I was having a bit of trouble with the section of Super Duper Socialism relating to the drug trade. Since "street" drugs have not seen any price pressure from the massive prohibition efforts, at least none that I could find, I decided to call some veteran entertainers and find out their thoughts. Ed and Bob were quite helpful and brought up the now lucrative pharmaceutical black market.
So, why are these "factory drugs" so expensive now? My first observation goes to an artificial scarcity as an intended result of regulation. Does anybody doubt that these products would no longer command a premium from buyers if they were over-the-counter purchases?
We have seen a reverse effect in formerly over-the-counter medications, like the Pseudoephedrine (Sudafed®, and other products) restrictions used to "combat" methamphetamine production. It is likely those restrictions result in higher prices for legal users, like me, since a pharmacist must be involved in the sale, rather than just the cashier. Also, the government added a a database or two, administered by the bureaucracy and paid for by you and me. So, before the product is out of the store, one is paying a government-inflated price for the product.
Bob Thomas, Professional Actor and WNOX entertainer
What increases the "street" price of prescription, or pseudo-prescription drugs like Pseudoephedrine, is the added layer of sales involved. If I were so inclined to purchase Pseudoephedrine and resell it, I would probably not sell it to the lowest bidder. I could, of course, or I could even give it away for whatever charitable reason I could muster. That is no guarantee that the next person who possesses that Pseudoephedrine will not seek a profit and find a buyer willing to pay a premium.
To get to the heart of why this works at all, one must wade into the mire of human behavior. In the case of street drugs vs. pharmaceuticals, we have two separate law enforcement systems and two separate distribution systems. Okay, there are some exceptions, like pharmaceutical cocaine, but we are talking the generalities here.
In the case of street drugs, we have an array of prohibition laws with billions of dollars in enforcement behind them with no measurable positive result. As previously posted, the price of heroin is lower than a pack of cigarettes, yet we do not have a massive "addict problem" with heroin. What we do have is thousands of people in jail over heroin, with no increase in price and no known increase in usage.
In the case of Oxycontin® and other drugs, we have controlled production and distribution, with very little direct law enforcement involvement. I say not direct, since everybody involved in the production and distribution of those drugs has been deputized in one manner or another, including the drug store customer.
The deputies include: the businesses (factories) making the drugs, the people transporting the drugs, the people stocking the drugs in warehouses, as well as the people handling and dispensing the drugs at your local Apothecary establishment. In the USA, all of these businesses must be licensed. Indeed the individuals selling the drugs to prescription holders must be licensed too. They face great risk, great penalties, for failing to follow the control guidelines set by the government.
Even the consumer is restricted by heavy penalties if he does not use his drugs (property) as intended. For example, if I had a prescription for Oxycontin® and did not use all of it, am I free to sell the unused portion? No, I cannot even return it to the chemist for a partial refund either, at least I am unaware of any who would engage in that folly. If I keep my unused Oxycontin® and a family member is prescribed the exact amount that I have remaining, am I "allowed" to give or sell it to them? No, that would be committing a host of felonies that I would rather avoid, from dispensing without a license to who knows what else.
However, the thing that "prevents" me from committing dastardly deeds like giving away my property to someone who needs it more is not my sense of conscience, it is the government threat to my liberty, even though the likelihood is undeniably low. For an example of conscience, I would not give or sell one of my guns to someone I even slightly suspect would not own them in a responsible manner.
Other people do not follow my attitude about risks to liberty, as is their right as people, so we have a situation where as soon as certain people obtain pharmaceuticals they are looking to resell them. The array of "protective" measures, from the doctor protecting her license whilst writing the script, to the pharmacist protecting his whilst filling the order, creates an expensive production and distribution chain while, at the same time, creates an artificial scarcity resulting in a price jump between the chemist's window and the parking lot of the store.
What to make of this? For one thing, if the government wants to impose a prohibition a great deal of effort, to the point of deputizing all of the actors involved, is required to have any price inflation effect on the product.
Does this mass deputization prevent anybody from obtaining contraband if they want it? It still does not appear to be the case. Yes, the price is higher for those who wish to intoxicate themselves with these particular chemicals, but they are hardly scarce enough to say that anybody is prevented from obtaining them.
It also appears that the regular patient who is prescribed pain killers, or what-have you, is not the major source of re-resale pills. The re-resellers themselves go to great lengths to forge prescriptions, or even establish licensed businesses, nicknamed pill mills (link is to a Florida, USA definition), to engage in these profitable crimes. Indeed, some "illegal" sellers have every credential required for legally dispensing controlled substances. Indeed, this is nothing new. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) in 1989, led a raid on pharmacies in the Harlem borough of New York city. Well, it was more like a caravan of news cameras feeding the Representative's need for publicity, but raids on pharmacies it was just the same.
