Gyroscopic Investing

1. Out of the 310+ million people in the United States, which individual is least justified in complaining about excessive government spending?
2. Guess who just sent me (and I'm sure thousands of other people) a letter complaining about excessive government spending?

The answer to both of these questions names the same person.

Ronald Reagan?

No, I don't think he's sending out too much mail these days.

Anyone else want to guess?

George W. Bush? Or someone previously in his administration? Otherwise, I can imagine that it would also be pretty ironic to hear this complaint from someone who has personally benefited from government spending to the tune of millions or billions of dollars. Maybe the CEO of Lockheed Martin or Boeing or something?

Here's another hint:

All federal spending must be as a result of bills passed through both houses of Congress.

Boehner? Reid? One of their predecessors under the Bush administration?

Yes, it's Boehner, who could of course stop every spending bill in its tracks by simply telling his members not to vote for it.

I think we have a new winner in the chutzpah department, don't you?

Hasn't he tried that a couple times and been pilloried for it as "shutting down the government?" 

RuralEngineer wrote: Hasn't he tried that a couple times and been pilloried for it as "shutting down the government?"

I don't recall whether he has done that with that reaction, but if so, it's his problem if he cares what anyone else thinks. Obviously Congress doesn't have to listen to us, or we wouldn't have had TARP and all the other Wall Street bailouts (just off the top of my head).

Most Republicans are just statists in conservatives' clothing.

I marvel at the way so few people seem to understand this basic point about how our system works.

MediumTex wrote: Most Republicans are just statists in conservatives' clothing.

I marvel at the way so few people seem to understand this basic point about how our system works.

And most Democrats are just statists in liberals' clothing.

Or to be even more succinct, most politicians are just statists.

Libertarian666 wrote: Yes, it's Boehner, who could of course stop every spending bill in its tracks by simply telling his members not to vote for it.

I haven't seen much evidence of Speaker Boehner's alleged authority of late. To be frank I'm not sure he could tell his members to take a bathroom break with more than an even chance of getting his way, absent supporting votes from the other side of the aisle.

MediumTex wrote: Most Republicans are just statists in conservatives' clothing.

Most libertarians are just conservatives in anarchists clothing.

doodle wrote:

MediumTex wrote: Most Republicans are just statists in conservatives' clothing.

Most libertarians are just conservatives in anarchists clothing.

Boom.

Everyone but pure anarchists are statists. It's a pretty useless word, IMO. 

Though mt makes up for it in spades with most of his random bits of  wisdom.

moda0306 wrote:

doodle wrote:

MediumTex wrote: Most Republicans are just statists in conservatives' clothing.

Most libertarians are just conservatives in anarchists clothing.

Boom.

Everyone but pure anarchists are statists. It's a pretty useless word, IMO. 

Though mt makes up for it in spades with most of his random bits of  wisdom.

I think that a lot of Republicans from the past in the mold of Calvin Coolidge were not statists.

Calvin Coolidge was a supporter of our involvement in WWI and the federal reserve.

I consider supporting forcing young men at gunpoint to go fight in trenches overseas, as well as supporting a centralized monetary system, to be quite statist.

Don't get me wrong, Calvin probably was a force for liberty on a lot of fronts, but if those fronts were a low social safety net and non-existent industry regulations, the 117,000 poor saps drafted to go die in a trench overseas, or the 200,000 wounded, probably didn't feel all that free.

I can't help but simply labelling this another case of someone wanting government to do some things and not others, which is fine, but let's not call him a non-statist.  We were at peace before WWI.  CC was in favor of ending that peace by forcing American men into a foreign war.

Also, lambasting Woodrow for starting the Federal Reserve, and giving Coolidge a pass on being an ardent supporter of it, is a bit too much of a pass.

Seems to me that in two absolutely massive ways, Coolidge was a force, at least in spirit, for expanding the power of the federal government to areas far beyond where it had been before.  Up until WWI, I wonder if we'd ever been involved in such a complete farce of a war that involved such little American interest.  Draft during an invasion-war (1812) is one thing.  To draft men to go defend a mess of European entanglement is something else entirely.

And while I support a fiat regime rather than a gold-based system (though I think a gold-based currency is as much a gov't policy decision as a free decision of society), I understand that it many ways it is a significant expansion of the federal government to move to have a central bank installed to regulate the money supply.

Consider the effects your words are having on Ad Orientem.  He's probably rocking an a fetal position in a corner someplace.  Have mercy, man!

Maybe there aren't any politicians who aren't delusional statists at heart.

It just bugs me a little more when some of them say they are against government solutions to society's problems, but their own records and careers show that they are just as happy to expand the role of government in people's lives as the crusading socialists.

That's really all I'm saying.

MediumTex wrote: Maybe there aren't any politicians who aren't delusional statists at heart.

If I think about the type of person who goes into politics, this statement makes a great deal of sense to me. I mean, how reasonable would it be to expect to look at the business world and find many successful people who think business distasteful?

Xan wrote: Consider the effects your words are having on Ad Orientem.  He's probably rocking an a fetal position in a corner someplace.  Have mercy, man!

Haha why is that?

Coolidge was a great president, but no one is perfect. On the two points raised...

Coolidge and World War I: He clearly supported the war effort once we entered the war and that included the draft. On that point guilty as charged. The evidence as to how supportive he was of actually going to war is thin at best. Coolidge did not advocate for intervening in the war, but neither did he speak out against it. Of course at the time he was in state politics, not Federal, and in those days public officials actually had a clue about the boundaries of their respective offices. For the most part he seems to have maintained a discreet silence on the subject before the war. Afterwards he lauded the soldiers and ideals for which they fought, but the different tone in his own foreign policy makes it difficult for me to believe that he would have dragged us into the war.

The Federal Reserve: Yes he supported it. But prior to the 1930's its mandate was much more conservative and of course we were still on a viable gold standard (not to open up that debate here). Coolidge supported the gold standard and accepted the Federal Reserve as the best means for managing it.

Conceding that one cannot logically hold public office if one is an anarchist I think all things said Coolidge remains the best President of the 20th century (and the first 13 years of the 21st).

As for the heresy of suggesting that Coolidge was an imperialist or a champion of big government in general, I will let the former Archbishop of Canterbury speak for me.

Pointedstick wrote:

MediumTex wrote: Maybe there aren't any politicians who aren't delusional statists at heart.

If I think about the type of person who goes into politics, this statement makes a great deal of sense to me. I mean, how reasonable would it be to expect to look at the business world and find many successful people who think business distasteful?

I got elected to my HOA board for the specific purpose of making sure they didn't do anything stupid and didn't raise dues on homeowners.  All I want the HOA to do is keep a low profile in the neighborhood and leave people alone to the greatest extent possible.

So it is possible for a person to enter politics without statist objectives, but I am sure it is rare.

Ad,

I don't have much of a problem with asserting that Coolidge is a good guy with a few marks on his record.  Where I have a problem is starting that with the premise that he was a pillar of freedom.  He liked low taxes and low economic regulation (with the exception of the fed), and was in favor of the draft to support a foreign war.

Ask the hundreds of thousands of men killed or injured if they felt free because Coolidge lowered their taxes and didn't regulate them.

And don't most anti-fed folks see the fed as the cause of the excesses of the 1920's?  If it's not the fed's fault, maybe it's the laissez faire capitalism that Coolidge espoused that perpetuated the boom/bust nature of the market.

I'm a much bigger fan of Teddy Roosevelt.  Yes he was an ardent supporter of involvement in WWI, but I understand that he has a more statist outlook. He did some really ballsy things that I quite like and he didn't care what his party thought of it.  I love what he did with the national park system, and his support of regulations on industry and monopolies I think are a huge plus.

His work on getting the Panama Canal done, as well, while it was done at the expense of many workers, I find to be just an amazing achievement.  I think he really loved America and, yes, saw a role of government and didn't back down from that.  I think that he saw the flaws that pure capitalism contained in terms of both ecology and economics. 

I realize people may disagree with this.  Just my take. 

I see government agents as similar to an accounting department of a company.  The idea is that the department exists to facilitate the wealth generation of the company. Both directly and indirectly.  Far too often, the accounting departments view their department as valuable in and of itself, with its systems serving their own purposes.

We want government workers and politicians that want to facilitate freedom, production, and prosperity, not simply use people's free activities to serve their own intrinsic goal of growing government.

I don't doubt there are many that don't understand this.