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In a piece for PolicyMic, I wrote today about the deluge of new taxes heading our way in 2013:

I’ve never personally cared for the practice of New Year’s resolutions. In my observation, most people don’t come close to living up to their goals. Moreover, if something is worth improving about yourself or your circumstances, why not take notice and do something about it no matter the day of the year? But in the spirit of the New Year, I’ve identified one resolution that we all will have to make whether we like it or not – to fork over more of our money to the government.

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Obamacare included a number of taxes to pay for its new spending, many of which take effect in 2013. The most notable is a 3.8% surtax on investment income for top earners, which like all taxes on capital formation will negatively impact everyone through reduced economic growth. Also included is a hike to the Medicare payroll tax, a higher threshold before which those with significant medical bills can deduct their expenses, an excise tax on medical device manufacturers, and a cap on contributions to flexible spending accounts.

Unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone’s payroll taxes will be going up by 2 percentage points with the expiration of the two-year holiday.

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The U.S. has the most progressive tax system in the developed world, as the big government European nations have figured out what we haven’t: You have to soak the middle class if you want to fund a large welfare state. They rely heavily on regressive VATs to fund their big spending, and some US politicians are already eyeing the same to support our bloated government as well.

Will 2013 be the year spendthrift politicians succeed in soaking the middle class with a VAT or other regressive and destructive tax, or will they finally reverse course and slow the runaway growth of government spending?

I only briefly touch on the so-called “fiscal cliff,” noting that the deal being reported represents exactly the sort of Republican cave that us more cynical conservatives expected. They’ll hike taxes on the rich, and get no spending cuts in return. In fact, the minor slowing of spending growth in the “sequester” has been put off a further two months. It’s increasingly apparent that the Republican party hasn’t the stomach to put the brakes on government spending, and are possibly cheering it on right along with the Democrats. So it’s not the “fiscal cliff” that ought primarily to concern us, so much as the path to Greece we are barreling down.

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There’s been significant uproar since a New York newspaper published a database of permit holders for handguns within its readership area. The decision to treat gun owners as sex-offenders is indeed worthy of criticism, and there’s no valid public benefit for exposing the privacy of citizens in such fashion. But it seems to me the bulk of the criticism ought to be directed at another target – the government of New York. They should not have ever made this information available in the first place.

The newspaper in question merely collected and put into easily accessible form information that was already publicly available by Freedom of Information Act request. They had no valid reason to do even this beyond cheap sensationalism, but it ought to be the government that is held most responsible. The information was none of the newspaper’s business and never should have been available to it in any form.

People must be free to exercise their rights without undue fear of intimidation tactics by intolerant political opponents. It is for this reason that we have secret ballots. If the government is going to require permits for the exercise of particular rights, a highly dubious and questionable practice to begin with, we ought to all at least agree that they will keep the information to themselves.

Some states, like Florida and Illinois, exempt such information from FOIA requests. New York and any other state that has not yet enacted the same protections to ensure the privacy of law-abiding citizens must immediately do the same. It is simply not the place of government to track and make public the lawful activities of the people.

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A shocking thing happened today – Michael Moore acknowledged guns don’t cause violence. He doesn’t realize it, but he did it nonetheless.

A lot of folks are focusing on Moore’s claim that Americans own guns because they are racist. Certainly it was a stupid thing to say, but I also found it rather mundane in its predictability. What I found more interesting was his acknowledgment that there is little violence in areas where guns are most prolific. Here’s what he said, with the key section in bold:

“I think we’re a very frightened people. I think we’ve been frightened ever since we landed on these shores. …

And I was fascinated in that subject when making ‘Bowling for Columbine,’ of how fear is used to the point where everybody feels like they’ve got to have a gun in the house. Now, not every house has a gun but we’ve got over a quarter-billion guns in people’s homes. And they’re mostly in the suburbs and rural areas where there is virtually no crime and no murder. So why is that? What are they really afraid of? What do they think of — who’s going to break into the house? Do they think it’s little freckled-face Jimmy down the street? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s who they’re afraid of. And it cuts down to the heart of our race problem that we still haven’t resolved. And I thought it would be interesting to take a look at that in the movie.”

So, “there is virtually no crime and no murder” where there is the most guns? Doesn’t that kind of blow up the whole premise of gun control?

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At times of mass hysteria, rational voices must speak up and urge calm. And what we are seeing now in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre can safely be described as mass hysteria.

