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View 695 Sunday, October 09, 2011

I can’t say I really blame the “Occupy Wall Street” groups. If I were their age I’d be thinking of joining them. They don’t really know what they want, but they really don’t want more of what they’re getting.

One radio commentator says “They want the damned bailout money back.”

When I was young I was the first in my family to go to a real college; my mother had a two year normal school degree and had been a first grade teacher. My father had matriculated in a Baptist College and was thrown out for reading James Harvey Robinson’s Mind In The Making, which was a pretty radical book back in those days. It actually accepted evolution… Anyway, in my time you could go to a state college without going into debt. My wife was the first in her family ever to get to college, and she worked her way through at the University of Washington; she graduated without debts. So did I. In my case I had the Korean GI Bill to help through most of it. I also worked at Reich’s Café in Iowa City, where I had a “board job”: an hour’s work as a waiter earned me a meal off the menu, and I kept any tips. With the GI Bill to pay tuition and rent, and at least one meal a day guaranteed by Reich’s, I was set.

Neither Roberta nor I even considered borrowing money to go to college, and neither of us had any problem finding a job when we got out. When I met Roberta she was a school teacher, and I was a Boeing aerospace engineer.

It’s different now. The US has poured so much money into the universities and colleges that it has built an education bubble. The costs of college degrees soared. Now you either start rich or you borrow money; very few can work their way through college, and that gets harder all the time. Indeed it’s very hard to get into a state college now: they want to bring in out of state students who will pay full price in order to support the insane cost structure. There’s no room for outsiders with reasonable but not outstanding records. Neither Roberta nor I would be able to get into the University of Washington now.

The first thing they teach in economics is that when too much money chases goods, the price of those goods goes up. Inject more money into a system, make it easier for more people to buy the product, the demand rises, the prices rise. It doesn’t take an economics degree to understand that; so when you make it possible for more people to buy a house, the price of a house will go up. And when you inject more and more money into the higher education market, then the costs will go up. We keep running that experiment in the hopes that this time it will come out different. And here we are. It costs an increasing amount to go to college, it’s increasingly easier to get loans, and the costs keep going up. Meanwhile the supply of people with college credentials goes up. Increase the supply of something and what happens to the demand? Particularly the demand for those with degrees in social sciences and the like. But maybe next year it will be different?

So they’re out protesting. The government spends enormous sums on – well, on anything. Bailouts. Bunny inspectors. Higher and higher pay pensions and benefits for government employees including college staff, administrators, and faculty. Money pours out of Washington every minute, but somehow after four years of education one has a lifetime of debt and no job.

Every person in the United States owes $47,000 that will have to be paid by someone. Add to that another $50,000 to $100,000 in college loans. Neither of those debts can be escaped by bankruptcy or anything short of disability and perhaps poverty. To get out of paying you have to get out of having much of an income. At least that’s how many see the situation.

Three years ago we were promised that things would be different. Hope and Change. We’re the one’s you have been waiting for. And now – well, now it’s worse. The spending goes on. Our masters – government employees – continue to get more and more. Pension costs go up and up (that’s part of that $47,000 each of us owes). Spending costs go up. And now those who would be the middle class find they are bondsmen. A few come out of college without debts – mostly those from rich families. We can be sure that Steve Jobs’ children will not be lifelong bondsmen – but that much of the prospective middle class will indeed enter life as debtors. Bondsmen. Not free.

I hear on the radio that the Occupy Wall Street people are moving toward Washington Square Park. I recall that one very well: I was once wanted on a misdemeanor charge of inciting civil disruption for a speech I made in Washington Square back about 1952. But that’s another story.

