There Needs to Be a Revolution Every 240 Years

Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Stephens Smith:  "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure."   He was fond of adding that there needs to be a revolution every 20 years. 

The human mind is rarely able to forecast the future with precision.  In the case of the Federalist government instituted at the state constitutional conventions in the 1780s and the national Constitutional Convention, Jefferson overstated the  case by 220 years.

From its beginning the federal government fulfilled the anti-Federalists' fears. It always has subsidized the wealthy and well placed, and it frequently has instituted elements of tyranny that have waxed and waned with popular opinion. In the 1790s the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Act, a direct attack on the Bill of Rights upon which the anti-Federalists had insisted.  During the Civil War Lincoln closed Democratic newspapers and attempted to arrest Chief Justice Roger Taney.  After World War I anarchists and socialists were exiled.  During World War II, Japanese-Americans were confined to concentration camps.  In the post-war period the FBI harassed communists.

Those incursions on civil liberties are small compared to the federal incursions on economic liberties that have escalated since the Civil War.  Until the 1920s, America's had been a limited state, a concept little understood before the 18th century.  Popular ideological commitment to liberty and the limited state allowed democracy to coexist with economic stability.

The American laissez faire, free market approach was able to accomplish several objectives previously unknown to humankind:

(1) an explosion of innovation,
(2) a rising standard of living for all Americans, especially workers, despite erroneous public belief that living standards were falling,
(3) an opportunity for all Americans to start businesses,
(4) a greater degree of freedom than ever previously known to mankind because economic liberty begets civil liberty.

As well, (5), the American economic and constitutional system overcame the natural flaw of democratic systems, class warfare and self-aggrandizement through special interests' capture of regulatory mechanisms, because of public commitment to the limited state and liberty.  In the 19th century government was less than five percent of the economy; today it is more than 40 percent.

In Rise and Decline of Nations Mancur Olson makes clear why democracy leads to special interest lobbying that imposes high public costs.  It may be that there are periods when the public can say no to special interests' influence on the state, but mass movements are fragile and do not last.  Ultimately, the economy's innovative capacity and living standards decline as special interests extract ever greater shares of wealth through regulation, taxation, and monetary expansion.

Olson shows that the reason special interests are successful in a democracy is that the incentive to lobby favors small groups. A given benefit divided among a small number of group members is larger per capita than a given benefit divided among a large number.  With a million group members benefits need to be divided among the million members.  With a single corporation or a single union, benefits need to be divided among a small set of interest groups. This makes organization of the interests easier and cheaper.

The transactions costs of organization and the larger benefit per capita make interests that can be easily organized more effective. This can change over time. For example, the environmental movement has been able to establish special interest groups that have worked in tandem with the United Nations and federal regulatory authorities. Nevertheless, they have done so by forging corporatist alliances.  Without those alliances the current push toward state-enforced, corporatist environmentalism could not have proceeded so far.  

The wealthy have always been small in number, have had greater resources, and have been able to communicate among themselves because they have been concentrated in specific geographic areas like New York and Los Angeles.  From the beginning of American history institutions like the central bank and slavery reflected the ability of the wealthy  to divide a large benefit among a relatively small group.

In his Anti-Federalists, Jackson Turner Main shows that the anti-Federalists were poorer and less organized than the Federalists.   Although the Federalists claimed to be in favor of decentralization and federalism (thus their name), once in power they attempted to centralize the state through the First Bank of the United States, a standing army, and the Alien and Sedition Act. As well, the Constitution broadened slavery (compared to the level that would have existed without the Constitution) by making the Fugitive Slave Law possible.

What prevented special interest capture of the economy was public commitment to limited government.  The American government always reflected the interests of the wealthy, but because its scope was limited, the American economy has been the most successful in history. Progressivism, though, discarded the 19th century commitment to the limited state. Progressives like Richard T. Ely viewed expansion of the state as a good in itself; John Dewey saw democracy itself as an ultimate good.  The administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson discarded the limitations on special interest extraction.  In the Progressives' minds they were saving America from trusts, but the ultimate effect has been to allow full sway to the dynamic Mancur Olson describes, so the trusts have expanded.

