Define Liberty: Introducing Progressives for Ron Paul

It is often important to highlight the plight of others to define liberty. Progressives for Ron Paul is a blog fighting for the liberty of U.S. citizens from the affairs of other nations. Progressives for Ron Paul writes:

[Progressives and libertarians] both agree that our nation spend obscenely too much money on war and war preparation, so much so that we end up making war more likely.

While Progressives for Ron Paul supports the non-intervention of our government in the affairs of other nations, the blog does not support the non-intervention of our government in our own affairs. 

For example, on the money saved from funding the Military Industrial Complex, the blog writes:

We Progressives would like to take every dime and use it to fund national green infrastructure projects, universal single payer health care and [then] pay down the debt.

Perhaps Cornelius, author of the blog, should ask himself the following questions:
 
Where does the Constitution give the federal government the authority to fund national green infrastructure projects? ...a universal single payer health care system? 
 
If from the "general welfare" or "necessary and proper" clauses, why do the Ninth and Tenth Amendments exist? 
 
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Define Liberty: Ron Paul's Plan to Restore America Now

Ron Paul, running for the Republican nomination for the President of the United States, has outlined a bold plan to Restore America Now should he achieved the presidency. Ron Paul explains:

America is the greatest nation in human history. Our respect for individual liberty, free markets, and limited constitutional government produced the stronger, most prosperous country in the world.

Ron Paul has proposed a series of fundamental reforms to put the United States back on the right track. 

Balanced Budget. Ron Paul will deliver a balanced federal budget within three years of his presidency.

Spending. Ron Paul will cut $1 trillion in spending in his first year, eliminating five cabinet departments: Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior and Education. He will also end the TSA, corporate subsidies, foreign aid, and foreign wars. 

Entitlements. Ron Paul will allow young workers to opt out of federal entitlement programs. He will also block grant Medicaid to the states, as is consistent with his support for federalism. 

Government Waste. Ron Paul will provide for a 10% reduction in the federal workforce and end Congressional pay and perks. He will take a salary equal to the median personal income of the American workers -- $39,336.

Taxes. Ron Paul will lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and the tax rate on the repatriation of profits to 0%. He will also extend Bush tax cuts, abolish the Death Tax and end taxes on personal savings. 

Regulation. Ron Paul will repeal ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. He will also mandate REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, Washington Post) for congressional review and authorization of regulations imposed by the President before implementing new regulations.

Monetary Policy. Ron Paul will audit the Federal Reserve and implement currency legislation to strengthen the dollar and stabilize inflation.

 
Bottom line: "Dr. Paul is the only candidate with a plan to cut spending and truly balance the budget. This is the only plant that will deliver what America needs in these difficult times: Major regulatory relief, large spending cuts, sound monetary policy, and a balanced budget." (Ron Paul's Executive Summary, Restore America Now)

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ObamaCare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act increased insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanded insurance access to over 30 million Americans. A few of the provisions include:

1. Guaranteed issue will require insurers to offer the same premium to all applicants of the same age and geographic locations without regard to pre-existing conditions.

2. The individual mandate will require everyone not covered by an employer-sponsored or public insurance program to purchase an approved private insurance policy or pay a penalty.

3. Firms employing 50 or more people will pay a shared responsibility requirement if the government has had to subsidize an employee's health care.

Funding for ObamaCare comes from a broadened Medicare tax on incomes over $200,000, an annual fee on insurance providers, a 40% tax on "Cadillac" -- unusually expensive -- insurance policies, and a 10% federal sales tax on indoor tanning services, all of which will generate $409.2 billion over the next 10 years.

Dodd-Frank. President Obama described Dodd-Frank as a

sweeping overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression.

The main components of the Dodd-Frank bill include the consolidation of regulatory agencies, comprehensive regulation of financial markets with increased transparency of derivatives, consumer protection reforms, a "resolution regime" that complements the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) authority, and the Volker Rule, described by Wikipedia.org as

a proposal [that] specifically prohibits a bank or institution that owns a bank from engaging in proprietary trading that isn't at the behest of its clients, and from owning or investing in a hedge fund or private equity fund, as well as limiting the liabilities that the largest banks could hold.

Sarbanes-Oxley. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 set new standards for U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. Ron Paul stated on Sarbanes-Oxley that

these regulations are damaging American capital markets by providing an incentive for small US firms and foreign firms to deregister from US stock exchanges.