The media’s anti-gun agenda is clear, and is entirely out of proportion with the facts. For instance, there have been almost 500 murders in (gun-free) Chicago this year, or the equivalent of approximately 19 Sandy Hook massacres. But that gets little to no coverage. The reality is that mass shootings of the type that occurred in Newtown, CT, as shocking as they are, amount to a negligible risk, and are dwarfed by other kinds of violence and more mundane causes of mortality (traffic fatalities in the US last year equaled approximately 1,245 Sandy Hook shootings). It’s not just the leftists in media, either. Joe Scarborough has basically lost his mind and is eagerly throwing freedom under the bus to pander to his audience.

But the media isn’t the only source of hysteria at the moment. Lawmakers, who actually have the power to produce real damage with their overreactions, are throwing around a host of awful ideas. It’s not just the usual and pointless effort to ban scary looking guns – so-called “assault weapons” that are distinguishable from other guns only by cosmetic features – though they want to do that too. The most moronic and hysterical idea I’ve seen to date comes courtesy of Sen. Boxer, who wants to deploy the national guard to schools.

The last time the nation collectively freaked out and made policy in response to an incredibly low likelihood event the result was the TSA – an ineffective and costly bureaucracy that seemingly finds new ways to violate our rights with each passing day.

Schools are, statistically speaking, one of the safest places for children to be. We don’t need armed troops parading the halls. We don’t need to wall them up and turn them into prisons. For God’s sake people, calm down.

Here, have some more perspective:

After spikes in the 1990s and 2000s, both in the number of deadly shootings and victims, mass public shootings have followed no discernible trend. The number of shootings rose in the early 1990s, then dropped just as precipitously. A decade later, it happened again.

In spite of high-profile cases of the past few weeks, there hasn’t been an uptick in mass shootings this year, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University. Fox tracks mass murders dating back to 1976 and said most occur inside places such as homes and workplaces. But he said public shootings in restaurants and malls are nothing new.

“It’s awful,” Fox said. “Yet this is not an epidemic and we’re not seeing a new upward trend.”

In schools, where public angst over shootings is often highest, the truth is actually more definitive: Deadly shootings are rare and getting rarer.

School shootings have declined dramatically over the past few decades, even as attacks such as those at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and Scotland’s Dunblane Primary School in 1996 have loomed large in our imaginations. The early 1990s were among the worst years for school killings, as gang-related incidents “spilled over into schools,” Fox said.

After reaching a high of 63 deaths in the 2006-2007 school year, the number of people killed in “school-associated” incidents dropped to 33 in 2009-2010 – the lowest in two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

While a few dozen children are killed each year in school, statistically speaking it remains the safest place a child will likely ever be, with the lowest chance of being killed. “When you consider the fact that there are over 50 million schoolchildren in America, the chances are over 1 in 2 million, not a high probability,” Fox said. “And most cases that do occur are in high schools and less so in middle schools – and hardly ever in elementary schools.”

So lawmakers, please stop and think before acting. For the rest of you, calm down and don’t encourage foolish lawmakers with knee-jerk demands to “do something.”

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An awful, horrific thing happened today – the mass murder of innocent children.

The response to the tragedy is predictably one of mourning. Some people process such traumatic events by reflecting, others by lashing out in anger at the perceived cause. All are understandable methods for dealing with such an horrific event, but we shouldn’t let our immediate emotions lead us to knee-jerks demands to limit freedom.

Many of those reacting to today’s shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut want us to finally have that debate about gun control. But since we’ve been debating gun control nonstop for decades, I assume what they actually mean is that we should stop debating gun control and start doing gun control, implementing whatever happens to be their preferred level of restrictions. Forgive me for not immediately jumping on board that train without first actually discussing the matter.

But perhaps before we begin yet another discussion about guns with all the same arguments,  we can start with a discussion of what problem(s) today’s event actually exposed. I wonder, is the presence of a gun really the biggest problem people see with what happened today? What about the society that birthed and raised the person who could do such a thing? Can we perhaps spend a little time talking about that? Or given reports that the shooter may have a mental illness, perhaps we should look at how we deal with such people. It seems to me that the polarizing issue of guns has obscured so many other, perhaps more important, factors at work.

Guns provide an easy answer, but not a particularly good one when actual evidence is considered. Focusing on access to weapons furthermore doesn’t require any self-reflection. It requires no questioning of just what we are all capable and how social pressures work to restrain our impulses in ways that allow us to live together as a community, much less where they have seemingly gone wrong. It’s far easier to avoid all of that mess and just demand new gun control laws. But doesn’t the evidence suggest that there are other factors at play?

We might want to consider, and I know this will be hard for many to accept, that there is no easy public policy solution. Not every social ill can be solved with government legislation. I don’t have all the answers, but I can’t help but feel that the proliferation of moral relativism, replacement of civil society institutions with less personal government institutions, and the general erosion of social cohesion – perhaps related to technologically driven changes in human interaction – are possibly playing a part in the seemingly increasing frequency with which young, disaffected males are committing mass atrocities (as it turns out, guns are not the only relevant commonality). These are just some of the possibilities that immediately come to mind, and I’m sure others can contribute many more possibilities than I, so perhaps we should first identify all the problems before demanding that somebody do something.

We would also do well to keep some perspective, perhaps by remembering that despite recent events violent crime in the US is on a 40-year long decline, and that gun crime in particular is at a 45-year low.

If and when we are eventually ready to talk about potential solutions we must weigh without excessive emotion the costs and benefits of taking any particular action. After all, life is not and cannot be made to be risk free. So we must ask: should we really sacrifice some of our freedoms to enhance our security, or the illusion thereof? Will the intended goals of any action actually achieve those goals, or does the evidence suggest it is merely wishful thinking? We should also be cognizant of the fact that laws born out of emotional demands to do something tend to have the worst unintended consequences. Finally, what if anything can we do as members of society that doesn’t necessarily involve the force of government?

Today’s shooting represents the worst of human capabilities, but it also serves to remind all of us of our inherent vulnerability and, we can hope, our shared humanity.

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For the title of dishonest headline of the day I submit this gem from Reuters: “Michigan votes to restrict union rights.”

And how did Michigan “restrict union rights”? By telling people they don’t have to join a union if they don’t want to.

In reality, what Michigan’s new Right to Work law does is enhance individual rights – in particular the rights to earn a living and free association, which both protects our right to associate with others and our right not to associate with others however we may see fit. The law ends the long-standing political handout to unions of forced membership by protecting true individual rights.

Unions should be allowed to exist in a free society just like any other voluntary group, but they should have to earn their membership by providing a worthwhile service, not through forced conscription. The legal system should not weight the system in their favor as it has done, and correcting that distortion is not a “restriction” on union rights, as the Reuters spinmeisters would have us believe.

Now that unions will have to actually work to get new members and keep their existing ones, they might be more accountable and actually spend more than just a tiny share of their dues on representing their members – the supposed reason unions exist – rather than primarily on cushy union salaries and lining the pockets of politicians.

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Chip Bok:

Read more…

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A few weeks ago, Rep. Tom Rooney (lifetime conservative rating of 94.7 by ACU, but a lukewarm 74% from Club for Growth) took to the Daily Caller to make “a conservative case for sugar tariffs.” He failed in my view, but he did succeed in proving my recent point that bringing home the bacon and handing out political “gifts” is a bipartisan disorder.

Rep.  Rooney makes the following arguments, as I understand it:

1) All countries use protectionist and interventionist policies in the sugar market – therefore we must too.
2) Brazil has captured a lot of the market and will drive out US producers with low prices if they don’t receive government assistance.
3) Jobs will be lost and prices will rise if that assistance isn’t provided.

He goes on to say that government assistance shouldn’t be too high, nor should it involve dictating business practices. That’s not enough; it shouldn’t exist at all. I agree with Milton Friedman’s view that even unilateral free trade is a better option than meeting subsidies with subsidies and tariffs with tariffs. If Brazil wants to “plow another $1 trillion into its sugar market over the next few decades,” we should let them. It’s money straight from their taxpayers pockets and into the hands of US consumers. It harms them, not us. As for the 142,000 US jobs supposedly on the line, it’s not either/or. The choice is not between subsidizing US sugar or seeing those people forced into unemployment. Their labor can be used elsewhere, and when combined with lower sugar prices than we would have otherwise seen if not for Brazilian subsidies, the net result is greater production for us. We get cheap sugar and we get whatever else those 142,000 people are able to produce. The only real loser in this equation is the Brazilian taxpayer.

Sure, the decline of US sugar producers would be disruptive to the people whose jobs were lost, but I think the social safety net (more like hammock these days) is more than big enough to handle it. And disruptions happen in all markets in a competitive system. Whether or not its because another firm has developed a more efficient business model or because of foreign subsidies doesn’t really make any difference, so long as it’s not our taxpayer doing the subsidizing. The real issue is that bad government policy has so encumbered the market that absorption of displaced workers is difficult, but more taxpayer handouts are not the solution to that problem.

Rooney repeatedly warns of a Brazilian led OPEC for sugar, presumably to explain his seemingly contradictory (amazingly, I find myself in agreement with Think Progress of all places) concern that Brazilian control over the market will mean both lower prices (to drive out American producers) and higher prices (to hurt US consumers), but OPEC strikes me as a bad comparison. An oil cartel can be effective (somewhat) at manipulating prices because oil production is necessarily concentrated in places where oil can be found and the major national producers are few. If you have no oil deposits, it doesn’t matter how high and enticing prices get, you can’t join the market. It’s true that sugar cane cannot grow just anywhere, but the barriers to  entry are not near so significant as oil. Non-Brazilian producers can simply increase production to offset any attempts by Brazil to artificially raise prices. In other words, even if US producers dwindle because Brazil is able to charge below-market prices thanks to subsidies, any subsequent attempt charge above-market prices after capturing a dominant position in the market would result in the return of US producers, or other new entrants to the market.

There is also a national defense issue with regard to oil that doesn’t exist for sugar. Interruption in the supply of sugar does not pose the same concerns as interruptions in the supply of oil.

What I think it comes down to is whether we adopt the protectionist view that within all arbitrarily designated political borders there must be complete self-sufficiency, or we instead allow ourselves to be blessed by the productive advantages brought about by global trade. Free trade is best, to be sure, but if the only available choices are between letting others foolishly distort their markets or joining them and doing the same to ours, I think it’s an easy decision which path to follow.

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The US government poses a serious obstacle to the import and consumption of foreign liquors. Like a product made overseas? Too bad! As for as the government is concerned, you have no more right to purchase the liquor of your choice than you do to manage your own health care.

First off – the United States drinks its whiskey from 750ml bottles. The entire rest of the world (except for South Africa, I believe) does not. 700ml or 70cl is the global standard. The United States does not want its citizens to be confused between two different measurements, so they do not allow for 700ml bottles of booze to be sold domestically. That means that any liquor company that wants to sell its booze in the U.S. needs to put it in an entirely different bottle with a new label as well. All of their other booze can be shipped with ease to every other nation (except South Africa, I believe) around the world. Then a separate, special, time-consuming batch has to be made just for the Americans. That sounds annoying and it probably is annoying to many small companies in the whisky trade, so they say forget the Americans. It’s too much extra trouble.

The reason? You’re too bloody stupid, that’s why (Hat-tip: Overlawyered)!

Kevin Erskine of The Scotch Blog inquired with the Tax and Trade Bureau as to why the US has this regulation. In short, it’s because the agency transitioned in the late 1970s to metric measurements and 750 ml was very close in volume to the then standard “fifth” (referring to a fifth of a gallon). Allowing 750 ml and 700 ml bottles was deemed too confusing for consumers, and so we’re stuck with an aberrant standard and less access to rare spirits.

Big government, limiting your freedom one condescending rule at a time.

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I try on this blog to criticize the ideas and policies of my adversaries, instead of the people themselves. I don’t always succeed, but that is one of my goals. But for Harry Reid I make an exception and don’t even try. He continues to demonstrate that he is one of the most loathsome people in the DC cesspool, and cares about nothing other than the accumulation of his own power. He runs the Senate like a dictatorship, abusing his authority in ways that do direct harm to political process and the American people. He is a cancer desperately in need of removal from the body politic.

His latest assault on good government is taking place as a crusade against the filibuster. He claims that the problem is his adversaries, who are abusing it to block his agenda. As usual he has twisted reality on its head, as it is Harry Reid who has long abused Senate rules to prevent votes on issues he considers politically dangerous to himself or his party, and who is seeking to solidify his ability to do so going forward. Mark Calabria of Cato explains:

First, let’s remember that the objective of every majority leader is to stay majority leader. To do so means members of his party must win re-election. One of the important ways a majority leader can facilitate such is to protect his members from tough votes. For instance, witness Reid’s current attempts to stop a vote on Rand Paul’s (R-KY) amendment to limit indefinite detention. You’d think that since many liberal voters and groups oppose indefinite detention, Reid would welcome such a vote. But such a vote would put Democrats and President Obama at odds. So Reid’s favored course of action is to avoid such a vote.

How does this relate to the filibuster? Well after cloture is invoked (see Senate Rule XXII), the only amendments that can be voted on are those that are both pending and germane. And an amendment only gets pending if there’s no objection. All Reid needs to do is oppose amendments for 30 hours, then the curtain comes down and he can force a vote, and this assumes he hasn’t already filled the amendment tree (I’ve witnessed such a process too many times to count). So when Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) claims, “[w]e’ve had over 300 filibusters in the last six years,” he fails to mention that few of these were actual filibusters. The vast majority were attempts by the Majority to limit amendments by pre-emptively filing cloture.

He goes on to look at the ratio of roll call votes to measures passed as a proxy for how frequently a Majority Leader uses this obstructionist practice, and lo-and-behold, Harry Reid is worse than the average. Harry Reid does not want filibuster reform to enhance the workers of the Senate, he wants filibuster reform to enhance his iron grip on the legislative agenda and further constrain the ability of anyone not named Harry Reid to have a say.

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