President Obama: You Know, We Could Use More Criminals In Government

I mean, I would have thought there to be no shortage.

Well, you know how on job applications, there's sometimes a little box that asks whether or not you've been convicted of a crime? With the wave of a pen, Obama just ordered that box to be removed from applications for jobs within the federal government, saying, "We can't dismiss people out of hand simply because of a mistake they made in the past."

You really can't make this stuff up.

"Simply because of a mistake" is fair enough, as applied to certain offenses. One might have said, "We shall no longer discriminate against certain kinds of offenses for certain kinds of positions." You could do a double-blind sort of thing with Federal hiring -- they employ enough people to do it -- whereby the first would filter to ensure that the crimes were of the right type to be ignored, and forward the listings stripped of criminal history to the actual hiring committee.

But, no. Instead, we won't consider criminal history... in hiring for government jobs, which come with government power... and somehow this makes sense? Somehow this is a good idea we should all get behind?

A Political Philosophy Wrapped in a Rant

This piece is really about the DMV not shining in comparison with the free market -- a point against which none of us are likely to argue -- but it is framed in an interesting account of the state.

[B]anditry frequently degenerates into a protection racket, a relatively modest tax on criminal enterprises and non-criminal enterprises alike. Protection rackets have their own challenges: For one thing, you actually do have to provide some protection, mainly from other predators like you. Over the years, economic success and administrative demands eventually transform bands of roving bandits into bands of stationary bandits. One popular theory of the state — one that is pretty well-supported by the historical evidence in the European context — is that this is where governments come from: protection rackets that survive for a long enough period of time that they take on a patina of legitimacy. At some point, Romulus-and-Remus stories are invented to explain that the local Mafiosi have not only historical roots but divine sanction.

Cf. Aristotle's account:

The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas 'companions of the cupboard,' and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions of the manger.' But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be suckled 'with the same milk.'...

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.

I would say that there is a sense in which both are true for America, for example: the frontier was settled by families who came together in marriages and formed ever-stronger communities (Aristotle), with very limited support from a distant government that claimed authority and the right to tax (Williamson). The American Revolution is the elimination of the 'stationary bandits' by the Aristotelian states that had formed on the frontier. So we began in the right way, surely.

And yet here we are.

We need a better account, one that does not look for the evil as bred in the bone, but one that recognizes the evil as a corruption of what was once healthy. It won't lie in the traditional analyses of what went wrong with America -- not in slavery or racism, I mean, for America has proceeded against those evils as resolutely through its history as any diverse nation is likely to do. It is, rather, a turning away from the favoring of the small Aristotelian cells of natural government in favor of a stronger, alien state. It is, likewise, about the turning away from the natural producer of the smaller Aristotelian governments -- the family, and those brotherhoods of table and church that Aristotle describes later in the Politics:

It is clear then that a state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship, for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.

I suppose we might say that it is a turning away from the natural toward the artificial, but that wouldn't do for Aristotle: he thought it was the purpose of art to bring to fulfillment and perfection that which nature had, for whatever reason, left incomplete or imperfect.

Perhaps it is a good place to begin an inquiry, in any case. There are levels of government and forms of governance that, if it were all to disappear tomorrow, we families would move to come together and re-establish. These levels and forms are healthy. What more?

The Port of Amsterdam -- SAIL 2015

OPM

I got a note in the mail today from the Federal Government's Office of Personnel Management, letting me know that my security clearance information was among those stolen in the massive data breach we've read about. They've taken a page from Target -- the store, that favorite of Michelle Obama's -- by offering me three years of free identity theft protection by way of compensation.

Which is all well and good, but -- like the President's own pre-announced withdrawal timeline for his Afghanistan surge -- that only tells the Chinese how long they have to wait before going gangbusters with the stolen data. My personal interests aside, out of a simple concern with national security they ought to flag my data (and all our data that was stolen) forever, not for three years. Whoever stole this stuff knows everything there is to know about where I've lived and worked, has on file personal references from people who have been interviewed in support to the investigation, and so forth. You could obtain any kind of paperwork from the government, or for that matter from private banks, based on what's in that file.

Fair enough if the three years is a stopgap while they put something else in place to ensure that the stolen data can't be used by the hackers, although it's not clear what that "something" might be. Perhaps a marker that anyone affected must be handled on a different basis than past information, should they need new clearances (or loans).

Still, three years is not that long a time. The scale of this breach, targeting as it did those with security clearances, ought to merit a much more permanent and serious response. That's true even if the government only cares about its own security, and not at all about those of us who are personally compromised.

Once in a lifetime

From Maggie's Farm, images of the desert bloom resulting from historic rains in the driest place on Earth.

That explains it

A retread, but still a Halloween-worthy explanation of the country's economic woes.

But that's a serious allegation!

Apparently nothing  can ever come to light that will keep a lot of MSM commentators from expressing uncomprehending shock at the notion that Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi.  In this interview, Charlie Rose asks in confused irritation what possible motive she could have had.  Rubio gamely replies that it was a campaign tactic in the final weeks of the 2012 presidential election.  "But that's a very serious allegation!" Rose stutters, for all the world as if no one had ever brought it to the attention of his colleagues until that moment, or as if they'd have been digging into the matter before now if only they'd known.  Rose then tries to argue that Clinton must have been in the dark, because the CIA kept changing its analysis--as if the changes in the talking points in the days following the attack had had anything to do with the untrammeled professional judgment of CIA analysts.  You have to wonder how much of this stuff Rose really believes, because it's hard to imagine that at this point he couldn't have made himself aware of the message-machine process during that eventful week, if he were willing to open his eyes.  Disagreeing with Rubio's interpretation of the facts I could almost accept, but claiming to be innocent of the controversy is a stretch.  Rose acts as if Rubio had suddenly decided to blame the situation on an attack from Mars.

What I rather like about the repeated display, however, is that it gives Rubio yet more opportunities to lay out the evidence to viewers who, like Rose, perhaps are hearing the facts for the first time.  A few may become curious.

Fun to Shoot

Powerline has the right attitude. I'm going to take the day off to enjoy this beautiful fall weather while it lasts. Do some hiking, and then perhaps later...

Taking it back

Bookworm Room's on fire with the videos lately.  There's a Democratic Debate Bad Lip Reading video up, but also this PSA applicable to the coming weekend:

Immoderate moderators

Much of the fireworks in last night's debate centered on the media's habit of beclowning itself.  The Democratic-operatives-with-a-byline in charge of moderating the debate were supposed to be conducting a session on "economic issues."  This is apparently what they think economic issues look like:

• A question about Rubio’s Senate attendance, driven by a newspaper editorial.
• A question about Jeb’s decline in the polls.
• A question about Hewlett-Packard’s stock performance while Carly Fiorina was the CEO.
• A question about Rubio’s family finances and his use of some retirement dollars.
• A question assuming the veracity of the “women earn 77 percent as much as men” canard. Wow. Just wow.
• A question to Ben Carson about Costco’s policy on benefits for employees in same-sex relationships.
• A question to Mike Huckabee about whether Trump has the moral authority to unite America. Wow again.
  

Self help

If you don't follow The Walking Dead--as I don't--you should skip all the written part of this HotAir piece, but watch the video explaining how to deal with zombies.

Waco Update: Dallas News Editorial

Just in case you like the bottom line up front, they give it to you in their headline: "In Waco case, biker gangs earning more trust than prosecutors."

Is God a Fact, or an Opinion?

Not too long ago we had a surprisingly intense argument over the proper definition of 'fact' and 'opinion.' It was framed, and not wrongly, as a really central issue in the quest to develop virtuous citizens. The use of language and the meaning of core concepts of language does indeed have much to do with that. This is just why Socrates was always so interested in whether people could define the terms they were using: "justice," "piety," and the like. Could you give an account of the real nature of the concept you were naming? Or could you not?

(An aside: Socrates thus gets the best line in this cartoon.)

Today I mention it because of this 7th grader whose teacher insisted that anyone who said that "God is a fact" or that "God is an opinion" was wrong. The only correct answer was that "God is a myth."

Now, the way I was taught the distinction, "fact" and "opinion" were mutually exclusive categories that covered every possible statement. "Fact" meant "a statement that can be proven true or false." Opinion meant every other kind of statement.

Thus, "God is a myth" (in the sense of 'myth' as 'false tale') is either a fact or an opinion. Since the teacher thinks it can be proven correct, she is classifying this statement as a fact. But then she ought to recognize that she has entailed that "God is a fact" is true, since she thinks that God's existence can be proven false -- and a fact is the kind of statement that can be proven true or false.

On the other hand, if "God is a myth" is an opinion because it cannot be proven either way, then "God is a fact" is also an opinion. "God is an opinion" is thus a fact, while "God is a fact" is an opinion. That's fun.

In any case, it's all bad metaphysics. Those who think that they can prove God don't try to prove his existence, but rather his necessity: God's existence is of such a different nature than ours that no one believes that we can understand how God exists, but if God is necessary, then we must accept it though we don't understand it. See Avicenna's Metaphysics of The Healing. Aquinas summarizes the argument (far too briefly to give you the sense of it):

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

Now Aquinas describes that as a proof of God's existence, but goes on to note that by "existence" he means something extremely different from the "existence" that you or I have -- in other words, he isn't proving "existence" in the usual sense at all. This point he gets from Avicenna, I think, although frankly he could have drawn it from the Neoplatonists or Parmenides. All of these are dense arguments that require years of work to grapple with effectively.

That's work that the seventh grade teacher is unlikely to have done, which ought to provoke some humility -- except that she is doubtless ignorant enough of the whole set of arguments not to realize that it is work that needs to be done to grapple with the question in front of her. She is still trying to prove or disprove God as if God were to be proven in the same way as your postman.

So is God a fact, or an opinion? Both, of course. How could it be otherwise? All things follow from God, and thus all things must be prefigured in God. God is both provable in Avicenna's sense, and outside what can be thought of as a proof for Kant. And thus it is just as true to say that God is neither, of course: all these concepts of human language are limited, and God is not.

Paid the Taxman

Today I rode over to the county seat and had a conversation with a man I know only by face, who recognizes my face in return even though he only sees me twice a year. Once I year I ride over there and pay my tag fees for the various vehicles registered in my name. The other time I come to pay the taxes on my property here in the county. He and I have to talk every time I come because it is his job to physically search me before I am allowed into the building.

The conversation turned, ironically I thought, on his desire to lament just how much of our money the government takes in taxes. He is of course paid out of those taxes, and is fully employed as a cog in the wheel of the tax-collection machine. His job is to protect the taxman from me, and to ensure that said taxman only encounters people like me after we have been carefully checked for arms.

It always strikes me as strange. The same government licenses me to carry arms, has my fingerprints on file and has itself investigated my background. They know who I am. The same government pays for its operations out of money that I or people like me provide. In fact, the reason I ever go there is just to provide them with that money. I always show up and pay my bill as soon as it arrives even though I could wait months to pay it.

Of course, the reason I pay it so quickly is that if I should forget, the government will sell my house and land at auction and evict me. Perhaps that's why they are so unwilling to trust me with arms around them, even though I'm coming -- as I always do -- to pay them what they ask at the earliest opportunity. Their own deep-set bad faith undermines our relationship. They cannot trust their citizens not to use force against them, even the ones who have always played by the rules and who have volunteered to be investigated, because they know how quickly they intend to resort to force if I miss a payment.

Seems like there's got to be a better way. The relationship between the citizen and the state should be a kind of friendship, ideally. You watch The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and you can see how the citizen used to participate in local government, indeed how citizens to really be local government.

Even in this very rural corner of a fairly rural state, we've gotten far away from that ideal.

Popcorn

Via D29, an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

[T]he foundation portrays itself as do-gooder nonprofit organization but a cursory look reveals questionable and incomplete disclosures of its activities and accounts, as well as incredible misspending of donor money, virtually since its inception.

Naturally, this can’t be stated in polite society. For example, the New York Times just had a story on the Clinton Foundation that found highly questionable conduct but buried it under the bland headline, “Rwanda Aid Shows Reach and Limits of Clinton Foundation.” Other stories have mentioned that the foundation has partnered with assorted dictators and robber barons. Among the latter is Canadian “mining magnate” (read: "penny stock artist") Frank Giustra, who donated millions to the foundation after Bill Clinton helped him land a mining concession for him in Kazakhstan....

However, the problems appear set to catch up with the foundation (now formally known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation), which has until November 16 to amend more than ten years’ worth of state, federal and foreign filings. According to Charles Ortel, a financial whistleblower, it will be difficult if not impossible for the foundation to amend its financial returns without acknowledging accounting fraud and admitting that it generated substantial private gain for directors, insiders and Clinton cronies, all of which is against the law under an IRS rule called inurement.

OK. That could be interesting.

This aligns nicely with the Hall's interests

Entropy and Income Inequality

The Mises Institute adjusted individual income to deduct taxes and then add back in what one receives in 'benefits' from one's government. The result:

Since Sweden is held up as a sort of promised land by American socialists, let's compare it first. We find that, if it were to join the US as a state, Sweden would be poorer than all but 12 states, with a median income of $27,167.

Median residents in states like Colorado ($35,830), Massachusetts ($37,626), Virginia ($39,291), Washington ($36,343), and Utah ($36,036) have considerably higher incomes than Sweden.

With the exception of Luxembourg ($38,502), Norway ($35,528), and Switzerland ($35,083), all countries shown would fail to rank as high-income states were they to become part of the United States. In fact, most would fare worse than Mississippi, the poorest state.

For example, Mississippi has a higher median income ($23,017) than 18 countries measured here. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom all have median income levels below $23,000 and are thus below every single US state. Not surprisingly, the poorest OECD members (Chile, Mexico, and Turkey) have median incomes far below Mississippi.

Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, has a median income ($25,528) level below all but 9 US states. Finland ranks with Germany in this regard ($25,730), and France's median income ($24,233) is lower than both Germany and Finland. Denmark fares better and has a median income ($27,304) below all but 13 US states.

No surprises here, though: there's significant entropy involved in taxing and spending. If you make $10,000 and I make $110,000, our average income is $60,000. If the government takes $50,000 from me to distribute to you, it's going to have to pay taxmen and bureaucrats to administer the program. You'll probably only get $25,000 of the money, the rest being lost to the systematic entropy. Our average income will now only be $47,500.

That's what these societies are striving for -- a more level field of incomes. That doesn't come without a cost.

In Praise of James Comey

I certainly hope that the author is right about our top G-man.

The fiercely independent head of the FBI is directing the investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email server and attendant issues raised during the Benghazi inquiry, which could lead to indictments of the former Secretary of State or her various aides....

Comey has shown a nettlesome tendency to stray off the Obama reservation. Most recently, he challenged White House orthodoxy by linking the rise of homicides around the country to stepped-up scrutiny of the police. In a speech at the University of Chicago Law School last week, Mr. Comey described the “YouTube” effect that has created a “chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year.” Police, he suggested, are so concerned about starring in a video that goes viral that they are attacking their job more tentatively to the detriment of law and order. The New York Times reported that Comey’s remarks “caught officials by surprise at the Justice Department, where his views are not shared at the top levels.”

Comey has also parted ways with Obama on the ‘Black Lives Matter’ controversy. In his speech in Chicago, the FBI director declared that “all lives matter” three times; at the White House, Obama was simultaneously defending the Black Lives Matter mantra while participating in a panel on criminal justice reform....

Comey has a reputation for integrity, a quality lauded by President Obama when he nominated the former Deputy Attorney General for his current post. Obama told how Comey prevented an ill Attorney General Ashcroft from being hoodwinked into reauthorizing a warrantless eavesdropping program, in the process standing up to President George W. Bush and putting his career on the line.

"He was prepared to give up the job he loved, rather than be a part of something that he felt was fundamentally wrong," Obama said.

All those qualities will be needed if he is to do the right thing here. No one expects it. The rule of law has collapsed so completely where the powerful -- or even the famous -- are concerned that there are pop-culture songs about how much you can get away with if you're a celebrity. Clinton is protected by both personal celebrity and deep ties to the rich and powerful among the ruling party. I doubt you could find three people in a hundred who really believe in their hearts that the government will call her to account for her casual, habitual violation of the laws governing classified information.

The author says "With James Comey leading the investigation, and unlikely to participate in any cover-up, [Republicans] should have faith in the system." It isn't just Republicans who doubt the system here. Democrats are also confident that she will face no charges. After the Justice Department long-investigated and then winked away Lois Lerner's moves at the IRS, nothing could be more plausible than that the law will go unenforced and the friends of the powerful will be protected from legal consequences. It would be eucastrophic if the FBI upheld its due and proper function in this case.

Beekeeping

John Cleese lists some of his favorite, but less-well known sketches from his career.

Budgetary Maneuvers

Exit question via Dan Foster: Would this budget deal have been this bad if Meadows and the Freedom Caucus hadn’t pushed Boehner out? The reason it’s two years instead of one and concedes so much to the Democrats is chiefly because Boehner no longer has any fear of reprisals from the right. He made a bad long-term deal in order to take this topic off the table for his protege, Ryan, when he replaces him as Speaker.

I think I'd like to know what the goals are for the maneuvers. I assume TEA Party advocates don't have a veto-proof majority on this issue either. There are two possible things that you could be after, then:

1) A better compromise on the budgetary concerns,

2) Losing the budget fight while winning a political "optics" fight.

There is little reason to compromise for either side of the fight. The President's minority party in Congress can rely on his veto to back them up. The majority party might be willing to compromise, but the TEA Party element of the right-wing coalition has drawn strength from driving out people who compromise. They're shifting the party rightwards just by winning conflicts like this one.

It sounds like (2) is what is going on, then: let Ryan vote against the deal, but let the deal pass, thus allowing him to assume the Speakership without being tainted by having compromised on the budget. It will, as they say, remove the issue for a couple of years -- an important couple of years, within the context of the 2016 elections. Voters hate government shutdowns, and tend to blame Republicans for them, so that makes some sense.

It does have the advantage of opening room for Paul Ryan to claim to be on the side of the TEA Party wing. For the TEA Party to have claimed the Speakership of the House -- symbolically if not actually -- is a major advance for a party that only got started in 2010, and which is not even officially independent. If Ryan elects to go along with them, it will raise their credibility in the eyes of ordinary voters who may not understand what is and is not symbolic. The budget gets settled ugly, but that is likely to happen anyway.