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Define Liberty: Abolish U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education, officially established as a Cabinet-level agency by Congress in 1979, was created under President Jimmy Carter by the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88). It began operating on May 16, 1980.

Despite its extensive intentions to, according to the Department of Education:

establish policies on federal financial aid for education;

collect data on America's schools, and disseminate the research;

focus national attention on key educational issues; 

prohibit discrimination and ensure equal access to education

the Department was not necessarily created with the interest of education in mind. Mona Charen of the National Review argues:

The Department of Education was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers' union by Pres. Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsement).

The Wall Street Journal confirmed the teachers' union influence, reporting that one House Democrat said in 1979:

The idea of an Education Department is a really bad one. But it's National Education Association's top priority. There are school teachers in every congressional district and most of us simply don't need the aggravation of taking them on.

Some even suspect the National Education Association wanted the Department of Education because of its potential to secure a large budget. Chester Finn, who served as assistant secretary of education from 1985 to 1988, observed:

Make no mistake about it, the principal reason the NEA and the administration wanted to elevate the Office of Education to a full-fledge department was to give it the political power and prestige to seek bigger budget increases for federal education programs.

The validity of the existence of a federal agency, such as the U.S. Department of Education, should be determined based on three criteria: cost, results, and constitutionality.

COST

The U.S. Department of Education's budget for 2011 was $69.9 billion (Budget Office). The budget in 2008 was approximately the same, at around $70 billion, having increased nearly five-hundred percent since 1980, when the budget was 14 billion.

Source: Department of Education, Project America

The Department of Education has also never produced budget savings nor a streamlining of federal education programs. The Cato Institute observed:

The department's budget has continually increased, from $14.5 billion in 1979 to $47.6 billion in 2002. [...] After its creation, federal spending increased at twice the rate it had before.

The U.S. Department of Education's budget for 2012 is $77.4 billion, an increase in $7.5 billion from the 2011 budget (Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Summary, U.S. Department of Education). And, with $3.729 trillion in outlays for 2012 (Wikipedia.org), the Department of Education's budget represents approximately 1.8% of the total federal budget. 

$77.4 billion represents a substantial share of taxpayer revenues. For example, Walmart reported total shareholders' equity of $68.5 billion in 2011, nearly nine billion dollars less than the Department's 2012 budget. 

Even if the Department costs billions of dollars per year, if it also creates an equivalent amount in social and educational value, the activities Department could remain defensible.

RESULTS

The Cato Institute reported:

The Department of Education and its nearly 5,000 employees have had virtually no positive effect on the performance of schools or the academic gains of school children. 

The Cato continued to point at the example:

The department's own national history report card issued in May 2002 found that only 43 percent of the nation's 12th graders had at least a basic understanding of U.S. history, unchanged from 1994, the last time the test was given.

For one group of students -- nine-year-olds, to be specific -- average student performance in reading did not practically increase from 1980 to 1999, despite annual budgets ranging from $15-20 billion.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

In another case, the National Review observes:

All of this spending has done nothing to improve American education. Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat.

Source: Cato Institute, National Assessment of Education Progress

Even if the Department of Education were extremely effective, though, its existence would not be unconditionally valid. Former secretaries of education Lamar Alexander and William Bennett argue:

[The department has] an irresistible and uncontrollable impulse to stick its nose into areas where it has no proper business. Most of what it does today is no legitimate affair of the federal government. The Education Department operates from the deeply erroneous belief that American parents, teacher, communities and states are too stupid to raise their own children, run their own schools and make their own decisions.

The ultimate authority lies with the United States Constitution. 

CONSTITUTIONALITY

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People, United States Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 15, 1791, is considered a truism, a claim that is so obvious or self-evident that it is hardly worth mentioning. The Constitution was, after all, written to -- in and of itself -- provide a written account of the powers delegated to the federal government. In fact, in United States vs. Sprague (1931), the Supreme Court insisted the amendment "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."

The Constitution does not even mention education. Freedom Works notes:

The truth is that the federal government only has about thirty enumerated powers delegated to it in the Constitution. Education is not specifically listed in the document.

Therefore, according to the Tenth Amendment, this power is reserved to the States or to the people. According to the Cato Institute:  

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress no authority whatsoever to collect taxes for, fund, or operate schools. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment, education should be entirely a state and local matter.

Roger Pilon, an American libertarian legal theorist, adds that the Framers of the Constitution never envisioned that the federal government would become involved in the funding of schools or mandating classroom policy. He writes:

From beginning to end the [Constitution] never mentioned the word 'education.' The people, in 1787 or since, have never given the federal government any power over the subject -- despite a concern for education that surely predates the Constitution.

