Great Speech, but I Hope the Story About the 86-Year Old Woman Is Not True

This is a great speech by Judge Napolitano. The first and last parts focus on whether Congress has the authority (or competence) to run a health care system. The answer, for those who care about the Constitution, is no. The middle section of the speech, though, is about government oppression and the PATRIOT Act. I hope that he somehow has it wrong and this is not really part of the law.

Finally, a CEO to Admire

Kudos to David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric. Speaking recently at a conference, Farr actually told the truth about how big government is crippling American manufacturing. In response, an Obama bureaucrat at the Commerce Department actually had the chutzpah to claim that the White House is trying to help companies by (this is not a joke) creating a multi-trillion dollar healthcare entitlement! With this type of nonsense from Washington, no wonder Mr. Farr is angry. His best line (and one that other business leaders should copy) was “...My job is not to shrink and roll over for the U.S. government.” Here are excerpts from the Bloomberg report:

Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas. “Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.” ...Companies will create jobs in India and China, “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something,” Farr said. The unemployment rate in the U.S. jumped to 10.2 percent in October, the highest level since 1983. Emerson, which Farr said employs about 125,000 people worldwide, has eliminated more than 20,000 jobs since the end of 2008 to lower expenses. “What do you think I am going to do?” Farr asked. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.” ...“This attack isn’t supported by the facts,” Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, said today in an e-mail from Singapore, where they are attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. “This administration has made a significant commitment to U.S. manufacturing, including reforming the country’s health insurance system to bring down costs and make American companies more competitive globally,” Griffis said. “...My job is not to shrink and roll over for the U.S. government.”

Even Drug Dealers Don't Want to Use the Dollar

I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or bad thing, but it surely says something that international drug dealers and money launderers prefer the euro over the dollar. The good news, so to speak, is that this is not a referendum on Bernanke's easy-money policy. The drug lords apparently prefer larger denominations, and the U.S. no longer circulates bills larger than $100. The Guardian reports:

International drug cartels have abandoned the US dollar for high denomination euros to launder millions in illegal profits, Europol has revealed. The gangs no longer use $100 bills because €500 notes – the largest denomination of euro – take up less room when transporting large amounts of cash across the world. ...Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, said last week police forces across continental Europe were tracking the movements of smuggled and laundered euros and had traced much of it back to large drug gangs. ...The scale of the smuggling operation was revealed in figures from the Colombian National Directorate. Only $300,000 worth of euros were declared as entering Colombia between January and June 2007, but over $551m in euros left the country. Once in Europe, the notes can be exchanged for dollars.

Will Big Business Screw America on Health Care?

That's the question posed by the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, which discusses how companies often get seduced into supporting big government - or, in some cases, are active proponents of bigger government since they've learned how to milk the system. In the long run, of course, statism saps an economy's vitality, which is bad for workers, investors, and consumers.

One lesson that Democrats learned from the failure of HillaryCare in 1994 is that they had to buy the silence, if not the outright support, of the business class. They've done this brilliantly by peddling the illusion that ObamaCare will "lower costs" for employers. But slowly as the legislative details become clear, it is dawning on executives of businesses large and small that reform is boiling down to a huge tax increase to finance a gigantic new entitlement. ...With only a few exceptions, drug makers and health-care providers have shown that their priority is rent-seeking from government, which means that any last-minute push back will have to come from the other six-sevenths of the economy. The Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business have finally figured out they were being taken for a ride. And now even the Business Roundtable, the association of CEOs from the largest companies, is engaged in a furious internal debate about the way forward. The Roundtable has been vaguely supportive but restive. But last week Roundtable president John Castellani was informed in a contentious conference call that many of his members will quit if the organization isn't more assertive against ObamaCare. ...The larger issue for business is the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Democrats are about to pass the largest entitlement expansion in more than four decades when federal spending is already at unprecedented levels. The "pay or play" tax on employers and the hike in payroll taxes on top earners in the House and Senate bills are merely teaser rates. The long-term pressures created on the federal fisc would require enormous tax hikes that would depress capital investment and economic growth, to say nothing of the Roundtable's priority of reducing U.S. corporate tax rates that are among the world's highest. The tendency among business groups is usually to conciliate and speak the language of consensus—especially with Democrats running all of Washington and able to do great harm to anyone who doesn't cooperate. And no doubt the Roundtable is hearing from the CEOs of companies like Pfizer, Wal-Mart and General Electric that are deeply invested in more government control of the economy.

Dan Hannan Rips the European Bureaucracy Racket

My earlier post noted that I would be speaking on a panel with Dan Hannan, one of the English members of the European Parliament who is famous in the blogosphere for his verbal dismantling of Gordon Brown. But since I'm in Brussels to discuss European reform in a city that is devoted to statism, this very short speech by Dan Hannan is much more relevant.



I wish Republicans were capable of doing this.

Greetings from Brussels

I'm in Belgium to speak at the 6th annual International Leaders Summit, which will be held in the European Parliament (a.k.a., belly of the beast) on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm giving two speeches, including one that will focus on European reforms - including transparency and accountability. A key theme of my remarks will be that centralization is the enemy of good government. Unfortunately, the European Union has been morphing from a free-trade pact into a centralized and bureaucratized super-state. I will explain why this is a bad thing, both from an economic perspective and a civic-virtue perspective, but I'm not overly optimistic of altering Europe's drift to statism.

On a more positive note, I'm looking forward to hearing some of the other speakers. Dan Hannan, an MEP from the UK is famous on youtube for his damning indictment of Gordon Brown, and he will be with me on the first panel. In the afternoon, I'll be joined by the former Finance Minister of Slovakia, who is responsible for an amazing set of free-market reforms, including the flat tax and personal Social Security retirement accounts.

Obamacare and Fiscal Incontinence

In a Cato podcast, I explain why government-run healthcare system will be vastly more expensive than we are being told. This covers some of the same material that is in my recent video, but there's no need to see my face (and if you don't like my voice or want to see my face, you can read a two-page report on the topic from Cato).