David Boaz

In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank urges President Obama to follow President Kennedy's lead and use the power of the federal government to intimidate business:

Roger Blough, the U.S. Steel president, . . .  defied Kennedy in 1961 by raising prices. “You have made a terrible mistake,” Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives’ offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining “hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the country club.”

Yes, that's a great vision: a president using the far more powerful and far-reaching federal government of today to force every business, every union, every nonprofit in the country to fall in line. Is that really what journalists would like to see -- a president deploying subpoenas, FBI agents, and IRS agents to effect political gain? This is just one of the problems with giving any government such powers.

In honor of the release today of A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, I revisit my thoughts from 2008 on the film series' view of freedom in America: The movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was celebrated mostly as a “stoner” movie: smart young Asian guys smoke pot and get the munchies. When I finally got around to watching it, it was funnier than I expected. And very near the end of the movie, after an all-night road trip in which they encountered more obstacles than Odysseus, when Harold finally gives up and says he can’t make the last leg of the epic journey to White Castle, came this wonderful speech from Kumar:

So, you think this is just about the burgers, huh? Let me tell you, it’s about far more than that. Our parents came to this country, escaping persecution, poverty and hunger. Hunger, Harold. They were very, very hungry. They wanted to live in a land that treated them as equals, a land filled with hamburger stands. And not just one type of hamburger, okay? Hundreds of types with different sizes, toppings, and condiments. That land was America! America, Harold! America! Now this is about achieving what our parents set out for. This is about the pursuit of happiness. This night . . . is about the American Dream! Dude, we can stay here, get arrested, and end our hopes of ever going to White Castle. Or, we can take that hang glider and make our leap towards freedom. I leave the decision up to you.

Escaping persecution, poverty, and hunger . . . to find ample food and unlimited choices . . . the pursuit of happiness . . . the American Dream. Yes, I think writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg were on to something. And then in the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, after another improbable road trip, the fugitive youths literally dropped in on George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. In the increasingly fantastic plot, the president invited them to join him in hiding from the scary Cheney, shared his pot with them, and then promised to clear up the unfortunate misunderstanding that landed them in Guantanamo Bay. An uninhibited but still skeptical Kumar said, “I’m not sure I trust our government any more, sir.” And President Bush delivered this ringing libertarian declaration:

Hey, I’m in the government, and I don’t even trust it. You don’t have to trust your government to be a patriot. You just have to trust your country.

Harold & Kumar: more wisdom than a month of right-wing talk radio. Hurwitz and Schlossberg get what America is about.

Bill Niskanen did most of his thinking and analysis on paper, in his many books and articles. He didn't seek out television appearances, though he certainly made a few during his years with Cato. But one television appearance stands out in my mind, when he debated Rep. Richard Gephardt on PBS's NewsHour about Gephardt's bill that would have required economic retaliation against countries that have huge trade surpluses with the United States. Alas, I can't find the exact date for this pre-Internet appearance -- possibly 1988, when Gephardt ran for president and made protectionism a big part of his campaign -- and I have only a clip of one of Bill's answers. But it confirms the "Blunt Libertarian Economist" headline that the New York Times used on its obituary:

So the Associate Publisher of The Nation sends me an email asking me, "Have any lefty relics gathering dust in your closet?" They're having a fundraising auction. As it happens, I do have some lefty relics I'd like to get rid of. I have:

• Keynesianism
• Wilsonianism
• Nationalized health care
• Government Motors
• The idea that the Constitution grants "plenary" powers to the federal government
• The War on Poverty
• Racial preferences

