Michael E. Newton's Blog, page 18
March 16, 2011
Freedom of religion or just illiterate?
The Arizona Republic reports 'Atheist group sues governor over prayer day':
Gov. Jan Brewer is being sued for issuing proclamations in support of an Arizona Day of Prayer.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, alleges that Brewer's actions were unconstitutional because they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from establishing a state religion. The lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing the governor from issuing similar proclamations in the future.
Excuse me?
Brewer's actions were unconstitutional because they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from establishing a state religion.
For those who don't know, Arizona's Governor is not the United States Congress. So there is no way she can be violating the First Amendment, which states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't take a constitutional law scholar to be able to read the First Amendment and know who it is restricting. But you do have to be literate.
March 13, 2011
My motto for writing, according to Abraham Lincoln.
I have previously posted my motto for writing:
"My design was not so much to contribute new facts as to shape the narrative in such a way as to emphasize relations of cause and effect that are often buried in the mass of details."
~ John Fiske, The American Revolution, Volume 1:vii.
Abraham Lincoln expressed a similar sentiment in his famous Cooper Union Address:
The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.
March 11, 2011
Private property is a most sacred right of mankind
Adam Smith writes in The Wealth of Nations:
To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.
This quote reminds me of what John Adams wrote in 1787 in his A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America:
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet" and "Thou shalt not steal" were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.
Adam Smith: Supply Side Economist
From The Wealth of Nations:
High taxes, sometimes by diminishing the consumption of the taxed commodities, and sometimes by encouraging smuggling, frequently afford a smaller revenue to government than what might be drawn from more moderate taxes. [page 954]
March 10, 2011
Tocqueville on why people demand equality over freedom
From Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (page 585 in my edition):
The advantages of liberty become visible only in the long term and it is always easy to mistake the cause which brought them about. The advantages of equality are felt immediately and you can observe where they come from daily.
March 9, 2011
Some perspective on the angry mobs in Wisconsin
It is being reported that angry mobs have taken over the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. I am reminded of the famous George Santayana quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." So I've been tweeting about it, trying to give some perspective on the broader historical and political ramifications. Here are my tweets, as is:
Message to the unions & those who still believe they are forces for good: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Motto for the angry mobs in #Wisconsin: "We are bound by no laws. There are no fortresses which Bolsheviks cannot storm." ~ Stalin #walker
Polybius was right "Democracy comes into being; and in due course the licence and lawlessness of this form of government produces mob-rule."
More Polybius: "When by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch."
March 8, 2011
Sovereign debt crisis update: Yields hitting new highs in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy.
Interest rates are hitting their highest levels since the euro zone was created. Here are the five most "at-risk" countries, in order of chances of default.
Greece
Ireland
Portugal
Spain
Italy
March 7, 2011
Where's my magnifying glass? I'm trying to find the budget cuts.
The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.
That figure tops last February's record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.
Last month's federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats' opening bid of $6 billion.
Actually, those figures overstate the cuts because it is comparing a yearly cut to a monthly deficit. In reality, the annual deficit of about $1.6 trillion is 26 times as large as the Republican budget cuts and 267 times the size of the Democrats' proposed cuts.
I'm glad to see Washington is taking this problem seriously…
Sovereign debt crisis: Here we go again.
Moody's cuts Greece rating, stokes debt fears:
Moody's Investors Service cut Greece's sovereign-debt rating Monday by three notches to B1, infuriating the Greek government and temporarily denting the euro amid renewed worries about the ability of Greece and other debt-loaded euro-zone governments to avoid default.
The ratings agency, which also assigned a negative outlook to Greece's ratings, highlighted the government's difficulties with revenue collection and noted a risk that Athens might not meet the criteria for continued support from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union after 2013.
That could result in a voluntary restructuring of existing debt, the ratings agency said.
[...] The spread on Greek five-year credit default swaps widened 27 basis points to 1,010 basis points, according to data provider Markit. A basis point is 1/100th of a percentage point.
That means it would cost $1.01 million annually to insure $10 million of Greek debt against default for five years, up from $983,000 on Friday.
[...] The yield on Greek 10-year government bonds rose to 12.12% Friday, moving back above the 12% level for the first time since January, Jenkins noted, while the two-year spread had hit 15.22%.
It's not just Greek yields that are rising. Portugal's 10-year yield is hitting new highs. Many suspect that Portugal will be the next domino to fall, followed by Spain, and then Italy. Italy's yield is also hitting new highs.
And the sovereign debt crisis continues, just as I've been saying it would…
If Obamacare is so great, why all the exemptions?
According to the latest report:
HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago.
About 2.6 million people are covered by the waivers, representing less than 2 percent of privately insured individuals, according to HHS.
With 2.6 million people now exempt from Obamacare, we are are getting close to my goal of 300 million exemptions.
