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A simple Democracy in America blog post, expressing a libertarian’s frustrations talking with a confirmed statist, does an excellent job explaining the free market logic of Hayek and Friedman.
… If we compare the Affordable Care Act to Friedman’s ideal, it’s clear that its changes are not in the “right direction”. Now, I don’t agree with all the details of Friedman’s ideal, but I agree with most of it, and, more generally, I share his and Hayek’s way of thinking about social insurance. First, set up dynamic free-market institutions and enjoy the blessings of their efficiency and innovation. High levels of growth and technical invention are the best social insurance, period. Then, use some portion of our enlarged national income to buy insurance for those who can’t afford it and to buy care for those who are uninsurable. If a mandate to purchase insurance is really necessary, I don’t mind. If some version of an IPAB is needed to decide how much of what care to provide to those who are houses afire, that’s fine. But let there be competitive markets. Let there be prices.
One of my complaints about this debate is that the left has been committed to a fundamentally dirigiste vision of universal health care for so long that it has difficulty even conceiving of a system that combines relatively laissez faire market institutions with generous social insurance. My colleague’s insistence that Obamacare represents some kind of culmination of liberals’ appreciation and incorporation of Hayekian concerns only reinforces my complaint and leaves me in despair.
Thomas Sowell looks back at how Clinton and the MSM hurt the Republicans during the government shutdown of 1995. Sowell thinks that this time Republicans and Tea Partiers will have to win the political battle to be effective.
…The last time the government shut down, back during the Clinton administration, the Republicans were riding high as a result of their capture of the House of Representatives– where all spending bills must originate– for the first time in decades.
…Congress had increased the amount of money appropriated for the government to spend, though not by as much as President Clinton wanted. So it was Clinton who shut down the government, though it was the Republicans who got blamed.
…Often, in politics, it doesn’t matter what the facts are. What matters is how well you make your case to the voting public.
Back in 1995, Bill Clinton and the Congressional Democrats, with the aid of the media, pounded away on the theme that the Republicans had “cut” government programs, even where the Republicans had appropriated more money than these programs had ever had before. …
Roger Simon appears in our pages frequently, but there was one post back in September that did not make the cut. Simon posted then about the Stuxnet Worm that was causing problems in the Iranian nuclear program and he speculated the German firm Siemens was involved. The post was not well organized and seemed too fantastic for belief. Turns out now he was correct. So the NY Times wrote yesterday in a lengthy and fascinating article. We have the Times story. If you want to read Simon you must follow the link above.
…The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.
In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009.
Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.
In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.
Siemens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.
The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.
The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults. …
P.J. O’Rourke criticizes the NY Times.
…In the matter of self-serving, bitter, calculated cynicism, there wouldn’t seem to be much left to prove against the Times. Judging by what I’ve heard from my fellow conservatives, the issue is decided. The New York Times is a worthless, truthless, vicious institution. But I disagree. I think things are worse than that.
…We observe in the Times a bizarre overreaction to people and things that can be construed as “antigovernment.” (And all people and most things often can be so construed, e.g., the man who just got a speeding ticket.) The Times has become delusional, going from advocating big government to believing that it is the big government. …
Ross Douthat wrote a calm, well-reasoned Monday Times opinion column about how most contemporary attacks on American politicians have been of greater interest to psychiatrists than ideologues. “From the Republican leadership to the Tea Party grass roots, all of Gabrielle Gifford’s political opponents were united in horror at the weekend’s events.” The newspaper probably heard this as a hallucinatory voice in its head urging self-destruction. If we’re going to discuss dark, paranoid corners of the Internet that have an unwholesome influence on our national life, there’s the New York Times online. …
On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asks NJ Governor Chris Christie why he won’t run in 2012.
… CHRISTIE: Listen, I think every year you have as a governor in an executive position in a big state like New Jersey would make you better prepared to be president. And after one year as governor, I am not arrogant enough to believe that after one year as governor of New Jersey and seven years as the United States attorney that I’m ready to be president of the United States, so I’m not going to run.
WALLACE: Yes, but you know, and I heard you say it might make more sense somewhere down the line, 2016, 2020, whatever. But one of the things that Obama learned and showed us all in 2007, when it’s your moment, you have got to move.
CHRISTIE: Listen, that is a decision that he made. And he’s obviously was successful in winning the presidency. My view is I want to, if I ever would have run for the presidency, if I was ever to do it, I want to make sure in my heart I feel ready. And I don’t think you run just because political opportunity is there. That’s how we wind up with politicians who aren’t ready for their jobs. …