Is collusion a factor? Of course it is. Profession after profession has joined with government for licensing with the intent of limiting the number of people who practice that profession. Doctors and pharmacists are no different and this is a Nationalized Socialism of sorts.
So, what we have here is more government of good intentions that produces none of the good intended results that they promise.
The book Easy Riders Raging Bulls, the author quotes Dennis Hopper thus:
The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me. There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street. After Easy Rider it was everywhere.
Sadly, I cannot find the television interview where he combines that statement with what he said on Inside The Actor's Studio (skip to 27:14):
In the interview I was thinking about, Hopper said that the original idea Peter Fonda had for Easy Rider involved a marijuana sale. Hopper thought the pot too bulky for a couple of guys on motorcycles. He thought of and rejected heroin, because he did not want to promote that drug. So he went with cocaine because it was expensive in small quantities.
The Dennis Hopper interview was the first thing I thought of when I read this passage in Dr. Walter E. Williams' essay Drugs, Economics, and Liberty.
Which is easier to conceal and transport—a million dollars’ worth of marijuana or a million dollars’ worth of cocaine? Obviously, it’s cocaine because there is far less bulk per dollar of value. Thus one effect of prohibition is the tendency toward increased sales and use of more-concentrated forms of drugs that can include products such as crack cocaine, ice, and meth.
Well, in the case of illicit drugs, the more things change, the more things change. Particularly the price. In 1969, when Easy Rider was released, cocaine was apparently a very pricey powder which did become more popular from that point forward. In the early 1980s, the typical price I heard from people I knew who knew about this stuff (usually bragging to others about how financially flush they were) spoke of "$1,200 coke", which I am pretty sure they must have been talking grams. If it were ounces, that comes out to only $42.33/gram and does not sound like a sum to brag about.
Michael Corbin reported in his story Cocaine Economics in July, 2012 this price regression:
I recently asked a group of ex-offenders who had served time for drug possession or drug distribution about historical trends in the price of cocaine in Baltimore. Those who had sold drugs in the early 1990s agreed that, depending on purity, you could get (or have to pay) as much as $300-$500 for a gram of cocaine.
When I talked to and observed some street level dealers for an Urbanite story last year, it was not uncommon to hear of a gram being sold for $75-$100. There was no way to know about levels of adulteration of the product, which is common, but the price trend was clear nonetheless.
If there is one number that embodies the seemingly intractable challenge imposed by the illegal drug trade on the relationship between the United States and Mexico, it is $177.26. That is the retail price, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data, of one gram of pure cocaine from your typical local pusher. That is 74 percent cheaper than it was 30 years ago.
As I have written about in the previoustwo posts, the prices of marijuana, and heroin, especially heroin, have been dropping like a car from Marina Towers into the Chicago River since the 1970s. Now I discover, the same thing has been going on with cocaine.
If government prohibition enforcement efforts are doing anything at all to the price of these prohibited products, I would like to see where that affect shows up.
If the common sense, perfectly logical, theory that prohibition enforcement elevates prices, then without it heroin would be free, or cheaper. Perhaps given away with every gram of cocaine and both would be thrown in with every pound of high-grade marijuana.
William F. Buckley, Jr. was right about this in one way: The only measurable result of the drug war, as of this writing, is a big bill and thousands of very special people in jail. The price has been too great. I disagree with him about the freedom aspect (he did not believe that people were free to put whatever they like into their bodies), but any way, his, mine, or a combination, this drug war has proven to be a fool's errand.
In the previous post I failed to convert 1971 US dollars to 2012 US dollars, so here are the numbers using the US government BLS inflation calculator. If anybody notices math errors, please point them out.
Heroin price per 0.10 gram
1971 $30 = $170.53 in 2012 dollars
2012 $4 = $0.70 in 1971 dollars
So, after all this law enforcement "helping" keep heroin out of the country, we discover that one bag of heroin has dropped in price from $30 to $0.70 in 1971 dollars.
But that is not the whole story. As per the previous post, in 1971 a 0.10 gram bag of heroin was only 5% purity. So for $30 one was purchasing 0.005 grams of heroin. That $30 purchases $170.53 in other stuff today.
A 1/10 gram bag of heroin is 90% - 95% heroin these days, so the purchaser is buying at least 0.09 grams of heroin for $4.00. Furthermore, if that 0.09 grams were further "cut" to 5% strength, like the 1971 product, it would produce 18 bags of product. The 2012 heroin user is getting an absolute bargain from his suppliers.
If one were going to replicate the heroin experience of 1971, he could do it for $0.22(plus some cutting agent)/per dose.