The result has been that for the past 40 years the American economy has been dismal, and it is getting worse.  As well, the Obama administration has demonstrated that it is capable of worse tyranny that that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which the American public has so far accepted with indifference.  These include use of state power to financially harass dissenting political organizations, illegal investigation of more than 100 million telephone records, and a cover-up about President Obama's self-destructive decisions with respect to Benghazi.  Hardly a day goes by without evidence of an additional tyrannical initiative at the federal level.

Americans tend to believe that they have a great political and economic system, but that is no longer true.  My ancestors wisely chose emigration from their eastern European homes, and if you are smart, you are thinking of foreign real estate investment.  Enough Americans favor freedom that a revolutionary movement is possible here. After 240 years, the liberty tree needs refreshment.  

New Gary Johnson Commercial

The other day, I was speaking to a waitress who supports Obama. She said that she dislikes the Republicans because they pander to special interests.  I suggested that Obama has overseen $29 trillion in swaps and other subsidies to global banks.  He has overseen bigger subsidies to Wall Street and banking than all of the preceding presidents in history combined contributed to all other special interests combined.  The waitress did not reply.  Mike Marnell, with whom I was having lunch, suggested that she would not change her vote. The American voter is a mindless drone. Voting for continuing the current system is a matter of habit. It is not going well; Americans are not doing well; the real hourly wage has not increased in four decades.  The conservative (in the European sense) philosopher Joseph de Mistre said: "Oute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite," that is, "Every nation gets the government it deserves."  Perhaps America deserves Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I hope that Gary Johnson proves that possibility wrong.

WEUS and Woodstock Times Spotlight Mitchell Langbert's Blog

This morning Dennis K. Thomas of Altamont Springs/Orlando's WEUS radio (the Internet Boomer Radio station is here --  the WEUS air station is here) interviewed me on his morning Boomer Show.   We discussed the importance of gold and silver ownership in retirement planning, especially in light of the Obama credit debacle.  I had been saying that 50 Bush messes fit into the Obama mess. The number will ultimately be greater.  

Dennis is a great guy.  He was quite complimentary of my resume.  He awarded me the coveted "Boomer of the Week" title, which was a thrill, and he asked me to be on his Social Security board of observers. I'm hoping for return visits.

As well, my friend Paul Smart, Ulster County New York's best left-wing journalist, published an (August 4, 2011, p. 8) article about the upcoming Olive Town meeting in The Woodstock Times. Calling me a right wing gadfly Smart writes about the budding resistance to the authoritarian Agenda 21 with mild sarcasm.  

I like the appellation gadfly, but right wing is inaccurate.  The term right wing comes from the seating on the right in the French Estates General in the 1780s to early 1800s of monarchists whose views are repugnant to me. I am sympathetic to de Jouvenal's concerns about centralization of power (who isn't?), but I believe in Hamiltonian republicanism limited by a Jeffersonian concern for states' rights, including secession.  Wikipedia describes right wing as follows:

In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist are generally used to describe support for preservation or promotion of social order and the legitimacy of social hierarchy in society that is often advocated in the name of tradition.  It involves in varying degrees the rejection of egalitarian objectives ... The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church).Use of the term "Right" became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.

Right wing doesn't apply to libertarians, and opposition to UN Agenda 21 is an anti-authoritarian hence left-wing position.  This might not be palatable to right wing Progressives, like Smart and The Woodstock Times's readership. Nor does right wing properly apply to most conservatives, although the very appellation conservative is also a throwback. There is no such thing as a real conservative in America because the views called conservative are of more recent, Jacksonian origin than the Hamiltonian, Federalist and Whig views called progressive.  American progressivism is a throwback to mercantilism of the 17th century; American conservatism builds on the late 19th century views of Alfred Marshall and the 20th century views of President William Howard Taft. 

