crime is about 12 years)….

Taking those numbers, they conclude that which doesn’t follow:

…Given these statistics, there is little doubt that banning private gun ownership and making life without parole mandatory for anyone convicted of murder would reduce the homicide rate in America significantly….

& Even though they aren’t advocating such a policy, they basically state that the number of guns in private hands necessarily affects either homicide or suicide rates.

I think this ignores the historical evidence that governments typically ban weapons prior to mass murdering their own citizens, but it also isn’t proven by the numbers they give.  Because regardless of how people kill themselves or others, removing the primary instrument doesn’t necessarily means those actions will halt.  Lastly of course, even that assumes the government has the ability to remove the primary instrument in question, which is highly unlikely.

Either way, overall they use the example that is hysteria over terrorism to show parallels to the war on drugs, traffic accidents, and other risks to conclude:

…What then is to be done? A little intelligence and a few drops of courage remind us that life is full of risk, and that of all the risks we confront in America every day, terrorism is a very minor one. Taking prudent steps to reasonably minimize the tiny threat we face from a few fanatic criminals need not grant them the attention they crave….

The thing is that I agree with the authors’ basic premise, or what seems to be their basic premise, that fear based policies are wrong, even though I disagree with the facts they’ve lined up and think that using terrorism as too narrow an example has severely undermined their case.

First, while it’s certainly true that the gap between objective terrorism threats and hysterical policies seems large, there are valid reasons for that.  They discuss one, which is we need to focus money on preventing mass catastrophes such as a nuclear detonation, but they fail to mention the organizations themselves and how they differ from murder in general.

It’s true, that in any free society, a lone nut, bent on killing others, will have the opportunity to do so and there’s little we can do, while maintaining a free society to prevent that from happening.

However, were terrorism and even gangs, the mob, and other criminal organizations differ is that we have to attack those organizations directly.  Dealing with each instance of terrorism as non-related criminal events is exactly what allows their organizations to gain grounds on operational abilities.  Ignoring the organization therefore, seems to dictate a increase in the likelihood of a major incident.

Outside these specific critiques however, I think our society has become very easily motivated by fears instead of reason and logic.  When we allow victims of drunk driving incidents dictate the driving laws, or say a murdered victim’s family members to seek emotional healing through a policy of revenge, or use those in the most destitute of scenarios to control medical policy… whatever it is, if  we allow fear to take a hold of our government policy, new legislation, or even on a personal level, allowing fear to control our own lives… if we allow this, we should at least be doing so with the knowledge that it’s not conducive to freedom.

Detailed Abstractions has more articles about fear based policies here, here, & here.

It’s been a full five years since Thomas Friedman gave us the book and idea that The World is Flat. While I’ll never be one to completely agree with Mr. Friedman, he proffers from an economic perspective that national boundaries are becoming less and less a barrier.  The consequence in America, as with all other western societies, is a need to prepare to compete with other countries for jobs.

As outsourcing becomes easier and developing countries access to highly skilled resources in developing countries, citizens have been or will soon be forced to compete for jobs not only with their local competition, but with their global competitors as well.

DA noticed for a little while now, that the US seems to moving backwards in terms of competitiveness (here):

…Odd thing is – those without freedoms or with lesser freedoms around the world have been pushing for market reforms, including Germany, France, China, Russia… while the US is pushing centralized control over banking and health care (to name two things)….

Energy apparently skipped my mind that day, but either way… with more evidence at hand, Ron Hart wrote a great piece The dangers of ‘Crony Capitolism’. He begins with a a prescient Winston Churchill quote:

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk.  Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

His basic premise is that through increased economic regulations in America and a movement away from the free market, we are in real danger of losing our economic edge:

…But the real damage done by his taking control of our major banks and car companies (and now one-sixth of our economy with his health care grab), is that private capitalism, one of the great drivers of our country’s abundance for all of us, has been damaged….

& due to these anti-market policies combined with ever increasing regulation, we are not only in danger in the future, but the signs are already here:

…The result, per Forbes magazine, is that we are losing ground to foreign competitors.

