Syndicated

One of my favorite non-political blogs is The Future of News. Steve Boriss wrote a fantastic piece titled The Fight for Free Speech: Will We Be the Greatest Generation? about the idea of net neutrality. Referring to a NYT editorial, he says:

The Times ignores the fact that the First Amendment is designed to protect us against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector, which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

This mistake with Boriss points out is, I think, the liberaltarian fallacy. It assumes that government action is going to protect you from business, rather than get coopted by business. Libertarians intituitively understand that this is absurd, but conservatives and, recently, Republicans, have been unable to make that argument. I suspect that we will not be able to achieve a majority until we have both an intellectually and politically serious critique of both government and big business. Read on.

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The Founders understood that the only way to stop a greedy, venal politician is with another greedy, venal politician with opposite interests. In the same way, economics teaches us that the only way to stop an greedy, venal businessman is with another greedy, venal businessman. If you try to stop a greedy, venal businessman with a greedy, venal politician, they will just get in bed with each other.  Adam Smith captured that point nicely:

The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

The Economist, reprinted here, updated this with a spot-on critique of President Bush, and by extension, the GOP:

Mr Bush is the classic instance of a conservative politician who confuses support for particular businesses with support for enterprise in general. These seemingly similar ideas are in fact directly contradictory.

The progressive left (and John McCain) is basically correct in their critique of the current GOP that we are in bed with big business. We need to understand and fix this legitimate critique. Because of this we have lost our credibility in arguing for genuine free-market approaches, like cutting corporate taxes and corporate welfare, which is what The Economist is arguing for in that piece. But there is also a libertarian critique that we need to re-embrace.

I would point out that the two most energized activist bases in the GOP Presidential primary, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee supporters, should find something to like in this. There is probably a reasonable place to land where you criticize the hedge-fund managers (a standard Huckabee attack) for rent-seeking (making Ron Paul supporters happy). To quote Hernando de Soto, who addressed in his book The Other Path the Latin American conflict between crony-capitalism and socialism, "may they one day realize that I am just as radical as they are." Center-right politics works precisely when it is optimistic, as de Soto was.

Boiling this down:

1. We have allowed libertarian-like arguments to be used to attack the private sector. This is what I will call the liberaltarian fallacy.
2. We have not sufficiently demonized rent-seeking by the private sector. In this way, we have become too corporatist. We have forgotten that Adam Smith is right.

I would argue that because of (2), we have not been able to develop an intellectually serious critique of liberaltarianism, which has damaged us among the value adding creative class like software engineers that are increasingly siding with the Democratic party (more on this soon).

Ultimately, we know what the medium term future is going to look like. Democrats will get on the take, as Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad already are and as Jim Johnson demonstrated himself an expert at. (Note that Matt Stoller, in a moment of either dishonesty or ignorance, describes this as "the free market" as opposed to rent-seeking companies and corrupt politicians) They will be corrupt, and we will attack them for it.

But to really win, we are going to have to develop a serious anti-government and anti-big business critique. Only when people see that the Democrats have (and indeed already are) whored themselves out to business will we be able to credibly get the majority back.. But we aren’t going to win by advocating for our own crony capitalism. We are going to need a reform agenda that attacks precisely this problem. And it is going to have to be relevant to the information ecomony that we are increasingly moving towards. (again, more on that in a bit)

Earth to Jonathan Martin (and the rest of the press corps): Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah moment was telling truth to people who didn’t believe it. Not to a standing ovation:

Obama’s Father’s Day speech includes some remarkable language about absentee dads that only he could deliver. More than that, though, it’s something of a Sister Souljah — yet one delivered from a member of the black community. …

This passage, which prompted a standing ovation, really stood out as a cut-to-the-bone, almost shaming challenge to African-Americans:

Where is the shocked silence? Who is going to attack Obama like Jesse Jackson attacked Clinton.

Give me a break, and stop giving Obama a free-ride.

This will make you laugh and cry. On the 12th, the Arkansas State Senate voted against expelling Senator Jack Crumbly. The problem was that the 2006 Democratic Primary that he won by 68 votes was found to be “completely corrupt.” That’s a quote from the statement Democratic Senator Bobby Glover contained in the report of the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Government Affairs. But this gets a whole more tastier… For example, Glover describes one campaign worker known as the “absentee ballot queen”:

A paid campaign worker for Crumbly stated under oath that she personally handled between 250 to 275 absentee ballots in this election. Furthermore, this worker is known as the “absentee ballot queen” in Forrest City, … Under Arkansas law, a bearer is only allowed to handle two absentee ballots or applications per election.

Ok. Clearly electoral laws were broken. And then there are were the forged signatures:

In carefully examining the absentee applicants and ballots that would not qualify, including forged ballots, handwriting expert Dawn Reed, testified under oath that Louise Fields, a pain campaign worker for Crumbly, had made at least 75 entries on absentee ballot applications and related records. She pointed out that the same 3 people wrote numerous entries on these documents, which included the name of Louise Fields. …

This is how Democrats run elections.

H/T Election Journal.

John McCain’s campaign took a big step when they created the McCain Report. Michael Turk has written on this. I am struck by a new post from the campaign’s Director of Strategy, Sarah Simmons. She’s senior staff whose opinions drive large-scale strategic decisions made by the campaign. And she is telling you on their blog what they are thinking:

John McCain continues to defy expectations. We all (pollsters, pundits and campaign leadership) were braced for a Barack Obama bounce — like a pretty big one. The great news: it hasn’t really materialized, not yet anyway. Yes, he’s seen a bounce — daily tracking polls show him up around 6-points — but that’s a far cry from the hype that many of our friends on cable news had been selling.

 

And, two major polls released in the past 24 hours are full of good news for the campaign — Diageo/Hotline shows Senator McCain trailing by 2 points overall, but we lead by 10 points with independents. WSJ/NBC shows Senator McCain trailing by 6 points, but the same poll shows Senator McCain has big leads with suburban women and white men.

This is making the Wisconsin Democratic Party very unhappy. They nominated someone that even their own hyper-activists can’t support:

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton’s defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

Why? The biggest reason seems to be her sister, who served in Iraq and who wants a leader who she can believe in:

Encouraged by her sister, who has served in Iraq, Bartoshevich signed up as a supporter with “Citizens for McCain,” an arm of the campaign targeting Democrats and independents.

She just doesn’t trust Barack Obama. Read on for why.

“I just feel you need to have somebody who has experience with foreign matters.”

She said a series of controversial Obama associations, including but not limited to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Chicago developer Tony Rezko, reflected poorly on his judgment. And she echoed the complaints of many of Clinton’s most ardent supporters that Clinton was treated unfairly in the nominating process and by the party.

“No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her — that’s by Susan B. Anthony,” said Bartoshevich, referring to the suffragist.

Bartoshevich called herself a “devoted Democrat” who had never voted for a Republican for president.

“I’m on a lot of the (pro-Clinton) blogs, and so many people, male and female, feel the same way as I do,” said Bartoshevich, who was listed as a Racine County co-chair for the Clinton campaign and who traveled outside Wisconsin to volunteer for Clinton. “The Democrats jumped on this wagon of Barack Obama, and nobody really knows him.”