In the meaning of lifestyle and religion, libertarians may or may not be traditionalists. Whether they are or not, libertarians do not believe in the use of state violence or authority to enforce traditional or any other lifestyle.

Libertarians do not reject egalitarianism, which the left almost always voices and almost always ignores.  I have never seen more hierarchical, authoritarian institutions than the left-and-progressive dominated universities in which I work.   An old trick of the left is to claim that they favor democracy and egalitarianism and then create institutions which exclude the majority,  who lack the resources to manipulate institutional levers. Smart's article is even handed for a leftist publication like The Woodstock Times, but one can guess that the pro-freedom reaction to the corrupt, Agenda 21-driven Town plan irritates the authoritarian Woodstock and Olive progressives in Smart's readership. 

To understand how leftist hierarchy and oppression are part and parcel of the left's claim  to "social justice" (a vacuous term that meant murdering millions to Hitler and Stalin) one need only observe the long standing strategy of Progressivism to staunch small operators and individuals through escalation of regulatory costs.  Kip Viscusi of Harvard and my professor at Columbia, Ann Bartel, documented this pattern with respect to OSHA, and I documented it with respect to ERISA.  Complex regulation makes it difficult for small operators to do business. The cost of regulation falls less heavily on large organizations that can spread costs across a wider range of units of output.  

Wealthier home owners are in an analogous position to larger firms.  They can more easily absorb costs that drive away lower-income homeowners whose houses wealthy left-wingers can purchase at a discount.  Agenda 21's costly environmental regulation can be borne by people making over $100,000 but not by people earning less. Median homeowners are ground under progressives' regulatory Gucci heels to the rich progressives' direct benefit, both environmental and economic. The only thing more right wing than someone who opposes equality is someone who says that they favor equality and uses government violence in the name of equality to enforce an inequality that benefits themselves. That is PROGRESSIVISM.

Less intelligent Progressives may actually believe that oppressive regulation that sends lower-wage homeowners into concentrated urban developments serves humanity, but smart Democratic operators like George Soros and Warren Buffett are well aware that the costly regulation that they advocate drives out smaller competitors, creating an open playing field for them.  Thus, billionaire Democrats like the Town of Olive's Bruce Ratner can sit back and snap up properties that have been forcibly vacated by progressive regulation like Agenda 21.  Though incapable of intelligent thinking about her actions, Linda Burkhardt well serves the opportunism of the rich.  Progressivism is a passive-aggressive ideology that Agenda 21 reflects. It claims to be helping humanity as it sends low-income homeowners to concentration camps like the LEED project Birchez, from which I was ejected by City of Kingston police acting as the Democratic Party's muscle men and out of their jurisdiction while claiming to be Town of Ulster police. 

Town of Olive Republican

I wrote up the first issue of a newsletter for the Town of Olive Republican Committee last night. Here it is in its entirety. Please feel free to offer suggestions or comments.


As a Republican living in the Town of Olive you may be wondering where the Committee has been all these years. It has been intermittently active because of the dominance of the Democrats here. However, several opportunities are opening up. First, the GOP won the county legislature this past year. Second, the Democrats’ self-destructive policies are causing economic decline. The Obama administration has proven itself fiscally irresponsible. Since 1990 Ulster County’s employment has grown at nearly a zero rate. During the same period the nation’s rate of employment has grown 20 percent. The difference is due to the Democrats’ high taxes and heavy handed regulation. Rather than step back and assess the Democrats’ failure here, Congressman Hinchey advocates adding more job-killing environmental regulation, a federal park that will cripple the region’s economy.

Interview with Chet Scofield, Town Republican Chair

Chet Scofield, chairman of the Town of Olive Republican Committee, is a lifelong resident of Olive and owner of Snyder’s Tavern on 28A. He graduated from Onteora High School in 1964 and worked for Rotron and then as an engineer with Ulster County’s Highway Department from 1977 to 2002. He became involved with politics in 2002, when he ran for Highway Superintendant. I cornered Chet during a slow moment at Snyder’s.

Langbert: What got you into politics, Chet?

Scofield: I wasn’t satisfied with the way things were going. I ran for highway superintendant in 2001. I joined the committee at the same time. I wanted a voice as to what was going on in politics. There was some disorganization in those years and the committee has had trouble getting off the ground. The committee was functioning sporadically between 2002 and 2008. We havent run a full slate of candidates in years and we are looking for candidates.

L: What is the role of the Town of Olive Republican Committee?

S: To find and promote viable Town candidates and to work with the County chair in supporting county, state and national level candidates.

L: What have been the problems in finding Republican candidates here in Olive?

S: It hasn’t been easy. The Democrats are dominant here because a sizable number have moved here from New York City. But independents are now the chief force and outnumber both the Democrats and Republicans (note: independents are NOT affiliated with the Independence Party; rather, independents have no party or are not of party, NOP. They represent close to 40 percent of the vote in Olive).

L: How would you describe your political views?

S: Pretty conservative. I dislike taxes. They are a necessary evil but by and large they are overdone.

L: What’s your opinion of Roe v. Wade?

S: Personally, I am not in favor of abortion. But I’m not rigid. I don’t know how I would feel about a candidate who met all of my other criteria as to favoring smaller government but also favored abortion.

L: Should abortion be illegal?

S: Other than for rape, I think it should.

L: What’s your position on the federal deficit?

S: The federal government should stop spending, repeal the health care law and let the private sector create jobs without interference.

L: What is our strategy for rebuilding the Olive GOP?

S: I hope to build a bigger group. We need to collect more people. We need members and ideas. We need to expose the waste in the Olive Town government to bring independents to our way of thinking. According to a reliable Town source Onteora is spending $31,000 per student. In comparison, the national average is $10,259.

L: How open are you to finding new blood to serve on the committee and to run for Town office?

S: Very.

L: Thank you very much, Chet.


Interview with Robin Yess, Executive Director, Ulster County Republican Committee


I met with Robin Yess at her professional office in uptown Kingston. Robin grew up in Dutchess County. She moved to Esopus in 1979. She graduated from New Paltz High School in 1982. She attended Empire State College in the 1990s and is two English credits away from her degree. She also attended the College for Financial Planning from which she obtained a Certified Financial Planning degree. She has passed the prestigious Certified Financial Planning (CFP) certification examination. She is a self-employed financial planner and a divorce financial analyst.


Langbert: What got you into politics, Robin?

Yess: Taxes. Seeing a trend with my clients. Seeing them leave Ulster County because of high taxes and fiscal mismanagement. This was back in 2004. I’ve been involved with the Ulster County Republican Committee since 2007.

L: You ran for Assembly in 2008. Are you thinking of running again?

Y: My skills and abilities are better suited to working within the GOP. It’s even more my calling than being a financial planner, which I’m very good at. I love politics.

L: What do you see as the role of town committees such as the Town of Olive Republican Committee?

Y: There are four areas that are critical. The most important is carrying petitions. Carrying petitions is the most important thing a committee person does. As well, the Town Committee needs to recruit candidates for local offices. Third, the committee needs to work with the county committee to serve as a conduit to the town, in your case the Town of Olive. Fourth, fundraising is important too.

L: What are ways that committees fund raise?

Y: They hold events; barbecues; field trips. There should be a regular schedule of events

L. What do you need to do to get onto the Town Committee?

Y: You need to carry petitions.

L: How many signatures do you need to get?

Y: Five percent of the registered Republicans in the district.

L: When I was petitioning in Olivebridge this year, many Republicans refused to sign petitions. Is that normal?

Y: It’s odd. You need to explain that that’s how candidates get on the ballot. If they don’t sign, there is no two-party system.


L: What is your vision for the Ulster County Committee for the next 5-10 years?

Y: Filling the Ulster County Committee (raising a full committee for every town). There are twenty towns in Ulster County plus the City of Kingston. That’s 21 committees. If the Ulster County committee was full we’d have 328 people but currently we have 179, about 55%. My goal is to get to work filling the seats on the Town Committees.

L: How many are on the Town of Olive Committee?

Y: Two out of 10 seats are filled.

L: How does the GOP determine the number of seats in each town?

Y: It’s based on population. The City of Kingston has 54 while the Town of Kingston has two. Saugerties has 32. But the towns’ votes are weighted by their Republican vote. The City of Kingston has 1446 weighted votes while Saugerties has 1834 weighted votes because their Republican vote is better. Working committee people can increase their town’s voice.

L: What rewards can a committee person expect?

Y: There’s no financial reward. People who want change, who want to support Republican candidates, who want to contribute to the nation’s future, who want smaller government and less taxes have reasons to get involved.

L: Whom do you support for governor?

Y: Whom do I support or who is going to win? Paladino has a better shot. As a taxpayer, I think Paladino is better. Cuomo is too connected politically as a career politician. Lazio is recycled. We need new people. Republicans have sometimes had tunnel vision. The question that should have been asked before the state convention nominated Lazio is “Can Lazio win?” You can’t run for office if you’re lining your pockets as a lobbyist.

L: How would you describe your political views?

Y: I lean toward the libertarian side. I’m a strong fiscal conservative. Smaller government. Less and fewer taxes. Government should not be involved with social issues like abortion. The GOP should not have a position on abortion. Government should not be involved with the marriage situation (gay marriage). I would like to see equal treatment for gays. As a financial planner I have seen gays mistreated. I am in favor of civil unions and believe that everyone should receive equal treatment. The national GOP platform no longer includes abortion. People should be free to worship, etc. as long as they are not harming anybody.

L: Thank you, Robin.

About the Newsletter Author

You may have seen my frequent letters to the Olive Press and my columns in the Lincoln Eagle, the Republican penny saver, which is distributed for free at Shokan Turf and Timber, Al Higgly’s fruit stand, Winchell’s, Russ’s Diner, Snyder’s Tavern, the Phoenicia diner, and the Boiceville gas station. I grew up in New York City. While I was in high school I developed an interest in libertarian politics. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College I worked for the International Nickel Company (now Vale-Inco) and became involved with the Libertarian Party. Libertarians believe in limited government and low taxes. In the 1980s I worked for Johnson and Johnson and City Federal Savings and Loan in employee benefit administration. Between 1976 and 1979 I earned an MBA in insurance at night at the College of Insurance (now St. John’s University School of Risk and Insurance). Then, I attended the UCLA Graduate School of Management, where I obtained an MBA in general management. In 1986 I attended the Columbia Business School, where I earned a Ph.D. in labor relations in 1991. In 1990 I became a Democrat to work on the Carol Bellamy for Comptroller campaign. Although Bellamy lost, I was appointed to the staff of the ways and means committee of the New York State Assembly, where I worked as a Democrat during 1991. Because I released a memorandum advocating cost reduction for Medicaid, I was fired, becoming the only Democratic ways and means staffer to be fired during the previous 25 years. The same year I was appointed to the business faculty of Clarkson University in northern New York, and from then on I have been a registered Republican. I also have taught at Iona College, Dowling College, Troy State University and New York University. I am currently a tenured professor at Brooklyn College, a campus of the City University of New York. I became active in politics again in 2006 and have worked with Candace de Russy, former SUNY trustee, and the National Association of Scholars. My blog, “Mitchell Langbert’s Blog” at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com, has had over 230,000 independent visits since March 2008. As well, I have published in such journals as the Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Labor Research, Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal, Benefits Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics/Journal of Value-Based Management, the New York Sun, the Times Herald Record, the Yale Economic Review and the Cornell Human Resource management Review. I write a monthly column for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Career Insider Newsletter. Recently, the Canadian Broadcasting Company interviewed me concerning a strike at Vale Inco. I have appeared on NPR, New York One, the Fox Morning Show, CBS radio, and WOR TV. I am married and have lived in West Shokan since 1997, full time since 2009. I joined the Committee in 2009. My first acquaintance with Olive was in 1964, when I was a camper at Camp Hurley in Olivebridge.

Please detach here


Name________________________________________________


Phone number_________________________________________


E-mail_______________________________________________


I would like to


________Serve on the Republican Committee ________Contribute financially



________Run for Office ________Get involved



Please return to Mitchell Langbert, PO Box 130, West Shokan, NY 12494; Or send an e-mail to MLangbert@HVC.RR.com

Food Inc.

The movie Food Inc. that appeared last year (I saw it in June in Rhinebeck, NY's Upstate Films) seems on the surface to be just another left-wing protest movie. However, it captures a number of libertarian themes.  If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.

First of all, it outlines serious risks associated with centralization of the food supply.  While centralization reduces costs it also creates risks such as the spreading of disease.  Second, it shows that USDA and government influence have contributed to harming small agriculture.  Organic farmers are often harassed by the USDA, which serves as an agent of large producers.  Third, it shows that many laws have been passed that reflect not the public interest but the interests of agribusiness.   After watching the movie, you will be glad that American agriculture has not been completely collectivized. I doubt that the movie's makers aim to pursue libertarian goals. However, the film makes clear that government's role has been to represent the large agribusiness firms, an inevitable outcome of socialist intervention. Government has not had a beneficial effect on the management of the nation's food supply.  Besides the issues the film raises, government has generally encouraged restriction of supply, which in other contexts would be illegal.  The effect has been to raise food prices.  At the very beginning of American socialism, during World War I, Herbert Hoover served as the food administrator whose job was to raise food prices by creating a food cartel.  This policy has been the American government's since the days of the New Deal.  Scientific management, in which the large producers excel, has driven down costs and prices in some areas.  The film argues that because they do not offer the same profit margins via fast food outlets, the same methods have not been applied to healthier foods like fruits and vegetables, which pound for pound now cost as much as and sometimes more than meat.

The aspects of the centralization story that libertarians might find most disturbing are first of all the role of government intervention in eliminating price signals.  If there are legitimate risks to centralization, the pricing ought to reflect this (i.e., lower prices would need to compensate consumers for the risk of contamination).  However, given restrictions on pricing and supply, government may eliminate these signals.  Second, the government has served as the enforcement wing of agribusiness in a variety of ways.  Libertarians will see at once that the pattern fits many other industries. Third, the courts' and regulators' harassment of small growers that the film depicts, whereby horrific conditions on agribusiness-related farms are given a free pass but much better conditions on small farms are found to violate trivial regulations that do not serve the public and the small farms are forced to close.

Overall, the film presents an argument against centralization of markets (that is, in favor of states' rights and elimination of federal regulation) and parceling of the market to prevent excessive emphasis on scale economies at the expense of innovation and other forms of competition. As well, it makes clear that when government gets involved, the producers will eventually dominate the public using the governmental system that was initially put in place under the pretense of serving the public.

Repeal Health Reform

National Broadside has proposed that reform of the Democrats' health care bill become a focal point for the Tea Party, conservative and libertarian movements. I agree. But I can't help but wonder why the million and one other government boondoggles wouldn't serve just as well. But health care would be a good starting point. National Broadside writes of the health bill:


>"This has an unusual ability to be repealed, and the public is on that side.” he said. "The Republicans are going to have to prove that they are worthy of their votes."

>Writes Greg Sargent of Plum Line:

It’s now becoming clear that this could be a major issue for Republicans in 2010: the Tea Party movement, as well as high-profile conservatives, are going to demand that candidates call for a full repeal of the Dem health care reform bill, presuming it passes.