I was even willing to let this confused blather slip by unaddressed:

America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

Bono is referring to some recent remarks by President Obama and trying, by definition futilely, to justify his absurd, outrageous and offensive winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. Whatever — generally speaking, I only value musicians' opinions when they're discussing music.

But a few minutes later I came across a blogpost praising some other thoughts about "America as an idea" — also in the context of a Nobel Prize:

[I]t is all too apparent that financial obligations associated with social entitlements intended to solve welfare problems and advance public welfare threaten the viability of basic monetary and financial institutions. In my judgment, American democracy is at risk. Why has a flood of crises inundated the United States of America and other democracies in the contemporary world?

Perhaps the answer is to be found in the superficial way we think about citizenship in democratic societies. How people conduct themselves as they directly relate to one another in the ordinary exigencies of life is much more fundamental to a democratic way of life than the principle of "one person, one vote, majority rule." Person-to-person, citizen-to-citizen relationships are what life in democratic society is all about. Democratic ways of life turn on self-organizing and self-governing capabilities rather than presuming that something called "the Government" governs.

That is Vincent Ostrom, husband of the co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, and written in 1997, long before the current "flood of crises" in American "basic monetary and financial institutions."

These two quotes — Bono and Ostrom — both verbatim, reminded me of another quote — well, misquote — that circles around libertarian cyberspace every so often.

Ostrom is basically re-stating that infamous faux quote repeatedly (and incorrectly) attributed to de Tocqueville, that "the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

Stated differently:

"How people conduct themselves as they directly relate to one another in the ordinary exigencies of life is much more fundamental to a democratic way of life than the principle of 'one person, one vote, majority rule.'"

Which is to say that "America qua idea" (cf., Bono's op-ed) is less about raw democracy for its own sake, and more about freedom — freedom to own and control property, freedom of contract (including the freedom to refuse a contract, such as health insurance), freedom to decide one's own charitable giving (rather than to have it forced upon you via taxes and subsidies), freedom to experiment entrepreneurially, freedom to take risks (but not subsidized risks), etc.

Which, yes, includes the reciprocal freedoms: freedom to fail, freedom to regret one's choices, freedom to be gullible, freedom to be weak-willed. Etc.

All of which is fundamentally incompatible with unbridled democracy — which, one more time, is at the end of the day nothing more than mob rule. The fact that the mob — or Bono — may consider itself "well-intended" or "enlightened" is utterly irrelevant.

America is indeed an idea. Or at least it was. Once upon a time…

–It is a request by President Obama. Literally: "I hereby request the following…" File that under "bold new leadership…"

–It is not "change." The memorandum is thoroughly infested with weasel term such as "currently available," "consistent with," etc. At best, the memorandum is the equivalent of policy proofreading: Let's go back and make sure we didn't miss anything that we were supposed to do in the first place.

–It is expressly worded not to give gays any real tools to work with:

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

That's boilerplate that always appears in such memorandums — when they're meant not to mean anything.

–It is not a "law" by any denotation of the word. It goes into neither the United States Code nor the Code of Federal Regulations. Only the (voluminous but worthless) Federal Register, which is the functional equivalent of the federal government's scrapbook.

–It is unconstitutional (or would be, if it were an actual law or order rather than a bottom-of-the-cereal-box plastic toy with no real value). More on that below.

–It is not applicable to health care benefits. With the putrid mucus of socialized medicine proposals gushing out of every Obama administration orifice, there's a definite bit of "fierce advocate" irony there.

—

Let's go back to why the memorandum, were it at all substantive, would be unconstitutional.

–First, "domestic partner" is not a federal term of art, in either the statutory or regulatory senses, and is therefore unconstitutionally vague. What exactly is a "domestic partnership," who gets to decide, what kind of notice is given, and is there an appeal process? Again, such questions are mere academic cocktail hour topics, since the memorandum isn't really a government action in the first place.

–Second, there are equal protection questions. Let's say you have three similarly situated same-sex couples "covered" (loosely speaking) by the faux initiative:

1. One in Massachusetts, where gays can get married.
2. One in New Jersey, where gays cannot get married but can get "civil unioned."
3. One in Wisconsin, which has a "no nothing never" bigot amendment.

