Libertarian Think Tank

Will Bunch at philly.com has this to say to ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters – you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues…

Sounds good. I’m always happy to read a good criticism of the mainstream media. The same entrenchment that allows for William Kristol to secure a job at the New York Times after proving consistently wrong for the last ten years, also allows George Stephanopoulos to continue existing and Chuck Gibson to continue sagging. But then I read part of Will Bunch’s beef:

 …me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes….And Charlie…could you be any more out of touch with your viewers? Most people aren’t millionaires like you, and if Pennsylvanians are losing sleep over economic matters, it is not over whether the capital gains tax will go back up again.

Is it common for journalists to misunderstand the impact of capital gains taxes on our economy? I doubt that I see more yield from my capital investments than the average Pennsylvanian, but I’m nonetheless concerned with how they will be levied in the future. Here is why:

For a while until the Bush tax cuts of 2001 capital gains taxes rivaled the highest levels of income taxes. So if I invested in an American business that turned a profit, I would likely have to pay around 40% of my returns to the federal government. The same goes if invested in gold, petroleum, grain, or classic automobiles. The problem is that, while that sounds like a windfall for the government, it has a chilling effect on investment. When the market is up, the chilling effect is negligible- prices still go up and investors still realize returns, so everything continues swimmingly.

The problem is that value sometimes depreciates, especially when market bubbles burst. When that happens and the markets start to look bear-ish, investors flee like they were breaking from the penitentiary. Worse, the first investors to leave are the foreigners who tend to have more liquid investments and readier access to other markets. This leaves American investors holding the bag, often with capital investments that are worth less than what the investors originally paid.

But why should non-millionaire Pennsylvanians like Will Bunch care about all that? First, if non-millionaires are not investing in capital assets, they should be. The federal government adds your income to your capital gains together to determine which tax rate to apply. Those who are in the lowest tax brackets are taxed on their capital gains lower than they have been in years, thanks (again) to the Bush tax cuts.

Second, and perhaps more important, where does Will Bunch think jobs come from? About half the jobs in the United States come from publicly-traded companies. That means that over half the jobs come from companies that are equipped to buy and sell their capital assets as casually as their officers flirt with their secretaries. If they lose investors -and they *will* lose investors if the Democrats raise the capital gains tax as they have sworn in blood to do- they will only be able to expand the job supply by leveraging existing profits. This reduces shareholder dividends, which also drives away investors.

For some real-world examples, consider the fallout after the bubble burst of 2000. Then, foreign investment dwindled to almost-nothing. Only the Bush tax cuts brought them back (sorry if you don’t like Bush, but there’s really no question that it worked). The reciprocal to that, of course, is that the threat of a Democrat President could drive it all away again between the months of November and January. This time, the American investors may be more savvy, aware of the foreign flight, and may follow suit. That could knock the the bottom out of the entire market. So, sorry Will Bunch, but capital investment is a pertinent question if one cares about the economy.  If Will Bunch thinks that capital gains taxes are unrelated to overall economic conditions…or if he thinks that Pennsylvanians don’t care about them, he is mistaken and they should.

Sure, Gibson and Stephanopoulos probably stunk last night, but I wouldn’t trust another journalist to tell me why.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later:

Thanks to Diebold’s trickery, Ralph Nader won’t win in 2008, either. Of course, this will be more humorous if you know the Diebold controversy.

This is rich. Factcheck.org’s Joe Miller wrote an incendiary piece on Ron Paul that was picked up by Newsweek, which was titled “Wrong Paul: Fantasy, fallacy and factual fumbles from the Republican insurgent”. Miller packs it full of false and disingenuous assertions. Some could expose Miller, Factcheck.org, and Newsweek to a libel claim. The rest are just nonsense. Apparently, Miller has a history of obfuscation, if not outright polemics in his fact-checking. His opening paragraphs claim to deliver criticisms of Paul’s more “outlandish claims”, but some of the claims are not even Paul’s.

First,

Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.

Actually, Paul claimed the exact opposite. He said it was “not secret” and it was “not a conspiracy”. Instead, it is a “contest between ideologies”. That means Paul thinks there are people who are ideologically driven to unify North America. Big deal.

Not only was Miller wrong about Paul’s claim, but Paul’s supposedly “outlandish” claim is actually pretty trite. So why did Paul bring it up? He didn’t. He said it when he was asked one of his three questions at the CNN/Youtube debate. The first was something like: What are you going to do when you lose? The second was: do you believe in all this conspiracy stuff? I think the third one had a little more substance.

So where did fact-checker, Joe Miller get this? Miller cited blogs, no less. One of them came from the Washington Posts’ Fact-Checker, whose quote of Paul omits the part where he said, explicitly, “It’s not a conspiracy”.

