Pinni Bohm Admitted to NYU Master's Program

I have had many, many fine students through the years. Among my favorites is Pinni Bohm.  When he took my conflict and negotiation class, Pinni "aced" the exam with a 98, the highest score on the exam in my ten year history of teaching the course (I have given the exam as both a closed book and open book exam, and Pinni's 98 was the highest in either category, but he took it as closed book). Pinni also worked with me on an independent study and began an Intercollegiate Studies Institute group at Brooklyn College.

Pinni went on to Cardozo Law School, where he has been involved with the Federalist Society and the Law Review.  Despite this heavy workload, Pinni still finds time to post on my blog.

Recently, Pinni e-mailed that he has been admitted to the Masters in Taxation at the NYU Law School, the leading program in its category in country.

Governor Tim Pawlenty

Marty Siegel, a childhood friend who now lives in Minnesota, mentioned Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) as a presidential possibility.  I did my one second barometer test for GOP candidates (did he support the bailout) and he passed. He apparently did not support the bailout.  Esquire ran an interview with Pawlenty on February 12 in which he states:

"Whether the threats or doomsday scenarios that were painted were real or partially real or not real at all. We won't know the answer to that, but we do know that some very bright people said that we faced doomsday, and there were other very bright people who said that, at the very least, the danger was overstated, and this notion that they were too big to fail was untested or untrue."

This does not amount to a strong position on the gold standard or elimination of the Fed, but it is the closest I've seen in the GOP among the major candidates except for Ron Paul.

Sarah Palin supported the bailout and so she is off my list.  Mitt Romney, whom I've never trusted (his support for the health plan in Massachusetts and his background as a consultant to the military industrial complex make me uncomfortable) is slippery about his position in a Glenn Beck interview in September 2008.  First, Beck says that he (Beck) opposes the bailout (a point on which I've had to correct myself) then Romney makes this vague reply:

"Well, there's no question no one has any interest in bailing out the guys on Wall Street who caused this problem. In many respects the term 'Bailout' is a misnomer. The people who caused this problem ought to lose jobs, ought to lose wealth and are going to face some hard times by virtue of their mistakes but what we want to make sure is that the people on Main Street and the homes all over America, that these folks aren't the ones who are suffering and if we had a meltdown of our financial system where banks and financial institutions couldn't make loans, where your life insurance policy was suddenly worthless, where awful these kind of dramatic changes occurred, you'd hurt a lot of people. A lot of people would lose jobs. You could even throw the country into, well, a very severe recession or even the D word which I don't want to use, but it's that which the treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve are worried about and that's why they are taking such extraordinary action."


Romney does not get clearer as he proceeds, which leads me to conclude that he was a de facto bailout supporter. There were plenty of ways to avoid a depression besides throwing trillions at the New York financial institutions.  His opposition at that time might have mattered psychologically but it would not have changed the Paulson-Bush-McCain-Obama position.  Nevertheless, his waffling is over political fear that he might be blamed for supporting subsidies to Wall Street, which was the de facto effect of his position.

Thus, compared to Palin or Romney, Pawlenty is closer to the libertarian one. He is certainly not a libertarian. The Moderate Voice blog describes him:
 
"Tim Pawlenty is a mainstream conservative governor in a traditionally liberal state. When I use the term 'mainstream,' I mean simply that he is in the mainstream of Minnesota conservatism – decidedly less conservative than the heart of Republicanism in the south, but conservative enough for most of the rest of the GOP. This alone gives him a decent shot as an alternative to either Palin or Romney in the 2012 primaries."

Pawlenty's website gives some useful information:

"As Governor, he has balanced Minnesota's budget three times without raising taxes, despite facing record budget deficits. Governor Pawlenty's most notable accomplishments include proposing and signing into law significant new benefits for veterans and members of the military; enacting a property tax cap, eliminating the marriage penalty and cutting taxes; toughening the state's education standards; reforming the way teachers are paid through a nation-leading performance pay plan; instituting free-market health care reforms that increase accountability and provide tax credits to encourage the use of health savings accounts; and implementing a plan to Americanize our energy sources by generating 25% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2025."

As mainstream Republicans go, Pawlenty seems like a good choice.  Unless you think that the GOP is going to abolish the Fed tomorrow (ha, ha) the best strategy is to work with a minimax candidate (minimize the maximum possible loss). Pawlenty seems to fall into this category.  

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.

More on CNN's Persistent Lying about The Tea Party

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit continues to do an excellent job tracking the ongoing misinformation and lies at CNN (h/t Jim Crum and Bob Robbins). Jim notes of the above crowd:  "Just in case you still trusted the state-run media… CNN on size of Saturday’s rally: 'At least dozens of people.' This is dozens?"

 Jim is right to call CNN "state run media".  Although the Democratic Party probably does not officially review CNN's coverage, CNN is loath to question anything that Barack Obama does, much like the state run media in a communist or Nazi state.