Today I saw a John Edwards bumper sticker — the first one I can really recall — on a beautiful Audi convertible parked in a luxury development in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. Just an idle question: Do you think it’s more likely that this John Edwards supporter is part of Edwards’s much touted constituency of mill workers and “regular, hard-working Americans” or of Edwards’s real constituency of trial lawyers and lobbyists?
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Government and Politics
McCain and Our Fundamental Rights
Sen. John McCain issued a ringing endorsement of the Supreme Court’s Heller decision:
Today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right — sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.
You can’t get much stronger than that. Except … wait … what was it McCain said about our sacred right to free speech? Oh, right, two years ago on the Don Imus show he said, “I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt.” So when McCain says that our Second Amendment rights are just as fundamental and sacred as our First Amendment rights, maybe he’s pulling a bait-and-switch. Because he’s thoroughly indifferent to the First Amendment.
In his statement on the Heller decision McCain went on to say, “This ruling does not mark the end of our struggle against those who seek to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens. We must always remain vigilant in defense of our freedoms.”
So true.
Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.
To echo Tim Lynch’s previous post …
Bob Levy, Alan Gura, Dick Heller, and the other original plaintiffs in District of Columbia v. Heller are to be commended for securing a landmark Supreme Court ruling affirming that the Second Amendment protects the right of law abiding individuals to keep and bear arms. It’s silly and sad that we needed such a ruling, and we should not forget the uncertainty and the threats to liberty that were made possible by so much constitutional revisionism over the past 40 years.
Levy and Gura deserve special recognition for their foresight and courage in pursuing this ruling despite considerable resistance. That resistance came from a lot of people, with a lot of knowledge about the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court, a lot of influence, and a lot at stake in the outcome. They argued this cause shouldn’t be pursued now, and they said it should be pursued by someone else. Levy and Gura, as it were, stuck to their guns. They have been vindicated, and we owe them big.
Praise is also due many such as Sanford Levinson, Robert J. Cottrol, and Stephen Halbrook, whose honest, careful scholarship ultimately defeated a very appealing myth.
Indeed, a good week for the Bill of Rights.
Pawlenty, Clarified
My recent blog on Minnesota governor — and potential Republican vice presidential nominee — Tim Pawlenty brought a great deal of e‑mail from Pawlenty partisans. Most of their criticism was of the “definition of ‘is’” variety. Governor Pawlenty doesn’t support “price controls” for the Medicare prescription drug program, he merely wants the government to “negotiate” prices. (Anyone who thinks that distinction is a difference should read this article by Robert Goldberg or this piece by Benjamin Zycher). And, while he supported one increase in the state’s minimum wage, he opposed a second increase. (So he only abandons conservative principles and basic economics sometimes.) However, in fairness to Governor Pawlenty, two of my criticisms do deserve clarification.
On SCHIP: Governor Pawlenty did not specifically oppose President Bush’s veto of the Democratic expansion of SCHIP. He did praise the bill for “increasing” SCHIP funding, and both individually and as head of the National Governors Program urged the program’s renewal, while the Democrats were trying to override the president’s veto. But he did not specifically call for overriding the veto.
And, on an individual health insurance mandate: Governor Pawlenty’s Health Care Task Force endorsed such a mandate. Although the governor initially hailed the task force report and called it “a framework” for reform in Minnesota, he did later distance himself from the recommendation for a mandate.
I don’t think any of this makes him less of a big-government conservative, but I want to make sure my criticism is as accurate as possible.
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Bush Watch
Over at RedState, they’re excited about a video narrated by Sen. Fred Thompson — remember him? — for the President’s Dinner of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. It’s a fine video, full of stirring music and appeals to freedom and smaller government by Thompson, John McCain, and the President — Ronald Reagan, that is. In 5 minutes and 28 seconds, there was no room for a clip, a photo, or a mention of the current President, what’s his name, Bush.
Republicans are no dummies. If they haven’t had a president they’re proud to be associated with in the past 20 years, they’ll reach back 27 years ago to the first inaugural address of a president they can still sell.
