Asymmetrical Information

Ha, ha Jane, you are such a crack up. Well, I hope you never get a chance to remit 5% of 20% of those glorious tax reductions from domestic spending only (must feed and nurture the military/industrial complex). And I suppose those democrats that are put on this earth solely to provide welfare queens with cadillacs will have to survive without you.

That's nothing. Try being a crunchy conservatibertarian. I get missives from every political party under the sun.

Actually, I think your recollection of the DNC letter is correct.

Anyway, that's what mine says.

:-)

Poor Democrats! Without single-issue voters everyone would be a Republican.

I remember the NZ Bear had a similar letter getting him to renew a non-existant membership a few months back.

Thanks Mark; you are correct, I did indeed. Even got that hack Kaus to blog about it over in Real Medialand (scroll down to Tuesday, August 27).

Sounds like neither my nor Mickey's all-powerful media spotlights were sufficient to shame the RNC into mending its ways... pity...

-NZB

I hate it when the Republicans send me a registered letter at home for fund raising. Why? BECAUSE I'M WORKING and not home to sign for the letter. That means taking time from my life to make a trip to the Post Office to personally retrieve this important communication. I ought to charge them for my time.

jane, did you get a letter from libertarians-r-us?

I don't know if she did, skippy, but I certainly did. Along with the letters from the Dems and Reps. Sigh. At least the Greens haven't signed me up yet.
FYI, I'm registered Independent.

kathy, everyone probably thinks you are waffling in your beliefs, and therefore fair game.

Poor Democrats! Without single-issue voters everyone would be a Republican.

gee, i didn't realize that "a woman's right to choose, a family's right to affordable prescription drugs, the right of Chuck Schumer's staffers to go on all-expenses-paid junkets to France to find out why their health care is so good" was one single issue. perhaps you meant, single sentense?

just came back to mention that i love anybody who begins any sort of writing with the words, "tee-hee!" and hyphenated, to boot!

("to boot" is a suffix phrase equivalent to the prefix "tee-hee!")

This is what I get for subscribing to the National Review and the Nation.

Eww, they're both horrible. What were you thinking?

You have to keep your eye on them or you never know what they'll get up to. ;-)

What, nothing from the Greens?

The Nation is a lot more rant oriented and seedy that The National Review though. If you want a similar rant-rag on the right, you should look for The American Spectator, which I think is publishing again.

Most fundraising groups do this stuff these days. The direct mail business is a seriously big business. Tom Knudson did a series on how most of America's "environmentalist" groups have become addicted to this stuff, but indirectly shows how it works all over the political spectrum. Dynamite stuff. Click here to read it.

IMHO, Right side rant mag honors would go to Front Page. It's so far to the right I even find it hard to read.

National Review and the Nation: center-left and far left.

It's so much fun being a Libertarian, isn't it. I mean, you get to make fun of everyone else, and carry on about how there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, and all. Of course, it's har d work ignoring the fact that Republicans have cut taxes. And, we are in the middle of an economic correction, undergoing the adjustment for 10 years of irrational (love that word, it's so ... accurate) exhuberance. Oh yeah. And, we are in the middle of a war.

And then there's the fact that if you don't participate, and you don't contribute, well you get what you pay for, don't you? You get Republicans who keep getting elected by slim margins and who then have to work both sides of the philosophical aisle, which waters down the size and number of those tax cuts.

But hey, why trouble oneself with all that icky reality, right? Yeah, we say. Us Libertarians aren't really results-oriented, even if we do rant about results. We're just here to snipe from the sidelines, without getting involved or investing, because well, it just feels so good to be a part of nothing and gee, we get to whine just about all the time about it.

Which is what life is all about for us Libertarians, isn't it? I mean, the whining part.

Paul The Barge is correct.

So-called Libertarians are mostly irresponsible sideline quarterbacks, full of querulous, carping negativism. If there are any responsible Libertarians out there, please tell what to eliminate from the Federal budget: space exporation, military spending, foreign aid for Africa, Medicare, or what? Be specific. Don't just tell me that budget deficits are bad.

The remarks George Orwell made years ago about the irresponsibility of the Left applies equally well to today's putatively conservative Libertarians.

I suggest that a more apt label for such "Libertarians" is "Libertines."

--david.davenport@mindspring.com

Jane,

No need to worry about any spending cuts. Forget all those cute theories about how a GOP Congress or cutting taxes will reduce spending.

http://www.nationalreview.com/moore/moore020503.asp>Reality is quite different.

Ooops.

Click here for reality.

