According to this story, the United Nations wants to put into place a global tax on billionaires.  The World Economic and Social Survey 2012: In Sear of New Development Finance, is a document designed to find ways for the international bureaucracy to extract wealth from other people that the UN can use to support whatever redistributionist cause is the flavor of the day.  In addition to proposing a tax on billionaires, the report advocates taxing air travel, currency transactions and greenhouse gas emissions are proposed as being potential “innovative” solutions to raising funds for the UN.  Here’s a nice little chart of what the UN calls “innovative sources of development finance,” which I would call other peoples’ money:

In short, the UN wants to take from rich countries to give to poor countries.  It wants to do this through any means it can, and thus has proposed a slate of taxes in the hopes that some of them will go through, creating more “revenue” for the UN to spend.  Given the UN’s record of managing and spending money, why on Earth would we ever want to give it more.  Billions have been wasted, much of it through fraud and corruption.  Where there hasn’t been fraud and corruption, greed and waste have ruled the day, with UN officials staying in five star hotels and living lavish lifestyles at the expense of United States taxpayers and the countries that are supposedly being “aided” by the UN.  When money does make its way to poorer countries, it is often handed to dictatorial and corrupt regimes, who use the money to finance their own projects.

If the United States – or any other Western country – wants to help the poor countries of the world, they should start with getting rid of dictators, implementing fair and sound laws, including laws which protect investors and signing free trade agreements.  And, if money must be given away, it should be done at the national level where there is, at least somewhat, accountability to the voters of the donor countries should the money be massively wasted.  Once any money passes to the UN, there is no control over how it is spent and the UN officials have shown, ad nauseum, that they cannot be trusted as fiduciaries.  As soon as they get money they are incentivized to spend it, no matter how bad the ruler of the country, no matter how much waste and no matter how much fraud.  Worst of all, they will spend the money even if the effects on the people they are supposed to be helping are negative, such as giving it to an oppressive dictator who then uses the money to feed the machinery of his dictatorship.

Statements from Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation are, in a word, incredible.  Incredible in the truest sense of the word – beyond credible.  LaHood, echoing the position espoused by Thomas Friedman and Andy Stern, believes that the United States government could learn a few things in efficiency from China.  In China, according to LaHood, wonderful things in public transport are happening because there is an autocratic regime that doesn’t have to bother to listen to citizens.

In his remarks, LaHood reveals the fundamental flaw of liberal economic policies.  This is best summarized as an equation: more spending = greater progress.   LaHood nicely sums of his thinking: “Two years ago, between 50 to 60 Republicans were elected to the House of Representatives to come to Washington to do nothing, and that’s what they’ve done and they’ve stopped any progress. Those people don’t have any vision about what the government can do. That’s been a real inhibitor in our ability to think outside the box and think big.”

In LaHood’s world, having the government direct and spend money is a de facto positive situation.  We know this because high-speed rail is unprofitable in virtually every place it operates, including environments that are far more amenable to high-speed rail than the United States.  It is the definition of irony for LaHood to use as his example of progress via government a piece of infrastructure that costs taxpayers billions of dollars for something they don’t want.  Every prediction made about the costs and ridership of trains has been so wildly inaccurate (and always below the true cost and the true number of riders) that they cannot be taken seriously.

We also know that LaHood is simply unwilling, or unable, to understand that people do not agree with him.  According to LaHood: “There’s no turning back on this. We’re not going to turn back. And you know why? Because that’s what the people want. That’s why… there’s no stopping high speed rail.”  LaHood’s remarks are belied by the fact that clearly many people DO NOT want high speed rail.  The evidence is those 50 to 60 Republicans who were elected by citizens who think the government is spending too much, as well as the governors of Wyoming and Florida who recognize the enormous expense that the taxpayers will incur if they allow high-speed rail to go forward.  In LaHood’s mind, however, such objections are irrelevant.  According to LaHood “Doing nothing is not acceptable. Don’t be coming here and telling me it’s not acceptable if you don’t have an alternative. It’s coming to California,” LaHood exclaimed. “All the studies show, if you build it they will come.””  Thus does he nicely sum up the liberal philosophy – it doesn’t matter if it’s cost-effective or serves the peoples’ needs, government must spend money and build things because it can and, because if it didn’t, people like Ray LaHood would be unable to justify their jobs and their power.

This passage reminded me of my own little bit of frustration with thoughtless TSA/airport security rules last month.  I was taking a plane out of Newark Airport and I had some letters with me which I forgot to drop in the mailbox on the way there.  After I cleared security, I asked someone working there if there was a mailbox around, to which she replied that they had all been removed following September 11.

The obvious question this raises is “why?”  Clearly, a bomb inside a mailbox is a very dangerous thing.  When it explodes, in addition to the explosive fores of the bomb itself, it can transform the mailbox into a deadly projectile.  That is why they are removed during parades and other events that might be the target of terrorism.  However, what is the logic in removing mailboxes from airports post-security?  If a terrorist takes the time and effort to construct a bomb and to take it through an airport, his target is not going to be the mailbox post-security.  He is much better off putting such a bomb at a mailbox in a crowded urban environment, like a mall.  The chances of getting caught at the airport are higher (though just how high is debatable) than they are on a random street in a major city.  Therefore, the only reason to take a bomb through airport security is to target the airplanes so that one may cause panic about air travel, thereby causing massive economic damage to the country and making people nervous to fly.  Blowing up people while on the ground does not have the same effect.  Is it really too much to ask that our security officials stop, think and use logic to determine security measures more than a decade after 9/11?

