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Friday, October 03, 2003 :::

Rights and Reason: How not to rebuild Afghanistan

A team of 35 Afghans--including seven women--have been working for the past 11 months to draw up a new constitution for Afghanistan. The process has included consulting 150,000 members of the public, but apparently not the US Constitution. The AP reports what appear to me to be many deficiencies:

The draft document says the government must provide women with education and health care equal to men. It also will mandate additional care for pregnant women and extra education for widows whose husbands were killed during the last two decades of war.

President Hamid Karzai is expected to make public the draft constitution in the next week. A 10-day meeting of a 500-member loya jirga, or grand council, is to convene in December to debate and ratify the document.

Implementing a constitution is crucial for Afghanistan as it lays the foundations for its first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for June 2004.

The draft constitution also declares Afghanistan a Muslim state but stops short of imposing Islamic Shariah law. Under Shariah, the Taliban ordered men to grow their beards long and pray five times a day, and carried out public executions and amputations for a range of crimes.

The Afghan constitution is scheduled to be revealed to the public next week, and I'm sure I'll have more to say then. But this I'll say now: the prosecution of this war makes me sick. If the Union fought the Confederacy the same way the US is fighting the Islamic militants, after Appomattox, the Union would have allowed the South to retain slavery as a means of showing the South that the Union would not trample on its sacred institutions.

Bush isn�t a warmonger�he�s a moral coward attempting to fight a compassionate war against an enemy who deserves only destruction.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 4:04 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Victory in Arizona

Congratulations to the Institute for Justice for scoring a major victory in Arizona's Court of Appeals reversing the city of Mesa's decision to seize a family-owned brake shop's property. The city used eminent domain to take the land of the brake shop, owned by Randall Bailey and his family, with the intent of using the land to facilitate the expansion of a neighboring Ace Hardware store. As is typical in these "economic development" thefts, the state argued the Bailey's store was rightly condemned as an example of blight.

The federal and Arizona constitutions prohibit the government from taking land except for a "public use" (and with compensation). Seizing land from one lawful business to give to another is hardly what the Framers' envisioned as a "public use". But this was before the age of urban renewal, where every state and local government saw itself as the central engine of economic growth. Mesa's argument to the Court of Appeals demonstrates this hubris in spades:

The City responds that the public will benefit from this redevelopment because a portion of the downtown area will be revitalized, creating an attractive �gateway� to downtown Mesa; substantial aesthetic enhancement will be achieved; property values will increase; jobs will be created; and tax and utility revenues will increase. These public benefits, argues the City, are sufficient to satisfy the �public use� requirement.

The city makes no mention of property rights, presumably because the city leaders don't consider the protection of such rights to be their function. The city is more concerned with enhancing its tax revenue, which in turn provides more funds for the government to spend on favored programs.

(Mesa's property values argument is also quite amusing; are real estate agents selling houses in the area by arguing "there's a newly expanded Ace Hardware nearby"?)

The courts have held that the government may take "blighted" property--i.e., slums--from private owners and give said property to other private interests. This simply created a pretext, however, for much of the eminent domain abuse that now takes place. Most local officials define "blight" as land that's not generating as much tax revenue as possible. Other cities look at "blight" in terms of the economic prestige of certain businesses. When New York officials seized a private office building under the "blight" pretext for the benefit of the New York Times Company, city officials acted out of fear that the Times would move to New Jersey, inflicting a psychological blow to New York's political and economic communities. Viewed in this light, blight takings are more about faux self-esteem than they are meeting legitimate governmental needs.

IJ, which represented the Baileys, can use this Arizona victory to bolster their eminent domain cases in other states. This case is in fact a tribute to the virtue of fighting a cause despite the long odds. For every defeat IJ has suffered on eminent domain issues, all it takes is one victory like this one to give the cause new life within the public and judicial spheres.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 2:06 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Defining the Public Interest

The Federal Communications Commission fined Infinity Broadcasting $357,000 over last November's "Opie and Anthony" incident in New York, where the two radio shock jocks broadcasted a segment of two people doing the nasty in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The FCC rules this a violation of federal anti-obscenity rules for broadcasters, and issued the fine against Infinity, the largest single-incident fine in the Commission's history.