This is a reminiscence of Bill Niskanen by his former student and colleague Benjamin Zycher: The late Herbert Stein, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and a genuinely wise man---in the true rather than the Beltway sense---once described Bill Niskanen as “a member of that rare species, the objective insider.” I knew Bill for almost forty years, as his student at the public policy school at Berkeley, as his colleague at the Council of Economic Advisers, and as a dear friend.  Bill introduced me to the newly emerging field of public choice economics.  Bill sharpened my still-meager skills in economic analysis.  Bill improved my econometric modeling.  I cannot count the number of errors from which Bill, exhibiting the patience of Job, diverted me.  Bill above all was a friend, a real friend, always willing to help, always willing to listen, always willing to be honest when called for, in a manner simultaneously uncompromising and kind. And yet: Those nine simple words from Herb Stein capture Bill far better than I have ever been able to do.  Absolute honesty, absolute integrity, absolute devotion to principle, immune to the petty pressures of others: Bill was a mensch.  Even more than his prodigious contributions to economic and public policy analysis, those attributes will remain synonymous with his name.  Kathy and Lea and Pamela and Jaime: May you be comforted with the knowledge that his name, and yours, will evoke tremendous respect for many lifetimes to come. May Bill rest in peace.

The European debt crisis is inspiring public radio to literary analysis. Last week NPR's Planet Money put the French-German relationship into a "threepenny opera":

All Everyone is counting on you You've got the money We've got the debt (Oh yes, we've got a lot of debt!) And do we need a bailout—you bet Germany Zat's it, I've had enough Looks like it's time now for me to leave... France Oh? Germany Vhy is ze door locked? You must let me out. France Dear when the times are tough It's better to give zan to receive

Then Monday Marketplace Radio turned to classics professor Emily Allen Hornblower and economist Bill Lastrapes to discuss Greek debt as classical tragedy—Oedipus? The ant and the grasshopper? Loyal Cato readers will recognize Bill Lastrapes as the coauthor of the much-discussed Cato Working Paper "Has the Fed Been a Failure?" And then, if you prefer prose and sober analysis to literary analogies, let me recommend Holman Jenkins's perceptive column on why Europe hasn't solved its crisis yet, which unfortunately appeared in the less-read Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal. (OK, not less read than Cato-at-Liberty, but probably less read than the weekday Journal.)

Neither leader has an incentive to sacrifice what have become vital and divergent interests to produce a credible bailout plan for Europe. To simplify, German voters don't want to bail out French banks, and the French government can't afford to bail out French banks, when and if the long-awaited Greek default is allowed to happen.... There is another savior in the wings, of course, the European Central Bank. But the ECB has no incentive to betray in advance its willingness to get France and Germany off the hook by printing money to keep Europe's heavily indebted governments afloat. Yet all know this is the outcome politicians are stalling for. This is the outcome markets are relying on, and why they haven't crashed. All are waiting for some market ruction hairy enough that the central bank will cast aside every political and legal restraint in order to save the euro.... And then the crisis will be over? Not by a long shot. All these "solvent" countries and their banks will be dependent on the ECB to keep them "solvent," a reality that can only lead to entrenched inflation across the European economy. That is, unless these governments undertake heroic reforms quickly to restore themselves to the good graces of the global bond market so they can stand up again without the ECB's visible help. It's just conceivable that this might happen—that countries on the ECB life-support might put their nose to the grindstone to make good on their debts, held by ECB and others. Or they might just resume the game of chicken with German taxpayers, albeit in a new form, implicitly demanding that Germany bail out the ECB before the bank is forced thoroughly to debauch the continent's common currency, the euro.

A year after Kate Zernike wrote in the New York Times that Tea Partiers were "resurrect[ing] once-obscure texts by dead writers"---such as F. A. Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in 1974 and died in 1992---the New Yorker's cover depicts Wall Streeters in top hats and bushy mustaches. That's an image from, what, the 1930s? Or maybe the 1870s? Who's "reach[ing] back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas" now?

The Wall Street Journal notes today that the federal government spent more money in the just-concluded 2011 fiscal year than in any year in history, and no one noticed. What happened to all that austerity and all those spending cuts that we heard about all year? Well, some of us warned over the past year that they were all smoke and mirrors. Now that the year's over, you can see in this chart from the Journal that the federal government spent more and borrowed more in 2011 than in any previous year—$900 billion more than just four years ago, and $150 billion more than last year: