journal . Ben Sommer

I was getting all into the idea of starting online contextual advertising for my various web properties, and got philosophical when I just heard a loud buzzing outside. A bird? A plane? Helicopters fly over at least a few times daily, and Logan Airport has started using an arrival path directly overhead, too. But no, it was the goodyear blimp flying right over my house. I took careful note of the advertisers scrolling by the huge screen - so I could remember where to never shop again.

I'm beginning to think like that fatso Michael Moore - the US government is the biggest terrorist, murdering organization. Fear over Iran is ludicrous. We should be fearful of the US government. Has Iran slaughtered over 100k people in Iraq in the last 3 years? Nope. Does Iran have thousands of A-bombs already. Nope. Was Iran's government the first (and only) to fire an A-bomb in anger, slaughtering - again - over 100k? Nope. Which exactly is the terrorist state here?

Joe Sobran is a new favorite of mine. What I learn from wikipedia is that he's a conservative catholic and old right-hand man of Bill Buckley's. He got canned from the National Review for alleged anti-semitism, though I gather he was really anti-Israel and anti-Zionist-influence-in-American-politics. Anyway, for all that he was banished from the conservative intellectual crowd just as neo-conism ascended in the 1980s. His ideas shifted recently to so-called anarcho-capitalism.

His latest column is a defense of that wacko Stephen Colbert for giving Pres. Bush such a reaming in person recently.

Colbert is my and my wife's favorite comedian from our all-time favorite sitcom, an obscure Comedy Channel show from the 90s called Strangers with Candy. He also has the dubious honor of being my brother's ex-wife's main squeeze just prior to them meeting.

The piece makes a point I think should be made more often that to habitually blame government failures (like Iraq, Katrina, etc.) on "mismanagement" or "personnel problems" is missing the larger point.

All right, all right, play nice people. Sharing is caring.

Here's a screed I found with something for everyone - the Bush haters and the environmentalist haters.

Synposis: a war on price gouging is looming, led by the indefatigable George Bush and unlikely bedfellows the environmental doom-sayers. Both will leverage their expertise in lies and fear-mongering to build a new, less flimsy straw man than that dissapointingly weak Sadaam Hussein. His name will be "Big Oil". Its WMD all over again.

Gary North is an economist - but a masterful prose stylist, too. This one is pretty brilliant.

What to do about job (in)security? North offers several options:

1. Riot for more security, as the French do
2. Stick your head in the sand, as employees of GM or Ford do (North calls them "Enron Motors" - destined for implosion)
3. Dig yourself a "technical skills" hole and crawl into it, and pray that progess won't render those skills irrelevant or cheaper in China (variation on #2)
4. Try to anticipate the future market landscape, improve your skills based on that, be adjustable, repeat as needed

No surprise he recommends #4. What will be surprising to those not used to thinking of a free labor market as a good thing is the conclusion: free competition, whether for jobs or anything else, is the engine of civilizational progress. Conversely, things that restrict the freedom to compete (unions, labor regulation, antitrust, etc) are anti-civilization. Radical, yes, but the logic is irrefutable.

These insights are especially important for those of us who are contemplating whether to someday break from employeeship into entrepreneurship.

Oh, one more thing: if I read another essay with the phrase "build up to the war in Iraq", I'm gonna puke. I think the mind of a writer who doesn't recognize the staleness and overuse of such a phrase, no matter how good the finished product, is deserving of some ridicule.

Once in a while I like to read the opinion and analysis of my "intellectual enemies", to assure myself of their ignorance and malevolence, as well as to keep my argumentation chops up. Perhaps the most problematic are not welfare lefties or warfare righties, but the types that call themselves libertarians or 'classical liberals', but differ not an iota in substance from the mainstream. Here's this guy.

Jubak makes a good point initially - the Federal Reserve is quietly ending the publishing of an important inflation-measuring statistic - M3. The obvious reason: it wants to soft-pedal its run-away growth of the money supply, which is all that inflation is.

I don't know Jubak's politics, but his line of argument and his poo-pooing of "conspiracy theorists" is the same as those sunday libertarians who drive me nuts. He intimates that, well, there might be a conspiracy here, but its just too much for him to be identified with "nuts" who claim that the evil Banking Industry and Federal Government collude to extract wealth from the people at home and abroad to fund its guns and butter.

Gimme a break. People who don't believe in conspiracies, in government or elsewhere, must instead believe in fairies and knights in shining armor. To believe that powerful men wouldn't seek unjust advantage for themselves contradicts our understanding of human nature - that we are pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking animals.

But in a sense, Jubak is right - the FED has long ceased being a conspiracy - it is a well-established swindle with all the solemn pomp of any government institution.

In related news, our hero Rep. Ron Paul has filed legislation to reverse the change, and commented on it here.

Dear Editor,

Thanks for Joseph Newhard's earnest and well reasoned attempt to refute anarcho-capitalism as a theory.

Though he writes very well, and obviously knows a good deal about the theory and the major figures (Rothbard, Hoppe, others), his argument fails.

[In a free and anarchic society] Private security agencies are
expected to emerge despite the presence of gang warfare and
the systematic aggression of tyrants and criminals alike. I
believe that this notion is false, and is demonstrably so on
empirical grounds.