This is libel, pure and simple. This piece was clearly intended to hurt Paul. Miller makes references to X-Files’ Fox Mulder and other pop-paranoia to stir it up. You see, it’s fair game to call anything Paul supporters say a “conspiracy theory” because Paul was videotaped being polite to some 9-11 Truthers. Worse, Miller was inexcusably wrong. Finally, while most obnoxious bloggers defend against libel claims by saying they didn’t mean their accusations as ‘facts’, FactCheck.org doesn’t have that luxury. They hold themselves as authorities of ‘fact’, so a plaintiff could easily argue that they are held to the highest standard. There you have it, the three elements of a libel claim. Oh, and you need money to litigate. Unfortunately for Miller, Paul is the best funded Republican candidate and he is in a great position to retain the best libel lawyers on the planet.

For the record, I have no idea whether someone wants to build a superhighway, but the Canadian Government is planning on it. In fact, the linked website used to be called “NAFTA Superhighway” instead of “NAFTA Corridor” before this thing exploded after the CNN debate. There are several pages on that website that use the word NAFTA with regard to highways. And CNN is no stranger to the topic (see video).

Here is Miller’s second criticism:

Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn’t planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.

No, *Miller* gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that Paul isn’t planning to cut. Miller takes a winding stroll through assumption and surmise to conclude that Paul is including domestic programs. His source? Some campaign staffer told Miller to check out a website. The website provided is list of national security costs. None of them were exclusively domestic. Miller also criticizes Paul in an attenuated way for including interest and “medical and retirement pay for veterans”.

First, of course we should include the interest. As long as we are on the fiat monetary standard, our dollar is backed by the “Full Faith and Credit” of the United States Federal Government. Know what happens if we go into default? The dollar tanks, badly. So, while ‘interest’ may not concern the legions of Americans whose souls are owned by credit card companies, it should probably be considered when we calculate America’s financial future.

Second, what is “medical pay” for veterans? Does Miller mean disability payments and medical services through the Department of Veterans Affairs? Should we not include that in the cost of a six-year-and-counting war? Miller apparently doesn’t think so, but having worked at the VA, I choose to differ. We are still mounting unanticipated costs for services and payments to Viet Nam veterans. More importantly, the VA is stocked with Viet Nam vets who aren’t going to let their successors suffer the indignity that they did. As a result, it takes far less to get a PTSD claim these days. If a war veteran tells his psychiatrist he saw bullets flying, he will probably get at least 10% and I’ll be the last person to say he does not deserve it. No, I don’t have any documentation for that, I just worked for a psychological trauma facility for combat veterans for three years. My co-workers pretty much wrote the book on PTSD claims. My instinct tells me that any figures for disability payouts in the years to come are going to be low…way too low. And that’s Paul’s point, isn’t it? We’re not paying a trillion dollars per year, right now. The Chinese are paying for it. The figure represents the amount that will be retroactively attributed to the war once politicians can safely distance themselves from it.

This one is a gem:

Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted “to totally disassociate” himself from the Reagan administration.

This is Miller’s indictment of Paul’s ‘facts’? No, here it is:

Paul’s embrace of Reagan’s legacy represents a significant change of heart. Actually, it’s the second time that Paul has changed his mind about Reagan. After endorsing Reagan for president in 1976 and again in 1980, Paul became disenchanted, leaving the Republican party in 1987. The following year, he told the Los Angeles Times:

Paul (May 10, 1988): The American people have never reached this point of disgust with politicians before. I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration.

So what? Paul was one of only four Republican Congressmen to endorse Reagan in ‘76. Then Reagan campaigned for Paul. Then Paul decided there were some unsavory characters in Reagan’s administration. Twenty years, and three big-government Presidents later, Paul decided he liked Reagan himself, if not his administration. Fair enough. It’s one thing to complain that politicians flip on issues. It’s just whiny to complain that they flip on friends. But it is downright telling that Miller thinks this is the more “outlandish” of Paul’s claims. Most important, how is this a fact check?

The more obvious reason why Paul puts Reagan in his ads is not that Paul was smitten with Reagan’s administration, of course, but that Paul and Regan are very ideologically similar (see the video). Their insistence on fiscal responsibility is a start. But Miller isn’t stupid. He knows this. That is why Miller’s piece is a disingenuous attack instead of a legitimate check on the facts.

Finally, Miller attacks Paul supporters in an “Introduction to Logic” section. I suppose I should let him have this one because assistant philosophy professors don’t get a lot of validation in life…then again, he has a real job now.

He explains the logical fallacy of “Denying the Antecedent”. I feel competent enough in logic to point out that colloquial sets of sentences, which never contain perfectly atomic elements, generally import some assumptions. Miller’s complaint that the following set is not valid completely misses that problem:

1. If FactCheck.org writes about a candidate, then that candidate makes some inaccurate claims.
2. FactCheck.org has not written about Ron Paul.
3. Therefore Ron Paul does not make inaccurate claims.

You see, the Paul Supporters’ obvious assumption here is that FactCheck.org is diligent and significantly interested in checking facts instead of just posting inflammatory articles. Of course, my forgoing discussion should show that it is neither. But I should be fair, Miller kind-of addressed this:

And that’s the problem with the DailyPaul.com argument. It works only to the extent that you assume that we write about every single inaccurate claim uttered by every single political candidate. We don’t. We just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning many Ron Paul flubs.

