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.  

Letter to Congressman Chris Gibson Re Immigration Reform

Mike Marnell forwarded Betsy McCaughey's video about the gang of eight's immigration reform proposal. 

PO Box 130

West Shokan, NY 12494

June 22, 2013

The Honorable Chris Gibson

1708 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congressman Gibson:

The proposed immigration law being put forward by the gang of eight is flawed and should be scotched.  Betsy McCaughey makes several points.  First, community organizations should have no role in the processing of citizenship applications, including those of immigrants seeking asylum.  Community organizations are partisan.  Marco Rubio and John McCain are committing direct partisan suicide by supporting this bill; I was skeptical of Mr. Rubio's conservative credentials before, and they have been discredited now.  

Second, the bill's proposed US Citizenship Foundation is a Trojan horse. It is outrageous that potentially partisan groups like this are being proposed to receive government funding.  Community organizations are fine as long as they are privately funded. They should not receive sanctions of law.  

Third, the Office of Civil Rights should not be involved in border security and enforcement.   

The America I once knew and that you defended is gone.  This is no longer the land of the free.  A government that regulates what you eat, forces you buy insurance, and, like this bill, uses soviets or community organizations to perform government functions is not the government of a free people.   Washington has failed America.  America's can no longer be called a great government.   

Have you thought about transforming the federal government into a defense-and-tariff treaty and downloading all other federal responsibilities to the states?   In its current form, from the Fed's garish monetary policy to social security to immigration regulation to the crackpot environmental proposals being put forth to federal gun control, the federal government is a failure.  I see massive net losses to the public from Washington. The federal government's only useful responsibilities are defense and tariff coordination. 

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Engage Mid-Hudson: Bad for You, Bad for Me

 I sent this email to David Church, Orange County (New York) commissioner of planning, and Thomas Madden, planner for the Town of Greenburgh.  Church and Madden led an Agenda-21-inspired regional planning charade called "Engage Mid-Hudson." The plan is packed with lies and superstition.  Church and Madden are front men for Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama, who are pushing for regional plans that aim to destroy Americans' living standards through ill-considered environmental regulation.  Cutting carbon emissions by some predetermined amount is based on ignorant, junk science advocated in places like The New York Times by badly educated "environmental scientists" who are ill equipped to evaluate the limits of their own training.  Ms. Muller is the public relations officer for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which funded 10 regional organizations with $10 million each to draft half-baked regional environmental plans. The Engage Mid-Hudson plan is here.

Dear Messrs. Church and Madden and Ms. Muller:

I am writing an article for The Lincoln Eagle, an 18,000-circulation monthly paper in Kingston, NY, concerning Engage Mid-Hudson’s regional green plan (executive summary attached) that was released in May.  I have a few questions for you.  Please address these concerns either in writing or by telephone:

(1)    “(The plan) was developed through a consensus-building process. “  At the initial meeting there were a number of protestors who voiced concerns about the plan. The plan does not address their concerns. At one point in the initial meeting you threatened to evict those who were disagreeing, although you rescinded that threat.  You did not appoint any who disagreed to officer positions, reserving your organization’s formal appointments  for connected retired IBM employees like Herb Oringel and other corporate-and-government insiders.  Although you ultimately were cordial in the initial meeting, the plan is misleading because it does not mention the sharp disagreement that was made evident to you and that you have failed to address.  This is also evident on your group’s website, which asks for reactions to the plan but does not permit a negative reaction. 

There is no consensus, and your plan’s claim that there is is a falsehood.  In particular Lynn Teger’s group Citizens for the Protection of Property Rights in the Mid Hudson Region was excluded from the process. If you wish to contact Ms. Teger, she can be reached at teger.lynn@gmail.com . If you do not wish to contact her for her group’s input, I would appreciate an explanation as to your selective choices as to who got to be invited to your charade.  IBMers, yes. Property rights activists, no.  There is no consensus because major opponents of your “non-binding”  plan were excluded.