Private security agencies exist now. Private judges (called arbitrators) exists now. Period. Newhard implies that "well, they don't really prove much". Hogwash - you want empirical evidence, there you have it.

Monopolist governments currently permit citizens some leeway to provide for their own self-defense. Whether consumers and producers of private security engage in free exchange on the market now depends on 1) how far the governments allow them to go, and 2) how badly governments fail in providing their own security services. In a free society security production is expected to multiply not _despite_ rogue aggressors, but on _account_ of them.

Also, anarchists don't naively believe in man's good nature, and that aggressors must first be banished to establish a free society. This is a common smear - that anarchism is utopian. Read Rothbard's For a New Liberty for exhaustive refutation of this criticism. Yes, the monopoly state must be banished for a free society to emerge, but not the odd antisocial gang. Its irrelevant whether this happens through armed revolt or long-term ideological warfare.

I insist that [with the current tyrannical, criminal US government]
the prerequisites for the emergence of anarcho-capitalism already
exist within the American society, and that the fact that it has
not yet manifested itself represents a serious flaw in
anarcho-capitalist theory.

So, Newhard's first two contentions - that current private security production "doesn't count", and that anarchists are naive - are wrong. That renders his follow-up assertions wrong, too. I must say I'm surprised to hear a good Randian spin a syllogism like this:

• Anarchist theory says private security will arise amidst aggression *false/confused*
• There is rampant aggression in the US today *true*
• Anarchism is not here now *true*
• Anarchist theory is flawed *false*

Anyway, I thought Randians were supposed to look down their noses at such facile appeals to 'empirical reality'. Its bad enough to attack the libertarian right using such bad logic. I sure hope Newhard doesn't use the same argument against our common enemies on the left:

• Socialism hasn't worked yet
• Socialism is flawed

So says pundit Malcolm Gladwell:

"I woke up one day and realized what much smarter people than me (Adam Gopnik) realized a long time ago, which is that the idea of employer-based health care is just plain stupid"

No, in fact it is a natural, and one might say ingenious, outcome of past events. A history lesson:

Employer-provided health care in the US dates from the 1940s and war-time federal wage controls - laws forbidding paying "too much" to workers. In an effort to circumvent these laws, employers enticed workers by pairing wages with health care, which was then tax-free.

And now a lesson in political economy:

Government intervention (in the labor market) leads to unintended consequences (employers bending over backward to pay workers their worth) that then lead to further interventions (some states now requiring employers to cover workers). Ludwig von Mises (http://www.mises.org) proved the logic of this over 60 years ago and still, few understand it. And those who do (beaurocrats, _muckrackers_) don't care.

If you still think socialist health care is great idea, look in the mirror and tell yourself this is what you want:

"The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom". ~L. Mises

I believe Canada is now in the first stage, imprisoning anyone offering private health care. More to come.

I remember thinking "Oh bullshit, he'll never get away with that" - when Der Fuhrer first talked about Iraqnam. If you thought the same thing then, and are now incredulous about yet another war - think again. Write a letter to your congressperson or newspaper, or say a prayer or something - anything to keep the bombs off the babies.

I've been reading Ludwig von Mises' Human Action. Its amazing - a monster work (1000+ pages). Almost every paragraph has something to expand the brain.

This snippet below, about the Nazis and their ideological system, is from a section called "The Fight Against Error". Here Mises talks about the danger of tarring one's ideological opponents as morally or psychologically deficient - something I love to do :)

The danger lies in the fact that, for most of us, many of our political ideas rest on the same unexamined fallacies. According to Mises, these were socialism and nationalism. The upshot is that, unless we can cast out the splinter in our own eyes, we'd do better not to note the beam in anothers'.

That word "autarky" particularly sticks out, with all the recent talk about "national energy self-sufficiency". I wonder what they'd all say if they knew they were reciting out of the Nazi playbook?

I finally understand the mysterious nature of money. Rather than begin at the beginning, let's work backward from recent news - Greenspan's retirement and the naming of the new Fed dauphin, Bernanke. If you watch CSPAN you saw Bernanke and the assorted crooks yapping about what should be the Fed's focus after Greenspan - achieving "full employment" or "controling inflation". These two bogus shibboleths have been offered as the Fed's reason for being since 1913. There have been others - moderating the "inherently" boom-bust cycle of capitalism, ensuring an "optimal supply" of money, etc. - all to justify the existence of what is essentially a mass counterfeiting and embezzlement operation - The Fed.

Ever since the rise of the modern state kings and parliaments have been grasping for control of the mint. The reason why should be as obvious as why a counterfeiter likes counterfeiting - its handy to be able to spend money without first having to earn it or, in the case of the state, to tax it. Taxing is cumbersome and ineffecient, and the people's natural resistence to it placed a barrier to power that states wanted removed.

Things started small - monopolizing weights and measures enabled rulers to clip coins, spending the excess on favored groups and wars, though on a small scale. It wasn't until the 20th century brought the twin hammers of income taxation and nationalized (and eminently inflatable) paper currencies that the bloodbath could begin. The slaughter of 170 million people in only 100 years couldn't have been funded by gold shavings.