We’ve corrected that oversight now.

Well, I look forward to reading that correction, but this ain’t it.

Click Here to DIGG

The Washington State GOP stopped counting caucus results after only 87% of the counties reported in, just as John McCain edged past Mike Huckabee. Bradblog reports that this decision was made unilaterally by Washington State GOP chairman Luke Esser, or as Brad of Bradblog.com calls him, “Esser the Suppressor”. Brad also claimed that Luke Esser has a history of devising measures to suppress votes. He cites a UW Daily article written by Esser in 1986:

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

That’s nothing. When I signed up to be a Precinct Committee Officer for my precinct in Seattle, I received a barrage of strange calls. Two of them came from the GOP district chair. In the first call, he asked how committed I was to the Republican Party. I truthfully said that I grew up in a Reagan household, served in the military, supported Rossi for Governor in 2004, and have voted only for Republican presidential nominees.

This loosened him up enough to talk some smack about Ron Paul. He said the problem with Paul is that he makes great, impassioned speeches in Congress, but refuses to “get anyone to go along with his ideas”. Whatever. “By the way”, he asked, “are you supporting anyone?” I said that I liked the whole field but I want to keep my preferences to myself. He said that was no problem.

After his first call, I got a call from another district chair. She outright asked me if I was a Paul supporter. I said the same thing. She shilled for Huckabee’s morality for some minutes before I told her that I was more interested in economic issues. “Yeah, but you don’t support gay marriage and those things do you?” I explained that, really, I don’t care.

She talked a little about being a PCO. She told me that I would run the precinct’s caucus, but “if a bunch of Paul supporters show up, you could loose the vote” I couldn’t understand what that meant. Anything but Paul is a win? Fortunately, my district chair called back to explain.

He said that he was encouraged by all of the new PCO applications, but that he would have to deny any applications from people who weren’t forthright about being Ron Paul supporters. He said that he had found us on a Ron Paul meetup group and that our PCO applications were denied. He didn’t say whether he did this with other candidates’ supporters.

I reminded him that I never lied to him. He acted like that mattered, “Oh. I didn’t really think about that. Most people just lied to me, but I guess you didn’t”. He promised to think about it and get back to me the next day. He did not. Nor did he return the email that I sent the following week. Rather than take a dangerous chance on a homeowner/law student/father of two, like me, our precinct went without a PCO.

So what the heck is going on that the Washington GOP’s representatives distinguish between Paul and a Republican win? A couple of months ago a Washington GOP official was quoted in a fury stating that he did not want a big turnout of Paul supporters because Paul is not even a real Republican (I think it was the Everett Herald, but I couldn’t find the article again after a 2 hour search) Apparently, strict Constitutionalists are personae non gratae around these ‘real’ Republicans.

So there you have it. If the Party stopped the vote after only 87%, my instinct tells me it’s not Huckabee that they’re worried about. Paul came in right behind those two with 21% of the vote, plus the vote stopped in Everett. But I suppose that invoking wrongdoing against Paul makes it a conspiracy theory.

Those “uncommitted” delegates might go for Paul too, considering that a large chunk of Paul supporters ran as incognito delegates, for precisely these reasons. This isn’t much of a secret, so this may be someone’s attempt to mitigate that effect. After all, Esser denied trying to get over on Huckabee, “I would have done the same for Gov. Huckabee if he had the same margin and the same underlying dynamics as Sen. McCain.” I believe that. Would he do it for Paul?

Incidentally, that district chair is a delegate for McCain now. He ran the caucus, so I approached him to make nice afterward. I told him it was a good thing that so many young voters were interested in politics. I also told him I became a delegate for Paul. Flustered, he said that we have only one candidate who can beat the Democrats and that we should be united.

Of course, I disagree. First, predicting McCain’s viability before he runs a national campaign is like calling Giuliani a front-runner before he looses to Ron Paul in the primaries. More importantly, I think that we will have the most statist, authoritarian Republican nominee since Nixon. I think we should send him a message to remind him where he came from.

Credits to Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall and Paul Kiel, Bradblog.com, and Goldy at Horsesass.org.

DIGG THIS

We are sorry about your tragic loss.

Washington, D.C. - Following a solid McCain victory in the Super Tuesday primaries, the Libertarian Party has sent Republican headquarters a funeral wreath marking the death of limited-government values within the Republican Party.  The wreath was hand-delivered to the D.C. offices of the Republican National Committee.  “We simply felt the need to express our heartfelt sympathy for the Republican Party as they undergo this tough time within their party,” says Libertarian Party National Media Coordinator Andrew Davis, who delivered the wreath.  

 How apt. That’s how most of the party must be feeling. They should deliver them to the conservative pundits who sided with authoriarians and created McCain. I’m sure that’s how they’re feeling.