Not surprisingly, some thought the FCC didn't go far enough, including FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat who wanted to consider revoking all of Infinity's broadcasting licenses. In a dissent from the FCC's decision, Copps wrote, "It all comes down to this: station owners aren�t given licenses to use the public�s
airwaves to peddle smut. They are given licenses to serve the public interest."

In a legal sense, Copps has a point. Federal law treats broadcasters not as private property owners, but as licensees of a "public good," namely the airwaves. Accordingly, the public, via Congress and the FCC, can decide what programming is acceptable under the licenses granted to private companies. Copps also points out, with merit, that the total fine against Infinity is little more than a "slap on the wrist" given the broadcaster's financial might.

That's the legal argument. Now let's try the philisophical-moral argument. First, Copps' suggestion that Infinity lose its broadcast licenses is far more obscene than the transgression that got Infinity in trouble in the first place. Copps genuinely believes the "public interest" is served not only through government censorship, but through shutting down private businesses that have not violated the legal rights of others. Infinity employs thousands of people. Should they all lose their jobs and livelihoods over the childish antics of two employees? Of course not.

Second, given the reputation--and I use that word loosely--of Opie & Anthony, it's reasonable to infer that the majority of people listening to the offending program were people who wanted to hear it. In other words, the people were voluntary buying the smut being peddled to them. If there's a market for this type of filth, why shouldn't a broadcaster meet this demand? The bulk of antitrust and competition law, which includes federal broadcasting laws, promote the view that "the consumer is entitled to have his every wish fulfilled". If that's the government's philosophy, than why is smut any less valid a demand than, say, the right to buy physician services at a fixed, below-market price?

Copps clearly sees himself, via his position as an appointed bureaucrat with no accountability to the President or Congress, as the just arbiter of what Americans should and should not have the option of listening to on the radio. This position is consistent with the laws that charge the FCC with protecting an undefined, somewhat mystic "public interest". Thus, it's hard to logically fault Copps' anti-business, anti-consumer, anti-individual rights position. It does mean, however, that we should fault the underlying law and demand its repeal. Radio stations should be treated as private property, period.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 1:52 PM | link | donate |

Capitalism and the Law: 'Supreme Court: pragmatists or ideologues?'

Patti Waldmeir at the Financial Times asks is the US Supreme Court is guided by pragmatism or ideology.

Although months have passed since the court's last extraordinary term - which yielded surprising rulings on affirmative action, homosexuality and federalism - the significance of that blockbuster term remains unclear.

Did the supposedly conservative court suddenly morph into a bastion of liberalism? Did it abandon the federalist revolution that was supposed to have been the Rehnquist court's legacy? Or did the justices merely rule on the cases that came before them, guided by pragmatism rather than ideology? The term ahead may - or may not - answer some of those questions.

It certainly is an amusing question. Here�s my answer: the Court is motivated by the ideology of pragmatism.

In the Nike commercial free speech case, the Court was presented with clear arguments that illustrated the reasons behind a businessman�s right to unshackled economically-motivated speech. It chose not to act on those arguments, and sent the case back to lower court for trial. In the University of Michigan affirmative action case, the Court was presented with clear arguments that illustrated the reasons why the government must not grant preferential access to its services on the basis of irrational criteria. It chose not to act on those arguments, and reaffirmed the substance of race-based preferences. Only in the Lawrence v. Texas did the Court respond to arguments that an individual has a right to their sexual capacity and that the constitution protects that right.

One wonders why the Court got it right when it came to deciding on the right to sodomy but not so right on the right to free speech or equal treatment under the law. No decision logically integrates with the other. Decisions read more like rationalizations then exercises in reason. One sees it in Justice Scalia when he writes that fundamental rights are created and can be taken away by government fiat. Once sees it in Justice Thomas when he writes compellingly that there is no philosophic or historical justification for the government�s encroachments of rights in one decision, and then in a similar case, remains silent. One sees it in Justice O�Connor when she writes an opinion supporting unequal protection under the law, as long as it expires in a generation. One sees it in Justices Breyer and Souter when they look to Europe for answers instead of to our own American traditions of law.