Bottom line: "Congress should take the enlightened view, consistent with that of the nation's Founders, and draw a line in the sand that won't be crossed. Education is a matter reserved to the states, period." (Cato Institute) 
 
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Define Liberty: Why Is College So Expensive?

Education in the United States is expensive. In 2010, the average annual tuition and expenses cost for students at a private not-for-profit four-year college or university was around $35,000, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Some argue that tuition costs are so high because schools are burdened to pay growing salaries to professors. From James Surowiecki of The New Yorker:

Teachers today aren't any more productive than they were in 1980. The problem is that colleges can't pay 1980 salaries, and the only way they can pay 2011 salaries is by raising prices. 

Others disagree. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, writes on his blog CARPE DIEM:

The significant real increases in college tuition over the last thirty years have not been caused by increases in faculty salaries.

He adds, citing a chart from the National Center for Education Statistics that correlates increases in college tuition with increases in faculty salaries and consumer prices (inflation) from 1978 to 2007:

College tuition has increased annually since 1978 at about twice the overall rate of inflation, 7.9% vs. 4.1%. In contrast, faculty salaries have increased annually at only 4.5%, just barely above the overall inflation rate.

Why, then, have college tuitions risen so dramatically since 1978, nearly twice the rate of inflation? Perhaps we should, first, look at the Law of Unintended Consequences, which states:

actions of people -- and especially of government -- always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended

The Law of Unintended Consequences is often attributable to the world's inherent complexity, which prevents policy-makers from considering all possible consequences for a particular action. 

Consider the following three examples to see the Law of Unintended Consequences in action:

Prohibition in the 1920s United States, which banned alcohol to suppress the alcohol trade, actually consolidated large-scale organized crime in the illegal alcohol industry. (Wikipedia.org)

The War on Drugs in the United States, intended to suppress the illegal drug trade, has actually increased the profitability of drug cartels. (Wikipedia.org)

The Streisand Effect, which states that an attempt to censor or remove a certain piece of information instead causes the piece of information to become more widely known and distributed. (Wikipedia.org)

Perhaps the Law of Unintended Consequences can be applied to rising college tuition costs, as well. Economist Thomas Sowell argues that the government-guaranteed loans -- which are intended to make college more affordable for millions of Americans -- may, in fact, lead to rising costs of education for everyone:

Those who want the government to provide subsidies to help meet the cost of college seem not to consider whether government subsidies might have contributed to the high cost of college in the first place.

Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, states more directly on Occupy Wall Street:

High tuitions are no fluke. They exist as a direct result of government-guaranteed student loans.

Schiff argues that "without such loans, tuition could not rise beyond students' or families' ability to pay." 

 

In perfect capital markets, the price of good represents the price at which the supplier is willing to supply the good and the price at which the buyer is willing to buy the good. With a government subsidy to the cost of education, however, buyers are less price-sensitive and willing to accept a higher price -- hence a $35,000-per-year cost.

 

Schiff ties the cost of education to the forces of supply and demand:

Because students have almost unlimited access to credit, universities are able to raise tuitions without the limits market discipline would otherwise enforce.

The Bottom Line: "It's ironic that as a direct result of government-subsidized student loans, students now need those loans to pay tuition that, in the absence of such programs, they could have afforded to pay in cash. It is a good example of a government "solution" to a problem of its own creation." (Peter Schiff)
 
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Define Liberty: Natural Rights and Consequentialism

Welcome to Define Libertarianism, a comprehensive look at what it means to be a libertarian in today's American society.
 
According to the Libertarian Party of the United States, a libertarian is:

a person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action

There are generally two versions of a libertarian, according to the late University of Chicago economist Dr. Milton Friedman: Natural Rights and Consequentialist.

• A Natural Rights Libertarian, otherwise known as an Ayn Rand Libertarian, is one who believes it is immoral to initiate force onto anyone else. In this case, the ends (some desired state of the world) never justify the means if the means requires government action. 

• A Consequentialist Libertarian, on the other hand, believes liberty leads to favorable consequences in the world, and therefore government force is justified only when it seeks to maximize liberty.

Is a libertarian a liberal or conservative? Again, according to the Libertarian Party, it is improper to define a libertarian in terms of a liberal or conservative perspective.

Libertarians are neither [liberal nor conservative]. Unlike liberals or conservatives, Libertarians advocate a high degree of both personal and economic liberty. 

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