Update: Here is the math from a different approach. If one wanted 0.09 of a gram of heroin (C21H23NO5) in 1971, he had to purchase 18 1/10 g. bags @$30/bag, $530. Today he need only purchase one bag @$4 to get that quantity of heroin. Now, $4 in 2012 buys about what $0.70 bought in 1971, unless you are talking heroin, marijuana, or cocaine. In 1971, $0.70 bought almost two gallons of gasoline. Today (23 Dec 2012), $4.00 buys about 1 1/3 gallons of gas where I live. Also, $530 dollars from 1971 buy $3069.54 worth of other stuff today, or 767.385 1/10 g. bags of 90% pure heroin.
Now, what of the folks who used to say that the "high price" was keeping many people out of the market, thus "saving" lives? This stuff is cheaper now than most other street drugs. Now, what of the stories we would see in fiction of overdoses from "extremely" pure heroin killing people? I focus on fiction there because I do not recall actual news stories of actual rashes of overdoses due to more pure heroin. It was frequently used in TV and movie plots.
Well, today this stuff is so cheap that it could be treated as free, yet we do not have legions of addicts roaming the streets. One is more likely to be accosted for a price-inflated-due-to-taxes cigarette than a mugger trying to feed his much less expensive heroin habit.
Is prohibition increasing drug prices, or is the government just ripping everybody off? The lobster pot theory on marijuana price. (major edit on 16 December 2012)
Just a minor theory that I have not done any serious research on, yet.
I hear that lobster traps are
incredibly ineffective. Yes, lobster fishers catch plenty, but when the
traps are watched it seems that many lobsters crawl all over them, even
enter and take the bait without being caught, and the lobsters that
show up on our plates are the exceedingly stupid lobsters. When the lobster industry catches a large number of lobsters, it really does not affect the lobster population in any meaningful way. A bit of
information I recall from a TV show about lobster fishing, but I could not find the video online. What I did find is this, a study like the one the fisherman was describing:
Based on our observations of approximately 24 videos obtained during the summers of 1998-2000, we have drawn a number of conclusions, a few of which are listed below. For more details about these studies see our first manuscript on the subject (Jury and Watson, 2001) in the Publication section of this website.
1. A large number of lobsters approach and enter traps, yet typically we only catch 1-3 per trap haul because the vast majority escape. We estimate that 10% of the lobsters that approach a trap enter, and of the ones that enter, only 6% are caught. Over 75% of the lobsters that escape the trap do so through the entrance. Video 1, on the right, shows a lobster escaping through the entrance to the kitchen.
2. Lobsters are very active around traps during the day, as well as the night. This confirms other field observations indicating that lobsters in their natural habitat are not as strickly nocturnal as previously thought.
3. Agonistic encounters around traps appear to limit entry and stimulate exits. Video 2 shows a large lobster chasing away smaller lobsters and then entering the trap. Small lobsters are very hesitant to enter, while larger lobsters tend to move right in like the one shown in this video.
4. Once in the trap, lobsters tend to "defend" the resource. Video 3 demonstrates this behavior. This also limits entry and it is probably one of the main behaviors that lead to trap "saturation".
My suspicion is that the drug war is much like lobster fishing and our public servants are only catching the
exceedingly stupid segment of the drug trade. The evidence for my theory? Law enforcement uses increasingly larger amounts of manpower, technology, and money, yet the price of the contraband they are chasing continues to drop. We are not examining a cause/effect relationship with lobster fishermen and street chemists, no not at all. It is just an interesting parallel to what is going on with the drug fishermen, aka, law enforcement.
For years I have heard people I respect greatly talk about certain aspects of drug prohibition, like Dr. Milton Friedman:
And Penn Jillette & Teller:
(that is not Penn in the frame)
From the Penn & Teller video I am reminded of an
interesting statistic - heroin prices have been dropping over the
decades since the 1971 beginnings of the so-called "Drug War." Watch
the video and look for the doughnut demonstration.
According to Penn & Teller, the price of "a bag" of heroin had dropped from $30 to $4 while the purity has risen dramatically. From 5% heroin for the 1970s $30 bag, to 95% for the $4 bag. This matched the hearsay information I'd heard in a late 1980s trip back to college. The younger students were talking about heroin being used again and they seemed unaware that it was ever considered expensive.
I had to do a little hunting around to discover how much product is in a "bag" and it appears to be 100mg (0.10 grams). After revealing this information about the price drop/purity increase, all of the "experts" that P&T cite say throughout the video that drug prohibition and enforcement increase the consumer price of whatever is being prohibited. As good, sound common sense as this makes, it does not appear to be correct. It is so good and sound that Penn and Teller refuted it before a single interviewee asserted that drugs are "more expensive" and those assertions made it right past the editors. Dr. Friedman said the same thing, over and over again, while he was alive, that drug prohibition efforts created an artificially inflated price for those products.
