Courts, Monks & Protected Interests

This issue has been around forever - powerful economic interests lobby their buddies in the legislature to stifle competition using the regulatory and police power of the state as their weapon of choice. Since the New Deal, the general take of the Courts has been that if the legislature makes findings of fact that, on the surface, justify the challenged legislation, absent a Constituinal issue, the Courts will not overturn the decision unless it is manifestly without basis.

All too often, that amount of protection is insufficient and acts to unfairly protect corrupt special interests. A case in point:



(H/T Instapundit)

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World At A Crossroads .

In his essay below, Victor Davis Hanson quotes the ancient historian Thucydides famous judgment of the state of the world two and a half millenia ago. "The strong do as they will, the weak suffer as they must." The world Thucydides described was a world with no policeman and no external limitations upon the ruling class beyond calculations of raw power. It is a reality kept at bay in the modern world since World War II by American engagement. But as that changes, Victor Davis Hanson, in a bleak essay, sees us returning to a world Thucydides would recognize.

This from Mr. Hanson, writing at the NY Post:

RUSSIA invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at unimaginable levels. Gulf monar chies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch - all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing.

"Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from a system of free trade, electronic communications, diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism.

But was that ever quite true? In reality, to the extent globalism worked, it followed from three unspoken assumptions:

First, the US economy would keep importing goods from abroad to drive international economic growth.

Second, the US military would keep the sea-lanes open, and trade and travel protected. The Americans, as global sheriff, would deal with the occasional menace, like a Moammar al-Khadafy, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il or the Taliban.

Third, America would ignore ankle-biting allies and remain engaged with the world - like a nurturing mom who at times must put up with the petulance of dependent teenagers.

But there've been a number of signs recently that globalization may soon lose its US parent.

The United States may be the most free, stable and meritocratic nation, but its resources and patience are not unlimited. It pays more than a half trillion dollars a year to import $115-a-barrel oil that's often pumped at a cost of about $5.

The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans hold trillions of dollars in US bonds - the result of massive trade deficits. The American dollar is at historic lows. We are piling up staggering national debt. Over 12 million live here illegally and freely transfer more than $50 billion annually to Mexico and Latin America.

Our military, after deposing Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, is tired. And Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the cheap criticism of global moralists. But as America turns ever so slightly inward, the new globalized world will revert to a far poorer (and more dangerous) place.

Liberals like Barack Obama speak out against new free-trade agreements and want existing accords like NAFTA readjusted. . . .

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy becomes harder to take. After all, it is easy for self-appointed moralists to complain that terrorists don't enjoy Miranda rights at Guantanamo, but it'd be hard to do much about the Russian military invading Georgia's democracy and bombing its cities.

Al Gore crisscrosses the country, pontificating about Americans' carbon footprints. But he could do far better to fly to China to convince them not to open 500 new coal-burning power plants.

. . . So, what a richer but more critical world has forgotten is that in large part America was the model, not the villain - and that postwar globalization was always a form of engaged Americanization that enriched and protected billions.

Yet globalization, in all its manifestations, will run out of steam the moment we tire of fueling it, as the world returns instead to the mindset of the 1930s - with protectionist tariffs; weak, disarmed democracies; an isolationist America; predatory dictatorships; and a demoralized gloom-and-doom Western elite.

If America adopts the protectionist trade policies of Japan or China, global profits plummet. If our armed forces follow the European lead of demilitarization and inaction, rogue states advance. If we were to treat the environment as do China and India, the world would become quickly a lost cause

If we flee Iraq and call off the War on Terror, jihadists will regroup, not disband. When the Russians attack the next democracy, they won't listen to the United Nations, the European Union or Michael Moore.

We may be on our way back to an old world, where the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must

Read the entire article. I have long thought that we are a nation at a cross-roads. In the short term, our nation will survive. But if we follow down the post modern road, then sooner rather than later, we as a nation will suffer horrendously. The choices really could not be any more stark, nor the forseeable consequences more costly.

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American Democracy, British Observations and EU Concerns

Our democracy is capturing the imagination of a lot of people in Britain, both because of the wild, almost anarchistic aspects of our nomination process to elect a President and because of the scale in which we are engaged in the process. I do not know how many articles I have read in the British press and blogs of late expressing admiration of and the consideration of a desire for such a system across the pond.

In a parliamentary system such as in Briain's, the electorate have no direct say in who will be chosen Prime Minister. The party with the most representatives in Parliament appoints a Prime Minister. The cynicism by which Britain views its political process is significantly more jaundiced than in America. And the EU has only a patina of democracy. EU Referendum has an intelligent rant on this today, comparing the exercise of democracy in America with the state of affairs in the EU, where they are currently far more concerned with enacting protectionist measures to keep out Chinese candles than they are with the exercise of democracy. That particular blog, not one given to overstatement, entitles their post EU Macht Frei - a play on the sign above nazi concentration camps which read Work Makes You Free.

As to the EU, I blogged on the latest EU consideration to ban outdoor heaters, calling it a textbook example of EU overregulation. The move would hit Britain extremely hard, with the costs estimated at a quarter of a billion pounds in lost business. The legislation is ostensibly to fight global warming, but will in fact only reduce Britain's carbon footprint by .002 of 1%. Yet never one to let common sense stand in the way of regulating, the EU has voted 592 to 26 to pass the measure.

I am sure that the EU will fall under its own weight eventually, My only question is whether it will take Britain with it? Right now, that's an even money bet.

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Hillanomix Part II

I am not the only person worried about the economically illiterate, anti-capitalist and anti-free trade statements of she who would be President - a topic on which I posted here. It seems that Hillary Clinton's sophmoric musings have also disturbed Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, who sees in her words a serious danger to the world economy. This today from the Telegraph:

Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, has warned Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, that she risks stirring up a hornets nest by inflaming protectionist sentiment in the United States.

"The things she's been saying reverberate around the world," he said.

"This is the last year the Doha trade round can survive. There is little chance of a breakthrough after this president leaves office. People in the current administration tell me the US is turning into a protectionsist country. It is a serious concern."

Mr Mandelson, the ex-architect of New Labour, once had close ties to the Democratic Party. But his duties as defender of the EU trade system now put him starkly at odds with his former allies and soulmates.

"The Democratic Party is not where it was in the free trade heyday of Bill Clinton, but I don't think it is irretrievable," he said.

Hillary Clinton has vowed to "review" America's main trade treaties, including the North American NAFTA pact signed by her husband. She has called for measures to "shelter" US companies from foreign investors.

Her arguments appear to go beyond campaign rhetoric. She now argues that "free trade" doctrines have been overtaken by the rise of cheap labour rivals in Asia, forcing the US to adopt a radically different strategy. "We just can't keep doing what we did in the twentieth century. We have to drive a tougher bargain," she said. . .

Read the article here. If Hillary Clinton believes half of what she has said about economics in America, she is tuly an economic illiterate and poses a danger to our economy and the world's economy if elected.

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