The one thing that the three couples have in common is that none of them have a "domestic partnership." If the intent is to extend (already existing) benefits to the couples in Massachusetts and New Jersey, then where does that leave the Wisconsin couple?

Or perhaps the plan is to have an honor code: The federal employee need only fill out an affidavit declaring her loved one to be her "domestic partner." But that poses equal protection issues too: Why shouldn't unmarried heterosexual couples be afforded the same option?

Because in, e.g., Wisconsin, straights can get married but gays can't? Okay — but now suppose you have a gay couple in Massachusetts who choose not to marry but opt instead to declare themselves an (unmarried) "domestic partnership" in order to glom on to the (not) new policy. Are we going to require them to get married to get the benefits? And so on…

Oh, and DOMA is still on the books. If the memorandum actually meant anything, and if anyone actually had standing to sue over it, then it's fairly obvious that the more potently the memorandum were used, the more likely it would violate DOMA (which, recall, Obama is defending vigorously in court. Ahem…)

Again, this is all angels dancing on the head of our cowardly president. I expect no law review articles, intense blog debates or other elaborate evaluations of these (strictly hypothetical) issues to emerge. But they help illustrate just how pointless the memorandum is. One would normally be tempted to call it "insulting," but this president has so callously insulted gays so many times already that this latest gesture barely warrants a footnote.

The memorandum does not insult the gay rights movement per se (leave that for the ever-lengthening trail of gay-hostile wreckage — from Rick Warren to the DOMA brief scandal, and likely beyond). Instead, this absurd piece of worthless paper insults our intelligence. This obnoxious, Rube Goldberg inspired non-policy, in which Obama actually finds a way to call nothing "something," is like two parents letting their kids vote on toppings for the pizza and pretending that the family is a democracy. It's cute — and strictly fantasy.

Gay apologists for Obama will either fall for it (again), or they won't. While there have been some "green shoots" (rainbow shoots?) on that front, for now I'll settle for a well-directed "I told you so…"

Happy Tax Day…

Proudhon Sightings™ are any utterances, typically but not exclusively by politicians, that celebrate (or lament) the ability of government to indirectly control people's lives.

State-imposed coercion by weapons is easy — just ask China's Communist thugs, Hugo Chavez or any Sharia goatherder. But it takes far greater sophistication and nuance for the state to coerce with the guns tucked away in the closet (the guns are still there, of course — just not displayed, or used — as frequently).

I tweeted a quick Proudhon Sighting™ earlier today: a financial executive who warned that today's TALF announcement will only work if the new private investors are exempted from the current AIG torch-and-pitchfork rabidity:

"The deal is good, but it's not worth it if I'm buying myself into a retroactive tax or a congressional hearing," the chief executive of a major investment firm said, insisting on anonymity because he did not want to seem at odds with the Treasury Department in the event that his firm ends up participating.

Perfectly reasonable perspective. Look where "seeming at odds with the Treasury Department" got AIG.

But that was a pre-season, warm-up Proudhon Sighting™. The real debut goes to one of the most disingenuous, finger-to-the-wind politicians in America today: Pennsylvania Governor Ed ("some of my constituents are racists who will never vote for Obama") Rendell:

There's so many innovative ways to use the tax code to get private investment involved in this. There are innovative ways. We don't have a capital budget, a federal capital budget. We're the only governmental subdivision in the country without one. You could finance — for $30 billion a year, which these days is not a lot of money, you could finance almost $400 billion to put up front in an infrastructure repair program administered through something like the infrastructure bank.

So not only can government force taxpayers to pay for "infrastructure" that they don't want (remember when they were called, not "shovel-ready projects," but simply "bridges to nowhere"?). Not only can government coax private investment funds away from their original (i.e., economically preferred) destination to some other (i.e., politically preferred) alternative. But now you can also boast about the fact that you're being "innovative" about it — by substituting the direct looting of guns with the indirect looting of the tax code (which itself is of course backed by guns).

That is surely a good inaugural Proudhon Sighting™.

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

–Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson

Previously:
–Forget "Going Galt" — How About Just "Going Proudhon"?

So who is going to eventually pay for this accelerating debt, temporarily held by the Chinese and others? As the national debt's percentage of GDP moves from about 40 percent to perhaps 70 percent, there will not be enough wealthy people left to bleed. Once the economy recovers, broad tax increases will be unavoidable. Or Obama's "once-in-a-generation chance" will actually involve the imposition of massive burdens on the next generation.