Korean automaker Hyundai registered record sales in August. Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei might soon pass Cisco in sales. Brazil’s jet maker Embraer is, according to Cessna CEO Jack Pelton “scaring us to death.” And more IPOs are happening away from America’s overly regulated capital markets. In addition, India has heart bypass surgery outcomes equal to the U.S. at half the cost, and Singapore is willing to pay U.S. biotech research stars about $715,000 in annual salaries….

Concluding with:

…In short, we do not have a monopoly on capitalism. We risk losing out to a world market that moves faster and with more resolve today than ever before. Our new political class does not seem to care that innovation and capitalism are fleeing….

Well said.

In yet another tax on the citizenry in the form of regulation, Washington DC has decided to sue AT&T (here):

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The attorney general for Washington D.C. has filed a lawsuit against an AT&T Inc (T.N) unit, seeking to recover consumers’ unused balances on prepaid calling cards….

Why?  Because, unused minutes on a prepaid calling card is identical in the plaintiffs’ eyes as if you were to own a house and die without relatives or a will:

…”AT&T’s prepaid calling cards must be treated as unclaimed property under district law,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement….

But not to worry – using official government logic, they reason since we’re already doing wrong in one place, why not here?

…States and municipalities have often similarly used unclaimed property laws, known as escheat laws, to claim ownership of unused retail gift card balances….

I’m sure the states did this out of the kindness of their hearts though – they weren’t looking for any additional revenue stream, only to make sure those with unused balances could rightfully claim them…  As if that were easy to do.  As most know, the original purchaser of the card is unlikely to be the end recipient.  As for me personally, I tend to get gift cards from various people and usually just pass them to my daughter – so at this point, the intended recipient wasn’t even the final recipient.

Not only that, but if you buy a gift $50 dollar gift card, leave $5 indefinitely and businesses are required to have a program to capture that, process it, file it, and eventually write the state a check with your name attached to it… well, all of that increases overhead and lowers profit, which raises prices and reduces new entries into the market.

Lastly, these laws don’t take into account the time value of money.  As we all know, inflation is constant even if stable and relatively slow.  Meaning, what I can buy for $10 today, I will likely not be able to purchase the same amount of stuff with $10 in a year.

Of course unused amounts on gift cards is a recent invention.  So let’s first look at this law historically.  Escheat laws were meant to cover real property (here):

…The term is often now applied to the transfer of the title to a person’s property to the state when the person dies intestate without any other person capable of taking the property as heir. For example, a common-law jurisdiction’s intestacy statute might provide that when someone dies without a will, and is not survived by a spouse, descendants, parents, grandparents, descendants of parents, children or grandchildren of grandparents, or great-grandchildren of grandparents, then the person’s estate will escheat to the state….

Which makes complete sense.  For example – If I bought a prime piece of real estate in Manhattan and died without will or heirs…. what should happen?  Any decent legal framework which includes property rights needs an answer as leaving property in such an unknown state isn’t a good idea.

Unlike real property however, unused minutes don’t really exist.   Even though recent TV commercials might have confused the DC attorney general, they aren’t little plastic orange discs logging actual time.

Additionally, the escheat law in this case isn’t needed as it’s being handled without issue in a private contract.  Sort of like a will is used when distributing someone’s estate.  Currently, the contract for AT&T prepaid cell phones, which each buyer assumes on purchase, expires unused minutes if not used within 90 days (IE – they revert back to the company).

Lastly, according to the attorney general, the industry knows unused minutes account for 5 to 20 percent of the minutes purchased.  Unlike unused gift cards, treating unsure minutes has an additional consequence.  Without fully knowing, but recognizing the very competitive market that is the cell phone industry – it is likely true that the average unused portion is factored in the current pricing structure.

Therefore changing that from 5 to 20 percent unused minutes to always zero and increasing overall administration costs, will only result in higher prices for the end consumers.

But they are going after an evil company, right?