So, to pull off the Big Plan, financiers and their pet politicians realized that they needed a much slicker technique than the old printing press. Simply running off more and higher-denomination notes is a very third-world way to inflate. You still see this in backwaters like Zimbabwe, but the people catch on quick, and such governments suffer more than the usual number of uprisings.

It happens like this - the Fed's "Open Market" committee holds a ceremony every few months, for the amusement of the press, to decide what shall be the interest rate on inter-bank loans. This is a distraction from the committee's main activity which, as its name implies, is purchasing assets on "the open market". Which assets is irrelevant, though in practice its usually federal bonds (to the immense benefit of the federal government).

The Fed buys assets with checks written against its own account, which is filled with nothing but air - money created out of thin air. The process of inflation begins - with each dollar put into circulation that wasn't exchanged for something of value (like a sandwich, or an hour's labor, etc.), the purchasing power of all other dollars is reduced. Prices rise.

So, pretend Joe Schmoe of Joe Schmoe Tractors just received a $1 million check from the Fed for assorted farm gear. The money supply is increased by $1 million. Joe deposits the check at his own bank. The bank, to its delight, sees this is a check payable at the Federal Reserve. It rushes to the Fed, and deposits the check in its own account with the Fed, thereby increasing its reserves by $1 million. Now, by law it can lend out $6 million to its other customers, also created out of thin air. Its bad enough when the bank does this so-called "reverse pyramiding" of its reserves with your hard-earned paycheck. But to create its own phantom money on top of the Fed's phantom money is a double-whammy. So there you have it - counterfeiting (phantom money) at both levels, and embezzlement (banks lending out your real - and the Fed's phantom - money) at one level.

If you're confused, that's because you're supposed to be. Only a select few politicians and technocrats understand the process, which they leverage to their own emolument.

The upshot is that the Fed's inflation does more to keep poor people poor than any capitalist bogeyman the Left would like us to believe, and its the cause of the modern boom-bust business cycle that ruins so many honest entrepreneurs, while rewarding the Haliburtons and Brown&Roots of the world.

A wicked smart article in The Spectator Bush the Marxist.

Though they don't like highlighting it, the neo-conservative movement was founded by post-Trotskyite intellectuals like Irving Kristol and son Bill. In case you forget, Trotsky broke with Stalin and was exiled over Stalin's transformation of their revolutionary state into a conservative thugocracy. Kristol was involved with Trotsky and his "Fourth International" in 1938.

The idea is that the twin doctrines of revolution and internationalism are the same for communists and neo-cons. Search the article for Bush jewels like "global democratic revolution" or "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The juxtoposition of such treacle with quotes by Marx and Engels will make your skin crawl.

In this light, "globalization" (ala Tom Friedman) is exposed as the same "global revolution". As a political movement, globalization has nothing to do with liberalizing trade (a good thing), but with building institutions (UN, WTO, World Bank, etc.) that might form the basis of a world state.

What is an anarchist’s definition of freedom? What to do when anarchists disagree?

Freedom? Freedom from coercion, violence as a general rule in person and property. We can all agree that murderers are bad, right? Thieves, vandals are bad. People breaking their contracts. Hatfields and McCoys shouldn't conduct private warfare. Yes, yes, and yes, right?

So what about the state? It kills, coerces, steals, destroys contracts, and conducts mass murder in war. But there are always myriad excuses, mostly based on the exploitation of fear in the populace.

Its not as radical a concept as it may seem. A principled libertarian wants the state held to the same moral standards as individuals. No violence. "But what!!!? How could the state continue functioning??" Indeed.

Actually, disagreement is never a problem for radical libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. If we understand each other correctly, our only point of agreement need be that the state is evil. That is our guidepost and informs all the particulars in the areas of theory and policy in which we must do intellectual battle with statists, whether left, right or center.

The most potent and as-yet unchallenged criticism of anarchism or radical libertarianism is definetly nationalism and the issue of law and order. The average American is very sympathetic to radically libertarian ideas, even if his instincts in this regard have atrophied over the last few generations. But he has real trouble getting over his religious allegiance to the flag, and his belief that policemen and soldiers and not communities are what keeps the criminals at bay. Hans Herman Hoppe wrote a book I've been meaning to get called 'The myth of national security'. He's one of the only writers tackling this very tough topic.

Sometimes this can all seem like theory and masturbation and no action. Economist Lew Rockwell has great things to say about that. He makes a strong case that a sound foundation of theory and intellectual background are essential for a new movement.

Whenever talking to someone (which is most everyone) who is mentally unable to detach himself from the state, I'm reminded of Ben Franklin's words in a bitter letter to his loyalist son, "You see everything through government eyes". Here's a question: can you conceive of a society without a state, one where there is no government people need representation or participation in? Of course, there is a place for pragmatism for a radical libertarian. Any step in the right direction is good, but one cannot accept a "diversion" or "reengineering" of state policies or institutions under the false guise of increasing liberty. Many examples come to mind, the most recent of which is President Bush's SS "privitization" - basically a whole new quasi-fascist forced savings program cloaked in libertarian rhetoric, that would do nothing to curtail or "privitize" that giant welfare program. Funny how America's rulers cloak their more evil intentions in the most libertarian language, isn't it?