I think it would be hard to find a more blatant example of propaganda and bad journalism than this AP “article” on the recent weather and global warming.  Here is the third paragraph:

These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it’s far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

And here are 8 through 11:

“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn’t listen. So it’s I told-you-so time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of “unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.” Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, “It’s really dramatic how many of the patterns that we’ve talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now.”

“What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters.”

In sum, the article’s main points are: The weather is catastrophic. There is no evidence global warming had a role to play. No credible scientist will say global warming is a cause of the weather. Yet, let’s take this opportunity to take those same scientists who won’t say it is global warming and let them imply that it is by using the conditional tense and maintaining that the recent weather is what global warming ‘would look like.’

Froma Harrop has this to say in the opening lines of her column today:

There was never much doubt that the individual mandate in “Obamacare” was constitutional. As Harvard Law School professor Einer Elhauge had noted, the first Congress in 1790 passed a law ordering ship owners to buy medical insurance for their seamen. Twenty framers of the U.S. Constitution were members, and President George Washington signed the law.

This is not only a bad opinion piece, it is factually incorrect.  There was significant doubt about the law’s constitutionality, just not by Harrop and the people she listens to.  A majority of the Supreme Court not only doubted the law’s constitutionality based on a Commerce Clause justification (which is what Harrop is arguing was never in doubt), but held that it was, in fact, unconstitutional based on that reasoning.  Finally, the 1790 law was passed by Congress pursuant to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16, which gives Congress broad authority to regulate the militia – a situation that is completely irrelevant to the Affordable Care Act.

Howard Kurtz had this to say in his article today:

Based on conversations with people who know him or have followed him closely, I believe Roberts did not want the court to be in the position of overturning a major law passed by Congress. He instinctively understands that this would be seen as a blatantly partisan act by a court already suspected of political motives. And so he groped his way toward a narrow ruling that would preserve the health-care law without breaking major legal ground.

If a justice on the Supreme Court takes the view that he shouldn’t rock the boat, then on what basis does he serve?  The Court is supposed to protect rights in the face of congressional and presidential overreach.  If it is unwilling to do so, then there is little use for it as the final arbiter of constitutional disputes.

Today’s New Yorker comment by Jeffrey Toobin succinctly demonstrates all that is wrong with progressive judicial philosophy.  Toobin applauds Roberts for siding with the four liberal justices regarding Obamacare because he thinks it (Obamacare) is good policy.  In Toobin’s mind “[i]t was a singular act of courage.”  Rule of law, separation of powers and other principles take a backseat to politics in Toobin’s (and the left’s) results-oriented view of judicial interpretation.

The proof is in the pudding.  Toobin’s second paragraph, the one which first starts to provide analysis, supports the Supreme Court’s decision solely on the basis of political rationales.  First, Toobin says the issue should not even have been close – that the mandate was clearly constitutional.  What does he site as evidence of this – that Republicans initially came up with the concept (a reference to the Heritage Foundation’s initial proposal in the 1990s) and that Romney instituted a similar system in Massachusetts.  That is not a constitutional analysis.  It’s not even a legal analysis.  Toobin’s conclusion – that because nobody challenged the idea when it was making the rounds as a philosophical matter and because it was implemented in Massachusetts it must therefore be constitutional is derisible.  The mandate was being discussed in abstract terms as a means of making healthcare more efficient – the discussion was centered around its policy implications, not its legal status.  Moreover, the discussion, or absence thereof, of the constitutional question surrounding a policy matter has no bearing, whatsoever, in providing evidence that a law is or is not constitutional.  As to the Romney argument, either Toobin is the worst legal analyst in the history of journalism for not understanding the difference between state and federal actions or he is deliberately disingenuous.  Clearly, in this case, it is the latter.

Perhaps my favorite bit of non-reasoning in this article is this passage:

What’s more, five Justices, including the Chief Justice, found that Congress had exceeded its powers under the Commerce Clause when it passed the Affordable Care Act. Supreme Court opinions are usually thick with citations of prior cases, but the key section of Roberts’s opinion, which was seemingly inspired more by Ayn Rand than by John Marshall, has almost none: “Everyone will likely participate in the markets for food, clothing, transportation, shelter, or energy; that does not authorize Congress to direct them to purchase particular products in those or other markets today. The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions.” But the A.C.A. does not “regulate an individual from cradle to grave”; it simply forces individuals to help pay for the medical care that they will almost certainly receive at some time in their lives. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her separate opinion, “The inevitable yet unpredictable need for medical care and the guarantee that emergency care will be provided when required are conditions nonexistent in other markets. That is so of the market for cars, and of the market for broccoli.” [Emphasis added]

I won’t get into why Ginsburg’s analysis is flawed, and why the broccoli argument is perfectly on point, having addressed the issue in previous posts.  Here, I want to address Toobin’s words, which I have highlighted above.  Toobin finds fault with Roberts for not citing a host of prior cases in his analysis and implies that this is somehow evidence that there are no grounds for finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.  This nugget of reasoning has managed to miss, entirely, the issue before the Court – this was an unprecedented piece of legislation which was a case of first impression for the Court, and thus the Court had no prior cases which were on point.  The primary issue raised by the challengers was that the individual mandate’s justification under the Commerce Clause was something never attempted before and beyond the pale.  For Toobin to ignore this fact speaks to an inability to process opposing arguments.

Later in the piece, we get to the true and fundamental problem of liberal jurisprudence.  Toobin, after stating that Roberts’s tax argument was flimsy and unpersuasive as a basis for upholding the individual mandate states “it led to the correct results.  Any port will do in a constitutional storm.”  That last sentence sums it up more neatly than I ever could, and it is disgusting.