David Boaz

The New York Times reports that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez “is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history…in a process that is both brutal and legal.” In what way is this process legal The article never says. Presumably the Venezuelan congress has passed legislation authorizing the seizure and redistribution of land. But Chavez controls all 167 members of the National Assembly, and the Assembly has granted him the power to rule by decree. It’s hard to call anything in Venezuela “legal” at this point. One might as well say that Stalin’s executions or Pinochet’s disappearances were “legal.” (And by the way, have you noticed that the Times always refers to Pinochet as a dictator, but to Chavez and Fidel Castro as President or leader )

If the term “legal” has any meaning other than “the ruler has the power to do it,” then it means that something is done in accordance with the law. The Oxford English Dictionary defines law as “the body of rules, whether proceeding from formal enactment or from custom, which a particular state or community recognizes as binding on its members or subjects.” One of the key elements of law is that it provides stability and certainty. I doubt that all the people of Venezuela recognize land seizures as proceeding in accordance with a body of rules. And certainly the arbitrary rule of a president or a rubber-stamp congress does not provide any certainty in the law.

At least the Times paused to tell us that the process was legal, even if it failed to specify just how. The Wall Street Journal article on the same topic doesn’t bother to consider the question of legality; perhaps that’s just a clearer recognition that in Venezuela there is no law, there is only Chavez.

And the rest of the Times article makes the process pretty clear:

The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own….

Mr. Chávez’s supporters have formed thousands of state-financed cooperatives to wrest farms and cattle ranches from private owners. Landowners say compensation is hard to obtain. Local officials describe the land seizures as paving stones on “the road to socialism.”

“This is agrarian terrorism encouraged by the state,” said Fhandor Quiroga, a landowner and head of Yaracuy’s chamber of commerce, pointing to dozens of kidnappings of landowners by armed gangs in the last two years….

But while some of the newly settled farming communities are euphoric, landowners are jittery. Economists say the land reform may have the opposite effect of what Mr. Chavez intends, and make the country more dependent on imported food than before.

The uncertainties and disruptions of the land seizures have led to lower investment by some farmers. Production of some foods has been relatively flat, adding to shortages of items like sugar, economists say.

John R. Hines Freyre, who owns Yaracuy’s largest sugar-cane farm, is now trying desperately to sell the property and others in neighboring states. “No one wants this property, of course, because they know we’re about to be invaded,” said Mr. Hines, 69….

“The double talk from the highest levels is absurd,” Mr. Machado said. “By enhancing the state’s power, the reforms we’re witnessing now are a mechanism to perpetuate poverty in the countryside.”

To be sure, the Times does stress the concentration of land ownership in Venezuela and the delight of many of the squatters at getting the seized land. But it’s a balanced article, other than that pesky word “legal.”

As I’ve written before, too many journalists are treating Chavez’s growing dictatorship in a guarded way. They report what’s happening — nationalizations, land seizures, the unanimous assembly, the rule by decree, the demand to repeal presidential term limits, the installation of military officers throughout the government, the packing of the courts — but they still treat it as normal politics and even report with a straight face that “Chavez stresses that Venezuela will remain a democracy.” Some law, some democracy.

This week I’m getting emailed press releases telling me that “94% of international teens want the US to address global warming more aggressively. “If you read waaaay down in the email, you discover that it was an online survey of 250 teens who — it appears — mostly attend U.S. schools. So maybe the striking headline is just a teensy bit of a stretch.

But if it were a scientifically valid survey of actual teenagers around the actual world, one might still say: So 94 percent of teenagers in other countries — that is, respondents who don’t pay taxes and haven’t studied either climatology or economics and aren’t looking for a job — and if they did pay taxes or look for a job, wouldn’t do so in the United States — think that the United States should hobble its economy in the name of something that vaguely sounds scary. And we should care because…

On NPR, Daniel Schorr compares the proposed wall along the southern border of the United States to the Berlin Wall and tells us, in the words of Robert Frost, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

I sympathize with him. I don’t like the idea of building a wall around the United States, either. Since the Boazes arrived in America in 1747, we have seen the country prosper as the Buchanans, the Tancredos, the Dobbses, the Maglalangs, the Brimelows, the Arpaios, and millions of others arrived on these shores and were welcomed into the country that my ancestors helped to create in 1776 and 1787.

But there’s a problem with Schorr’s analogy. The Berlin Wall was designed to keep citizens in. The wall (or fence) along our southern border is intended to keep non-citizens out. There’s a very real difference. The Berlin Wall declares that the people of East Germany are the property of the East German state and are not free to live anywhere in the world other than East Germany. The Border Fence merely says that non-U.S. citizens can’t enter the United States without permission; as far as the U.S. government is concerned, they’re free to travel or live anywhere in the world except the United States.

Daniel Schorr might ponder this: He lives in a house with four strong walls and secure locks on the door. He reserves the right to bar entry to his house to anyone, and that helps to protect his life, liberty, and property. But a building with walls and locks to keep people in is called a jail.

As I said, I too don’t want a wall around the United States. But we need better arguments against it than flawed analogies.

In a letter to lawmakers, the president’s budget director, Rob Portman, …accused Democrats of doing little to rein in “the unsustainable growth in entitlement spending” on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare [reports the Washington Post].

Well, they did almost all oppose the trillion-dollar expansion of Medicare in 2003 that then-Rep. Portman voted for and that President Bush bludgeoned reluctant Republicans into supporting.

Two days before the French presidential election, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal warned that there would be riots if her opponent, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected. She told a radio interviewer:

“Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” Royal told RTL radio.

“It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won),” she said.

Pressed on whether there would actually be violence, Royal said: “I think so, I think so,” referring specifically to France’s volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.

Then the Washington Post casually reported, in an article on Sarkozy’s plans, that “While he seeks the strong majority that will be crucial for pursuing the ambitious agenda he has promised, it is unlikely he will risk tackling any tough issues that could spark social unrest or street protests.”

“The question he will have to ask himself first is: What are the reforms he should implement to show politically that he sticks to what he announced ” said Dominique Reynié, a political analyst at the Institute for Political Sciences’ Political Research Center. “And the second question is: What are the reforms he can implement without creating riots ”

And indeed, according to Time, there have been riots since the election. But the rioters aren’t the disaffected immigrant youth of the suburbs. Instead, “the participants are mostly white, educated and relatively comfortable middle class adherents of extreme-left and anti-globalization ideologies.” Some 500 cars were burned each night, up from the routine 100 cars set afire in la belle France every night.

It was outrageous for Royal to suggest that the French people should choose their leader on the basis of fear and threats. We talk about a “heckler’s veto” in which the government presents someone from speaking in order in order to avoid a violent reaction from his critics. How much worse it would be for a great nation to choose its president because of a “rioters’ veto.” How appalling for the leader of a French political party ostensibly committed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to encourage a rioters’ veto. Journalists should think twice about casually reporting that elected leaders will make their decisions out of fear of rioters.

And people on the left who are committed to democracy and peace should speak up against the use of such political violence by others on the left. Nobody warned that the French bourgeoisie would riot if Royal was elected. And they wouldn’t have, so no journalist would be reporting that President-elect Royal would have to avoid “tackling touch issues that could spark social unrest.”

Jeff Birnbaum, who covers lobbying for the Washington Post, which is sort of like covering the Pope for the Vatican Observer, writes about “the other K Street” in a lengthy article. “K Street,” of course, is shorthand–or if you believe Wikipedia, metonym–for the lobbying industry.

According to Birnbaum, “the other K Street” is a building along K Street that has become home to a dozen or so well-funded left-Democratic lobbies–Campaign for America’s Future, Americans United for Change, Progressive Majority, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, USAction, MoveOn.org Political Action, etc. So that’s very different from the usual corporate lobbyists, right

Well, let’s see. What K Street is really about is using political influence and the power of government to transfer resources from those who produced them to yourself or your clients. It’s about milking the taxpayers. It’s about using your political connections to impose your own agenda on the unorganized masses.

And by that definition, “the other K Street” fits right in with the corporate K Street. Special interests give them buckets of money, and they manipulate the political process on behalf of partisan, ideological, and interest-driven agendas–just like the corporate and right-wing lobbyists.

Michael Barone reminds us that it was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s aides who originally created “K Street” when they left the White House and went into business for themselves. They happily lobbied the permanent Democratic majority in Washington for the next 60 years or so. Now the taxpayers’ pinata is available to everybody.

Blue corn isn’t subsidized like white and yellow corn, and that’s just not right. Or so say the blue corn growers. Cindy Skrzycki’s “Regulators” column in the Washington Post today is the sort of thing that ought to make you a libertarian. So many lawyers writing so many regulations, with clauses and sub-clauses. And it’s all nonsense.

So here’s the problem:

Under the regulatory system that determines which crops qualify for inclusion in Department of Agriculture support programs, blue corn is an orphan. According to the department rulebook, it isn’t even considered corn because it’s not yellow or white, the only versions of the food that are eligible for federal agricultural loans and crop payments.

This means that farmers who grow blue corn, which is made into the blue-corn tortilla chips that many of us love to dip into a nice salsa, aren’t growing “real” corn, so they don’t qualify for loan or other support programs, according to the government.

Now you might think this is no big deal since blue corn sells for about twice what white and yellow corn do. But the growers feel hurt and victimized and, you know, invisibilized. They want to be an official government-recognized crop. And, you know, get the loans and subsidies. Like popcorn got in 2003.

But fear not. Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), chairman of the House subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture (seriously), is listening. He’s promised the blue-corn growers that he’ll try to address their needs in the current farm bill.

And then taxpayers can subsidize premium organic blue corn, lest this great nation ever run out of blue-corn tortilla chips in a national emergency.

It looks like a property tax revolt is brewing across the country, perhaps the biggest one since the era of Proposition 13, in the late 1970s. The Christian Science Monitor reports today that “legislative proposals, citizen initiatives, and lawsuits are on the agenda in at least 20 states.”