Of course protesting in the public parks is no way out of this mess. Neither is soak the rich taxation. I understand the temptation to denounce “greed” as the cause of America’s problems. I understand the strong temptation to respond by punishing the greedy. I am willing to discuss taxation schemes that have the intent of leveling the society. I am certainly willing to discuss resumption of the anti-cartel trust busting activities to prevent enormous concentrations of wealth. There are serious economic costs involved in doing that sort of thing, and if you confiscate all the wealth you will seriously distort the allocation of resources. If you succumb to the temptations of envy – they have this money, and we want it. You don’t need that much money – it’s not fair – you may find that covetousness has no boundary.

There really isn’t enough money to pay our debts by soaking the rich. As the Brits found out long ago, the problem with insisting on near equal divisions of the economic pie is that the pie stops growing, and after a while gets smaller and smaller. Envy and covetousness, such as I am hearing from Lisa Ann Walter on KFI as I write this, are powerful temptations, and succumbing to them can make you feel good. How dare you have that big party when I can’t find anything on sale at K-Mart! How dare you take ten million dollars for that movie performance. You don’t need that much! Take a million and be grateful! The list of things we can resent will never end.

FAUSTUS. Thou art a proud knave, indeed.–What art thou, the second?

COVETOUSNESS. I am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl, in a leather bag: and, might I now obtain my wish, this house, you, and all, should turn to gold, that I might lock you safe into my chest: O my sweet gold!

FAUSTUS. And what art thou, the third?

ENVY. I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. O, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! then thou shouldst see how fat I’d be. But must thou sit, and I stand? come down, with a vengeance!

FAUSTUS. Out, envious wretch!–But what art thou, the fourth?

WRATH. I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother: I leapt out of a lion’s mouth when I was scarce an hour old; and ever since have run up and down the world with this case of rapiers, wounding myself when I could get none to fight withal. I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be my father.

FAUSTUS. And what art thou, the fifth?

GLUTTONY. I am Gluttony. My parents are all dead, and the devil a penny they have left me, but a small pension, and that buys me thirty meals a-day and ten bevers,–a small trifle to suffice nature. I come of a royal pedigree: my father was a Gammon of Bacon, my mother was a Hogshead of Claret-wine; my godfathers were these, Peter Pickled-herring and Martin Martlemas-beef; but my godmother, O, she was an ancient gentlewoman; her name was Margery March-beer. Now, Faustus, thou hast heard all my progeny; wilt thou bid me to supper?

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s (goods)
house or fields, nor his male or female slaves, nor his ox or ass, or anything that belongs to him.

Which turns out to be fairly good advice; spending your time in envious covetousness is not any way to be happy. Of course “what is my neighbors’ goods” is a fair question. Where did the wealth come from? Robbery? Theft? But then if property is theft, it’s easy to justify any action you like. If I am to be enriched by despoiling you, it’s easy enough to think of good reasons why I ought to get out the axe.

Taking someone else’s property to settle your own debts is a powerful temptation and it leads to powerful feelings of self-justification. But we all know that. If we wish to restructure the distribution of wealth, it is important to think carefully, not merely seize in anger out of jealousy. There really are optimum limits on fortunes, and organizations too big to fail are probably too big to be allowed to exist; but confiscation out of envy is not the remedy to that. Yes there are institutions that ought to be broken up. But not to enrich me or you. Not to pay my college tuition. Or yours.

The real objection to soak the rich taxation is that it feeds the beast. There is no way to sustain the 7% exponential growth in government spending that we presently enjoy, and any soak the rich taxation scheme that gives us the illusion that this spending growth can continue is far more dangerous and will do far more harm than any good we can gain from taking the money.

There may come a time when we need to debate the distribution of income – but not while we continue a 7% exponential growth in spending.

Cut the spending. Stop the exponential. Once that is done we can debate income structures. But not until then. Every week that goes by adds to that $47,000 each of us owes. There isn’t enough money to be taken from the rich to pay that. The only way out of this hole is to stop spending, then cut back the regulations until we have economic growth again. We can grow our way out of this. We can’t solve our problems with envy.

Edmund Burke noted:

As long as our Sovereign Lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and Commons of this Realm— the triple cord which no man can break—the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation—the firm guarantees of each other’s being and each other’s rights—the joint and several securities, each in its place and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of dignity—as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and we are all safe together—the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen! and so be it! and so it will be—

Have we come to a time when the insolence of the rich is too much to endure? Or is it from the rich that our troubles rise? Would despoiling the rich make us safer?

For those interested, I recommend Russell Kirk’s essay on the subject.

I don’t blame the Occupy Wall Street people. I do caution them to think about what they are doing. What is it you want? And be careful what you wish for.

View 695 Thursday, October 06, 2011

I had hoped to end the Proscription discussions but there is news:

Proscription

Dr Pournelle,

This article appears to give the detail you were looking for regarding the process by which a citizen gets onto the proscription list:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

How one gets off the list is less clear (well, one way is obvious…)

Regards, Stu

Stu Fleming

The article is well written and detailed. Of course it cites anonymous sources; how could that be otherwise? In essence it says that a secret subcommittee of the National Security Council meets and proposes names. “Look, with a spot I damn him.” The names are made known to the President but no positive action from him is required. He could remove a name from the list, but whether he has ever done so is not known. It isn’t even known that he has ever read the list. The Reuters article says:

“The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.”

As to Samir Khan, the second American killed in the drone rocket strike, he was not on the list but was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Suppose that this system were in place in 1972, and the National Security Council committee determined that Tom Hayden, already under indictment for his anti-war rallies and the protests at the Chicago Convention, was determined to be an enemy of the United States; a drone aircraft sees him during Jane Fonda’s visit to the North Viet Nam anti-aircraft station. A Hellfire is launched. Hayden is killed. So is Jane Fonda, who is nearby.

I have a number of friends who would say “Serve them right,” with some glee; but this thought experiment does raise some Constitutional questions.

“Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.”

One presumes that the Tonkin Gulf resolution which permitted Presidents Johnson and Nixon to send the troops to Viet Nam would certainly justify anything that the current Congressional resolution justifies in the way of dealing with enemies of the United States: neither looked like a formal Declaration of War, but apparently both sufficed. So my thought experiment is fantastic only in that we don’t have drones and hellfires and real time satellite observations and thus could not have seen Hayden and Fonda on their pre-marriage Viet Nam tour and ordered a strike. Whether either or both might have been targeted I do not know. I don’t know who is on the committee.

In 1968 I was proposed for an office in the Department of Defense that might well have put me on that committee, but I was rejected by two of the President’s advisors as “inflexible”. (And no, I do not know what that means. My qualifications involved political advice in the area of national defense during the 1968 campaign plus a still active clearance and considerable experience with high tech weaponry. I can guess what the president’s political advisors meant, but I do not know. It came as a surprise: my wife and I thought we would have to leave California for Washington. I’m rather grateful for the rejection, as it happens.) But of course in those days no such committee existed, nor did we have anything like the capability for carrying out such acts. The closest thing we had in those days involved much larger manned aircraft.

Had we had the physical capability, I do not know if Nixon would have employed them, or whether he would have balked at the use of such capabilities against American citizens convicted of no crime even if they were in a war zone.

It is not a question now. Apparently we have an anonymous committee of persons who report to the National Security Council (Vice President, Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and other Constitutional Officers). The committee itself may or may not have members confirmed by the Senate, but the committee itself is unknown to either the Constitution or the Laws.

“targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

Perhaps I am unduly disturbed by all this.

For those interested in the Middle East situation I can recommend this:

Available on the web and in pdf format at:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201110.kramer.middleeast.html

THE MIDDLE EAST CIRCA 2016

by Martin Kramer

When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is only 20 percent higher than it was then-it’s only at 12,700. Last February, one of the co-authors wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I Was Wrong About ‘Dow 36,000’.” “What happened?” he wrote. “The world changed.” Well, what a surprise.

Now there was a lot of talk that sounded like “Middle East 36,000” just a couple of months ago. This is a new Middle East, everything you thought you knew is wrong, bet on revolution and you’ll be rewarded handsomely with democracy.

Let’s face it: Americans like optimistic scenarios that end with all of us rich and the rest of the world democratic.

There’s much in the American century since World War Two to foster such optimism. But while you enjoy reading your copy of “Middle East 36,000.” I’m going to quickly tell you what’s in the small print in the prospectus-the part that’s in Arabic. <snip>

The LA Times today has an article entitled “Zero-tolerance policies driving up suspensions” in which it laments that anyone is suspended for disobedience or other non-violent behavior. They should instead receive help. “A child who is suspended from school is more than likely waving a red flag for needing intervention and support,” said Dr. Robert Rosa, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. “Metaphorically speaking, this is a time you want to put your arms around a student, rather than push him away.”

Whether this is a good idea for a wealthy school district, it certainly seems inappropriate for a system that is broke and laying off teachers (by seniority, not by effectiveness, of course). We can’t afford to educate those who can be educated and want to be educated and are willing to be polite and self-disciplined; yet we are supposed to dedicate even more resources to those who are unruly and undisciplined? To what end? Of course if “being educated” is an entitlement the taxpayers are required to provide rather than an investment the taxpayers choose to make, that may be the right way to look at it; but given that we can’t afford it, does this make sense?

Our education system is busted, both financially and in effect. It won’t be fixed by admitting that the point of the system is to do what we can for the future citizens and particularly the future productive citizens, but until we understand that it must do at least that much, it will continue to be broke and unfixable.

This is not Lake Wobegon. Half the students are below average. Half of those below average are getting a great deal of attention – some would say at least as much as the other 75%. Is this a rational allocation of scarce resources? It may make one feel good to spend a lot of time helping a spastic child of low IQ, and it is a noble thing to do: but can we afford that, and what will be the effect on the future economy? Will the nation be better off having mainstreamed a disabled child from the 35^th percentile to the 40^th, or by having taught calculus in high school to a 90^th percentile child of very low income?

The answer to that would be different if there were a lot of money; but there isn’t. We’re broke. Every single one of us owes $47,000 on the national debt. That must be paid, and the rest of us will have to pay the shares that those who will never earn that much money will not be able to pay. Education decisions must be made with that stark fact in mind.

Salve, sclave.

View 695 Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Today’s Headline:

Labor Unions Join Wall Street "Occupiers" for Mass Rally

The cavalry has arrived in Lower Manhattan. Representatives from no fewer than 15 of the country’s largest labor unions will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters for a mass rally and march today in New York City.

The AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transit Workers’ Union are among the groups expected to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of mostly young men and women who have spent the better part of three weeks sleeping, eating, and organizing from Zuccotti Square.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/labor-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-york-rally/story?id=14673346

The revolution enters the next phase. It could be serious, but it can also be farce: it’s not at all clear which of the conflicting demands coming from the Occupy Wall Street protestors the unions support. It is doubtful that real auto workers are in favor of the tax raises that would be required to forgive student debts, but that hardly matters. The entire “American Autumn” is a community organizer event intended to draw attention away from the Tea Party; something for the media to play with. The Arab Spring events are serious but disorganized. These “American Autumn” events are actually fairly well organized even if they appear to be something else. No one took them very seriously. They certainly weren’t demanding the overthrow of Obama. They weren’t demanding a military coup. Mostly it was farce.

Some of it was a bit amusing, even appealing. After all, the IWW, the International Workers of the World, have endorsed Occupy Wall Street. All 12,000 of them, among them the folk singer Leslie Fish, who will emotionally and rather appealingly tell you that the Wobblies are still around. You can hear her here. (It might take a bit of time to download; be patient. And you may find some other songs at that site, such as Let us Go A-rambling…) After all, it’s time to throw the bomb…

But it is farce no longer. The entry of organized labor, which claims to speak for more than 10% of the US population and which has a highly favored place in Federal law and regulation, makes this a more serious matter.

It is also a sign of desperation. And maybe, just maybe, those who pay their union dues will stop to consider that this may be a more serious matter than they supposed. It’s one thing to pay dues and watch money go to liberal causes. It’s quite another to identify oneself with rebels. Next it may be your turn to throw the bomb.

No news on the CERN faster than light neutrinos. Without that observation all the speculations about relativity are fairly idle talk: as Russell Seitz reminds me, most physics professors have a peach crate full of well reasoned refutations of Einstein’s theory of relativity sent by smart people, and there’s not a lot of point in reading them because there’s no need for a new theory: what we have works to cover the data we have. Beckmann’s Einstein Plus Two is interesting if the FTL particles are “real” (repeatable observations by different teams with different equipment, etc.) because we need a new theory because if FTL happens then light speed really isn’t invariable; but without that observational data, it’s just another book in the peach crate. That’s still the way to bet, of course. But I sure could use faster than light for my stories….

Mail 695 Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Durbin to Bank of America Customers: ‘Get the Heck Out of That Bank’ – ABC News

Just what we need, politicians orchestrating a run on a bank.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/durbin-to-bank-of-america-customers-get-the-heck-out-of-that-bank/

Do these idiots not understand that this could plunge the US into a Depression!

Jim Crawford

Note that Senator Durbin was involved in the regulation that caused BoA to impose this fee:

Summary of the Durbin Interchange Amendment

As Modified for the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Conference

• The Durbin amendment would bring reasonable regulation to the $20 billion per year debit

interchange fee system. Interchange fees are received by the card-issuing bank in a debit card

transaction. However, Visa and MasterCard, which control 80% of the debit market, set the

debit interchange fee rates that apply to all banks within their networks. Every bank gets the

same interchange fee rate, regardless of how efficiently a bank conducts debit transactions.

Visa and MasterCard do not allow banks to compete with one another or negotiate with

merchants over interchange rates, and there is no constraint on Visa and MasterCard’s ability

to fix the rates at unreasonable levels. This system is effectively an unregulated $20 billion per

year transfer of wealth from merchants and their customers to card-issuing banks.

• The amendment will require that for transactions involving debit cards issued by banks with

assets over $10 billion, any interchange fee charged on the transaction must be reasonable and

proportional to the cost incurred in processing the transaction. Visa and MasterCard currently

charge debit interchange fees of around 1-2% of the transaction amount. These fees are far

higher than the actual cost of processing debit transactions, and they mean that small

businesses and merchants always get shortchanged when they accept a debit card for a sale.

• The amendment will permit card-issuing banks to receive debit interchange fee adjustments to

cover reasonably necessary fraud prevention costs. However, as opposed to the current

interchange system where banks receive a guaranteed level of interchange revenue no matter

how effectively they deal with fraud, the amendment will require banks to demonstrate that

they have met fraud-prevention standards and taken effective steps to reduce fraud in order to

receive an issuer-specific interchange adjustment that will cover their necessary costs.

http://www.fmi.org/docs/interchange/Summary_of_Durbin_Amendment.pdf

I will note that the best way to make the US economy grow would be to suspend for five years all Federal Regulations on commerce. Let the states deal with it. You could provide that the suspension will take place in 180 days, and the Congress has those 180 days to reinstate any regulations it sees fit, but one at a time, not en masse. They would probably keep the US Department of Agriculture meat inspections and some programs like that rather than leaving such matters to the states. Some programs would never even be considered, like bunny inspectors. Give them 180 days to restore the necessary and all the others go. The result would be an economic miracle, but of course that will never happen.

National Space Prize

Dr. Pournelle,

Your idea has merit, which means it will never be considered by our government. I wish I weren’t so cynical, but I am.

There could be an added fiscal benefit: non-essential NASA facilities could be sold off to the private space industry. I know that wouldn’t make a dimple in the national deficit, but it’s still cash inflow. And the private space industry would get some good facilities here and there.

Thanks!

Martin L. Shoemaker

civil defense

There is an excellent video on pjtv talking about our vulnerability to biological attack. A movie was made this year, Contagion, that while being a movie, still made good points on some of the gaps in the system. The Hudson Institute fellow that was interviewed talked about the great strides we have made in the last ten years to handle an outbreak. However, he kept mentioning the "government" as the planner and executioner. It occurs to me that the old civil defense organizations would be far better at handling the local problems of an outbreak. One of the problems brought out in the movie and confirmed in the video was distribution of the vaccine and the problem of getting first responders to show up when it gets really bad. In both cases, the old CD organization would probably circumvent those problems. As you have said, they get titles and uniforms and get to strut around, and then one day they become heroes and you can have as many of them as you need.

Just another reason vector to reform CD.

Phil

To reform CD we will first have to abolish FEMA. FEMA is a very good example of how not to organize for disasters. It does not encourage local volunteers, and it tries to manage everything from far away. Abolish FEMA and restore Civil Defense, including commissioning locals to take command on declaration of an emergency. Work with local authorities. Make it clear that the first responsibility is local because Washington just can’t do it all.

I would not call retired majors and commanders working to build a local civil defense organization as strutting.

Bleephead Rock and Absentia Proscription

Dear Jerry Pournelle:

Regarding the (excuse my language) "Niggerhead Rock" story… evidently

it’s a bigger deal for some than for others. That is in the nature of

slurs. Imagine, if you please, your least favorite American politician

leasing a ranch with the name "<Bleep>head" painted on a rock; where

bleep = a violent slur against your own personal ethnic group. (I can

think of a few for mine, I don’t know any for yours, and I don’t care

to find out, though I’m sure they exist.) Wouldn’t you object? Even if

it happens that the slur also has a non-insulting meaning?

Call it PC if you wish, or plain good manners. In general it is prudent

to not insult random strangers gratuitously; or, at least, not

strangers who count. When people who didn’t count start to count, then

suddenly some words reveal meanings previously ignored in polite

company. Perry may or may not be a racist, but he’s definitely a jerk.

Regarding proscription lists: The trouble with terrorism is that it

exists in the grey area between criminality and statecraft. Indeed,

merely by existing, the terrorist demonstrates the continuity between

the two. But states have privileges and citizens have rights; what then

does the terrorist have? Do we try to arrest and try them like

criminals, or blow them up from afar like warriors? I propose a

compromise; that proscription for treason be (partially, badly)

tempered by this expedient; trials in absentia. I don’t like it either,

but it’s better than just taking the President’s word for it.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

My apologies. I tried to reformat this, but it was too much work.

How in the world could it be anything but manners? Voters generally do not want presidents who act like swine. But manners are both local and temporal. What was mannerly in 1983 for the son of a rancher who leased a hunting lodge is one thing; that was a time when there were Niggerhead rocks in many places across the South, and I know of at least one in Springfield Ohio that existed in 1950; I do not know when it was renamed, but I assume that it was long ago. In 1983 Rick Perry told his father that the rock was inappropriate, and they painted over it.

In 2011 it is artificially conventional to assume that the very hint of the existence of the word nigger is so offensive that everyone ought to be shielded from seeing or hearing it. Joseph Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the Narcissus was published in the US under the title The Children of the Sea, not because the title under which it was written was considered offensive, but because the publisher didn’t think anyone would buy a novel about black people; today the name would have to be changed for other reasons. Mark Twain’s greatest work has to be bowdlerized. This in a time when black rap artists routinely use every offensive word known to humanity in a deliberate attempt to shock; but it is racist to notice that. As to what is ‘racist’, the ‘right’ to define that is of the very essence of modern politics, and has little to do with rationality.

Oddly enough I still believe in rational discourse.