This is a Court animated not by the principle of individual rights�a principle is an immutable permanent truth must be acted upon constantly. Instead, this is a Court that acts by a pragmatic, rule of thumb thinking where no fact can be known with certainty in advance and everything is decided by their view of the prevailing winds. And this is why activism before the Court is crucial, not that it will change the Court�s thinking on the first instance, but in that it lays the larger groundwork for future change.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 10:47 AM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Counting the Bodies

Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, more than 8,438 physicians have been prosecuted for alleged antitrust violations by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. This figure encompasses 18 groups ranging in size from six to 1,500 physicians. To my personal knowledge, at least three other groups are under investigation at this time, and in all likelihood the FTC's current "one physician group a month" quota will continue in the immediate future.

To put the number in perspective, 8,438 is about 1% of all physicians in the United States.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 10:01 AM | link | donate |

Thursday, October 02, 2003 :::

Sports: Mount Limbuagh Erupts

A commenter below asked for my view of the Rush Limbaugh-Donovan McNabb controversy. Nick and I had a dialogue late last night on this issue, and I was prepared to offer lengthy commentary on the story. Then I changed my mind. When I stopped to think about it critically, I realized this story isn't worth much genuine commentary. Limbaugh's charge against McNabb--or as Limbaugh puts it, his charge against the media--was accompanied by no particular context or evidence. Accordingly, I'm treating Limbaugh's entire statement as a frivolous charge unworthy of rebuttal.

I will add, however, that I find it pathetic that a man with the success and influence of Limbaugh chose to launch a cheap, unprovoked attack on the sports media over McNabb. There is plenty of uncovered examples of genuine media bias that need to be addressed. Here at CAC, we make every effort to shine the light on government policies and media biases that are ignored by the media and the larger culture. I would be insane to waste my time inventing biases to attack. If Limbaugh can't sustain his act without doing so, then perhaps he's outlived his usefulness.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 5:15 PM | link | donate |

Wednesday, October 01, 2003 :::

Antitrust News: Europe Loses Another One

It should bother Americans to learn that European courts are more active in protecting businesses from antitrust abuse than their passive American judicial colleagues:

A European Union court yesterday annulled a $317 million antitrust fine imposed on major shipping companies accused of fixing prices on trans-Atlantic routes.
In a defeat for EU regulators, the European Court of First Instance said the annulment was "based partly on lack of evidence and infringement of the rights of defense."

The Luxembourg-based court did uphold the European Commission's 1998 decision that the shippers' cartel regulating capacity and fixing prices on trans-Atlantic routes broke competition rules.

However, it said the regulators had failed to prove that the shippers had unfairly sought to induce potential competitors to join their Trans-Atlantic Conference Agreement. The court said 90 percent of the fine was imposed for that reason.

The judges also said the shippers had voluntarily notified regulators of their actions, "thereby protecting the undertakings from potential financial penalties."

This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the European Commission's antitrust enforcers before the European courts. These setbacks may be encouraging to Microsoft, which this week decided to contest the latest Commission efforts to slap additional antitrust sanctions on the company. Microsoft probably realizes they have a fighting chance on appeal to the European courts, as opposed to the antitrust-biased American courts.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 5:11 PM | link | donate |

Antitrust News: Free Stuff from Microsoft!

And so the pillaging begins. Attempting to exploit Microsoft's $1.1 billion settlement of a 1999 lawsuit bought on behalf of California consumers that claimed Microsoft violated the state's antitrust and unfair competition laws, San Diego-based Lindows.com has set up a special website it claims will facilitate an �instant settlement� of consumer's claims, gives away a free PC to the first 10,000 claims applicants and ever so conveniently, allows consumers to purchase Lindows software with their settlement proceeds. Reasons for joining in on the looting are offered in a Flash video on the settlement website:

First, you like free stuff. If you qualify, you get to go shopping and Microsoft picks up the tab. . .

Second, you can send Microsoft a strong message that it�s not alright to abuse their monopoly at the expense of you, the consumer. Microsoft will get back some of the $1.1 billion dollar settlement from any portion that goes unclaimed. Don�t let that happen. . .

Third, you can spur innovation by helping channel funds from Microsoft to some of the alternative technologies that are now available. Competition is always a good thing for consumers and the practices for which Microsoft was found guilty harmed competing companies and technologies, so even if you can�t use the products available to you at msfreepc.com, by submitting your claim, you�ll be assisting several companies and organizations to compete with Microsoft, helping to bring balance to the marketplace and discouraging future abuses and overcharging of consumers by Microsoft.

And finally, fourth, perhaps you have a friend that would enjoy the products at msfreepc.com. You are welcome to make gift out of anything you purchase there using you instant settlement. . .

