How's that, again?

In the State of the Union tonight, President Obama asked Congress

to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.

referring to the recent Citizens United decision.

Now, this decision was specifically rooted in the First Amendment protection of free speech.

How, exactly is Congress going to pass "a bill" that rights this "wrong." Wouldn't that "bill" specifically have to be a Constitutional amendment that would then be ratified by the states?

Finally, A Step in the Right Direction

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down on of the most pernicious aspects of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" bill. No longer will government restrictions on corporate speech in the immediate run-up to elections be allowed.

Hilarity ensued. Most newspapers carried editorial condemning the judicial activism of the Court, and bemoaning the horrible impact on democracy this will have. I would note, however, that most of these same newspapers are  corporations as well, but they themselves got a special exemption from the McCain-Feingold rules.

I also find the notion that this decision was "judicial activism" absurd on its face. Read the text:

Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...

The government banned political speech in the run-up to an election. That seems to be a pretty damn clear violation to me.

One Step Forward, Several Steps Back

The decade is coming to a close, so I thought I would review the progress (or lack thereof) that the USA has made towards increased individual liberty, both economic and social.

First, the good.

We've seen some significant progress on gay rights. Civil unions are now available in many states, and in several the courts or legislatures have made gay marriage legal. This is a big step forward from where we were even ten years ago, and this progress seems set to continue. The only troubling note is that in every case where the issue has been put to voters, it has failed. I believe that trend should reverse itself shortly, however. Sadly, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" remains the official policy of the United States military, waiting for anyone to spend a little political capital to change it.

The ridiculous and completely ineffectual "Assault Weapons" ban expired and it seems like it has very little chance of coming back. The Supreme Court also struck down the Washington DC gun ban, which simply prevented law-abiding citizens in the District from owning guns. Shall-issue concealed carry permit laws have continued to spread. This is a great development for those who take the entire Bill of Rights seriously.

Millions were liberated from the tyranny of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, but only at a horrific cost in both blood and treasure. Whether those gains are merely temporary or worthwhile in the long-run remains to be seen, but it appears to me that these actions were not worth the cost. 

Now, the bad. And, unfortunately, there's a lot of it.

 First, we had a campaign finance "reform" law that stifled free speech and entrenched the power of political incumbents. Organizations and private companies are no longer allowed to air commercials about candidates at the most crucial time of all: right before an election. The goal of this law was noble enough: to reduce the role of money in politics. However, it failed in two critical aspects. First, it simply shunted the money over to new 527 groups, the number of which have exploded since enactment. Second, it fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. Why is there so much money in politics? Because the politicians have the power to dispense favors to groups who contribute to their campaigns. How should we reduce the influence of money in politics? Not by suppressing speech, but by reducing the ability for politicians to dole out favors. If politicians can't provide a firm payback to campaign contributors, the amount that interest groups will be willing to commit to politicians will drop dramatically. If you reduce the powers of the politicians, the money will leave as well, and you won't have to abuse the First Amendment in the process. But, of course, that isn't what happened, and we're left with a situation where political speech is provided less protection than pornography (which isn't a complaint about pornography by any means).

In the case of Kelo vs. New London, the US Supreme Court expanded the power of eminent domain such that everyone's property rights are threatened. Today, "public use" as defined in the Fifth Amendment means that the government need only see a net benefit to itself from seizing your property and using it for a different purpose. If another party could generate more tax revenue from the lot your home is built on than they get in property taxes from you, they can force you to leave. They need only pay you what they consider "just" compensation, while forcing you to look down the barrel of a gun. Sadly, those forced from their homes in New London saw those homes razed to the ground to no end whatsoever, as the private developer who was building the industrial park backed out of the deal after Pfizer decided to leave the area. There is nothing but an empty lot there today, instead of a perfectly functional neighborhood. Many states have enacted nominal eminent domain reforms to prevent such acts, however, most of them are riddled with loopholes, and another egregious case was just certified as legal by the courts in New York.

The War on Drugs continues apace. Police departments militarize. Our inner cities continue to decay. Billions in black-market enabled dollars continue to flow to criminal enterprises, and billions more are spent trying to restrain and deny human nature. If the War on Terror is a failure, the War on Drugs is an abomination. Obama has signaled the tiniest of movement on the issue, promising that the DEA will not raid medicinal marijuana operations that are in full compliance with all state laws. Given the drug warrior mentality so prevalent among state and local law enforcement, this is not much of a commitment.