In the case of heroin, there was once a cartel that kept the price high. I believe The French Connection was based on that cartel. It was not law enforcement keeping the price high as much as it was a tight knit community of heroin producers and traffickers.
One of my Economics professors (in the 1990s) compared the heroin market with the marijuana market of the 1970s. Heroin had protected geographic territories, protected by "gangsters," and the consumers could not easily switch suppliers. Indeed, the suppliers were in collusion and kept the price high. The raw material came from poppies that could not be cultivated just anywhere and there was some other processing involved.
I am not sure what happened to the heroin cartel. Like most cartels, it seems to have fallen apart.
Marijuana, on the other hand, is both industrial and a cottage industry. It is a plant that is easy to grow almost anywhere, and with sex and violence* could be cultivated into a quality product. People setup large indoor growing operations, and some try outdoor growing, while others grow small amounts in their basements, spare bedrooms, closets, garages, sheds, and just about anyplace else you can think of.
Marijuana, generally illegal in US States, and federally illegal throughout the country, seems to run about $300/oz. for "high grade" in most of the USA, according to http://www.priceofweed.com/, which seems to be a "grade" that was unavailable in the 1970s and superior to anything sold then. The PBS Frontline series investigated in 2011 and reported a production price of $1,606/Lb., or $100.375/oz., making it quite profitable at a 300% markup. They also reported that the 2011 end-user price is not much different from the price today. Also, from a cursory look at their reporting, the street price has more to do with the average income where it is being sold than anything else. But what of the historic price?
This short internet article gives some clues:
The Price of Marijuana October 5, 2009
. . . Due to the increasing supply of this drug and the proximity of the border to Mexico, marijuana’s value has taken a full swing throughout the 90’s. Today, Marijuana can be purchased in Mexico for $100 to $200 per kilogram. Along the southwest border, Mexican marijuana goes for $400 to $1000 per pound and can also be bought for wholesale for $150 – $300 a pound. In the northwest and Midwest sections of the US, the average price of marijuana runs from $700 to $2000 per pound. California sells it at a high for about $2000 to $6000 per pound. . . .
WOKI-FM, a Knoxville, TN USA radio station, recently took an on-air survey during The Phil Show and if I recall correctly, $100/oz. was easy to find in the area, but that is considered "low grade." Fancy-pants weed was reported at $350/oz. if I recall correctly.
So, what we are seeing is the opposite of what one would expect, the opposite of what Friedman predicted, and the opposite of what Penn and Teller's guests stated without challenge. The federal government certainly is not spending any less money on prohibition. Also, the information cited above came before Colorado and other States made marijuana relatively or completely legal at State level. So what is the deal?
First, as Dr. Milton Friedman cited in (I believe) an appearance on Donahue in 1980, if the general citizenry is not in agreement on a particular law or category of law, then the law is not going to stop them from continuing to behave contrary to that law. Friedman cited alcohol prohibition. In addition, I will cite the 55 MPH national speed limit (passed by Congress and signed by Pres. Nixon in 1974), that was largely ignored. Also, I will raise "hand roll" cigarette tobacco vs. "pipe cut" tobacco, where folks like me use the much cheaper pipe variety to avoid the excessive tax ($24/lb) on the cigarette variety, a tax that is supposed to discourage me from smoking cigarettes.
Since there appears to be little or no public resistance to illicit drug use, plenty of willing customers, and the sellers are not getting a monopolistic price, not even an unconscionable price, not even a high price, for their product. What it appears is that the consumer is getting a quite reasonable price for non-pharmaceutical drugs.
Federal, State and local governments all go "begging" to the taxpayer for more "enforcement" money, yet they do not seem to be able to impact the price, at all. They have no trouble filling jails with the folks who just "jump into the boat" so-to-speak, yet they do not put a dent in the alleged problem that they keep saying they need more money to fight. The prohibition has shaped up to be nothing more than a bureaucrat full employment scheme.
On this point I am in complete agreement with Dr. Friedman, and not enough people point this out. Most of people advocating and enforcing the prohibition in no way advocate jailing millions of people for possessing a little pot. The people who came up with this had no intention of creating the actual results that we see today. No, the vast majority of these people are well intentioned folk who think they are saving many more people from horrible mistakes.
These are the good intentioned people who pave the road to Hell. Quite a few of them sincerely believe that you or I will run out and try heroin if it becomes legal. They also sincerely believe that their efforts are preventing us from purchasing heroin right now. I will fully admit, I have no idea where to get heroin at this moment, and it might take me all of a weekend to figure it out. Availability is not what prevents me from trying it, or marijuana, at all. I simply have no desire to try it.