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U.S. Sugar Program Costs Another $1.75 Billion
The state of Florida announced yesterday that it will pay $1.75 billion to buy out the nation’s largest sugar producer and 300 square miles of land it owns north of the environmentally sensitive Florida Everglades. Although most news stories ignored the connection, the deal is yet another cost Americans continue to pay for our misguided agricultural programs.
The company selling the land, United States Sugar, has for decades benefited from a federal program that guarantees a minimum price for United States Sugar’s crop through a system of loan guarantees and strict import quotas. This means American families and sugar-consuming industries are typically paying two to three times the world price for sugar.
The sugar program also imposes damage on the environment, which motivated yesterday’s announcement. Like other farm programs, the sugar program encourages over-production. In the case of United States Sugar, that means the extraction of fresh water that would otherwise flow naturally into the Everglades, and the over-application of fertilizers that artificially raise the phosphorous content of the runoff, causing a sharp decline in periphyton, such as algae, that supports bird and other animal life in the Everglades. [For more about the environmental damage caused by U.S. farm programs, see my 2005 article published by the Property and Environment Research Center.]
In large part because of the damage caused by subsidized domestic sugar producers, Congress allocated $8 billion in 2000 for cleaning up the Everglades. Florida’s purchase of United States Sugar was just the latest installment in an ongoing clean-up operation.
Of course, Congress could have avoided much of this mess years ago by repealing the sugar program. If Americans had been free to buy sugar at world prices, our domestic sugar industry would have been smaller and more efficient with a much smaller environmental footprint. Converting the sugar-cane fields to more environmentally friendly uses would have been much less expensive because the annual subsidies would not have been capitalized into the value of the land.
When the Democrats took power in Congress in 2007, they pledged themselves to be in favor of reform, fiscal responsibility, and protection of the environment. Yet the new farm bill that Democrats voting overwhelmingly in favor of last month, and that their likely presidential candidate Barack Obama endorsed, strikes out on all three counts.
A Big-Government Running Mate for McCain?
The Washington rumor mill has Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as the leading candidate to be John McCain’s running mate. If so, that would be a clear slap in the face to small-government conservatives.
Pawlenty, who reportedly coined the term “Sam’s Club conservative” to describe his political philosophy, has been an economic populist and big-spender generally. Among other things, he:
- Supported government subsidized health care for all children as the first step toward universal health insurance, and opposed President Bush’s veto of a Democratic bill that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP) to families earning as much as $83,000 per year;
- Supports Massachusetts-style health care reform, including a “health care exchange” and an individual mandate;
- Has called for banning all prescription drug advertizing, and seeks government imposed price controls for drugs offered through Medicare;
- Proposed a $4000 per child preschool program for low-income children;
- Pushed a statewide smoking ban smoking ban in workplaces, restaurants and bars;
- Increased the state’s minimum wage;
- Imposed some of the most aggressive and expensive renewable energy mandates in the country;
- Was an ardent supporter of the farm bill;
- Received only a “C” ranking on Cato’s 2006 Governor’s Report Card, finishing below such Democrats as Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and tied with Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
It was the Republicans’ big-spending, big-government ways that helped ensure their defeat in the 2006 midterm elections. Suburbanites, independents, and others who were fed up not just with the war and corruption, but also with the Republican drift toward big-government who stayed home, or even voted Democratic, on election day 2006. That night, more than 65 percent of voters told a pollster they believed that “The Republicans used to be the party of economic growth, fiscal discipline, and limited government, but in recent years, too many Republicans in Washington have become just like the big spenders they used to oppose.”
John McCain cannot hope to win this fall without the support of economic and small government conservatives. Many are attracted to what appears to be McCain’s genuine fiscal conservatism. But many others are suspicious of McCain’s populist, big-government tendencies on issues from energy and the environment to civil liberties, the war and campaign finance. McCain needs to reach out to Reagan/Goldwater small-government conservatives. Vice President Pawlenty would be sending a very different signal.