While hardly irrelevant, the question of "paying off the debt" is not the truly urgent issue. If one assumes, foolhardily or otherwise, that the United States Government is what accountants call a "going concern," then all that Treasury debt can be refinanced by new borrowing as it comes due. Businesses do that all the time.

The truly urgent issue is the interest on that debt. Now at almost half a trillion dollars every year and doomed to rise stratospherically as Washington commits to trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and the spreadsheet can add new columns.

Unlike, say, the Social Security "trust fund," the interest on the federal debt is not some empty accounting gimmick in a binder in a file cabinet in West Virginia. That is real cash money that must be paid, on time and in full, to whoever happens to own Treasury debt.

And who owns all that debt and collects all that cash interest? Maybe the Chinese and other foreigners. Maybe rich Americans. But this much is certain: Not the poor, and for the most part not even the middle class that Obama & Co. are so eager to buy off. They just get to pay the taxes.

That is what now passes as "enlightened" post-laissez-faire progressive macroeconomic policy.

Previously:
–On Budget Deficit Obliviousness (Or: "Trillions All the Way Down")
–CRS Recommendation: The National Debt
–CRS Recommendation: Foreign Holdings of Public Debt
–Government Bringing Back 30-Year Bond
–Defining "Balanced Budget" Down

On March 3, 2009, GLAD filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Boston on behalf of eight married couples and three surviving spouses from Massachusetts who have been denied federal legal protections available to spouses. Two of these couples will be filing suit after receiving rejections of their amended tax returns from the IRS. Each plaintiff is currently eligible for a particular program or benefit, applied for it, and was denied that legal protection because of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA").

Section 3 of DOMA is the provision that bans any and all components of the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages (as opposed to Section 2, which unconstitutionally repeals the Full Faith & Credit Clause and authorizes states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions).

I once wrote:

As I have blogged previously, it's all well and good for professional gay activists to advise going slowly, waiting "a generation or two." Except that I'm 38 — I don’t have a generation or two.

On the other hand, it is entirely appropriate for those who stand to suffer from a foolhardy strategy (e.g., a doomed-to-fail lawsuit) to speak out against it and call for it to be withdrawn. This is such a lawsuit.

A good rule of thumb is that any gay rights litigation not sponsored or supported by Lambda Legal is probably not a winner. Yes, GLAD was the lead counsel in both the Massachusetts and Vermont marriage cases. Point conceded. But Lambda had their backs in both instances. They are the experts, and they have nothing to do with this case. Not a good prelude.

A victory at the trial level might well be won, and perhaps the First Circuit would even uphold a victory on appeal. All entirely possible.

But then what?

"[The case] certainly can and may reach the Supreme Court level, and we think the Supreme Court is receptive to these fundamental notions of equality and the balance between federal and state governments."

That from one of the GLAD attorneys. And I am flabbergasted by it. Wishful thinking is one thing. Self-delusion is something else entirely.

This Supreme Court not showing great deference to Congress on a matter that does not involve heightened scrutiny? What are they thinking over at GLAD? (Remember: Gays are not a suspect class under federal law, and while there is a fundamental right to marry, there is not a "fundamental right to a joint tax return.")

Finally, whatever happened to legislative repeal of DOMA — now that Democrats control everything in Washington from the Oval Office to the supply closet? The people are more convinced that the Supreme Court will "do the right thing" than they are that Congress and Obama will?

Wow. Just wow.

The case is Gill v. Office of Personnel Management (complaint PDF – 92 pages). More thoughts from Hunter of Justice, Right Wing Watch.

Now that the stock market has lost half its value, could you imagine if we had gone ahead with George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security and bet that money on stocks? Aren't you glad that Democrats stopped him and saved Social Security?

Well.

Of course, the Bush administration's proposal was not to "bet Social Security money on stocks." It was a proposal for voluntary partial privatization that would have allowed younger workers to opt into an arrangement where some of their taxes would have been diverted into vested personal accounts that, yes, could have been invested in equity vehicles — or not. There would certainly have been lower-risk options and even no-risk money market funds to choose from. And in the process, workers could have at least modestly reduced their dependence on a risky, unvested annuity stream that offers essentially zero returns at best.