Well, Mr. Davenport, I'm not a Libertarian, but as far as eliminating items from the Federal Budget, I would fully advocate ending all Social Security payments to any retiree with other sources of annual income that exceed 30-40k, instituting a large annual Medicare deductible (5k?) for any retiree who has a net worth outside of his home greater than 150k, or income streams consistent with such net worth. I would also close every military base which had it's primary strategic purpose the re-election of the incumbent Congressman. We can zero out agricultural subsidies, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and other federal activities that this society can function without (I'm working off the top of my head, being too lazy to go to the Fedreal Budget web page at this moment). The notion that the entire 2.3 trillion dollar budget is needed to have this society function, or prosper, is too silly for words.

Although not strictly a political fundraising group, the best solicitations I get are from PETA. I'm a member of several less radical animal-rights groups, so I guess PETA considers me a good prospect, because I've gotten no less than 7 copies of the same solicitation letter from them in the last two months. The best part: each of those letters was mailed to me containing one US nickel. The letter says that I should carry the nickel with me to "remind me that animals need our help every day." I wonder how much it cost to mail that instead of a little card with a picture of a dead bunny on it. I just know that I've pocketed 35 cents, and they're not getting a dime from me.

[ I would fully advocate ending all Social Security payments to any retiree with other sources of annual income that exceed 30-40k, instituting a large annual Medicare deductible (5k?) for any retiree who has a net worth outside of his home greater than 150k, or income streams consistent with such net worth. I would also close every military base which had it's primary strategic purpose the re-election of the incumbent Congressman. We can zero out agricultural subsidies, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and other federal activities that this society can function without (I'm working off the top of my head, being too lazy to go to the Fedreal Budget web page at this moment). The notion that the entire 2.3 trillion dollar budget is needed to have this society function, or prosper, is too silly for words. ]

Those cuts sound good, but even if Pres. Bush instituted those budget reductions (a) the Federal budget would still be far out of balance, and (b) an even bigger spending Democrat, exploiting fears of further government spending shrinkage, might defeat Bush in the 2004 election.

In any event, my opinion is that the only solution to the deflationary -- repeat, DEflationary - crisis facing the USA is more Keynesianism, instead of Herbert Hoover-ism.

The laissez-aller era ended and failed more than 70 years ago. It ain't a-comin' back.

Agree or disagree?

http://www.prudentbear.com/archive_comm_article.asp?category=Guest+Commentary&content_idx=20091

A Long Economic Winter

February 4, 2003
Richard Benson is president of Specialty Finance Group, LLC ...

Simple arithmetic, knowledge of how the world works, and common sense, are all that are needed to see that a long Real Recession lies ahead. The pillars of the U.S. economy: Business, Real Estate, Financial Markets, the Consumer, and, the Government, are still pointing down. In order to meet demand, businesses still have too
many workers, too many plants, and too much capital.

...

Will the consumer spend us back to prosperity? The answer is with what? The consumer has been conditioned by the stock market bubble. Since the stock market would take care of his retirement, there was no need to save. Indeed, the consumer could spend every dollar he earned and every dollar he could borrow. This leads us to a world where 1.6 million consumers are now filing for bankruptcy every year. This year the U.S. Treasury will collect $180 billion less in taxes from individuals than last year. That means that $600 billion of income and capital gains has gone missing. This year single family mortgage debt will be up $600 Billion. Borrowing helps keep spending alive. But at some point, decreasing incomes and increased borrowing just don’t add up, particularly when pension funds and 401K’s have been nuked by the Bear Market. Borrowing to spend means that you are spending other people’s money. It’s wonderful; it's fun; Unless, of course, you are the lender. With low incomes, no bonus, job loss, no new jobs, record bankruptcies, and record home foreclosures, we are starting to see consumer spending sag, and slowed down lending to people who can’t pay. The consumer pull-back will trigger the Long Economic Winter.

With Congress approving going to war, you would think that the boost in Federal spending needed for the war effort would boost the economy. The government is not doing enough. While the Federal budget is going into deficit, more of the deficit is coming from a drop in tax revenue than new spending. Moreover, state and local governments are headed for $80 Billion in deficits; except, these governmental entities are not supposed to run deficits. While state and local borrowing is rising, so will taxes and cuts in programs and employment. Because of the November elections, needed fiscal policy will be postponed until next year.

Without massive, immediate fiscal stimulus to offset the major negative forces from business, real estate, the consumer, and financial markets, common sense and arithmetic add up to a very Long Economic Winter.

Before we sign on to federal spending as means of ending an deflationary environmet, we may wish to examine how that has worked in Japan over the past decade. Building bridges that don't get any traffic doesn't seem to have done much of anything.
Hey , I never claimed that advocating spending cuts would get anybody elected; you just asked what spending cuts I would prefer. Also, I see no reason why it is a net positive for society to have money taken as taxes, and then spent on a military base that serves no purpose for the nation's defense.