When we think of anarchy, we usually think of the Hobbesian notion that the state is all that keeps at bay Man's natural condition of war, deprivation and animal savagery. Subtly we've all been infected with this ages-old propaganda, perpretrated by those with a plain incentive for us to be so infected - that is, those holding power of the state. That's not conspiracy talk (though it is a conspiracy), just basic economic analysis.

Speaking of that - private economic exchanges (whether between shopper and grocer, or between multibillion dollar corporations), private economic contracts (employment, insurance, consumer/producer), common laws such as traffic rules, and pricing on everything from labor to commodities to rates of interest to the medium and value of money itself can, have, and do occur naturally through the help of a sort of magical 'invisible hand' without any help (or more likely) hindrance from the state. Consult history to find that all these things, as well as their framework - the free market - precede the state.

Happily, these spontaneous types of human cooperation tend to dull the natural inclinations of the state to kill, terrorize and rob its own subjects or those of another state. One can gauge the propensity of a state to make war by the freeness of its trade with other states.

NPR and PBS were (briefly) on the chopping block recently. Too bad they were save at the last minute. Here is a general response to friends who get their undies all in a twist every time this comes up, accompanied by an exposition of principled anti-statism:

Its a long and tricky task to unpack an anti-state philosophy. Some people argue against the state on utilitarian or technical legal grounds. Outfits like the Cato Institute do this. They rightly say that nearly all government policies have (intended and unintended) negative consequences. They "don't work", so they should be curtailed. Of course, whether they work or not is in the eye of the beholder, but that's another story. Point is, there's no moral dimension to this approach. The only test is a policy's efficacy and utility. NPR/PBS probably have strong utility, for a lot of people.

Arguing against a state policy on legal or constitutional grounds seems to me like a meek and unmanly pleading - an oppressed subject complaining to his ruler that the he is transgressing his own laws. Well, who makes the laws? Yes a constitution is supposed to be the "law by which lawmakers govern", but for me the US constitution has been a lost cause for a long time. NPR/PBS, to a constitution purist, certainly aren't legitimate - but then most of government isn't. But like I said, its a lost cause. Only a morally insecure libertarian would still protest unconstitutional laws in the face of this.

Then there's morality. What does the state do? How does the state operate? What is right and wrong to you? Once you discover what the state does and how it operates, how does that match against your notions of right and wrong? Here's what I think:

George Washington said "Government is not reason or persuasion, government is force". That's basically all the state has - violence and threats of violence. No one volunteers their taxes, its forced out of them. No one volunteers to be regulated, they're threatened to comply. To most people, this is fine. That's what the state is for, right? To me its simple - why is it immoral for individuals to kill, terrorize and rob but just fine for the state? Shall we talk about deteriorating moral values? I think most of them stem from people's addiction to the state, and from approving of the immoral way it does things.

Obviously, the most horrible thing the state does is war. The "Save NPR" brigade are quite right that making an issue out of $100M for the CPB in the context of the war and a $2.5T federal budget is like pointing out the speck in someone else's eye while ignoring the log in your own. That's what congress is doing now. Those criminals love war, welfare, subsidy, protectionism, debt and inflation. So why the heck are they picking on PBS?

But that's not what I'm doing. I say the state is immoral, whatever the context. And the context of these ridiculous petitions is NPR/PBS funding - and so I'll speak my mind on this particular subject. But if anyone wants to write 100 petitions against war or taxation, I'll sign every one. In fact, considering how unimportant NPR/PBS is compared to the death and impoverishment of war and taxes, why don't we leave off these little petitions and get to something bigger?

Its happened again – they've gone and opened up another Wal-Mart nearby. Since its the new year, and we're supposed to confess our past weaknesses and strive to do better this year, allow me to confess this: I'm learning to love Wal-Mart.

Rather, I love what Wal-Mart gives me - low prices. Although that ought to be enough to entice any consumer to devote most of his retail dollar to the nearest Wal-Mart store, the company has many other things to recommend it. It employs 1.3 million worldwide. It earns for its shareholders more than the entire GDP of Switzerland. It sells boxes of Corn Flakes for 56% less than the competition. In short, Wal-Mart is a force for good.

But if doomsayers are to be believed, Wal-Mart is destroying the American way of life. We've all head cries about “Wal-Mart-ization”. Big Box retail stores like Wal-Mart and Home Deopt are crushing competition from small local shops, replacing high wage - often union - jobs with minimum wage jobs, and supporting even cheaper "slave" labor abroad. Indeed, most of this is true. My only question is: what's the problem?

The problem is that few people are willing or able to grasp one of the most basic economic principles – no pain no gain. In a progressive, dynamic, and relatively free-market economy like ours there are winners and losers. The winners – if they are entreprenuers or companies – get rich and grow. If they are consumers and employees, they get cheaper, better products and services, and a higher wage and standard of living. The losing companies and their employees, of course, get nothing but a failed business and a pink slip, and a whole lot of bitterness at “cruel” competition.