(2)    You claim that carbon emissions cause global warming.  Yet, here is a graph of 5 million years of climate change, and current temperatures are well below those of five million years ago, when there were no human carbon emissions.  How is it possible that the climate is now cooler than it was before humans existed if climate warming  is anthropogenic?  If you do not know the answer, please explain why you claim to know the sources of climate change in your report, but really you, your consulting firm, Francis Murray, Andrew Cuomo,  climate scientists, and the environmental movement are ignorant about it.

(3)    You make the claim that you aim to “reduce the region’s overall contribution to climate change.” Please produce empirical evidence of any kind that specifically shows that the Catskills and Hudson Valley region make any significant contribution to climate change.  On what factual evidence other than hearsay from your consulting firm and the ignorant parties previously noted do you base this claim?

(4)    How much did you pay Ecology and Environment, Inc. to frame this plan?  The plan is a knock-off of other ICLEI-and-Agenda 21-based plans; a monkey could have copied it off other plans for free.  Please explain why 300 people who supposedly participated in this planning process came up with a model that already exists in hundreds of plans around the world.
 

(5)    In the 1930s, there were the dust bowl storms, which were worse than any storms occurring now.  Please provide me with evidence of this claim: “Critically, climate change can impact the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. The Mid-Hudson Region is already challenged by extreme weather events, particularly flooding, as evidenced in the recent hurricanes Irene and Sandy. “  Was Sandy the first hurricane or storm to affect the region? I think not.  In 1821 a hurricane made landfall in New York, flooding Manhattan to Canal Street. 

(6)    Your report lacks evidence of an understanding of cost-benefit tradeoffs.  Even if windstorms increase by 50%, is that a rationale to curtail living standards by 50%? Please clarify how you calculated the tradeoffs in the report’s many far-fetched, extreme claims, such as that there is a need to reduce automobile use or to force people in rural settings to move to urban ones.

(7)    You write that the region needs to “become radically less energy and fossil fuel intensive while strengthening the regional economy.” Please provide data or empirical evidence that the region needs to become less energy and fuel intensive.   There is no evidence that the regional economy can become stronger without fossil fuels. You implicitly make the claim that it is possible, but there is no empirical evidence that it is.  Please provide some.  You wild, unverified claims amount to superstition, not intelligent policy making.

(8)    The reduction in available farmland was caused by a massive building binge that was funded through sub-prime mortgage lending.  Earlier, the Federal Reserve Bank expanded the money supply over a century, in part to fund energy-intensive centralized agriculture, suburban development, and the automobile industry.  Could you please mention that Andrew Cuomo in 1993 had proposed expansion of home building to include sub-prime borrowers, which led to increased use of farmland for home building and ultimately harmed the financial industry? First, Cuomo advocated massive expansion of private home ownership.  Now he is attacking private home ownership.  Can you please reconcile these wild vacillations in the direction of Mr. Cuomo’s maelstrom?

(9)     You write that you aim to “foster economic development” and “make all growth smart growth.”  The term “smart growth" is vacuous and nonsensical.  Historically, economic growth occurs in the absence of government regulation.  I do not believe that you or your crew of IBM bureaucrats have the slightest idea as to how to foster economic growth.

The best way for New York to grow is to abolish Engage Mid-Hudson and fire three quarters of New York’s vampire government.  Would you please explain your track record in fostering economic development in a state that has lagged the national economic performance for decades? To be precise: What do you know about economic development?  Is Orange County successful in developing economically compared to North Dakota or other carbon energy-developing states?

(10) You make the claim that tourism can strengthen the area’s economy. Do you have any evidence that you know how to develop tourism?  You remind me of the film Roger and Me in which Flint, Michigan attempts to turn itself into a tourist mecca. They succeeded in further damaging their blighted economy--which was not as blighted as New York’s.

(11) Engage Mid-Hudson has no authority to pass legislation or regulation, yet you write in terms of targets. How can you implement targets if you have no authority?

Wikipedia: Five Million Years of Climate Change

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png