Well, Mr. Davenport, I'm not a Libertarian, but as far as eliminating items from the Federal Budget, I would fully advocate ending all Social Security payments to any retiree with other sources of annual income that exceed 30-40k, instituting a large annual Medicare deductible (5k?) for any retiree who has a net worth outside of his home greater than 150k, or income streams consistent with such net worth.

Class warfare!

And I'm not sure Japan proves anything; would they have gone into a depression without all those public works? Heck if I know.

"Paul The Barge is correct.

So-called Libertarians are mostly irresponsible sideline quarterbacks, full of querulous, carping negativism. If there are any responsible Libertarians out there, please tell what to eliminate from the Federal budget: space exporation, military spending, foreign aid for Africa, Medicare, or what? Be specific. Don't just tell me that budget deficits are bad.

--david.davenport@mindspring.com"

We could start by cutting all spending for the war on drugs. How much is that up to? And it seems to me like we ought to be getting more return on our INS investment -- there has GOT to be a way to do a better job on the same or preferably less money. As for foreign aid, maybe we could start by labeling our "loans" more accurately -- I'm not saying there is never a good reason to give money to other countries, but the government should be honest about doing it, tell us how much they're giving to who, and why it was necessary to send our money to other folks. Then again, our state and federal governments also ought to be accounting to us for the money spent on Medicare, Medicaid, etc. -- how many people were helped, what kind of assistance were they given, what was the criteria to qualify, etc.

[Building bridges that don't get any traffic doesn't seem to have done much of anything.]

I think that the those superfluous Japanese public works projects are unproductive inasmuch as they don't provide any really necessary infrastucture nor any exportable products.

Perhaps there is *no* fiscal or economic solution to Japan's economic problems, either capitalist or Marxist. Chinese wages are lower than Japan's. If China can successfully emulate Japan's export manufactures, then Japan, c'est mort ... what was it the old Lutheran geezer said about the crisis of the falling rate of return?

Japan's only salvation may be a strong outside shock to Japan's whole socio-economic concept of normality ... similar to what America needs.

And it might not hurt if Muhammedan terrorists blew up Japanese banks and office buildings and thereby destroyed all records of past due domestic debts ... a Japanese year of Jubilee.

"Heck if I know" should be the statutarily required utterance made by anyone, "expert" or otherwise, prior to predicting what economic "solution" will have what effect on any economic problem. These are damned complicated problems, and economics has greater limits than many acknowledge.

As to class warfare, well if we are going to have it, I'm on the side of those getting forcibly taken from, as opposed to those doing the forcible taking.

Mr. Davenport,

You stated: "If there are any responsible Libertarians out there, please tell what to eliminate from the Federal budget: space exporation, military spending, foreign aid for Africa, Medicare, or what? Be specific. Don't just tell me that budget deficits are bad."

1) I don't accept your premise that these are the only places to make cuts. As have been mentioned in earlier posts, how about cutting away the budget for the "war" on drugs? How about eliminating welfare? How about eliminating subsidies for farmers?

2) Of the options you listed, I pick foreign aid for Africa, Medicare, and some parts of space exploration.

Space exploration is pure (as opposed to applied) research; the nature of such research is that you never know exactly what you are going to get out of it, but there is a great potential return. Still, there is no compelling reason that certain aspects of research and development for space exploration could not be privatized. And allowing commercial interests in space would encourage industry to work in that direction.

Military spending returns national security, allowing us to live in a world full of tyrants without being dominated by them.

The other items in your list return nothing to us. What return does Medicare give us that responsible spending and planning by individuals would not? Why should we give aid to Africa if it returns nothing? Loans to Africa (to be repaid with reasonable interest), technological assistance (by way of expertise rather than capital goods), efforts by private organizations, etc. are all better than endless lucre tossed across the Atlantic to land in the swimming pool of the despot-of-the-month.

[ What return does Medicare give us that responsible spending and planning by individuals would not? ]

That's it. If you can't get any more useful work out of old, poor folks, let 'em croak.

This is economically quite rational.

The political situation in the United States is ridiculous. Money buys power. That is the way it has always been and I fear that that is the way it will continue to be.

I am fed up with the system. What a glorious day it would be if men and women with similar visions to Ralph Nader were elected to run our country. Perhaps then America could use her influence and power to benefit others the way they have the ability to. I am tired of the way the United States bullies others into making them choose a side. I am tired of the way the United States uses others and expects everyone to love them.

There is a lot of reason to hate us here in the States. Look at what we did in Chile for example. Is that fair? Is that just? We were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chileans. Why? because we couldn't imagine the thought of US companies losing any profits due to the way the new democratically eleted government wanted to run things. I don't want to even begin to explain my dissatisfaction with the role the United States has played in the Middle East over the last half century or so.

If we expect our world to survive much longer, changes have to be made. Changes that would have to start by rethinking through the US political system.

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