Additionally, all reports estimate the size of just the marijuana market at $50 Billion +/- $40 Billion, which shoots another hole into the "money buys everything" theory. The collection of customers and sellers in that market do not seem to have been able to buy any political cover at all with all that money. The efforts in legalization have come from libertarian moral quarters, in opposition to those opposed on moral grounds. In the case of Colorado 2012, the citizens passed legalization by referendum, over the objection of their elected officials.
Could it be that some of that money was used by the illegal producers to keep it illegal and create an artificially high price due to a hostile/risky environment? Possibly, but unlikely. At least there does not seem to be any evidence pointing to a drug lobby fueled by pot growers. The "keep it illegal" crowd appears to be driven by well meaning people who are sincerely against individual choice.
For the record: No, I do not favor any prohibitions, I do favor strict enforcement of damages against anybody who damages property or injures people, sober or not. Also, it should be the property owner's call if he wishes to allow intoxicant users (or anybody else) to be on his property, including businesses.
*"Sex and violence" in the sense that the female plants must not be exposed to pollen from the male plants, so the male plants are killed. If there are no male plants around, a female plant may switch sexes and pollinate other plants, so plants must be watched somewhat carefully and any switchers must be cut out.
A number of knife-wielding attacks on children in various schools across China have occurred in recent years, underlining the shortcomings of the nation's mental health care system.
State-run news agency Xinhua has reported that Min Yingjun, 36, was arrested after he went on a stabbing rampage that left children and an elderly woman injured as they were walking to school on Friday morning. A post on Weibo, China's top microblogging site that's similar to Twitter, described the "vicious incident" that unfolded.
"One mental patient charged into a group of students on their way to school, hacked and injured one resident and 22 students," the post read.
The man who initially stabbed the elderly resident before attacking the children was eventually stopped by school guards.
No fatalities resulting the incident have been confirmed, an outcome that cannot be said for previous incidents that occurred in 2010 and 2011.
Last August, a daycare facility employee in Shanghai went on a similar rampage, injuring eight children with a box-cutter. The victims were between the ages of 3 and 4 years old, and they sustained injuries mostly to their necks and heads. Most were immediately rushed to the nearby Fudan University hospital for treatment. The woman accused of the attack was 30 years old and suspected of suffering from mental illness.
In March 2010, a stabbing spree in Fujian province made international headlines after a man brandishing a 10-inch knife attacked students at the entrance of their school, killing eight and critically injuring five.
If you were looking for this - Connecticut School Shooting Suspect Named Adam Lanza - and were under the impression that banning guns would stop attacks on school children, you deserve a refund from whomever taught you that only guns are used in school attacks.
The story above shows what you get from government healthcare and gun bans don't help.
What is Left and what is Right?For that matter, where do the various
political movements from the past 150 years fit in the Left/Right
construct?If you thought that contemporary
writers continue in the tradition of the French to define Left and Right, then
as the very Liberal John Tagliaferro says, “You deserve a refund!” from the
government education industry.
Super Duper Socialism begins with what the political
Left and Right really are, shows where the most familiar political groups fit,
and may shock you where they do not.This is not a simple rehash of already argued positions.
Was FDR a Fascist?Of
course not, National Socialists hated Communists in the same manner that
Democrats hate Republicans.Was Teddy
Roosevelt a Socialist of different label?Anybody who would deny that is as blind to the concept as the New
York Times was until 1913.
As you see, this is a slightly more complicated issue than
it appears on the surface, a surface muddied by government education and
mainstream media since the early decades of the 20th century.Super Duper Socialism takes the reader
on a fully documented historical journey through the American political scene,
and its surprising ties to other collectivist movements.
If you do not know the answers to these questions, or even
if you think you do, then you really need to read this book:
Why are Nazis and Fascist called “Right Wing” today?
Who was the last USA President to raise taxes?
Is slavery socialistic?
How far did Mussolini and Hitler take laissez-faire economic policy?
Who was the first world leader to achieve a Silent Spring?
What end of the political spectrum uses famine as a weapon?
This is pretty close to finished. Basic elements are where they will be when finished. Won't know the spine thickness until I get done writing and the editor gets done editing. Not sure what the back cover description will be yet.
Other than possibly the most minor changes, this is the new cover. The Empress approved it over the weekend.
Now, I need to finish the "How did we get into this?" portion (about 150 standard paperback pages, 34,500 words so far), then decide if "How do we get out of it?" will be in this book, or a sequel.
