Jeff Scialabba — VOICES for REASON

The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee knocked down long-standing restrictions on corporate and union contributions to political campaigns and was a definitive move toward the restoration of free speech in America. Yet many Americans are up in arms over the ruling, viewing the decision as an invitation for rampant corruption in Washington. While people are right to be concerned about political corruption, there’s a serious misunderstanding here about what gives rise to it and how it can be eliminated.

As Yaron Brook explained in a 2008 forbes.com op-ed, the problem is not the “allegedly corrupting influence on money on politics,” but rather subjecting “political speech to the corrupting influence of government control.”

It’s true that in a free system, money does give you a greater ability to get your message out; this is precisely one of the reasons it’s desirable to earn wealth. If this is what campaign finance advocates regard as corrupt, which system would they regard as uncorrupt? One in which a person’s ability to promote his viewpoint is unrelated to the financial resources he’s earned (whether personally or through voluntary contributions).

This is why campaign finance advocates have not been appeased by McCain-Feingold, and are calling for complete public financing of political elections. Under such a system, candidates would no longer have to financially earn the platform from which they speak; instead, the government would furnish candidates with your tax dollars. Of course, not every potential candidate could receive public funding under such a system: Only “serious” candidates would.

Who decides which candidate is serious? Those presently holding government power. There is no surer way to create a political aristocracy in America.

But what of the fear of corporations supporting politicians in exchange for favorable legislation? Isn’t that a form of corruption justifying restrictions on their freedom of speech? The real question is: Just who is corrupting whom? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Bernanke won a second four-year term at the head of the Federal Reserve yesterday with a 70-30 vote in the Senate. Alex Epstein pointed out the absurdity of reconfirming Bernanke on foxnews.com. Bernanke is among the individuals most responsible for the financial crisis, and he hasn’t changed his financial philosophy in the least. Yet nearly three-quarters of the Senate—and President Obama—think he saved us from disaster. To use one of Alex’s metaphors, we just elected the arsonist to put out the fire.

Image: Gage Skidmore on Flickr

The election of Scott Brown to the United States Senate has a lot of pundits clamoring about a resurgence of the Republican Party. Let’s hope not. The last thing this country needs is a resurgence of the same Republican Party which, as Don Watkins noted on Monday, has become virtually indistinguishable from the Democratic Party in its fundamental philosophy. Although there’s presently a lot of tension between the two political camps, most of what President Obama is doing was already done by President Bush, and Republican “alternatives” to Obama’s proposals are typically nothing more than watered-down versions of Democrat bills.

What is that philosophy? As Don notes, it’s the idea that “the government has the right to force us to sacrifice our freedom, interests, and desires for the sake of the ‘common good.’”

If you want a sense of what’s wrong with this idea, I recommend Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, which is set in Communist Russia—a society that implemented the idea of sacrifice for the “common good” as its fundamental principle. You’ll get a wrenching depiction of the misery and oppression of a totalitarian society (as well as a moving, plot-driven story filled with the heroic figures typical of an Ayn Rand novel), and a preliminary understanding of why life beneath a government wholly dedicated to the “common good” has to be so horrific. Read the rest of this entry »

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t like the amount of salt that Americans consume—and therefore he wants to force us to consume less. The newly launched National Salt Reduction Initiative seeks to reduce Americans’ consumption of salt by 20 percent over the next five years. The program is described as “a coalition of cities, states and health organizations working to help food manufacturers and restaurants voluntarily reduce the amount of salt in their products.” This coalition will set reduced sodium targets in a broad array of foods, and businesses who sign on will pledge to meet those goals.

Seems harmless, right? After all, too much salt is supposedly unhealthy and, if you disagree with the goals of the program, well, it’s voluntary. Except that “voluntary” government programs are anything but. Just as the trans fat ban Mayor Bloomberg instituted in 2008 was preceded by a call for restaurants to “voluntarily” eliminate the lipid from their kitchens, so the National Salt Reduction Initiative is a warning shot for food producers and restaurant owners to reduce salt levels . . . or else.

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The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article recently reporting on, of all things, the question of whether horse-teeth floating—the filing down of horses’ teeth to maintain their oral health—should be subject to government regulation. According to the Journal, the Texas board of veterinary medicine has been aggressively lobbying the state to take action against those who float teeth without a veterinary license, and has ordered two dozen such floaters to cease and desist. Four of these floaters have responded with a lawsuit, arguing the cease-and-desist orders violate their rights under the Texas constitution.

This case raises the issue of government licensing in general, which has been rapidly expanding over the past half-century. The Institute for Justice, which is backing the floaters in their lawsuit, reports that the number of American workers subject to such government oversight has increased from 3 to 35 percent in the past 50 years. Licensing laws are a critical point of entry for government intrusion into individual lives, with everyone from real estate agents to hairdressers (!) being forced to obtain government permission to make their living.