This is precicely the story surrounding Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart has caused some pain, particularly by ruining smaller businesses that couldn't compete, and by importing most of its merchandise from China, which further reduces American employment. But isn't this what unemployment insurance is for? And job retraining? And the Small Business Administration? And the myriad other government support programs for displaced workers and failed entreprenuers? Why are these taxpayer-funded cushions not enough for the malcontented? We may never know.

The bright side of Wal-Mart - and it far outweighs the dark side – is that for every single malcontent, there are literally thousands of consumers benefiting enormously from Wal-Mart's chief value proposition – its low prices. Ask yourself, do you really want to live in a 1950s world where few families could afford TVs and nice appliances, and people brushed their teeth with baking soda? If not, you should thank heaven for companies like Wal-Mart and the economic progress they represent. All the trade union people, anti-globalization types, and intellectual and media elites want one thing – to halt that progress and make you poorer.

And as for your own New Year's Resolution – try letting go of that guilt you feel when you walk into Wal-Mart next time.

When you get to work this morning, sitting down at your desk to a burnt cup of office coffee and your morning email, I ask you to contemplate that fixture of working life: the QWERTY keyboard.

Have you ever wondered how the keyboard got the way it did? I have. I've experimented recently with different key arrangements on my own board, a trivial thing to do in Microsoft Windows. As a chronic tendinitis sufferer, I have an incentive to try less fatigue-inducing alternatives to QWERTY, even if my words-per-minute get handicapped in the process. One promising arrangement I found is called “Dvorák”. It purports to be laid out on strictly ergonomic principles, placing the most frequently used keys in the most prominent positions. Despite this I am finding little relief so far. Typing, no matter how I slice it, just plain hurts.

Investigating further, I found to my surprise that controversy has swirled for years among economists over whether Dvorák or QWERTY are superior, and how QWERTY gained its market dominance. The lowly keyboard, it turns out, more than just an overlooked symbol of life in our networked world, is Exhibit A in the case against free-market capitalism.

The typewriter was invented in 1868 and, so the story goes, the now-familiar QWERTY keyboard was selected precisely because it prevented fast typing, which jammed the keys. Though it may have been the right design for the time, QWERTY critics say, we've all been suffering its inefficiencies since, and a mass conversion to Dvorák should be undertaken forthwith by the computer industry. More tellingly, these critics say that government is needed to force that conversion on us.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. Mainstream economists like the liberal-left Paul Krugman discuss the so-called “Economics of QWERTY”. This is the familiar story of BETA vs. VHS, Mac vs. PC, and Hybrid vs. SUV. To Krugman, the undeserved market success of technologies like the QWERTY keyboard is due not to superiority or low cost, but to early “lock-in”. These technologies simply beat their competitors to the punch, and market inertia keeps them dominant - and keeps all of us dim-witted consumers from switching en masse, even though we all know individually we'd be better off doing so.

This is all garbage, of course. Products dominate a market if – and only as long as – they serve consumers' needs. The QWERTY keyboard remains dominant because, as I discovered first-hand, Dvorák is no better. If it were, consumers would clamor for the new keyboards, and savvy entrepreneurs would provide them.

The true lesson to be learned here is that anti-capitalists always underestimate the intelligence and autonomy of individual consumers and entrepreneurs acting without help or guidance from Big Brother government. To them, we are all helpless in the face of a cruel and capricious free market that rewards not innovation, but timing and luck. They couldn't be more wrong. I prove it every day I sit down at my computer to type.

The bad news about the Big Dig keeps getting worse. While most of the news media are accurately reporting the horrific figures - nearly 700 leaks in the main tunnel, bungling contractors bailed out over 3,200 times, and 500% in cost overruns - public outrage usually doesn't sustain itself for very long. People have gotten used to the Big Fat Obnoxious Dig. They shrug their shoulders and blithely move on with their daily doings, offering at most a toss-off comment like "Those pesky bureaucrats!"

Though we have little reason to be thankful so far for this boondogle of a public works project, we are thankful for one thing - that the feds are paying for most of it.

Ever since the project's inception in 1985, the funding ratio has been pegged at around 80% federal to 20% state tax dollars. That makes the it the most obscene pork barrel fleecing of the other 49 states in the history of public works. For this we can thank Reagan-era Cabinet Secretaries George Schultz and Casper Weinberger, both former Bechtel executives, who might have helped steer federal funding to Massachusetts, and consequently to their friends at Bechtel. Such rotten connections should be enough to induce an accute case of deja vu in anyone who's heard juxtaposed the words 'Haliburton' and 'Dick Cheney'.

With the most recent revelations of corruption and ineptitude, talk has begun in Washington of finally shutting off the Federal spigot. At that point, for Massachusetts taxpayers, the panic will set in. And for good reason - when its someone else's money you're spending, who cares how badly its spent?

This prompts a larger question: can publicly funded projects of any kind avoid corruption, inefficiency, and rape of the taxpayer? The Big Dig is routinely labeled "The largest and most mismanaged public project" in US history, as though these two aspects are coincidental. The facts speak loudly that most initial estimates for government projects are lowballed, later spiralling out of control, and funds are always allocated not to contractors who are the most innovative market entrepreneurs, but to the most persistent political entrepreneurs - that is, those with the greasiest lobbyists. So, the larger the project, the larger the corruption. As economist Lew Rockwell, President of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute, puts it - "When the slop's in the trough, we can't be surprised when the pigs come out to eat."