One of the funny things the Socialist loves to do is confuse issues. Any old issue will do, and one of their favorite issues to muck around with is voting. It does not matter where the voting happens, some Socialist will be starting a conversation about it, long on emotion and short on facts.
One of the ironclad facts about USA Presidential elections is the Electoral College casts all of the votes that count. There are plenty of good reasons for this and one of the biggies is preventing the big States from beating up the little States for that particular office.
The Senate exists for a similar reason. Each State has equal representation in the Senate, as opposed to the way each person is represented in the House of Representatives (see the Connecticut Compromise). We Americans did not elect our Senators directly until after the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on 31 May 1913.
So, back to that electoral college business. There has been much whining and whimpering about the electoral college electors not being bound to vote for whom they were elected to elect. The States (plus the District of Columbia) have all control over this. If a State wished, they could impose some penalty on the electors for failing to vote for whom they are "supposed" to vote for.
Also, there is much whining and whimpering over the "winner take all" system most States use for their electors. Again, this is fully within the control of each State. Maine and Nebraska have perfectly legal proportional voting systems that other States and the District could copy or they could adopt other proportional voting systems if they wished. To date, none more have adopted such a system.
The 2000 Presidential election was one of those times when the Socialists were positively rabid about the outcome. Their preferred candidate, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. failed to win the electoral college vote, thus lost his bid for President. However, he did win the popular vote, which is nice but that is no how one wins the presidency in the USA.
Some keep saying, to this day, that "all the votes were not counted." Which is complete nonsense, for sure, and the votes that mattered were counted by Vice President Al Gore, Jr. himself in his capacity as President of the US Senate. Yes, he did, here take a look:
In my political reading, I tend to lean toward National Review. Since my early days of political awareness, I was a William F. Buckley, Jr. fan and remain a fan of the magazine he created.
What does this have to do with the great Dr. Walter E. Williams? It seems like he and I are the only people left in America who will call bullshit on the notion that Presidents can spend any monies not appropriated by the Congress, and I will add that it is bullshit to think that Presidents can refuse to spend monies appropriated by the Congress. One does not need a PhD in Economics to understand this, as I am living, breathing proof.
Dr. Williams brought this point up in closing his last appearance guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, several weeks before the date stamp on this post. In a more recent column, he stated it this way (pretty darn close to the same way I have been stating it for a few years):
The first clause of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, generally known as the "origination clause," reads: "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." Constitutionally and by precedent, the House of Representatives has the exclusive prerogative to originate bills to appropriate money, as well as to raise revenues. The president is constitutionally permitted to propose tax and spending measures or veto them. Congress has the authority to ignore the president's proposals and override his vetoes.
There is little intellectually challenging about the fact that the Constitution gave Congress ultimate taxing and spending authority. My question is this: How can academics, politicians, news media people and ordinary citizens continually make and get away with statements such as "Reagan's budget deficits," "Clinton's budget surplus," "Bush's tax cuts" and "Obama's spending binge"? I know that the nation's law schools teach little about Framer intent, but I wonder whether they tell students that it's the executive branch of government that holds taxing and spending authority. Maybe it's simply incurable ignorance, willful deception, sloppy thinking or just plain stupidity. If there's an explanation that I've missed, I'd surely like to hear it.
The question about the debt is even more obvious. Katrina Trinko and every other typing head in The Beltway just came off of a typing binge about raising the debt ceiling, followed by another typing binge about raising the debt ceiling. The Congress raises the debt ceiling, not the President, as these writers would know if they only read their own articles strewn with Congressional Republican vs. Democrat positions on raising the debt ceiling. Not a one of them were so dim as to suggest that the President might do it all on his lonesome.
I do remember the days when I believed what Katrina Trinko and others believed, that the Congress passes budgets but the President does the spending, followed by the flawed logic that Presidents can spend whatever they like or refuse to spend federal funds on things they don't like. Part of this was true in practice before 1974. Presidents, up until Nixon, were able to impound Congressional appropriated funds on a whim. Not any more.
Yes, the President usually submits a budget annually. The Congress can, and usually does, ignore that budget before passing their own. As on many things, the Congress has the last word. In recent years, the Congress has not even bothered passing a budget, relying on Continuing Resolutions to direct spending. In essence, the Congresses since 2008 have left federal spending on autopilot. However, there is a bigger problem which Dr. Williams writes well in the above linked article.
Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.
Apparently the legions of National Review writers and commentators like it that way too. Just go take a peek at the responses to my comments when I expressed exactly the same notions as Dr. Williams.