It’s no surprise why. Rising home values have meant rising assessments in many parts of the country. Rising home values are great if you’re selling; but if you’re not planning to sell your house, the increase can just mean higher taxes. And now, as Dennis Cauchon pointed out in USA Today, house prices are falling in some places but assessments haven’t yet been adjusted.

More importantly, cities and counties gleefully increased spending as the tax revenue rolled in during a decade or so of rising prices. But now that the revenue increases are slowing, local governments don’t want to cut back. Instead, they want to raise rates to keep the good times rolling—for governments if not for taxpayers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that more and more taxpayers are protesting their assessments. That’s one form of rebellion. Another is tax protests and calls for political action, and the Journal reports that those are happening, too, from Florida to Minnesota.

Back in 1978, the college newspaper cartoonist Berke Breathed (later famous for “Bloom County” and “Opus”) drew a brilliant cartoon about Proposition 13. For the benefit of our younger readers, I’ll explain: Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes in California, was spearheaded by Howard Jarvis. And it passed in June 1978, about the time the movie The Omen II came out, with its tagline “The first time was only a warning.” And Breathed was right: Prop 13 was a warning to the political class that taxpayers were fed up. After Proposition 13, the Democratic Congress cut the capital gains tax rate. Massachusetts passed Proposition 2-1/2 in 1980. More than a dozen other states put constitutional limits on taxes in the next few years. Ronald Reagan ran for president on a tax-cutting platform; he defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter, swept in a Republican Senate, and cut the top marginal income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 and then to 28 percent.

From earmarks to entitlements to local assessments, it’s time for taxpayers to give the political class another warning.

This Tuesday, May 1, Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chavez will take control “of Venezuela’s last remaining privately run oil projects.” The symbolism is obvious: the socialist May Day. Last year, Bolivian president Evo Morales sent his soldiers to occupy the gas fields in his country on May Day.

So I’m reminded, as I was last year, that May 1 is also the anniversary of the institution of private retirement accounts in Chile. Since then Chile has been a great economic success story.

Perhaps 25 or 50 years from now, we will know whether Chile’s privatization or Bolivia’s and Venezuela’s nationalizations brought a higher standard of living to their citizens.

Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, gave a resoundingly libertarian interview to NPR’s “All Things Considered” Friday evening. Frank has introduced a bill to repeal last year’s ban on online gambling. As he did in this 2003 Cato Policy Forum, he made his argument in libertarian terms. From the Nexis transcript:

ROBERT SIEGEL: First of all, what is your motive here Is it libertarian Is it to achieve more revenues for the government by taxing activity What is it

Rep. FRANK: It’s libertarian. I am appalled at the notion that the government tells adults that they cannot do certain things with their own money on their own time in ways that do not harm anybody else because other people disapproved of them. …

But my motive is overwhelmingly that I just don’t want to see the government telling people what to do….

SIEGEL: How much money would taxing Internet gambling bring in to the federal government

Rep. FRANK: Well, in the bill I am – not a lot – I really want to make it very clear, that’s not my major focal point here. Potentially this could be a useful source of revenue just like any other business. But I do want to stress, my main motivation here is that I do think I should mind my own business and I want to deal with the environment, and I want to deal with economic problems, and I want to deal with poverty and all these other things. But I spend a lot of energy trying to protect people from other people. I have none left for protecting people from themselves.

In between those segments, Frank said that we allow lots of things over the Internet–like wine sales–that are appropriate for adults but not for children. And he said that conservatives want to ban things they think are immoral, and liberals want to ban things they think are “just tacky.”

It’s good to hear an elected official use the word libertarian, and use it correctly, and apply it to issues. Would that more of his colleagues would do so. I’m reminded that seven years ago I did a libertarian rating of Congress. Frank did better than most Democrats, and indeed better than most Republicans (including 7 of the 11 members of the Republican Liberty Caucus Advisory Board). But he voted to restrict steel imports, restrict gun sales and gun shows, and implement the restrictive “Know Your Customer” bank regulations, and he opposed a tax cut. So his commitment to not telling what people to do with their own lives and their own money seems limited.

This year, as Financial Services chairman, he’s demonstrating his interventionist tendencies as well as his sometime libertarian instincts. He wants to push all workers into government health care, to regulate corporate decisions about executive compensation, to put more obstacles in the way of free trade across national borders, to keep Wal-Mart from creating an internal bank clearinghouse to hold down its costs. Not to mention expanding anti-discrimination rules to include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Frank told another journalist:

“In a number of areas, I am a libertarian,” Frank said. “I think that John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ is a great statement, and I was just rereading it.

“I believe that people should be allowed to read and gamble and ride motorcycles and do a lot of things that other people might not want to let them do.”

Would that the Republicans who once took Congress on the promise of “the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money” also reread (or read) “On Liberty” and take its message to heart. And would that Barney Frank come to realize that adults should also be free to spend the money they earn as they choose and to decide what contracts, with foreign businesses or local job applicants, they will enter into.