Two cheers for the congressional GOP

Kudos to the house Republicans for standing united in an ultimately futile attempt to stop the unconstitutional atrocity that just oozed its way to passage on Sunday.

However…

Do you really want to get the “tea party” rebellion back on your side? Show the depth of the convictions you claim to have on government interference in the health care industry.

You can start by publicly renouncing your support for the Medicare drug entitlement that would not have passed without you.  Honestly, this is log-in-the-eye material here.

Quick Quote: Frédéric Bastiat on wealth redistribution

There’s an abundance of data supporting this from the experience of Communist societies, but certain western academics and politicians remain convinced that the problem resides in the execution of the philosophy, not in the philosophy itself.

If it were to be asserted on principle, admitted in practice, sanctioned by law, that every man has a right to the property of another, the gift would have no merit—charity and gratitude would be no longer virtues. Besides, such a doctrine would suddenly and universally arrest labor and production, as severe cold congeals water and suspends animation; for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants?

-- Frédéric Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy

Feel free to draw your own applications to the financially destructive, liberty-smothering health care boondoggle that just passed.

Is Facebook planning to start charging for access?

There are a lot of Facebook groups out there claiming that on some date certain, such as July 9, 2010, FB will either start charging all users for access, or will divide its services into free and premium access levels.

(click to enlarge)

Think, people, think!

Do any of these groups point to a Facebook news release or an article on a major news website supporting this claim?  No?  Then why do you support them by joining?

Whoever started these rumors may not be trying to scam you out of your money like the “free gift card” folks are, but they are scamming you nonetheless, and they’re having a good laugh at your expense.

On the plus side, your experience may be fodder for some psychology PhD dissertation on social engineering.

House Deemocrats come under withering online mockery of their unconstitutional proposal

Even the Washington Post can’t ignore the absurdity of simply deeming a bill to be passed without an up-or-down vote:

The proposed House "deem and pass" vote strategy is already facing one of the most insidious enemies of contemporary political discourse: online mockery.

Perhaps because of the resemblance of the phrase to #demonsheep, a hashtag given to a recent bewildering California U.S. Senate race ad, the deem and pass legislative procedure has been given one of its own by opponents on Twitter, where wits and wags have decided that they can play this game at home and #deem things done just by declaring them so.

Keep up with the Twitter feed here.

Facebook is a goldmine for scammers

In recent days I noticed that several of my Facebook friends had become fans of a page called “First 10,000 Fans Get a $1000 Wal-Mart Gift Card!”
Just the name of the page raised a red flag in my mind. Walmart (not “Wal-Mart”) was planning to invest ten million dollars in a Facebook promotion?
So we start with an improbable typo and an unlikely premise. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to the fan page. Here is what I saw (click for larger image):

Well, there’s the “Wal-Mart” typo again. Maybe it’s just an incompetent web programmer that doesn’t know the correct spelling of his employer’s name. Like I said: improbable.
I looked through the various tabs of the fan page, looking for evidence that the page was actually sponsored by Walmart. All I found was a link to their online store website. The corporate website, by the way, makes no mention of this promotion, but that might be because Walmart was testing a viral marketing strategy (a ten million dollar test?), so I didn’t give this fact a lot of weight.
I also went to Walmart’s official Facebook page. Again, no hint of the promotion.
On the official page’s Discussions tab, there’s a thread about this “Free Gift Card” page. There, someone posted a link to an article on Walmart’s corporate website. The article warns about bait-and-switch scams that use free Walmart gift cards as the bait. After luring you in, they get down to their real business: trying to sell you magazines, or whatever.
Well, how about that?
I didn’t really have to do all of this additional research. The name of the fan page should have been the dead giveaway.
But wait! The fan page has testimonials of happy Facebook users! And it has a place where I can submit my own testimonial. Doesn’t that lend credibility to the page?
Sure, this comment panel can easily be faked, and sure, the links don’t go anywhere, but let’s set that aside for a moment and just try to submit a comment. If you enlarge the above screenshot, you can see the comment I tried to submit. After clicking the button, I got this:

Sure, whatever.
Did you hear that the latest edition of the Random House dictionary accidentally left out the word “gullible”?
Sometimes being a cynic can save you a lot of headaches.
12 March UPDATE: Here are some more instances of the “First 10,000” scam on Facebook. (If a link no longer works, it probably means that Facebook has removed the page in response to complaints)

• First 10,000 Fans Get a $500 Best Buy Gift Card!
• First 10,000 Fans get to Test and KEEP an Apple iPad!!!
• First 10,000 Fans Get A Free Ikea Gift Card
• First 10,000 Fans Get a $1000 IKEA Gift Card!
• Wal-Mart First 10,000 Fans Get a $1000 Gift Card! (A new one, complete with the exact same testimonials!)
• First 10,000 Fans Get A Free Ikea Gift Card (a different one from the ones listed above)
• First 10,000 Fans Get A Free Home Depot Gift Card
• First 10,000 Fans Get A Free Best Buy Gift Card (hey, wait – the testimonials here are nearly all the same as the ones for Home Depot!)
• first 10,000 to join get a free chocolate bar! (this one’s a pretty lame me-too page that appears to be a deliberate attempt to measure the gullibility of FB users)
• Twilight New Moon! First 10,000 Fans Get a Free New Moon DVD!!!

24 March UPDATE:

• Official Olive Garden Week, Dine In On Us This Week Only (Same general format as the others, but this one actually attempts to justify the obvious fact that it's selling stuff)

28 March UPDATE:

• IKEA.com Register Now to a Get Shopping Spree on Us! (This one works a little -- just a little -- harder to look legit. It might help if they would come up with some new pretend Facebook user comments)

7 April UPDATE: Great news – PC World reports that FB is aggressively taking these pages down as soon as they hear about them.  FB also has a warning on its security page.

That giant sucking sound you hear…

…is your hard-earned money going into the coffers of the federal government and into the pockets of those who do business (directly or indirectly, through contracts or lobbying) with the federal government.

Washington Examiner, March 10:

6 of the 10 richest counties in U.S. are in DC area

Loudoun ranks as the richest county in the United States, immediately followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, while Montgomery, traditionally one of the wealthiest, is now 10th.

Forbes magazine ranked eight other Washington-area counties in its list of the nation's 25 wealthiest counties, far more than any other area in the country. The rankings are based on 2008 median household income data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Loudoun's median household income was $110,643, while Fairfax's was $106,785 and Howard's came in at $101,710.

Here are the rankings, according to Forbes.

In my youth my family lived in four of the top ten counties, but we certainly dragged the median down in each case.

And now, for a completely trivial pet peeve: “Guardrail Damage Ahead”

Here in Texas, whenever someone puts a serious dent in a guardrail, the highway department will send out someone to put up signs alerting us to this fact.

The Texas Department of Transportation’s Maintenance Operations Manual explains when the warning signs should go up:

"Guardrail Damage Ahead" signs should be installed only when substantial damage occurs to guardrail barriers or attenuators which causes them to not function properly.

What the manual doesn’t explain, however, is why this warning to drivers is necessary.

Unless the damage is so severe that the guardrail is sticking out into a lane of traffic, no hazard is posed, so what’s the point?

Whenever I see one of these signs, I say to myself, “Wow, thanks for the warning!  If I lose control of my car here, it might not be safe for me to hit that guardrail.  I must aim for something else.”

How the MSM read Joe Stack’s manifesto

Via RedState, February 22:

For what it’s worth, read it yourself and decide.

McCain: It’s not my fault! They made me vote for it!

Senator John McCain, just now realizing that conservatives consider his vote for the TARP financial industry bailout to be a political liability, offers this defense (Arizona Republic, February 22):

Under growing pressure from conservatives and "tea party" activists, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is having to defend his record of supporting the government's massive bailout of the financial system.

In response to criticism from opponents seeking to defeat him in the Aug. 24 Republican primary, the four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

So.  Bush administration officials assured you that the money would be used in a particular way.  Then, you and your staff combed through the proposed legislation and found that yes, safeguards were in place to ensure that the money would indeed be used in the way specified by the officials.  Thus, with confidence you cast your vote in favor of the TARP legislation.

Wait.  What’s that?  You didn’t read the legislation before voting on it?  You simply relied on administration assurances that the the money would be spent to combat the housing crisis?

And now it’s their fault that you cast your vote for a bill that had no such restrictions on the money?

You think this defense is going to mollify your critics?

Again and again, you remind us that if Sarah Palin hadn’t been on the ticket, your loss to Barack Obama in 2008 would have been epic.

Did the Civil War truly settle the secession question?

Prior to the American Civil War, it was popularly assumed that states which had freely chosen to enter the Union could just as freely withdraw from said union at their own discretion.  Indeed, from time to time individual states or groups of states had threatened to do just that, but until 1860 no state had actually followed through on the threat.

Since then, it has been considered axiomatic that the War “settled the question” of whether or not states had the right to secede.  The central government, backed by force of arms, says the answer is No.  As long as no state or group of states tests the central government’s resolve, we can consider the question to be “settled” from a practical viewpoint.

This assertion has long troubled me from a philosophical and moral viewpoint.  We are supposedly a nation of laws, and the central government is supposedly subservient to the laws that established and empower it.

In a nation of laws, when someone asks, “Do states have a right to secede from the Union?”, a proper answer would have one of two forms:

• “Yes, because x.”
• “No, because x.”

Here, x would be an explanation of the laws that supported the Yes or No answer. 

With the secession issue, though, we are given the following as a complete and sufficient answer:

“No, because if any state tries to secede, the central government will use force of arms to keep it from succeeding.”

There is no appeal to law in this answer – just brute force.

Based on this premise, the central government can amass to itself whatever right or power it chooses, simply by asserting it.  After all, who has the power to say otherwise?

Come to think of it, that’s exactly how the central government has behaved more often than not since the Civil War.

---

This issue came to mind today because of an item posted today on a trial lawyer’s blog (found via Politico).  The lawyer’s brother had written to each of the Supreme Court justices, asking for their input on a screenplay he was writing.  In the screenplay, Maine decides to secede from the US and join Canada.  The writer asked for comments regarding how such an issue would play out if it ever reached the Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia actually replied to the screenwriter’s query.  I have a lot of respect for Scalia regarding constitutional issues, but his answer here is beyond absurd.

I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.")

He actually said that a constitutional issue was settled by military action.  Oh, and by including the word “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the issue became even more settled.

What if the president were to send out the troops to prevent the news media from publishing or broadcasting anything critical of his administration?  This is clearly an unconstitutional action, but by Scalia’s logic, if the president succeeds, we must then say that the military action “settled the question” of free speech.

If these scenarios are not comparable, I’d like to hear why.

We truly get the government we deserve

This would be outrageously funny if the implications for our republic weren’t so deadly serious.

Over the past few months, a reporter for CNSNews.com has been cornering various members of Congress and asking a simple question: Which part of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to mandate that every American buy health insurance?

Back in October I highlighted the answers given by three of them, but CNSNews has now done us the service of compiling all of the responses into a video. 

The answers vary, but here’s a rough sampling of what you’ll hear in the video embedded below:

• You’re kidding, right?  How can you ask such a question?
• I don’t know (said in a way that does not indicate embarrassment)
• You’ll need to ask the lawyers on our staff
• In the “commerce” clause
• In the “general welfare” clause
• In the same place that gives Congress the power to pass Medicare.  You’re not saying that Medicare is a bad thing, are you?  Some extremists actually say that we should get rid of Medicare.

The correct answer, of course, is that the Constitution does not empower Congress to pass laws like this.  Try to point this out to our congressfolks, though, and we’re called extremists. 

Decades of public schooling have resulted in generations of constitutionally-illiterate voters who happily keep returning these people to Washington.

Too late for Terri, but still encouraging news

The Wall Street Journal reports today on a medical study that, if its findings are true, suggests the possibility that Terri Schiavo was aware of her husband’s unrelenting quest to have her put to death by starvation and dehydration five years ago.

In a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, four of 23 patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state showed signs of consciousness on brain-imaging tests.

Even more significantly, one patient was able to answer yes and no questions using the researchers' technique—indicating the potential for communication with people previously considered unresponsive.

Researchers at two centers, in England and Belgium, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests on 54 patients with severe brain injury. Of these patients, 31 were diagnosed as being in a minimally conscious state, meaning they showed intermittent signs of awareness such as laughing or crying. The other 23 were diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, meaning they were considered unresponsive and unaware of their surroundings.

The study is part of a growing body of work changing how people think about the vegetative state. "There has been a kind of nihilism towards these patients. This represents a cultural shift," says Joseph J. Fins, chief of the medical-ethics division at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York.

Modern liberals probably wouldn’t give the time of day to a classical liberal

I tend to call myself a constitutionalist conservative, but my views on government and liberty align quite nicely with what was once known as liberalism.

"A [classical] liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary cooperation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas."

— Milton Friedman

Reference: Capitalism and Freedom (U. of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 39

Barack Bingo

Patriot Post has provided a handy “bingo” card that will allow you to keep track of President Obama’s favorite buzz phrases during Wednesday night’s State of the Union speech (click image to view it full-sized).

EU implosion, update #6: Demographic collapse in Germany

In 2005 I did a series of posts outlining various political and demographic forces working against the attempted creation of the european superstate. 

How are they doing now? Even if political integration succeeds at first, it’s only a matter of time before the demographic time bomb alters the region beyond the recognition of anybody now living.

A January 21 article in German news website “The Local” outlines the challenge now facing that country:

Official figures on Thursday showed Germany's population shrank for the seventh year in a row in 2009, defying Chancellor Angela Merkel's bid to boost the country's birth rate.

The population was "81.8 to 81.7 million at the end of 2009," the Federal Statistics Office said, compared to 82.0 million in 2008. The number of births also dropped.

Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe - 1.4 children per woman - and data released in November suggested that at current rates, the country's population could shrink by up to 17 million in the next 50 years.

The article goes on to note the two major solutions that have been proposed.  Chancellor Merkel has introduced various incentives to encourage Germans to have more kids, but they don’t appear to be accepting the challenge.

That leaves massive immigration as the only real alternative.

Prof. Ralf E. Ulrich, a demographics specialist at the University of Bielefeld, said the figures were a wake up call for Germany to start a societal and political discussion about making the country more attractive to immigrants. He said the alternative would be forcing people to work much longer than they do now and slashing Germany's pension benefits.

Despite the fact that Germany would eventually be transformed into a country that is no longer German, natives are most likely to accept this solution, since it involves the least amount of personal inconvenience and allows the country’s welfare state to stagger along for a few more years… at least until the future majority population changes the laws more to their liking.