For anyone interested, here is the piece I wrote for the Pope Center on conservatism at Carolina: http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2611
Thanksgiving is socialist, according to Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, PhD. Stick to trade theory, buddy. To anyone who isn’t an ideologue blinded by childish hatred of the “other side” like Krugman, there’s a difference between socialism à la British Labour Party (i.e., British Steel, British Leyland, confiscatory taxation, etc) and a bunch of people voluntarily sitting down to share a meal with one another.
The difference between charity and socialism? Coercion. Charity is voluntary, 70% marginal taxation is not. What’s so difficult about that?
And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy a holiday that celebrates the best of a free society.
Apparently, Jim Neal, former Senate candidate, misses what every sane person understands. At a meeting of the Chapel Hill Town Council, he submitted a petition which read:
Many questions remain unanswered in regard to the Chapel Hill Police Department’s deployment on Sunday November 13th 2011 of a heavily-armed Special Emergency Response Team to clear a private building in Chapel Hill that had been occupied by a group of protesters. Seven people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor breaking and entering.
I have submitted a petition to to the Chapel Hill Town Council calling for the appointment of an independent commission to review the events leading up to yesterday’s deployment of the SERT unit. Residents of Chapel Hill are divided, one camp outraged by what they deem to be an unmeasured response by a SWAT team and the other yielding to the professional judgment of the CHPD. Neither side has the facts to which the public is entitled in order understand the events that led to yesterday’s display of lethal force by the Chapel Hill Police Department.
What is there not to understand? First, there was a vacant building. Then, a bunch of college kids “occupied” the building. They proceeded to barricade themselves in, post banners and posters explaining what they were doing, and then posted sentries. That is a hostile act.
Perhaps the Chapel Hill Police Department was aware of videos like this. Or this.
So they went in with a SWAT Team, taking every precaution to protect themselves of the potential threat within. Did anyone get hurt? No. Were shots fired? No.
What is the problem here?
Sometimes, I have this sneaking suspicion that the Occupy movement is actually a terribly clever parody of left-wing protests, a bunch of (inevitably) Koch-funded conservatives/libertarians who are satirizing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Kumbaya, warmed-over Marxist leftism that we see today. Reading the recent DTH article about the motor company occupiers almost, almost confirmed those suspicions.
There were so many gems:
“Occupy Chapel Hill members say the arrests have created internal dissent among those who wanted to keep the protests peaceful and legal.”
Let’s enter our World of Imagination and think about how the news reports would read for a Tea Party group who made a similar announcement (but, fortunately, since they were the Tea Party, staying “peaceful and legal” went without saying).
“During a Sunday night march protesting the police raid and arrests that day, members chanted criticisms of law enforcement. But similar chants were quickly hushed in Thursday’s march.”
Great! So no more “Kill the Cops!” chants. Phew
“The group of occupiers also collectively agreed to not destroy public property.”
Wait, wait, wait. They had to actually discuss this and come to an agreement to not destroy property???
“In some ways, I feel I have been occupying my whole life,” said “Heather Epes, a Carrboro resident”
What does that even mean? “Heather Epes, age 2, was unduly concerned about income inequality.” The DTH can do better than quote mindless nonsense from a hippie (who’s from Carrboro, if you hadn’t guessed already).
Cammie Bellamy, a sophomore journalism major, who said she has been involved with Occupy Chapel Hill since protesters began occupying the Peace and Justice Plaza in Chapel Hill on Oct. 15, said the movement has inspired her. “I think this is the biggest, most visible movement of my lifetime,” she said.
Arab Spring, Green Revolution, move over, Occupy Chapel Hill is here as the “biggest, most visible movement” of the past twenty years! #narcissism
But then I remember that they’re actually serious. And I go back to wishing it were simply satire.
This past Monday, Congress passed a bill- soon to be signed by President Obama- that increases the Federal Housing Authority’s maximum lending limit from $625,500 to $729,750.
Yet another ridiculous subsidy for the rich. The Wall Street Journal decimates the increase here.
The Occupy Chapel Hill branch of OWS is proving Jesse Helms’s quip that Chapel Hill is the “zoo” of North Carolina more true than he ever imagined, I’m sure.
Occupying private property in the name of the 99%-who don’t support the movement in the first place- is a horrendous in and of itself. But then having the audacity to whine and complain about how the police responded? Cue Occupier Ryan Jarrell, “I was shocked by the police action simply because no one else had talked to us before then.” Shocked, shocked! No one came to talk to them! Poor souls.
Instead of directing outrage at these spoiled college students (who think they can simply waltz into anyone’s house, barricade themselves in, post sentries and NOT face repercussions), the local community rallies behind them (also here)! There outrage is reserved, instead, for the police who thankfully restored order in the face of chants of “Kill the cops!”
Far worse, however, are the posters that appeared overnight in response to the removal of the occupiers:
Occupy Chapel Hill should lose any legitimacy it may have had. As it would, in any other town. Not in Chapel Hill.
The “Occupy” Movement has increased its activity in recent days, trying to ramp up its protest against “corporate influence” in the American political system. I certainly agree that if the will of a few corporations were to drown out the people’s will, then we would have a serious problem. However, I fundamentally disagree that regulating corporations is the way to solve this problem. The OWS Movement is focused on protesting the wrong people. It is the Congress on E. Capitol Street and the President on Pennsylvania Ave that the protestors should focus on if they want to reduce the corruption that comes with crony capitalism and excessive corporate influence.
