What Value, Tea Partiers?

When not being denigrated as 'teabaggers', when not painted with a broad brush by focusing on the nuts any group has, the Tea Partiers can bring great value to the public discourse. For one thing, several of the Tea Partiers I know and have met have an excellent knowledge and grasp of the US Constitution.

I love this grilling a US Representative- a person sworn to uphold the Constitution- gets from a Tea Partier, and the fail as he at first tries to buffalo his way through, then has to confess he doesn't know his basic job description.



(h/t Joyce Merrill)

As Usual, 'Reform' Makes Things Worse

This time, it's credit card 'reform' that will help enrich the credit card companies that were supposed to be reigned in. From Reason Hit & Run:

Lo some nine months ago, Congress took a politically courageous stand against mom, apple pie, and credit card issuers by supposedly reining in the excesses of the latter (excesses which largely consisted of giving lots of people the ability to purchase goods and services on the automated installment plans otherwise known as credit cards). The goal of the new legislation was to clear the books, start anew, blah blah blah, and hem in the contagion known as excessive credit, which was widely believed to be behind the financial crisis that may or may not be over. And, at the same time, of course, Congress was going to make sure that all Americans had access to the credit that is our god-given birthright. The streets of America are paved with gold MasterCards and all that.

So now the new rules are in effect. And credit card issuers (banks, mostly) are now coming up with new ways to squeeze money out of customers, just like restauarants doubling up on corkage fees, extra charges for more butter, you name it.

So many people want Congress to act. Not me! Give me gridlock, stalemate, pussyfooting, and deliberation! I can't think of a single Congressional 'reform' in my lifetime that made anything better, only worse.

Old Boss, New Boss Chronicles

The more I see of President Obama, the more I think he's the four-year extension of the Bush Administration McCain was supposed to be. Likewise, the Democratic Congress. I love this passage, from a NY Post article:

The push to get the bill through before the holiday weekend was so frantic, members of Congress didn't have a chance to read all 1,071 pages of the document before they could vote.

"In a perfect world it would have been nice to have had more time to process it," said Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

Perfect? Heck, in a good world, we read the bills we're voting on. Is there a Democrat out there who, with a straight face, can express joy over not reading the bill prior to voting? You want to open the door to corruption? This is a GREAT way to do it. Allow staffers to write god-knows-what, and then vote on it.

Well, this is as good a chance as any to remind you of Downsize DC's "Read The Bills Act".

There's a basic principle at stake here. America was founded on the slogan, “No taxation without representation.” A similar slogan applies to this situation:
“No LEGISLATION without representation.”

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.

Obama's promise to post bills for five days before passage is nice, but it's empty transparency. Posting the stimulus five days before VOTING on it would have been the real deal. It kinda reminds me of my favorite Che Guevara quote:

"We can hold the trials any time, so long as the executions happen now".

Honest government is unafraid of debate, unafraid of scrutiny, and is in no rush to get the signatures on the dotted lest anyone read the fine print. Alas.

Big Surprise

So, when the libertarians were saying that losers shouldn't be bailed out, because bailouts allieve them of pain, and cause them not to revise bad decision making, this is one of the things we were talking about. From the NY Post:

High-flying Citigroup executives, trying desperately to hang on to their new, $50 million luxury jet, took heavy flak yesterday from the White House and Congress after The Post revealed how the beleaguerred bank is blowing taxpayers' rescue funds.

What to say to the Congress and Obama? "Well, you voted for it!"

If they want to blame someone, they need to rush to the nearest mirror.

To repeat, if you want to stop bad decision-making, stop rewarding bad decision-making. It really, truly is that simple.

Big Problem Caused By Government Tinkering

The Congress was hearing about the "problem" of higher gas prices (see yesterday's post), so they pushed subsidies at farmers to produce corn so that it might be sold to producer of ethanol, who are also subsidized.

Ah, the unintended consequences. As usual. So, what happens? Farmers have an incentive to dedicate some larger percentage of their land towards the production of corn. They'll get a greater subsidy check, and they'll have a greater market to sell to besides. In the meantime, less of every other crop is grown that might have been planted on those fields, and less corn is available to feed animals, to make oil

From today's Indy Star report, some seriously required reading:

Ethanol producers rely on a 51-cents-a-gallon ethanol tax credit to make slim profits. Slashing the credit by even 6 cents could put their operating margins in the red or close to it, said Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

A new farm bill, passed last week by both houses of Congress, would cut the credit to 45 cents. Ethanol, which in the United States is mostly made from corn, is a federal subsidy program that in some ways is proving to be "too successful," said Hurt.

The federal subsidies and record-high prices for oil set off a "gold rush" by ethanol producers who've built so much plant capacity that it's on track to far exceed the federal mandate for fuel use of 15 billion gallons of ethanol production by 2015, Hurt said.

The open plants alone will gobble up a fourth of the nation's corn harvest this year, he said. Congress must now wrestle with the question: "Have we let that go too far?" Hurt said. On the other hand, he said, "How can we as a country say, 'We want less fuel?' or say, 'Tough luck to ethanol producers' " after spending years encouraging them to build plants.

Yes, it looks like Pandora's Box, alright. But there's a truism of economics that goes, "Anything you subsidize you will get more of," so the over-production of ethanol plants should come as no surprise, and the corn subsidy program being 'too successful' should be anything but a surprise.

Notice that without the subsidies, the ethanol plants wouldn't even be built, because they are unprofitable? The entire profit comes from the subsidies- which is to say, from us taxpayers.

One extremely insightful Star reader commented nicely, concisely:

There is no problem so bad that the goverment can't make it worse.

This is why I believe in a laissez-faire approach to the economy. If there was a real market for ethanol, rather than the artificial one created by subsidy incentive, the market would have lept into the breach seeking profits in making ethanol. Now we have a losing industry pumped up beyond projected 'need', needlessly driving up the cost of all food products- which are themselves generally already subsidized to some degree or other.

I don't want the Congress meddling in the economy, and certainly not in something as important as food. We may drive 30,000 miles/year as I do, or we may walk everywhere we go needing no fule- but we all have to eat. If high fuel prices hurt the poor and cause them to not drive, what do high food prices cause for the poor?

Congress 'let it go too far' by being involved at all. Leave the market alone and it will do a better job than a Congress that resembles one driving on ice: If you get off course, the worst thing you can do is to jerk the wheel to compensate. You throw the thing further off course in the other direction.

But, we want our government to DO SOMETHING. Alas, you got what you asked for.