What we now hear from politicians is righteous indignation and steely determination. We can conquer the corruption, save the project, protect the taxpayer form further abuse, make the scoundrels at Bechtel pay.

This is absurd, and no one should believe it. Trying to root out government patronage and corruption is like playing whack-a-mole - whack it down here and it pops up there. Human nature, supremely adaptable and greedy to the core, always finds a way to be corrupted.

But greed can also be a definite good. In fact, self-interest in the free market has been the engine of social progress for two hundred years. The key to any successful project is private, not public, ownership. So in the future, we should look to privately financed and managed highway systems.

Its hard to imagine what a privately owned and managed Big Dig would look like only because government has long held a monopoly on civil construction. Whatever the funding mechanism would be for such an arrangement - tolls, an auto-use tax - is unimportant. Human ingenuity would invent a solution to that. But what can't be invented is a government that knows how to spend The People's money better than The People themselves.

Last week James Carville, the colorful Democratic Party strategist and architect of the 1992 Clinton campaign - aka the "Ragin’ Cajun" - offered the way to salvation for disheartened members of his party: "We've got to be born again." His challenge gave voice to many Democrats disgusted at their anemic showing in this year's election. Rather than wallowing in denial, wringing their hands, or blaming defeat on an ignorant public, Carville says Democrats need to pare down their message, stop pandering to fringe left-wing groups, and diffuse radioactive wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion.

This approach would not be new for Democrats. Carville's own management of Clinton's campaigns emphasized a moderate position on cultural issues coupled with fiscal restraint and a rolling back of spending on many federal programs. What resulted was an unshackling of the American economy and a boom unseen since the 1920s. What worked once may certainly work again, though I for one would like to see the ideals of the Democratic Party lived up to even more fully than this. And so I say: Liberals, be born again Libertarians.

Blog discussions are raging on the web advocating just this sort of revival of the Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Back in the early days of the Republic, being a liberal really meant something - it meant standing for individual rights, freedom from tyranny - from either a king or your own fellow citizens - and a truly free capitalist market, not one where unholy alliances between industry and government predominate. A liberal was against big government and high taxes but for the Bill of Rights, against war and a large military but for citizen militias and gun rights. In short, liberals believed America was and should remain a true meritocracy.

As we all know, something funny happened to the Democrats on the way to the 2004 general election. For one thing, early southern Democrats' addiction to slave labor undermined their putative commitment to rights and made their cries against increasing federal power ring hollow. After emerging from their Civil War defeat and the long political winter following it, and rather than resolving their contradictions and replanting their libertarian roots, they simply embraced all the big-government ideals of their Republican opponents, and then some.

So here we are. Somewhere along the way the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties got reversed. Republicans are the supposed party of small government and economic liberty, while the Democrats stand for high taxes, redistribution of wealth, and special favors for minority groups. But we all know the truth - Republicans are crooks, in bed with big business and committed to war and moral legislation. And worse, they know it. On the other hand, most Democrats are truly well-intentioned if misguided folks who have simply lost their way lo these many years.

So I too call on Democrats to wake up and be born again. Wealth redistribution is working against you and for the Republicans - nearly fifteen cents out of every "Blue" state tax dollar goes to the "Red" states. So cut taxes sharply, cut spending even more, and balance the budget. Let states make up the difference as they are able. Pull the rug out from under gay-bashing bigots by getting government out of the marriage business for good. Shun environmentalists and realize that our single biggest polluter is the unnacountable federal government and its enabler the EPA. Bring our troops home, disentangle us from foreign alliances, and hang a giant 'Open for Business' sign at our ports. Free trade and a truly competitive economy will be here to stay, which is the best thing that could ever to happen to any poor man.

Such reforms would certainly be bitter pills to swallow for many Democrat-aligned groups - labor unions, trial lawyers, socialists, and other parasites. But if Democrats wish to rise from the ashes, they must have the courage to repudiate their own special interests and work for a return to true liberty, economic as well as civil. An army of image consultants won't save you, Democrats - what you need is the plain truth and the courage to act on it.

Yasser Arafat is dead. One more Islamofascist bites the dust. Call it one small step forward for mankind. But is it? To Arabs he was an icon, a righteous victim and defiant guerilla warrior wrapped into one man who for decades acted as titular head of a stateless people, the Palestinians. Recent corruption was wearing the shine off of his reputation, but despite this and his tacit support for the increasingly brutal Palestinian terrorists, he remained the most viable partner for peace with Israel - the best choice of a bad lot.

Why should Americans care about Palestine vs. Israel, and the Middle East in general? Until recenty that would've been a good question. Meddling in their affairs only got us burned in the past. Our unstinting support of Israel earned us little in terms of strategic advantage, while only breeding resentment from Arabs. But today, it should be obvious why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict matters: our part in it was a key motivator for the 9-11 attacks, touching off an open-ended 'War on Terrorism' that promises to mire us in ideological and armed conflict for a generation.

