Matt Patterson

Land of the Free? Part 2: The Real War on Women

by Matt Patterson on May 18, 2012 · 2 comments

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

“How could it be illegal to sell something that it’s perfectly legal to give away?”

– George Carlin

The recent extra-curricular exploits of American Secret Service agents in Columbia have once again brought the World’s Oldest Profession into the news. And once again, both opponents and proponents  of legalized prostitution are making their respective cases in a variety of public fora.

The “con” arguments on legalized prostitution are many, but essentially break down into two types. 1) Moral: Selling the body for sex is an inherently debased and debasing activity that governments should restrict in order to protect the character of society, and 2) Practical: Prostitution breeds a variety of pathologies — disease, violence, etc. — that it is the duty of the state to guard against.

Unfortunately, as with laws against narcotics, prostitution prohibition laws often have the opposite effect than intended. In practice, anti-hooking laws end up hurting the very people they are designed to protect, while compromising the moral integrity of the government by entangling it in a hopeless morass of inconsistent logic, ensuring inconsistent enforcement and therefore unjust governance.

Let us start with a simple fact. A lamentable one, perhaps, but a fact nonetheless: There is always a market for sex. And by market I mean a literal, economic market. In fact, it is the one market you can be sure will always exist — prostitution in one form or another is found in virtually all known human societies, past and present. This has to do, ultimately, with the nature of the male sex drive, which has been underwritten by millions of years of evolution and cannot be legislated out of existence, and the relative reticence with which human females choose their mating partners.

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Labor and Occupy: Comrades in Arms

by Matt Patterson on May 9, 2012 · 3 comments

in Culture, Labor, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

The Washington Examiner is reporting that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is helping Occupy DC become a “more permanent fixture” of the Washington, D.C., landscape by moving the anti-freedom agitators into cozy offices in the heart of the nation’s capital. And as usual where “occupiers” are concerned, there is no shortage of hypocrisy to be found:

The Service Employees International Union, one of Obama’s most vocal supporters among labor groups, is paying $4,000 a month for three offices the Occupy protesters will use for at least the next six months to plan future demonstrations, organize and host workshops.

The offices are at the Institute for Policy Studies, a nonprofit progressive group headquartered at 16th and L streets NW, amid the major law firms, trade groups and lobbying shops that Occupiers have spent the past seven months denouncing. The offices are just a short distance from the tent city Occupy DC established in McPherson Square in October.

Occupiers moved into their new digs Monday. The SEIU will pay the rent for six months, said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Six months. Hmmm…that would take us right up to the November election, though of course the “occupiers” insist they are not there to help re-elect President Obama, in spite of their benefactors at the SEIU being among Obama’s most enthusiastic boosters. But never mind that — what is beyond dispute is that Big Labor, Occupy, and the Obama White House share an animosity toward those who amass “too much” wealth, the so-called and much maligned  ”1 percent.”

How ironic, then, that labor bosses can be counted among that dreaded category. Take AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who has been exposing the alleged exorbitant salaries of various CEOs with his organization’s new website Executive PayWatch. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Trumka explained in an email to supporters:

Runaway CEO pay isn’t just bad for our economy, it’s bad for the morale of working families, too. All workers, from the executive suite down to the shop floor, contribute to making a company successful. But these corporations are buying into the myth that the success of a corporation is the result of its CEO alone.

But after stirring up all this hatred for the wealthy, Trumka may have  a hard time explaining his own “runaway pay.” Trumka earned $293,750 in 2011 alone, and in fact, as the Beacon reports, “has earned well over $200,000 every year since he was promoted to Secretary Treasurer [of the union] in 2003.”

Sounds like a 1-percenter to me. Time for Occupy AFL-CIO?

Land of the Free? Our Insane and Unjust Drug War

by Matt Patterson on April 26, 2012 · 1 comment

in Features, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Post image for Land of the Free? Our Insane and Unjust Drug War

Americans have long beat their chests and bragged about their liberties. But more and more these are empty boasts — the land of the free is really the land of the regulated; the home of the brave now the home of the bureaucracy.

Take our insane “war on drugs,” an affront not only to common sense and fiscal sanity, but also to basic civil liberty. As is often the case, government has gained control of our bodies by regulating the market, i.e., dictating what you can or can’t buy, sell, or own, in this case, narcotics.

By what right does the government lay claim to this power? Often it is said — erroneously — that drug prohibition laws as are “society’s” way of sending a message — the message that drugs are immoral and/or physically dangerous to consume.

Nonsense. First, there is no such thing as a collectively moving “society.” There are only individuals who individually make countless decisions every day about how to conduct their own lives. Since every single day many millions of these individuals choose to intoxicate themselves with some substance or other, in spite of our vast prohibition infrastructure, if “society” is sending a message with its drug laws, then individuals don’t seem to be getting that message.