The whole situation is absurd. Governments cannot and should not attempt to remove all traces of verbal insult from a society. It is certainly bad manners to inflict insult on people, but it is equally bad manners to assume offense where none is intended and often is not even felt. When I grew up, it was polite to say “Negro”. It was a term I used because it was not supposed to be offended, but on one occasion it seemed to be.

“I just thought I ought to be offended,” said one black friend back in my undergraduate days when I still used many of the verbalisms I had grown up with in a legally segregated society. This was in a party in Iowa City hosted by a black barber at which Count Basie was the guest of honor. Basie laughed his head off at the time, and oddly enough my friend was mildly rebuked for his manners while Basie was handing me a beer. That probably did more to raise my sensitivities than any sensitivity training ever could.

The Niggerhead Camp rock, long ago painted over, is a manufactured incident intended to give those who want to feel offended an excuse for doing so. That is not good manners, and I do not think it is good politics. I suspect that dredging this up does no one any good at all. And I will repeat that assuming offense where none is intended and little is felt is neither good manners nor good citizenship.

I agree with you on trials in absentia; they need not be in open court, and they might be military tribunals as were the trials of the World War II saboteurs that resulted in their execution; that would be a lot better than proscription lists.

XCOR ballistic people-mover.

<http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/new-space-venture-could-bring-every-city-on-earth-within-two-hours-travel-20111103-ncx>

—

Roland Dobbins

DCX was a scale model of SSX, which was designed to be savable, reusable, and to launch from any azimuth and any latitude. DCX was something of a proof of concept.

Proscriptions

The rationale you stated seems a bit incomplete. From what I can surmise (as a random guy on the internet), the criteria for inclusion on the proscription list (assuming there is a list and these things aren’t decided ad hoc) are as follows:

1) an active participant,

2) in a country/organization we are at war/AUMF with,

3) in a location inaccessible to US personnel (without killing people and breaking things),

4) sheltered by a government unwilling or unable to affect capture.

High value targets only need apply, as the cost of a Predator is well into the seven figures. Had Al-Awlaki been so gracious as to hop on board a commercial aircraft, presumably he would have been arrested, shipped off to Club Gitmo, and tried (eventually) under military tribunal. Samir Khan may or may not have qualified as an HVT himself (underwear bomb manufacturer), but getting two for the price of one can be considered as a "happy coincidence" if you believe in that sort of thing.

Kenneth Anderson has a series of posts on the drone attacks at volokh.com.

Lee Stillman

Arrested on what charge?

So far as I know there was no indictment. Makes more sense just to kill him than to charge him in court.

His correspondence with Hassan may or may not be grounds for arrest and trial for treason, but that hasn’t been shown.

His companion so far as I know was only a publisher. He made speeches.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Charges? We don’t need no steenking charges!

Seriously, I doubt there would really be much of any law enforcement procedures followed. CIA: we want him. Airport security: okay, there he is. No cameras, no lawyers, no Miranda warning, no phone call.

Lee Stillman

I believe that the technical name for that kind of government is “police state.” It is hardly what the Philadelphia Constitution had in mind.

Hit lists and Prizes

Dr. Pournelle;

The proscription list that you describe probably is an artifact of the cooperation between the Judge Advocate Generals office, the UCMJ, and the Office of the President / Commander-in-chief bureaucracy. The poor sap executing the order is sure to have a chain of command that has assured him that the order is legal, and one would assume the order was vetted by the chain of command and JAG, so you would have to look to some secret presidential order or ( more likely) a bureaucratic determination based on some method such as was used to excuse water-boarding by the previous administration.

On a different note, I would like to comment on your idea of offering prizes to get the best bang for the buck. I don’t think you have taken it far enough. Why not offer prizes for trimming government excesses? Write it up so that anyone who can show why a law is unconstitutional gets ten percent of the savings caused by rescinding that law. Even if a law is constitutional, if it can be shown to have effects contrary to the spirit of the original law – and it gets removed – then some monetary reward or compensation would be offered. All of the above would be run through the congress, not the courts. As the congress is creating the mess – they should clean it up. There is no reason a committee couldn’t recommend to the whole assembly that a law be rescinded, after convincing arguments have been presented.

Mr. B.

Proscription worries

Dr Pournelle

Your worries over the proscription of two American al-Qaeda members seems to me to be valid but perhaps academic. I am not certain, but I think it may be a fruitless quibble.

It is clear that there is no language in the Constitution which authorizes proscription. It is explicit that Congress may not exercise such power. I cannot imagine the judiciary has such power, but perhaps that says more about my imagination than it does about the judiciary.

What we are left with is that the power is inherent in the Executive; that is to say, it is extra-constitutional.

Clearly such powers exist. President Lincoln used them to quell the rebellion. There is no language in the Constitution that authorized the President to raise troops against a rebellion, suppress the writ of habeus corpus, or order the army and navy to make war on some of the several States. There is no language in the Constitution by which the President may proclame slaves emancipated and deprive citizens of their property without a hearing. But it was done.

I am reminded of my reaction to Justice Souter’s concurrence in the judgment of Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993). A federal judge, Walter Nixon, had been convicted of perjury. He refused to resign his office. The House impeached him. The Senate referred the matter to a committee for findings of facts and then, upon hearing the report of the committee, removed Nixon from office. Nixon petitioned the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had not been ‘tried’ by the Senate. Souter, in his concurrence wrote

If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results, convicting, say, upon a coin toss, or upon a summary determination that an officer of the United States was simply " ‘a bad guy,’ " . . . judicial interference might well be appropriate.

(Full decision and concurrences at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html .)

My Constitutional Law professor asked us what we thought of this. I said Souter was an idiot. He asked why I thought so. I said that if things were so bad that US Senators would decide the fate of men by tossing a coin, then the Republic was already lost and, thus, ‘judicial interference’ was a farce.

While I appreciate your concern, I do not fear for the life of the Republic because President Obama or officers acting for him ordered a missile strike on two Americans whose allegiance to al-Qaeda outweighed their allegiance to the United States.

Were you instead to talk about the flagrant misuse of federal power to raid the Gibson guitar factory while letting alone Gibson’s Democrat-contributing competitors, I would readily join with you.

Live long and prosper.

h lynn keith

I hope you are correct. My own suspicion is that the Gibson raid is not actually unrelated to the use of missiles against enemies of the people, but that may be because I have an over active imagination. Once you abandon the notion of prescribed powers where do you stop?

Russian proscription.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8802732/PIC-AND-PUB-PLS-Leaked-document-reveals-plans-to-eliminate-Russias-enemies-overseas.html>

Russia ‘gave agents licence to kill’ enemies of the state

The Russian secret service authorised the "elimination" of individuals living overseas who were judged to be enemies of the state and ordered the creation of special units to conduct such operations, according to a document passed to The Daily Telegraph.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent 10:23PM BST 02 Oct 2011

The directive refers specifically to the European Union and western Europe and appears to be signed by the head of counter-intelligence of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

It is dated March 19, 2003 – four years before the killing of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London. It sets a provisional deadline of May 1 2004 for the new units’ work to begin….."

Bills of Attorney

Just a minor quibble with your excellent post on state actions against individuals; the UK has not completely given up on bills of attainder in modern times. A good example can be found here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/ssi2006/20060512.htm A news story on that legislation can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536449/A-grim-legal-first-killed-this-firm.html

Cheers,

James

James Spiller

Now that is interesting.

Scott Adams on Taxes, the Wealthy and a Return to the Ocean – WSJ.com

Jerry,

Driving the rich to sea?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576601000374936460.html

I seem to recall a certain Sci Fi author who wrote a series of stories premised on the idea that the wealthy would escape to space.

Jim Crawford

Thanks