"So was 9-11 our fault?" you ask indignantly. However harmful our policy might have been toward the Arabs what could possibly have justified a crime like 9-11? I hate talking down to adults, but with so many Americans having succumbed to George W. Bush's childish view of the world as 'goodies' vs. 'baddies', I'm afraid its necessary: stop being a knee-jerker.

Pundit Pat Buchanan has long been a critic of the Bush Administration's empirialistic foreign policy. He's no knee-jerk Republican, but a common-sense conservative who's vision of a non-interventionist America is looking better all the time. When Bush says "You're with us or against us", Buchanan says "If you're not against us we'd like you to be with us". When Bush says "We must stay the course in Iraq", Buchanan quotes Kenny Rogers: "You have to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em". When Bush says of muslim extremists "They hate freedom", Buchanan asks "Do they hate us for who we are, or for what we do?"

Indeed, the Arabs love us for who we are. American culture reigns supreme and is emulated in the progressive Arab cities of Damascus and Amman. What they hate is our favoritism of Israel. And why should we take sides at all? There will always be interest groups with influence in government - pro-Palestinians no less than pro-Israelis - who want us to favor one side or another and to intervene on their behalf. But our government should keep hands off any foreign affairs that don't directly affect Americans' security. We must stop giving Arab extremists reason to use America as a scapegoat for their own misery, when their true opressors are their own corrupt rulers. Though I doubt Bush will take my - and Pat Buchanan's - advice, let's at least hope that Arafat's death won't propel us further down a dead-end road.

Winston Churchill once said "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." I turned 30 September 6th, and this year's election marks my political middle age: I've had a heart this long, it was now time to discover that I also have a brain.

What I am talking about here is not a conversion of party allegiance from Democratic to Republican, but from a mindset that views government as the solution to most problems to one that views it as the root cause of most problems. Though the Republican party has - ever since Ronald Reagan sucessfully ressurected the political ghost of arch-conservative Barry Goldwater - made itself out as the defender of traditional limits on government power, they deserve this reputation only when compared to the avowed socialists in the Democratic party. History teaches us that the first true American liberals came from Lincoln's Republican party of the 1850s, and that the Democratic party, after nearly being destroyed by the civil war, simply leap-frogged past them in their embrace of big government and high taxes, and their hostility to free market capitalism.

So how did I and my newly discovered brains vote this presidential election? We voted Libertarian. As expected, Michael Badnarik barely registered in polls, but at least this time the Libertarians saw fit to run a credible candidate who knew how to wear a suit and deliver a concise stump speech - skills their past candidates totally lacked. I'll refrain here from a defense of my decision to vote third-party, as most people with whom I talk try to bully me into doing. I'm not the only true conservative to be disgusted with the Republican (let alone the Democratic) offerings this year. Some bit the bullet and voted for Bush anyway, still others like me voted Libertarian or just stayed home.

Consider the record turnout of young voters this year. Given Churchill's dictum, it was natural to expect twenty-somethings to support the liberal candidate. They are inexperienced, psychologically under-developed, and ignorant of the economic struggles they are to face later in life as mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. Demographically they are waiting longer and longer to leave their parents' nest, retarding their ability to exist independent of some paternal authority. Consequently they wind up transfering many of their hopes for protection and susbsistence to the government. And waiting for them with open arms is that pack of perenially immature, tooth-fairy-believing, free-lunch-offering Peter Pans - the Democrats.

Even if young people do anticipate the struggles of 30-something adulthood, they are likely to still be under the impression that economic hardship is mostly the result of too little government support, not too much taxation and regulation. Just wait until they turn 30 and start earning a decent income - like me, if they've got any brains at all they'll have a quick conversion.

The great cultural critic H. L. Mencken once said "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods." How true. One can picture candidates as auctioneers, taking bids from special interests and their voting consituents on the property and wealth of their fellow citizens.

I know that these days, with the income tax a fixture of political life, it may seem extreme to think of it in terms of confiscated property, but that's exactly what it is. The only thing voluntary about Massachusetts' income tax these days is the novel mechanism, that debuted on last year's return, of giving taxpayers the option of paying the higher (and formerly statutory) 5.8% rate, rather than the current 5.3% rate. Not surprisingly, native son John Kerry exposed a bit of his liberal hypocrisy by calling for higher federal income taxes on the campaign stump, while quietly opting for the lower rate on his own state return.

Consider the fight this year over Governor Romney's efforts to complete the voter-mandated roll back of the state income tax from 5.85% to 5%. This is something state legislators, led by late House Speaker and Chief Oligarch Tom Finneran, have willfully refused to do despite direct orders from the voters in a 2000 referendum.

Romney has been busy campaigning for a raft of new Republican candidates for statewide office. Democratic lawmakers, by their obstructionist, anti-democratic refusal to obey voters' wishes on the tax cut may have unwittingly handed their opponents a potent weapon that will come back to wound them this tuesday. Though a Republican sweep is unlikely, there are several vulnerable Democratic encumbents. Even a few upsets would send a strong message to Beacon Hill.

Despite our unfortunate reputation as the 'Commonwealth of Tax-achusetts', our state does have a traditional resistance to big government and its attendant inefficiency and corruption. We are the birthplace of that great middle-class tax revolt,commonly known as the American Revolution. We are the descendants of Daniel Shays and his farmer's revolt against high property tax. We are the citizens who in 2002 nearly voted away the state income tax entirely.

But to listen to the elites at the Boston Globe Editorial Board, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, and other tax-friendly organizations, we the poeple don't know what's good for us. We don't fully appreciate the failing schools and ineptly managed public works (e.g. the Big Dig) that our taxes so amply fund. We don't understand why big union payouts for town employees require some of the steepest property tax increases in decades. And most importantly, we are selfish and inhumane if we dare challenge the state's monopoly on education by calling for more school choice and accountability.

Its a proven fact that taxpayers will always vote for smaller government. It happened in here in 2000, in Tennesse in 2001, in Alabama in 2003, and it will continue to happen throughout the country until lawmakers get the message: 'Stop auctioning off our stolen goods".

Yes, its that time again. Flu Season. Since the pandemic of 1918 killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions in Europe (possibly tipping victory toward the allies in WWI) keeping the inlfuenza virus in check has ranked near the top of public health concerns. Thankfully, doctors have had steadily greater success preventing another outbreak. Still, an average 36,000 Americans die of the flu each year, and it remains a leading cause of death. A regular flu shot for at-risk people could help end this.

But this year there's a vaccine shortage and (surprise) a panic. And as free-market economist Thomas Sowell once said "Whenever I hear the word 'shortage' I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually 'price control.'

And who controls prices? Well, in the free market consumers and producers "control" prices, or rather, arrive at mutually advantageous prices through an elaborate dance performed on the vast stage that is the American economy. But unfortunately, this time we're talking about price controls imposed by the government.

In 1994 President Bill Clinton signed into law a price freeze for all children's vaccines to be bought and distributed by the Centers for Disease Control. Needless to say, after 10 years of inflation, increasing health care costs that have outpaced inflation, and the appearance of more virulent strains of inlfuenza requiring new research to fight, the government now finds itself with few manufacturers interested in selling it vaccines at 1994 prices.

It's the simple A-B-Cs of economics - supply and demand - that explains this shortage. Government enforces a price ceiling on a vaccine, reducing manufacturers' profit incentive to pruduce it, and simultaneously consumers perceive a new bargain and think to themselves "Now that a flu shot costs so little, there's no reason I shouldn't get one!" An artificial increase in demand and reduction in supply results and we get our predictable shortage, waiting lists, and panic.

One would think that since this scenario has played out literally thousands of times over the years government would have learned its lesson. But not so. We are already hearing complaints about "greedy" drug companies and calls from beaurocrats to further nationalize health services. But moving in this direction would only result in longer waiting lines for the medicines we need, whose availability government intervention caused to dry up in the first place. In the extreme case, we'd end up like Soviet Russia, with its long lines for everything from toilet paper to aspirin. But even in the milder case, we'd likely have many more yearly deaths from the flu, simply because a vaccine wasn't readily available. Ask yourself: would you rather be a few dollars poorer and your child's or elderly parent's health better secured this winter, or take your chances in line for a "cheap shot" from the government?

To be a casual observer of this year's election rhetoric is a dangerous thing. Dangerous because marginally interested voters don't have the time, interest level, or inclination to cut through the spin from our major media outlets like NPR, CBS, New York Times, and Boston Globe. Thus when a headline like "President Bush's Cuts Tax For Rich" gets repeated often enough, it seaps unchallenged into voters' unconscious. They think: "Yeah, Bush ain't cutting my tax."

This happened to me. As one not predisposed to take anything from the media at face value, even I found myself believing that I was left out of the several rounds of tax cuts passed these last few years. A wake-up call came from an HR Block mailing to my home last March, which trumpeted the new Federal Income Tax rates for 2003, comparing them to the previous years'. To my surprise my marginal rate had fallen from 28% in 2000 to 25% in 2003. Sure, the top bracket fell from 40% to 35%, a full two points farther than mine - but those high-flyers are already paying way more than me, in dollar and percentage terms, and they deserve to keep more of what they earn, too.

So, as an inveterate tax hater, I was elated. I wasn't being left out at all! Who could have could have brainwashed me to think otherwise? Why, that old boogey man, Liberal Media. The truly shrill Paul Krugman of The New York Times (economist and occasional punching bag to Bill O'Reilly) is so jerky-kneed that he cannot write the word 'Bush' without spasms of disgust and many repetitions of 'Greedy Liar!'. The Boston Globe's Robert Kuttner writes his weekly screeds about Republican scams and duplicity, about how conservatives in Congress are stealing everyone's free lunch and giving it to their rich cronies. The most obscene assertion came from Kuttner last summer, when his response to the Republican argument that families who paid no income tax had not earned tax relief was: "Of course, these families do pay sales taxes, excise taxes, and property taxes."

What Kuttner would like, I'm sure, is a hand-out for the poor. That is, free money. So for him and other self-hating tax-payers out there, here's how a tax cut works: