David Boaz

Like a lot of people these days, the actress Kathleen Turner is very concerned about polarization in Washington. She has a special reason to be concerned: She's coming to Washington's Arena Stage to do a one-woman show, "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,' based on the life and writings of the sharp-tongued liberal columnist. She tells the Washington Examiner:

"One of these challenges may be getting a wide enough breadth of people to come, you know, because people are so closed-minded now, that if they think it doesn't represent their point of view, they're not interested," she said. "I'm afraid it will be like -- if you're a Republican, don't go to the show -- it's a real shame both artistically and as a reflection of our nation's mentality."

Fortunately, liberals from Hollywood don't have that sort of us-against-them mentality:

But while Ivins became famous for mocking former President George W. Bush, nicknaming him "Shrub" and "Dubya," Turner told us that her approach to dealing with the Bush years was a bit more subtle. "I had to do some real dodging there once in a while, but I pretty much managed it," she said, explaining that she "purposely" never met Bush. "I used to be on the Kennedy Center artistic, you know, selection board and those events are always held at the White House, and so then I had to bow out for a few years, didn't I?"

It's a real shame when Republicans are closed-minded.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave a great speech on surveillance last week at FreedomFest. Actually, he gave two good speeches, but the one embedded below is his short 6-minute talk at the Saturday night banquet. He talks about our slide toward state intrusion into our phone calls, our emails, our reading habits and so on. You know how big the surveillance state has gotten? The answer is "a gazillion." Watch the speech—complete with high-falutin' references to Fahrenheit 451 and the martyr Hugh Latimer!

In the 1960s Ayn Rand was becoming a major cultural presence. She drew overflow crowds at colleges from Yale to Wisconsin to Lewis and Clark. She wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times. She was interviewed by Alvin Toffler in Playboy. (The interview can be found in The Libertarian Reader.) She accepted an offer to place her papers in the Library of Congress. And in 1967 her celebrity was officially recognized by an invitation to appear on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Those who remember it say that Carson was so fascinated that he scrapped his other guests and kept her on for the whole show. He invited her back twice more. Alas, many of the early Carson shows were lost in a fire at NBC's archive, and Objectivists have lamented the lost tapes ever since. Now a partial tape of that first Tonight Show appearance has turned up, and Libertarianism.org has it: Visit Libertarianism.org for classic and original videos of Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Thomas Szasz, Walter Williams, and many more.

Tad DeHaven summed up the congressional report on Countrywide Financial's VIP loan for members of Congress and other Beltway players.           But I was struck by this point in a Bloomberg report, about Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo's close relationship with Fannie Mae chief executive Jim Johnson, former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale and chairman of both the Brookings Institution and the Kennedy Center. Instructing his staff to give a discount mortgage loan to Johnson, Mozilo wrote in an email:

Jim Johnson continues to be a source of many loans for our company and this is just a small token of appreciation for the business that he sends to us.

Note that Jim Johnson didn't favor Countrywide with his personal business. He didn't invest in Countrywide. He didn't sell houses and send the buyers to Countrywide. No, he sent loans backed by taxpayers' money to Countrywide, and was rewarded with personal benefits. That's crony capitalism. This was kind of a stunning detail:

Jim Johnson, chief executive officer of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, earned $100 million during his time at the company. Nonetheless, Countrywide employees expressed concern about giving him a loan because he didn’t pay his bills regularly and had a low credit score, according to e-mails published in Issa’s report.

Given his credit report, Countrywide underwriters didn't want to sign off on a loan to Johnson. But Mozilo, who knew the business Countrywide was really in, told them not only to approve the loan but to give Johnson a discounted rate. And that, kiddies, is how being involved with a highly respected politician can get you a job in Washington that pays $100 million, backed by the full faith and credit of the American taxpayers, as well as extra perks from other companies tied into the crony corporatist state. More on Johnson, Fannie, and Mozilo here.

For those devoted Cato-at-Liberty fans who wouldn't think of visiting any other blogs, here are links to a couple of things I've posted elsewhere this week. In response to a New York Times op-ed deploring excessive freedom on the Fourth of July, I wrote this over at Libertarianism.org:

Where Andersen goes wrong, of course, is in deploring these outcroppings of freedom in American life. When people take seriously the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he calls it “self-gratification” and “every man for himself.” He writes:

But what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same libertarian coin minted around 1967. Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish....

Americans who actually appreciate the Declaration of Independence call it self-reliance, minding your own business, staying out of unnecessary wars, and raising everyone’s standard of living by pursuing your own profit. Andersen is sort of right: “For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors,” freedom is desired. And freedom works.

And at the HuffingtonPost, on the day that another dismal unemployment report came out, I wrote about some accomplishments the president could boast about in his reelection campaign:

Most deportations. Despite his endorsement of the DREAM Act, President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any president in history. He's been deporting about 400,000 people a year, about double the number in the George W. Bush administration. Most leaks prosecutions. The Obama administration has been criticized for leaking classified information in a series of campaigns to portray the president as a tough, engaged commander-in-chief. But meanwhile the administration information has used the 1917 Espionage Act to target suspected leakers in twice as many cases as all previous presidential administrations combined. Most troops in Afghanistan. The United States had about 30,000 troops in Afghanistan during 2008, the last year of President Bush's term. By the end of 2010, President Obama had increased that number to almost 100,000. It's down to about 88,000 now, which still might surprise people who recall candidate Obama's ringing antiwar speeches of 2008.