By protest the Congress and the President, what I mean to convey is that the regulations that many in OWS wish to impose on corporations to stem their influence would actually make things worse. Think about it. The more government becomes involved in the economy, the more of a vested interest businesses have in influencing policy makers. Because smaller businesses cannot afford this influence, the large corporations are the only ones who get a voice. One could argue that the government could regulate businesses, large and small, to cut their influence out 100%. However, if this were to happen, then the engine of our economy would have no voice in the political system and the policy makers would inevitably create loopholes in those regulations for their own supporters. The solution is to reduce government intervention and regulation of the economy. In fact, I would argue that the only justifiable regulations would be ones that provide for the safety of the consumer (no lead paint in children’s toys for example). I would point out, however, that government does that job quite poorly now (one needs to look no farther than the FDA’s incompetence for proof of that), but that is an issue for another day.
Now, let’s get one thing completely straight: some degree of corporate influence is not necessarily a bad thing. When corporations help to elect representatives who will facilitate economic growth and allow more power to the free market, corporate influence can be good. When corporations collude with a government dead-set on picking winners and losers, however, we enter dangerous territory. If a government is committed to picking the economic winners and losers, then clearly, the corporation that is able to make the biggest donation will be the winner and the small “mom-and-pop” stores will lose out. It is politicians crafting policies that pro-actively favor those who help their campaign who subvert competition, entice crony capitalism, corrupt the free market, and skew the will of the people by giving huge corporations a vested interest in ingratiating themselves with them. Therefore, Occupy Wall Street and all of the other protests that aim to have more “responsible regulations” by government to lessen corporate influence are fundamentally wrong in their approach to solving the problem. By having the government let go of the market, stop micro-managing the economy, and only regulate to provide a guarantee of safety to the consumer, we would actually lessen the perceived need for corporate influence. Corporations’ goals are to maximize profits after all. They will not spend money on politicians, if politicians are stripped of the power to pick the winners.
With less than a year to the next election, Democrats are going to extraordinary lengths to pit the (mythical) mild-mannered, compromise-ridden President Obama against a do-nothing (at best) Republican Congress (who want “dirtier air,” for example).
The Economist played into their hands by blaming the right for the supercommittee stalemate on debt. The GOP was blamed for the failure to reach an agreement this summer, so this is no surprise, but the claim is nonetheless extraordinary.
Replay the debt drama this summer. It boiled down to the President demanding tax increases while Speaker Boehner said no tax increases. Somehow the GOP is at fault here? If neither party is willing to budge on a point, that is a collective failure that simply cannot be pinned on one of the parties provided both positions are justifiable. In this case they were. Obama made the arguable point that the debt problem cannot be solved without tax increases. Republicans made the equally arguable point that tax increases in the past have only worsened our fiscal situation.
What makes that claim even more absurd is that the Republicans on the supercommittee have actually made a proposal to increase tax revenues by $400 billion- even Sen. Dick Durbin called this plan a breakthrough. Yet Democrats still rejected it.
It would be nice (but too much to expect) if the media actually called out Democrats for their intransigence, especially the game they play by conflating tax rate increases with revenue increases. Somehow, the “do-nothing” myth carries the day.
So, this whole tuition increase business has piqued my interest. I feel like as someone who will be totally unaffected by these proposed increases (being a senior and all), I can offer my opinion on the subject without being caught up in the hurricane of emotion that seems to have enveloped the issue.
Let’s the consider the increase just on its face. A 15.6% increase for in-state students and a 6.5% increase for out-of-state students. The Consumer Price Index (core) for 2011 (year over year) currently sits at 2.1%. The Higher Education Price Index (which, incidentally is the index used to calculate fee increases) for 2011 is 2.3%. So, it’s worth asking the question why such large tuition increases (over inflation) are necessary. While the General Assembly did cut the education budget this year, I feel like their expectation was that the university would reciprocate and cut out some of the fat from its budget (maybe some of the “centers” and other things on campus that don’t contribute very much to the academic mission of the university). It looks like raising tuition on students is merely an easy way out for the administration and saves them the trouble of having to make the “hard” choices. After all, it’s much easier to raise tuition than to fire people.
The structure of the increases is also curious. Why such a large increase for in-state students (who, with their parents, pay taxes to support the university), while such relatively small increases for out-of-state students? Why is the in-state increase more than double the out-of-state increase? I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, but considering that the university’s traditional role has been to provide an education to the people of North Carolina for “as close to free as possible,” the way that these increases are being distributed across the student body is quite odd.
And let’s consider what the increase will be spent on. From what I can tell, the new money will be spent primarily on faculty salary raises and financial aid. Raising tuition to pay for financial aid is quite strange. In effect, you’re increasing your prices so that you can give money to other people who can’t afford to pay your prices. It’s a classic redistributionist scheme. And then there’s the issue of salaries. I don’t know if the administration’s noticed but there’s a recession going on out there. Lots of people don’t even have jobs, and most of the ones that do haven’t gotten raises in a while. So, I’m not really sure that this should be a priority at the moment. Raising tuition by 15.6% (a fair amount of which will probably end up being paid via loans which students will then have the privilege of paying off for the rest of their lives) to hand out pay raises in such a depressed job market hardly seems like a good investment.
So, it doesn’t seem like these tuition increases are really worth it. What the university ought to do is own up to the fact that the golden days of ever-increasing budgets are over, and do what every other governmental entity (with the exception of the federal government) on earth has been doing for the last few years: make real, hard cuts.
The Washington Post recently had a great article on the history of failure of government intrusion in the free market.
The numbers are pretty damning: http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/energy/subsidies#11