Of course, even if it was getting through, the logic of the message is downright abysmal. Wouldn’t  everything “immoral” or “dangerous”  be ripe for prohibition, then? As William F. Buckley famously observed, adultery is immoral, but the state doesn’t go around locking up people who cheat on their spouses. Eating a rib-eye steak is (allegedly) bad for you, but that doesn’t mean we close down Morton’s, The Palm, or any other red meat pusher (although maybe we shouldn’t be giving Mayor Bloomberg an ideas).

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The Tax Man Cometh — and Taketh

by Matt Patterson on April 19, 2012 · 1 comment

in Economy, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

If you’re like most Americans, you woke up on April 18 dazed and sore, a victim of the not-so-gentle attentions of the U.S. Tax Man.

But now that he’s left with your wallet and your dignity, what is he going to spend your hard-earned but easily surrendered money on? What exactly is Uncle Sam going to do with all the cash he collected in his annual, anti-Santa- like dash across the country?

Thanks to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we have a handy breakdown of federal tax revenues and expenditures, including USA Today-esque pie charts (mmmm….pie), which shows a couple of surprising and depressing things.

For one, those who think that all those foreign wars being fought by our large and professional warrior class are bankrupting the country are dead wrong. “Defense and International Security Assistance” accounts for only 20 percent of the federal budget (all numbers are for 2011) totaling $718 billion, of which only $159 billion was allocated for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, whether you think that number could be higher or lower, few would argue that national defense is not the fundamental province of the national government, and therefore undeserving of a significant share of national expenditures.

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Obamacare: Constitutionality Argument Misses the Point Entirely

by Matt Patterson on March 29, 2012 · 1 comment

in Features, Healthcare, Regulation, Zeitgeist

Post image for Obamacare: Constitutionality Argument Misses the Point Entirely

Conservatives are ebullient over the unexpected hostility and skepticism the government’s lawyers faced from the Supreme Court Justices over the three days of hearings on the constitutionality of Obamacare.  In fact, so withering was the interrogation that the consensus of the Beltway-NYC elite has shifted virtually overnight from “Of course the Court will uphold it!” to “Oh my God! The individual mandate is doomed!”

It is heartening to see the Justices take the constitutional question seriously, and entertaining to see them pick apart the very weak case(s) for the individual mandate that every American purchase health insurance or face government sanction. And it certainly seems more possible now than it did last week that the Court may throw the baby out, and the bath water too, for good measure.

However, it is possible that this focus on constitutionality may someday backfire on conservatives.

If the law is upheld, that will take a lot of the steam out of the opposition to Obamacare. In the minds of many voters, rightly or wrongly, the imprimatur of the Supreme Court may function as a sort of ne plus ultra for the whole debate. Voters may figure, “Oh yeah, Obamacare. Didn’t the Supreme Court settle that? So what’s the big deal?” On the other hand, if the law goes down the left will say, “See, we tried that individual mandate that conservatives came up with, and it didn’t work. Time for single-payer national health care!” Which, of course, is what they’ve really wanted all along.

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Paul Ryan (and Penn Jillette) vs. Entitlements

by Matt Patterson on March 22, 2012 · 1 comment

in Economy, Nanny State, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

No sooner had Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled his new budget proposal than liberals were howling in rage and righteous indignation. What was it that  infuriated them so? James Pethokoukis at The American gives a clue when he compared Ryan’s budgetary approach with the president’s:

Ryan’s Path to Prosperity would cut the growth in Medicaid spending by $770 billion over ten years vs. President Obama’s budget, still spending $3.5 trillion overall on the program. Ryan would convert the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant to the states – indexed for inflation and population growth — giving them the flexibility to design programs that best suit their needs. He would also convert the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program into a block grant indexed for inflation and eligibility beginning in 2016 and make aid contingent on work or job training. There is also a goal of “devolving other low-­income assistance programs to the states.”  The goal here isn’t just to cut spending growth, but to create a culture of empowerment rather than dependency.

It is, of course, this desire to create a culture of “empowerment rather than dependency” that  is the driving factor behind Ryan’s entitlement reform plans. And it is this desire that has aroused the ire of the left, who reside in a twisted world where “dependence” is synonymous with “moral.” Take Jonathan Cohn, who in a New Republic piece, “The Stunning Immorality of Paul Ryan’s Budget,” writes that Ryan’s effort to “strengthen the safety net” through structural reform  is “morally bankrupt.”

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Downgrading the West

by Matt Patterson on March 9, 2012 · 1 comment

in Economy, International

In my column for The Washington Examiner today, I discuss the origins and consequences of our horrific, $15+ trillion debt:

For decades, the government has been spending our wealth — first everything we made, then everything we are ever going to make, and now everything our children and their children will ever make. How future generations will judge us for the theft of their prosperity is not hard to guess.

America is not alone in this fiscally debased condition, of course. The rot is deep and widespread; it is civilizational. The entitlement promises made by national and local governments of the West are so vast that they can never be kept.

Some readers have scoffed at my characterization of debt as a fatal, civilizational sickness, rather than a manageable nation-centric problem.

Yet today, as if on cue to compliment my Examiner article, I woke to find highlighted on the Drudge Report a Business Insider piece titled “Fitch Downgrades Greece To ‘Restricted Default‘” (“Restricted Default” is basically a legal fantasy whereby creditors agree to pretend that the debtor is not as broke as it really is, because the reality is just too unpleasant to face).

Another March 9 headline, this one from Financial Times, rings “Alarm Sounds Over Spain’s Rising Public Debt.” Still another Drudge-featured article today (this from The UK’s Telegraph) has a lengthy, biting sub-head which encapsuates perfectly the collective delusion that has taken hold of Western policy makers:

Europe has ring-fenced Greece’s debt crisis for now but its escalating recourse to legal legerdemain has shattered the trust of global bond markets and may ultimately expose Portugal, Spain, and Italy to greater danger.

This must have been what it was like to live in the 1930s, as the clouds of war gathered over the horizons of the West. Then, as now, leaders of men were bound by bad decisions made decades earlier, yet possessed neither the competence nor the courage to take the actions necessary to forestall disaster.

Then, as now, policy makers shuddered to make the painful decisions that the times required, thus only hastening the coming catastrophe.

Obamacare: Anyone Have a Plan B?

by Matt Patterson on March 1, 2012 · 3 comments

in Healthcare, Regulation

In just a few week the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments regarding the legal challenges to the administration’s controversial health-care overhaul, especially the constitutionality of the so-called “individual mandate” that requires every American to purchase government-approved insurance.

The Court’s finding on the matter will be the most consequential ruling in that august institutions long history, excepting only perhaps the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision. If the Supreme Court upholds the law, there will officially be no limits to the federal government’s scope, no ceiling on its powers, no real liberty in America, economic or otherwise.

(It is hard to believe it has come to this, that a people who once set a continent in flames over a trifling tax have been reduced to hoping a court will save them from enslaving legislation passed by the very officials they have elected. Yet here we are.)

And if the Court does not save us? Some cling to the hope that new politicians, put into power in some future elections, will undo what Barack Obama has done. Perhaps. Anything is possible.

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Social Security: Gateway Drug to Tyranny

by Matt Patterson on January 17, 2012 · 14 comments

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Social Security remains the most popular, and therefore politically  untouchable, program ever instituted by the United States government. Just last year, 79 percent of respondents to a CNN/ORC poll rated Social Security “good for the country.” In the same survey, an astonishing 73 percent agreed that “Social Security is something that the U.S. Constitution allows the federal government to do.”

Clearly, support for the program cuts across the political spectrum. Even many of the Tea Partiers who have marched with fervor against Obamacare are doubtless collecting Social Security, and would doubtless be loath to give it up.

This is sad, because as I have been arguing ad nauseum for several years now, Social Security is every bit as offensive to liberty and fiscal sanity as Obamacare: In fact, you could not have had the latter without the former. Social Security has been conditioning Americans since F.D.R that it is the proper role for government to 1) extract resources from some citizens, and to 2) provide income subsidy for others. To care for some at the expense of many.

Once our body politic accepted this fundamental role of government, Medicare, food stamps, welfare, Obamacare (or something very like it), and all the rest of the entitlement state were all but inevitable. Obamacare will put us over the edge, to be sure, but make no mistake: It was Social Security that first put us on the road to fiscal disaster and moral lethargy.

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Abandoning the Future: The Ruinous Consequence of Debt

by Matt Patterson on January 13, 2012 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Features, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Post image for Abandoning the Future: The Ruinous Consequence of Debt

Mere months after President Obama and Congress last tussled over the debt ceiling, the United States has once more reached its legal borrowing limit. But it still needs more. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The U.S. government was just a hair below the $15.194 trillion debt ceiling on Tuesday, $25 million shy of the limit Congress set last summer. President Barack Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders Thursday, saying the U.S. debt was within $100 million of the ceiling “and that further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.”

The “further borrowing” required to meet our commitments will amount to another $1.2 trillion, if the Treasury Department and the president get their way. And if they don’t? Again, from the Journal:

The practical implications of failing to raise the debt ceiling are pretty severe, according to government officials and market analysts. The government can only borrow money up to the limit, and because the government spends more money than it brings in through taxes and other receipts it is constantly running up the debt. Failing to raise the ceiling would mean the government would have to make severe cuts in spending to avoid defaulting on debt obligations.

So we are faced with an insoluble dilemma, which goes something like this: Default on the debt and inflict tremendous economic pain now, or keep borrowing and inflict even worse economic pain in the future, because, let’s face it, you can’t borrow forever. And what can’t go on forever will, as the saying goes, someday stop.

The problem is that some people, a lot of people, believe that there is no reason borrowing can’t go on forever. This notion that debt is inherently benign, or that its dangers are overblown, is a deadly meme that has penetrated the brains of a large number of elites in the governing and professional classes. You find it mostly on the left (I saw some liberal talking head spouting this nonsense on cable TV the other day), but also on the right, as when Dick Cheney once foolishly remarked that “deficits don’t matter.”

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