The video comes complete with an image of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sitting on a pile of $100 dollar bills.

According to the Lindows website, Microsoft�s attorneys have sent Lindows CEO Michael Robertson a letter saying he is mischaracterizing the settlement and encouraging the public to submit fraudulent claims by using digital signatures instead of hand signing their claims forms.

Robertson responded in a letter back to Microsoft that reads in part:

Our plan is to continue to offer the MSfreePC service in spite of your threats. If required, we will be a voice in the courtroom defending a consumers rights (sic) to use technology and an online process to secure their settlement claims. I believe your company refers to this as the �right to innovate�.

Heh. The only innovation Robertson is engaged in is using antitrust to loot a commercial rival.

Of course, none of this is really a problem for Microsoft, since antitrust itself is wholesome law, and Microsoft has put antitrust behind them. But at this case indicates, that might not a wise strategy for a company that plans on long term success . . .

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 2:58 PM | link | donate |

Antitrust News: Daily Roundup

* Today in Washington, the National Association of Attorneys General opens its three day seminar on antitrust. NAAG's Antitrust Project is headed by NewYork AG Eliot Spitzer, the self-appointed regulatory czar of American business. Susan Creighton, the FTC's antitrust caparegime will address the AGs on the Commission's recent efforts to limit the scope of the state action doctrine.

* Alaska's attorney general has opened an investigation into the sale of Yukon Fuel Company, one of the state's top diesel fuel producers. The state is concerned that Yukon's eventual buyer will be Crowley Maritime Service, currently Yukon's chief competitor. Alaska relies heavily on diesel fuel, and consolidation of the two companies could lead to price increases, which in antitrust parlance is akin to economic genocide. One of the more puzzling statements on this case comes from Meera Kohler, an electricity consumer advocate, who argues, "Without competitors, it would be whatever the market will bear, with no alternatives. This is puzzling because the whole point of competition is to decide what price "the market will bear". Mohler and her allies in the state AG's office don't want market competition, they want antitrust to function as a de facto price control over diesel fuel.

* The Justice Department reached separate agreements with General Electric and Alcan requiring divestitures before the companies can complete acquisitions of smaller rivals. It's funny. Antitrust regulators always howl that large corporations exert coercive and unfair influence over the market, yet these same companies always seem to settle DOJ antitrust charges without a fight. Perhaps big business isn't exerting enough coercive and unfair power in the market. If they did, the DOJ and FTC regulators would likely be out of a job, benefiting producers and consumers in the long run.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 1:01 PM | link | donate |

Tuesday, September 30, 2003 :::

The Courts: Briefing to the Max

Eugene Volokh explains the rules for filing inimicus curiae--or "enemy of the court"--briefs in federal court:

1. Focus primarily on repeating the arguments of your favored party. After all, anything worth saying once is worth being said by everyone who wants to say it. The official term for this (originally from Law French) is the "moi aussi principle."

2. If you do have a genuinely original twist to add to the analysis, don't just stick with it -- that's bad form. Be sure to surround it with lots of other points that echo what your favored party says (see item 1 above). A ratio of 10 page of repetition to 1 page of new material is the norm, though experts believe that even this is too low.

3. Always include lots of general rhetoric, such as "The importance of the timeless guarantees of the First Amendment cannot be overstated in our marketplace of ideas, and the republic on which it rests." Judges and law clerks just love that sort of stuff. This is especially true when filing briefs before the Supreme Court. The sorts of close and difficult cases that the Court hears are almost always decided primarily by applying general slogans. In fact, it's considered disrespectful of the Court to focus on mere factual details, or to use more mundane language.

4. Always keep in mind that (according to Rule 3.7), "The primary purpose of an inimicus curiae brief is to allow the inimicus to tell donors and other supporters that the inimicus Has Filed A Brief Before The Court expressing the timeless verities for which the inimicus and its supporters stand." Any departure from this purpose is frowned on.

Eugene, of course, is humorously describing common problems with amicus curiae briefs. As the person resonsible for drafting CAC's amicus briefs, I have seen all of these foibles many times over. Here at CAC, we try to avoid making these mistakes, though admittedly we're not always successful. Our brief in the Michigan affirmative action cases was largely repetitive of the general arguments offered--but then again, with more than 90 amicus briefs filed, it's hard to say anything original. At least we kept our brief to eight pages, likely making CAC's contribution to that case the shortest of the 90-plus participants.

In our briefs in Nike v. Kasky and United States Postal Service v. Flamingo Industries, however, I believe CAC made a valuable contribution. In both cases we brought up constitutional arguments that were not addressed at all by the parties. In Nike, we challenged the constitutionality of California's "private attorney general" statute under the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution (which requires all states to maintain republican governments rather than direct democracies). And in Postal Service, we argued the structure of the USPS violates the Supreme Court's requirements for a sovereign agency under Morrison v. Olson (which defines the difference between "superior" and "inferior" officers of the Executive Branch). Whatever impact our briefs had on the ultimate outcome (none in Nike; to be determined in Postal Service), we upheld our role as legitimate "friends of the court".

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 9:25 PM | link | donate |

The Culture: So where do you advance Objectivism?

An anonymous Objectivist scholar has been bloging on the apparent collapse of David Kelley's "Objectivist Center." TOC is a quintessential libertarian organization in that it is an organization without either a worthwhile intellectual base or a practical focus. I have ignored it accordingly. While I agree with the post on the substantive points about TOC, I was struck by his comments that TOC's efforts are likely run out of "some guy's apartment in Alexandria." That's hardly damming in my mind. After all, I run the Center out of my Alexandria apartment. But the comment, however directed, irritated me enough to get me thinking.

In her 1962 Ford Hall Forum talk, "America's Persecuted: Big Business," Ayn Rand called for a civil liberties group for businessmen. The founding vision of the Center is for it to be just such a group. Dare I brag, our activities have pioneered now ground in the advancement of Objectivism (after all, there have been three Objectivists that have appeared on national broadcast TV--Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and me). But given our resources, I run the Center out of my Alexandria apartment. I do so because the Center does not enjoy the financial support to allow it to pay for commercial office space.

Does that diminish the value of the Center's accomplishments? In the past year, the Center has filed briefs with the US Supreme Court defending equal treatment under the law (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger), the rights of businessmen to full protection of their speech (Nike v. Kasky), and attacking government-created monopolies (United States Postal Service v. Flamingo)? The Center has issued a continuous stream of comment letters defending the victims of antitrust prosecution. Objectivist arguments will win in political and legal debates once they are engaged by our opponents. Of course, this requires our opponents hear our arguments in the first place, particularly given that these people currently control the political and legal forums in which these debates occur. The Center has fought for capitalism where no Objectivists have before--in the corridors of power that squelch our freedom and potential for prosperity and with the very people that suffer accordingly.

I wish I had all the funding I needed to fully advance the Center's goals. I want nothing more then to one day lay the cornerstone for what I envision would be both an office and Objectivist community center here in Washington. But in the meantime, I am proud of the record accomplishments of the organization I lead, however humble our digs.

::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 12:08 AM | link | donate |

Monday, September 29, 2003 :::

Antitrust News: A Battle of Steel Wills

The Washington Times' editorial page has discovered a potential barrier to economic efficiency--antitrust:

Steel analysts agree that consolidation can only help a global market burdened with oversupply. Anti-trust regulators could differ with this consensus, however, to the detriment of the U.S. steel industry. Consolidation cops have an undistinguished record on blocking steel mergers, such as preventing U.S. Steel's attempt to buy National Steel in 1994.

In the coal industry, there has been more recent evidence of overzealous anti-trust policing that analysts say augurs badly for future steel mergers, with the Federal Trade Commission giving Arch Coal a second information request on its bid to buy Triton Coal. "This is a review," said Merrill Lynch metals analyst Dan Rolling, "that should have taken five minutes," since there is a gross overabundance of coal. Instead, regulators are effectively suspending a merger that should have gotten speedy approval.

Just a few months ago, the Times' editors were chomping at the bit to subject Major League Baseball to antitrust prosecution because owners wouldn't relocate the Expos to Washington, DC. And the Times, like most major media outlets, provided no substantial coverage or scruting of the Bush administration's antitrust misdeeds in other industries. Still, the Times' comments are welcome here, if only because it demonstrates not all conservatives consider antitrust an enlightened form of government intervention.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 8:37 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: The Real Costs of Healthcare

Today's Wall Street Journal reports health care costs are expected to rise 12% for businesses that provide coverage for their employees. This would be the fifth consecutive year of double-digit percentage increases. This year costs rose an average of 16%.