The Senate's version of fiscal law history is here. The key element for the modern American is this bit:
Two developments provided the impetus for the enactment of the Budget Act in 1974. One development was an increasing realization by Congress that it had no means to develop an overall budget plan. Prior to 1974, Congress responded to the President's budget (which contains the President's many spending and revenue proposals) each year in a piece-meal fashion. There existed no framework for Congress to establish its own spending priorities before work began on specific spending and revenue bills during the spring and summer.
A second, and more immediate, cause for passage of the Budget Act was a dispute in the early 1970's regarding presidential authority to impound money appropriated by Congress. During this time, President Nixon repeatedly asserted authority (as had many of his predecessors) to withhold from Federal agencies money appropriated by Congress. By 1973, it was believed that President Nixon had impounded up to $15 billion of spending previously approved by Congress. A large portion of these funds were to have gone towards the building of highways and pollution control projects. Many in Congress disputed these actions by the President.The authorization for the pollution control projects, for example, had been enacted by Congress in 1972 with a strong vote in both Houses overriding President Nixon's veto. Nonetheless, the President impounded much of this spending. These events led Members of Congress to seek a legislative solution.
In 1974 Congress enacted the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to establish procedures for developing an annual congressional budget plan and achieving a system of impoundment control. The Budget Act also created, for the first time, congressional standing committees devoted solely to the budget. It also created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to serve as the ``scorekeeper'' for Congress. CBO is responsible for producing an annual economic forecast, formulating the baseline, reviewing the President's annual budget submission, scoring all spending legislation reported from committee and passed by the Congress, and preparing reports in compliance with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. CBO's policy with respect to providing estimates is set out in Appendix B. The Joint Committee on Taxation scores all revenue measures.
The notion that one President "spent more" or "spent less" than another is thoroughly ridiculous, since the Congress holds all of the purse strings.
One might ponder why our current President Obama could spend money on an automobile industry bailout when the Congress never authorized funds for the Chrysler bailout. What the Congress did appropriate was funds to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which is where the Executive illegally expended the funds from. What it is is a misappropriation, although it may not be a deficiency if funds were still available for what the money was appropriated for. As I have written elsewhere, every single fiscal manager in the federal government who approved any aspect, any amount of money, for the Chrysler bailout should be in jail for misappropriation.
Kind of amazing how it just takes the
presence of a Republican to make a deficit and the presence of a
Democrat to make a surplus, even if either are just imagined.
So, according to CBS a Republican House passed this stuff without a
by-your-leave to the Senate or the President. In a way it is history
repeating itself from the Clinton surpluses, that apparently he created
by edict without the "help" of the Congress.
I am curious, has a single person who writes this stuff ever heard of
the Impoundment Control Act or the Anti-Deficiency Act? Do they have
even the most remote clue that a president's budget is literally
meaningless and the Executive *must spend* in accordance with the orders
of the Congress? At least that is the legal way. As for all that
bailout crap, there should have been some Treasury Contracting Officers
up on charges for approving the car maker bailouts with financial
institution bailout money (that should never have been appropriated
either). Reply to this comment
Jonathan and his commentators are assuming
too much good will from Yglesias. The Leftists never lets facts get in
the way of a narrative.
OT: As far as American budgets, debt, and all of that go, I really
wish that conservative columnists would take a peek at the
Anti-Impoundment and Appropriations Acts of the 1970s. Then, *maybe*
one side of this spending debate will stop giving credit to any
president for any surplus or deficit. The Congress has been completely
in charge of that since 1974.
One would think that with all the recent chatter about the debt
ceiling that writers would stop tagging presidents with that one too.
Wishes and horses. Reply to this comment
I emailed Dr. Williams and National Review about this post and received this response (nothing from NR yet):
To: John Tagliaferro <johntagliaferro@gmail.com>
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Delete | Show original
Thanks and hang in there.
Cheers.
Professor Walter E.
Williams
George Mason University, Economics
4400 University Dr., MSN
3G4
Fairfax, VA 22030 On 10/8/2012 7:51 PM, John
Tagliaferro wrote:
Dr. Williams (and whomever reads the mail at NRO), It
seems you and I are darn near the only people left who have read the
Constitution, to include the article typers at National Review. Below is
a clip from a recent blog post related to my upcoming book is quoted below
and I link to one of your articles. You can read the whole thing if you like
here: http://superdupersocialism.blogspot.com/2012/10/me-and-dr-walter-e-williams-against.html "Me
and Dr. Walter E. Williams Against the World In my political reading, I
tend to lean toward National Review. Since my early days of political
awareness, I was a William F. Buckley, Jr. fan and remain a fan of the
magazine he created. However, it drives me up the freaking wall when I
find nonsense like this on their pages: O’Malley Denies Obama Has Increased
National Debt More than Any Other President and the comments found attached
to the article. What does this have to do with the great Dr. Walter E.