So, yes, I can imagine that. I can imagine it quite easily.

Here's something else I can imagine: Imagine if Social Security had not been taken "off-budget" (i.e., if Social Security surpluses had not be used to conceal the true size of the federal budget deficit).

Imagine if all the Social Security surpluses collected by the federal government over the years had not been raided by greedy members of Congress and fraudulently presented to gullible voters as a "trust fund" — which is an absurd, empty accounting gimmick backed only by a pledge to raise taxes in the future (i.e., to recoup all those taxes already paid for Social Security but spent on Bridges to Nowhere and No Bureaucrat Left Behind "public investments").

Where would all those billions upon billions of surplus tax dollars have gone? Not into the stock market — no one ever seriously suggested that (except for the notorious radical conservative, Bill Clinton).

That money would almost certainly have gone to banks. The Social Security Administration or Treasury would simply have deposited that money in financial institutions, probably as specially negotiated long-term certificates of deposit.

With all that extra money in their deposit bases, banks would have had much stronger balance sheets and therefore would have been far less likely to need government cash now in the wake of the financial crises. Indeed, there could easily have not been any financial crises — especially if those Social Security surplus deposits came with strings attached (e.g., about taking on excessive risk) all those years ago.

Oh, and Social Security would still have all that money today tucked away safely for tomorrow. The reward would have been…

Well, more wealth than you can imagine!

—

Elsewhere:

The President's 2010 Budget lays the groundwork for the future establishment of a system of automatic workplace pensions, on top of and clearly outside Social Security, that is expected to dramatically increase both the number of Americans who save for retirement and the overall amount of personal savings for individuals. research has shown that the key to saving is to make it automatic and simple. Under this proposal, employees will be automatically enrolled in workplace pension plans — and will be allowed to opt out if they choose. Employers who do not currently offer a retirement plan will be required to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA account that is compatible with existing direct-deposit payroll systems.

Excuse me, but doesn't the Obama proposal sound an awful lot like the Bush proposal — you know, the one that liberals blasted as nightmarish?

There is one big difference: Bush's plan was opt-in and therefore truly voluntary; Obama's is opt-out and therefore (at least indirectly) compulsory.

Imagine that.

POST SCRIPT: How delicious it was to hear Secretary Geithner, barely 30 minutes after I posted this, insist in his congressional testimony that the Obama plan would most definitely "not require employees to invest in the stock market." Quite delicious indeed.

Previously:
–Will the Democrats Privatize Social Security?
–Times Editorial Repeats "401(k) = Stocks" Lie

The Vice President today commended the new owners of Republic Windows and Doors, a Chicago window manufacturing plant that was shuttered late last year, resulting in the lay-off of its 250 union workers. Republic was purchased in bankruptcy court last week by Serious Materials, a California-based company that makes energy efficient windows. Serious Materials has announced plans to reopen the Republic factory and to eventually rehire all 250 of its laid-off workers at their former pay levels. Serious Materials said it purchased Republic because the Recovery Act will increase demand for its products.

That which is not seen: The jobs lost elsewhere in the economy because of: higher taxes, crowding out of private investment by government deficits, entrepreneurial paralysis in the midst of never-ending and always-changing regulation, rent-seeking, government waste, political corruption, and the perpetual font of self-congratulatory hubris from politicians, bureaucrats, their pundit apologists, and all the other central-planning fetishists.

Enjoy the windows…

Previously:
–Maybe We'll Be Really Fortunate and Mount St. Helens Will Erupt
–Obama's Broken Window Fallacy

And what, exactly, is the "it" that Ms. Kelley "unfairly" can't take advantage of now?

The Obama administration rushed to include a health care safety net for laid-off workers in the recently signed stimulus bill, but has not told employers exactly how to make it work.

As a result, tens of thousands of jobless people could wait months before getting help paying for health insurance that their employers previously had covered.
…
Employers are waiting for instructions from the Labor Department and the Internal Revenue Service on how to put the program into place. Both agencies posted some information online Thursday.

Until employers get the guidance they need and notify potentially eligible ex-employees, most workers will not apply for the new benefit. Many probably will not know it exists.
…
An IRS spokesman said the agency is moving as fast as it can.