Under Bush, it became government policy to allow warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, as if the FISA process was too strict and slow for our leaders. This was despite the FISA court turning down less than 10 wiretap requests out of over 10,000 during the previous decade.  Obama initially campaigned on rolling back this authority, but his Department of Justice has since argued in court for broader immunity than Bush ever did, essentially claiming that the government cannot be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal law.

Our detainee policy has been terrible. We knowingly, willingly used torture on prisoners, and only recently disavowed that as illegitimate. We are now going to be giving those prisoners show trials in a civilian court, a la the Soviet Union in the 1930s. If found guilty, they will be executed. If found innocent, we will simply refuse to release them. Our new President made a promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year on his first day in office, long before he understood the difficulties that this commitment would face, and he has now admitted that it won't happen. Meanwhile, with focus on Gitmo, the prison at Bagram continues to grow and fester with very little scrutiny.

We further centralized government control over education. No Child Left Behind had a perfectly acceptable motive behind it (holding schools accountable to some standards), but did so by imposing a centralized set of rules on the schools. Unsurprisingly, these rules are being gamed, and despite dramatically increasing the amount of federal money being spent on our schools, improvement has been marginal at best. No progress has been made on breaking the disastrous government monopoly on educating our children. Congress basically killed the school voucher program in Washington DC recently, and various small-scale voucher programs have been eliminated due to union pressure or ruled illegal in several states.

We've entered an era of increased government intervention economically, one where profits are privatized and the losses are socialized. Our economic leadership convinced itself that its friends on Wall Street were somehow special, and that bankruptcy, a building-block of the American economic system, was just too clumsy, painful, and cumbersome for Bear, Merrill Lynch, or AIG. A more striking example of regulatory capture I cannot think of. For decades, our Congress encouraged risky mortgage lending, and subsidized that same lending via the implicit guarantees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They continue to do so today, and the risky mortgage balances of the FHA and Ginnie Mae have risen dramatically over the past year.

When the government shepherded Chrysler and General Motors through bankruptcy, they turned normal bankruptcy processes on their head. Bondholders, many of them pension funds, mutual funds, and private individuals, were relentlessly demagogued by Obama, who made them out to be rapacious corporate insiders (like the ones we bailed out already) who were trying to secure unearned profits. This is ridiculous. They were secured creditors, who should have had first claim on the assets in bankruptcy. Instead, the Obama administration gave them a huge haircut, while rewarding their union contributors.

We have a government that is completely unwilling to let the economy face the consequences of a decade of malinvestment. The bubble has burst, and government is doing everything in its power (and some beyond its powers) to reinflate it. Housing prices increased ridiculously, but have lately weakened somewhat. They need to fall even further to return to anywhere near historical norms. What does Congress do in response? Enact a "first time" homebuyer tax credit (first-time meaning, bizarrely, that you haven't bought a house in the past 3 years), then later extend and expand eligibility for it, distorting the market even further. Car sales plummet as households wisely try to deleverage.  What does Congress do? Enact the stupidest program ever invented, Cash-for-Clunkers. The government borrows $3 billion to pay people to destroy perfectly functional cars. Surprisingly, people like free money and do so. Once the program runs out, car sales crater again. These are not serious policies crafted by serious people. They are ridiculous tricks crafted by hacks and charlatans.

We are on the verge of implementing a cap-and-trade system for CO2 that will present the biggest opportunity for lobbying and corruption that the world has ever seen. It is more complex, more opaque, and less economically efficient than a simple carbon tax, which is exactly why Congress prefers it. They will be able to choose winners and losers based on ideology, campaign contributions, or whatever other criteria they feel. The graft will be unmatched, mark my words. 

I've already documented my feelings regarding the health care "reform" bills being proposed, and most especially the individual mandate that all the bills are based upon. In short, our Congress is on the verge of enacting the biggest infringement on individual freedom since the Dred Scott decision. 

I can't help but think of Alexis de Tocqueville's concept of "soft despotism" when I look back over the recent past. Tocqueville foresaw that a democratic government could slowly expand its reach into all spheres of life. He said that soft despotism "does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Sadly, this seems to ring true of America today. 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will say that I'm thankful for one thing: it could have been worse. But it's been a long, painful decade for lovers of freedom in this country.