Williams? It seems like he and I are the only people left in America who
will call bullshit on the notion that Presidents can spend any monies
not appropriated by the Congress, and I will add that it is bullshit
to think that Presidents can refuse to spend monies appropriated by
the Congress. Dr. Williams brought this point up in closing his last
appearance guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, several weeks before
the date stamp on this post. In a more recent column, he stated it
this way (pretty darn close to the same way I have been stating it for
a few years): Who May Tax and Spend?" Thank you for your
time, JT
Topics like this are addressed in my upcoming book, Super-Duper Socialism.
In our Progressive march away from laissez-faire, free markets has brought us to this bit of National Socialism in tribute to a Republican Congressman who occupies the seat of Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District as I write. More expensive and pretty pictures here.
The government transportation system of the relatively small city where the above pictures were taken is curious too. Pretty much anybody who wants a car there has one. The federally subsidized buses that flock to and scatter from the John J. Duncan, Jr. Bus Cathedral, belch around the streets of town mostly empty. One can read here what a bargain was had for only $29 Million.
I did not have to arrange an evacuation of the area for the "photo shoot" either, there just was not a soul around for socialized transport worship services.
Prior to FDR, there was not a lot of this nonsense going on, either monuments or government transport. Yes, there were monuments aplenty for the Founding Fathers, but not so much for sitting legislators. It seems to have begun picking up steam around Reconstruction and exploded with Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK-WV), who was famous for this sort of thing. Now it has become commonplace across the Republic.
Super Duper Socialism: You were fed an illusion about the Left and Right - A Narrative History by John Tagliaferro
Until I saw Antony Beevor on Q & A with Brian Lamb (C-SPAN) I never thought that I shared much with true historians as far as my style of conveying history to others. Professor Beevor notes that there is a German style, also alluded to as a scientific style, which is really just an illusion. All history is narrative and I approach it the same way that he does, with an open mind. Of course, I have my own biases going in, but as I find evidence I have no problem changing my mind.
Changing my mind is what happened while researching this book. As I began I knew that International Socialism and National Socialism were different only in degree, but those were the two major camps of Socialism. However, I was under the impression that American Socialism was something different, more along the lines of Mussolini's Fascism. I was very wrong.
When I 'discovered' a 1913 New York Times article about Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform, they used the term "Super Socialism" to describe Roosevelt's vision of a non-Marxist socialism. Over the weeks, that title echoed to the point that it finally dawned on me that this forgotten description was perfect to usher in the American accent on the Yellow/National Socialism that was sweeping western civilization.
Just a couple of decades later, the Super Socialist states of the world were allying with Marxist states and movements to battle National Socialists, not over freedom, but merely over which flavor of Socialism would rule the world. Nowhere in World War II was anybody fighting for free markets, free speech, freedom of choice, or the freedom of anything beyond the 'freedom' of the state to dictate to the people.
As time progressed after the big showy surrenders of the Axis powers to the Allies, another war began. Some call it the Cold War, which does have some merit, and some called it World War III, which really has more merit. Underlying all of that is still the war for freedom, with the True Right libertarians and Conservatives in an ideological and electoral battle against the Socialists of the Left. "Super Duper Socialism" is the label I use for American and Red Chinese hybrids of Marxist and non-Marxist Socialisms.
About the cover:
The cover has gone through more evolutions than the text. It began as a collection of Socialists with the ice ask identified as the murder weapon of Trotsky in the middle. As I was writing, a Florida Democrat Party office displayed an American flag with the field of stars replaced by a bust of Obama. I found that interesting and created a similar one on my own, with a different version of the book title scrawled across the stripes.
For the current cover, that I am quite satisfied with, I replaced the white stripes with yellow, for Yellow Socialism and kept the red for Red socialism. After adding the bust of Obama I had a little room at the bottom of the field for leading American Socialists. I had more, but one can only fit so many before they shrink to the point of invisibility.
Update: The wife and the cover illustrator for some of my other books thought the first version was too busy, so I simplified it a little. Wife told me to try Powerpoint for more text effect options.
I did have a thought of giving the flag a golden fringe for the "Ohio is not a State" tax protestors, but the "Cali 05" frame brought a distressed effect that I like better. The stylized Socialism bumper sticker across the front was a bit of an accident. I wanted the white parts to be transparent, but my limited knowledge of graphics programs got in the way, so I applied it like a bumper sticker and liked that better than my original idea.
Older versions below.
As of this post, I am only about 1/4 - 1/3 of the way through my writing. Hoping to finish before the election heats up.
V/r,
JT
Super Duper Socialism: You were sold an illusion about the Left and Right
Super Duper Socialism: You were fed an illusion about the Left and Right
John Tagliaferro