Jim Foreman, managing director of Towers Perrin, the consulting firm that produced the survey, noted that employers' were facing added strains of providing health benefits in a bad economy because "[t]here's no way you can pass these costs on to customers." And therein lies the problem. Most of American healthcare financing policy is now based on the axiom "the consumer must never pay market value". Federal policymakers have gone to great lengths to install smoke and mirrors throughout the healthcare system to hide the true costs from consumers. Employers are given tax breaks to provide healthcare coverage, something which is not inherent to the employer-employee relationship. The FTC and DOJ prosecute doctors that try to protect the erosion of their incomes by government-sponsored managed care companies. The managed care firms, in turn, acclimate the consumer population to paying more for an inferior level of service. And all the while, political leaders are looking for ways to further mask consumer costs--exhibit A being the ongoing effort to provide government-sponsored prescription drug benefits.

Major labor unions--which enjoy cartel protections under federal law--firmly oppose any effort by employers to shift the cost of healthcare back to consumers. This is not just a matter of short-term practicality, but of long-term ideology: the AFL-CIO backs government-run socialized healthcare, and the best way to get that is by driving employers to the brink of financial ruin over healthcare costs. That way big business will be clamoring for socialized medicine just to get the cost monkey of their backs. This is why, for instance, many larger corporations have thwarted efforts to give physicians an antitrust exemption . Corporate America will condemn physicians to serfdom rather than take a principled stand for free markets.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 8:33 PM | link | donate |

The War: Treason in the White House?

From the Washington Post:

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

In July, the odious Robert Novak wrote a column exposing Valarie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (the author of the report debunking the Niger uranium story), as a CIA agent or operative. Novak cited two senior administration officials.

According to the Post, yesterday another senior administration official revealed that the two officials were shopping the "story" to six different journalists, and that the motivation of the two officials was revenge against Joseph Wilson.

At least, Robert Novak has revealed the identity of an alleged CIA agent. If Novak is telling the truth, then two people in the Administration need to go to jail and he is shielding them. If the Post's senior administration official is telling the truth, then five other journalists also know who the culprits are, and are concealing the truth. In addition, the senior administration official knows the truth and is remaining silent, in public at least.

Someone needs to go to prison for this.

The Washington Post Article

The Bob Novak column

UPDATE: Novak has changed or updated his story. From the Drudge Report, with no attribution:

'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'

Part of this quote is duplicated on
cnn.com in the 9th paragraph and given as something Novak said on Crossfire today.

According to the Washington Post's anynonymous source, there are five journalists who can either corroborate Novak's story or contradict his account of what Novak's anonymous sources said. This might not be a matter of criminal conduct, but of Novak's trademark sloppiness. Why does this guy keep his job again?

::: posted by John Bragg at 11:40 AM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Barriers to Entry

Thomas Sowell attacks one of the major reasons for the shortage of qualified teachers in government schools:

You may have heard how hard it is to find enough teachers -- and therefore how necessary it is to raise salaries, in order to attract more people into this field. One example can demonstrate what is wrong with this picture, though there are innumerable other examples.

A young man who graduated summa cum laude from elite Williams College decided that he wanted to be a teacher. He sent letters and resumes to eight different school districts. Not one gave him even the courtesy of a reply.

Does that sound like there is a teacher's shortage? Moreover, any number of other highly qualified people have had the same experience.

The joker in the deal is that, no matter how highly qualified you are, your desire to become a teacher is not likely to get off the ground unless you have jumped through the bureaucratic hoops that keep people out of this field -- thereby protecting the jobs of unionized incompetents who are already in our schools.

The most important of these hoops is taking unbelievably dreary and stupid courses in education. Using these costly and time-consuming courses as a barrier, those in the education establishment "maintain low standards and high barriers at the same time," as Secretary of Education Rod Paige has aptly put it.

Factual studies show no correlation between taking these courses and successful teaching. Private schools are able to get good teachers by hiring people who never took any such courses. That is where our Williams graduate finally found a job.

The very people in the education establishment who maintain barriers to keep out teachers are the ones constantly telling us what a shortage of teachers there is -- and how more money is needed. This is a scam that has worked for years and will probably work for more years to come.