People often view licensing as a necessary safeguard against unqualified practitioners of a trade. But there’s an important distinction between government licensing and private certification. Private agencies exist in many fields, from interior design to bookkeeping, that offer certification assuring a level of professional competence. There is no reason why, on a free market, customers would have difficulty obtaining an independent assessment of a given practitioner’s qualifications and skill. Indeed, there are often multiple private certifying bodies competing with one another to offer the best guarantee of excellence. And companies such as Consumer Reports and Angie’s List offer advice on a huge variety of products and services.

But such agencies merely offer their expert opinion, they don’t have any power to force their judgment on anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Commentators on both the right and the left have griped about the many conditions in the Senate and House health-care bills that were added to win the support of special interest groups or specific congressmen. The right, for example, has decried the dealing as “cash for cloture,” while the left has assailed the individual mandate as an insurance industry coup.

And indeed, the bills are ripe with provisions that benefit some at the expense of others. Among those in the Senate bill alone (see this article for a more complete list):

• $300 million to Louisiana for the vote of Mary Landrieu
• $100 million to a Connecticut hospital to help the sinking poll numbers of Christopher Dodd
• A permanent expansion of federal Medicare payments to Nebraska (estimated value, $100 million) for the vote of Ben Nelson
• An excise tax exemption for longshoremen in exchange for the support of their union
• A 10 percent tax on tanning salons—added at the behest of the American Medical Association in place of a proposed a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery
• The exemption of Florida senior citizens from Medicare cuts for the vote of Bill Nelson
• $600 million in Medicaid benefits to Vermont for the vote of Patrick Leahy

Where does the money for these favors come from? From the only place it can—the pockets of U.S. citizens who have created that wealth in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Amid the economic collapse and backlash against the growth of government, interest in Ayn Rand exploded in 2009. Within six months of 2009, bookstore sales of Atlas Shrugged had doubled the record of 200,000 set in 2008, and they are expected to exceed 400,000. Discussion of Rand and her views was a regular occurrence in the media, with some even dubbing 2009 “the year of Ayn Rand.”

Undoubtedly Ayn Rand’s popularity 27 years after her death was remarkable, and I view it as a positive sign that so many Americans saw on some level the connection between Atlas Shrugged and current events. I’d like to think, however, that the year of Ayn Rand would not be characterized by billion dollar government bailouts, the inauguration of a statist president elected on a platform as vacuous as “hope and change,” and government takeovers of automakers, financial institutions and the health care system.

On the contrary, a truly “Ayn Rand year” would witness the casting off of these and all other government chains. But this would require a much deeper process of intellectual and cultural change than we have yet seen. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent series of posts I discussed how increased government control over health care in America would devastate the medical technology industry and stifle innovation. But the negative effect that government interference has on innovation is true for any industry. From cookware to computers, men will only invest time, money and thought on developing new products if they project the payoff to be worth it. The more the success of a potential product is subject to the dictates of Washington bureaucrats, the less likely that potentiality will be made real. The more regulatory hurdles one has to overcome to achieve a dream, the less likely one will make the effort to overcome them.

This past Monday bore witness to the achievements possible to man when he is left free. In a hangar in the Mojave desert, Sir Richard Branson and his team at Virgin Galactic lifted the veil off Space Ship Two, the world’s first commercial spacecraft. Space Ship Two will take passengers to a height of 68 miles above Earth, well beyond the recognized border of space. It is one of a number of private spacecraft being developed in the nascent space tourism industry, which will make it possible for private citizens to experience wonders previously reserved for government astronauts.

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In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, there’s an unforgettable Thanksgiving scene at the mansion of Hank Rearden, a self-made millionaire industrialist whose achievements include the invention—after ten years of toil—of a revolutionary new metal, stronger, cheaper and more durable than steel. In addition to Rearden, seated at the table for Thanksgiving dinner are his mother, his wife Lillian, and his brother Philip, all of whom are wholly dependent on Rearden and his wealth.

Here’s is Rand’s description of the setting:

The roast turkey had cost $30. The champagne had cost $25. The lace tablecloth, a cobweb of grapes and vine leaves iridescent in the candlelight, had cost $2,000. The dinner service, with an artist’s design burned in blue and gold into a translucent white china, had cost $2,500. The silverware, which bore the initials LR in Empire wreaths of laurels, had cost $3,000. But it was held to be unspiritual to think of money and of what that money represented.

A peasant’s wooden shoe, gilded, stood in the center of the table, filled with marigolds, grapes and carrots. The candles were stuck into pumpkins that were cut as open-mouthed faces drooling raisins, nuts and candy upon the tablecloth.

In keeping with Thanksgiving tradition, Rearden’s family gives thanks for the bounty before them.

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On Friday I discussed the life-serving benefits made possible by the thriving, but fragile, medical technology industry in the United States. Literally millions of lives have been bettered and extended by the products this industry has created, such as defibrillators and advanced surgical tools. For an idea of how amazing the technology in this field is, consider that Paralympian amputees are now argued to have an advantage over non-handicapped, Olympian athletes. It’s not a pipe dream that advances in this industry might one day soon be able to restore sight to the blind, or complex motion to the paralyzed.

Not a pipe dream, that is, unless any of the health-care reforms in Congress come to pass.

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