Put aside the precedent questions of whether COBRA subsidies are a legitimate function of government (or, for that matter, whether COBRA itself is even constitutional). Put aside the question of whether it's fair to require employers to bear the added costs of trying to track down former employees, calculate their new entitlements and administer an entire new benefit regime for them.

Just focus for a moment on Ms. Kelley. She brings an understandable sense of urgency to the issue as a result of her financial situation and lengthy litany of ailments. Point conceded. But does she also get to hurl such an indignant attitude back at those trying to help her (with other people's money, of course)?

This is an entirely new entitlement, requiring an entirely new bureaucratic apparatus impacting multiple government departments, and an entirely new administrative burden on private employers. President Obama signed the stimulus package a mere 12 days ago.

And what does Ms. Kelley have to say about it? Not "thank you." But "it's totally unfair."

This is the entitlement mentality: Be offered an inch, demand a yard. Receive an entitlement, demand that it be immediately increased. Receive an increase, complain that it's all happening too slow. Too much is never enough.

Here's another quote(*) of the day — or of a somewhat longer period:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.

The passage goes on to note that the average duration of great civilizations has been around 200 years. The Framers had hoped to exceed that limit precisely by not exceeding the limits of legitimate government in the first place, and by trying to ensure that their new nation would not be a true (i.e., mob-controlled) democracy.

As Ms. Kelley so succinctly notes: in more ways than one, Americans are living not just on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.

Full Disclosure: I myself will likely qualify for this program, and unapologetically intend to take full advantage of it. Accepting a modest entitlement clawback, after paying well over $400,000 in federal taxes over the past ten years, is hardly hypocritical. I have never considered martyrdom to be a libertarian virtue.

We saw it recently with President Obama, who smugly (and dishonestly) insists that, under his budget proposal, 98% of Americans will see no increase in their taxes, while quietly ballooning the federal cigarette tax to fund a liberal pet project — the expansion of SCHIP from covering only poor children to also covering not-poor not-children.

So too among the states:

Some politicians want a bigger taste of the economy's naughty side, pushing for special taxes on dirty magazines, racy movies, sex toys and strip clubs.
…
Most of the proposals — call them skin taxes — have stalled, often because of conflicts with First Amendment protections of free expression. … But even with serious constitutional problems, lawmakers haven't stopped trying to capitalize on the fact that sex sells, especially when facing big budget shortfalls and weary voters who aren't likely to stomach an across-the-board tax hike.
…
It's easy to see why targeting sex businesses seems like a political slam-dunk. Singling out taboo behavior for extra taxation is part of the political drive that has led to "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol.

I'm not sure that's entirely true, at least until recently. The notion of strictly aretaic (i.e., punitive) taxation on "taboo behavior" is not typically the justification that is put forth for "sin taxes." That's a new excuse.

Previously, sin taxes were typically rationalized on either of two strictly economic theories. First was the externality argument: Smoking or drinking (or now even eating) today tends to result in additional costs to taxpayers tomorrow (at least under socialized medicine). The sin tax merely adjusts the price of the sin to reflect the (supposedly) "true" cost of the sin.

The alternative economic justification for a sin tax is the more pragmatic elasticity argument. Smoking and drinking tend to be resistant to price increases, at least up to a point. Hence the government can "safely" impose a tax on such activities with less fear of disrupting the market for those activities — what economists call a deadweight loss.

But either rationalization — externality or elasticity — is still based strictly in economics and not in ethics. The notion of a strictly punitive "sin tax" is a rarity — precisely because the notion is so offensive to enlightened principles of statecraft.

We as individuals may shame or shun the smoker. The government as a taxation authority may seek to raise revenue from the smoker for reasons (real or imagined) connected to the smoking. But taxing the smoker simply to express collective disapproval of her smoking is simply not a legitimate function of government.

So too with pornography, sex toys, pole dancing, "violent" video games or any other "taboo." Aretaic ethics — imposing morality (whose?) for its own sake — has always been, and remains, a fundamentally un-American monstrosity (not to mention the fundamental, and increasingly unbridgeable, chasm between conservatives and libertarians).

To the extent that constitutional protections such as the First or Fourteenth Amendments block aretaic taxation, so much the better. But the debate ought to transcend constitutional limitations and be conducted on a higher level: more should be required before something is taxed than merely deciding that "the mob thinks it's icky."

Previously:
–The Latest "Sin" to Tax: Video Games