State licensing of professionals constitutes a major barrier to entry, yet you rarely hear much about this from antitrust regulators. Instead, the Federal Trade Commission has spent its resources attacking voluntary professional societies that try to maintain ethical standards without resorting to government coercion. The FTC, of course, sees voluntary action as illegal, but not state-imposed licensing regimes, which like antitrust are designed to, cough, "protect the public interest".

In the past year, the FTC prosecuted three groups for minor provisions in their ethical codes that did not meet the standards set by Commission lawyers. In all three cases, the FTC explicitly banned the groups from expressing any opinion about ethics that conflicted with the views of the Commission. To give you an example of what we're talking about, one group--the Institute of Store Planners--had an ethical rule that said members should avoid participating in certain types of bid competitions. Store planners, who design retail interiors, had been screwed in the past by unethical customers who solicited designs from multiple store planners, then after picking one designer, the winning bidder would steal design elements from his competitors. The losing bidders, meanwhile, received little to no compensation for their work. ISP's rule was thus designed to prevent store planners from hurting themselves. ISP never enforced the rule, since it was understood to be an ethical opinion. But the FTC spent thousands of dollars to force ISP to drop the opinion from their ethics code on grounds that consumers were being harmed.

The FTC then misled Congress about the ISP and other voluntary ethics code cases. In a formal report to Congress, the FTC said their actions in these cases broke-up "smoke-filled room conspiracies"--their words, not mine--and that consumers significantly benefitted. In fact, there was no evidence of consumer benefit, and these "conspiracies" all involved ethics codes that had been public knowledge for years--in ISP's case, for more than three decades.

If the FTC put half the energy it spends violating the First Amendment into fighting the teacher unions, then we might see some "consumer benefit". But attacking large, well-financed targets is not the FTC's preferred method of operation.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 9:44 AM | link | donate |

Sunday, September 28, 2003 :::

Politics: Objectivism in Action

I bitch when Objectivists sit on their fat hides and don't do anything, so it's only fair I praise the ones that do. D. Logan Darrow Clements is an Objectivist running for governor on the California recall ballot. He seems to have the rhetoric down nicely:

Ayn Rand knew that big government ruins all it touches while freedom leads to incredible prosperity. I know, as did she, that the economy will roar to life if we liberate it from excessive taxation and abusive regulation. See the work of freedom in grocery stores filled with food, hospitals filled with lifesaving technology, and a computer industry filled with innovation. See the work of big government in power blackouts, failing schools and traffic jams. The more important the task, the more reason it should be handled by resourceful companies motivated by profit, not bumbling politicians motivated by power.

His website constantly refers to Atlas Shrugged as "America's 2nd most influential book". I believe it came in behind Dr. Phil's new weight loss book.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 7:14 PM | link | donate |

Rights and Reason: Commerce on commerce

Commerce Secretary Donald Evans has an op-ed in today's Washington Times explaining the Bush administration's approach to business:

Past government leaders have failed to address the growing burdens American businesses carry. Inaction in the 1990s on problems such as growing health care costs, runaway junk lawsuits, insufficient energy and unreasonable business regulations now are forcing businesses to lay off employees.

The Bush administration came to office to solve problems � not pass them on to future generations. The president is working with Congress to create the conditions under which businesses can grow and create jobs.

The president's tort reform and medical liability reform will make our businesses more competitive. Junk lawsuits � especially the ones aimed at our doctors � might enrich trial lawyers, but they bankrupt good businesses and put blue-collar Americans out of work.

Evans' fine rhetoric, unfortunately, does not explain why the administration's antitrust policy has become more aggressive and destructive with each passing month. Evans highlights the unique burden doctors face from tort lawsuits, yet he expresses no understanding of the antitrust burden thrust upon them by the government's antitrust lawyers. Evans notes unfair regulations destroy jobs, yet he makes no acknowledgment of the wealth that is destroyed by the FTC's efforts to undo mergers years after the fact or the jobs that have been lost when businesses are forced to shut down rather than face antitrust investigations where they are afforded few, if any, constitutional due process rights.

Every day this administration is in office, its antitrust regulators hurt the rights and economic livelihoods of "average Americans". Until Secretary Evans (and his boss) realize this, we must continue to treat the current administration as an enemy, not a friend, of individual rights and capitalism.

::: posted by Skip Oliva at 10:58 AM | link | donate |

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