And more! Read 'em all.

The Washington Post reports:

Lawmakers approved a broad measure Friday that freezes federally subsidized student loan rates for another year, reauthorizes the government flood insurance program and extends federal transportation funding for two more years. The deal resolved months of acrimonious debate on key legislative concerns on the eve of a Fourth of July recess, and offered President Obama an opportunity to claim victory after a high-profile campaign to pressure Congress into action on both the student loan and transportation issues.... The agreement includes the first long-term transportation spending plan agreed to since 2005, replacing a series of short-term extensions. It passed the House 373 to 52 and the Senate by a vote of 74 to 19.

So as George Will and I noted recently, bipartisanship consistently seems to mean the expansion of government and government spending. Democrats and Republicans may fight about abortion and tax cuts, but they can agree on (in Will's words):

No Child Left Behind, a counterproductive federal intrusion in primary and secondary education; the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act); an unfunded prescription drug entitlement; troublemaking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government-directed capitalism from the Export-Import Bank; crony capitalism from energy subsidies; unseemly agriculture and transportation bills; continuous bailouts of an unreformed Postal Service; housing subsidies; subsidies for state and local governments; and many other bipartisan deeds, including most appropriations bills.

Talking to Marketplace Radio, former Senate Majority Leader turned lobbyist Tom Daschle is candid about the attractions of political office:

Hobson: What do you miss about your time in the public sector, if anything at this point? You've been in the private sector for a while. Daschle: Well, to be honest, I miss the power. The senators have an enormous amount of power, probably second only to the president of the United States.

He's doing OK in what Marketplace laughingly calls "the private sector" -- they mean "the rent-seeking sector" -- having made some $5.3 million in his first two years for "providing strategic advice" at a lobbying/law firm. But he still misses the power.

NPR has a story on Mitt Romney's hopes to win back some of the youth vote that went so heavily for Barack Obama in 2008, and today's Diane Rehm show is looking at the politics of the generation gap. I wrote about the youth vote earlier this month for the Huffington Post. I argued that Obama's Bush-retread policies on Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war on drugs would reduce his appeal to young voters. And most importantly, I said:

Debt. And finally, perhaps the longest-term impact President Obama will have on today's young people. The national debt has increased by $5 trillion, about 50 percent, during Obama's 3-1/2 years in office. As a percentage of GDP, it's the highest since World War II. The average amount of student loan debt is $25,000, but each American owes about $45,000 for the national debt. Worse, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements programs are estimated anywhere from $62 trillion to twice that much. That amounts to $500,000 to as much as a million dollars for every American household. The promises that government has made are unsustainable, and it's today's young workers who will end up holding the bag when the money runs out.

It's not like Romney has any serious plan to reduce the debt burden on today's young people, and if they really wanted to end the wars and avoid bankruptcy, they'd probably vote for Gary Johnson. But we can at least hope that in addition to promising college students cheaper loans, Romney and Obama will feel pressed to come up with actual policies that might bring the nation's unfunded liabilities to less-than-Greek levels.

Today Politico Arena asks:

Are conservatives hypocritical to argue for eliminating campaign finance restrictions and disclosure requirements, which they once supported, or does their argument regarding donor harassment carry some weight?

Roger Pilon made some good points about conservative donors facing harassment, which might explain shifts in conservative sentiment on the issue. In my own response, I tried to remind readers that people on all sides of controversial issues have reason for concern about disclosure and intimidation:

There are good arguments for disclosure, especially with regard to contributions to candidates: Let the voters see who might be influencing a candidate. Of course, there are lots of people who have influence without being major donors - mayors and governors, leaders of voting blocs and interest groups, editors and publishers. Maybe they should all be identified, too. The case for disclosure is even weaker when it comes to supporters and opponents of initiatives. In that case there is no officeholder to influence. Once the law is passed, it's the law. And we do know that there have been instances of bullying and intimidation based on donor disclosure. In the past both the NAACP and the Socialist Workers Party have petitioned to protect their donors from publicity and resulting abuse. Many businessmen shied away from supporting term-limits efforts to avoid offending incumbent officeholders. A couple of decades ago, people didn't want to be known as contributors to gay-rights causes; these days, it may be worse to be known as an opponent of gay rights. In either case, disclosure has a chilling effect on political involvement. The problems with disclosure may be greater today because of the increased polarization of politics and the role of the internet in both encouraging polarization and making it easy to identify and expose donors. Disclosure is a complex issue, but we should not ignore the chilling effect it can have on political engagement.

Jay P. Greene's discussion of national education standards in the Wall Street Journal applies to more than just education:

Proposing that all children meet the same standards is essentially proposing a nationalized system of education. Some reformers may argue otherwise, but the truth is that standards drive testing, which in turn drives what material is covered, as well as how and when it is taught. Such uniformity would only make sense if: 1) there was a single best way for all students to learn; 2) we knew what it was; 3) we could be sure the people running this nationalized education system would adopt that correct approach; and 4) they would remain in charge far into the future. But that isn't how things are.

Those are good cautions to keep in mind when we discuss centralized and mandatory plans for anything, from subsidizing green energy to nation-building in Afghanistan.