Bribery and the Republic

I received the following quote the other day and was struck once again by the clarity with which de Tocqueville wrote about the American people. I am sure this applies to all peoples, but I find it especially scary at this time in the history of the United States of America.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money
- Alexis de Tocqueville

The Cost of Living

I haven't made it all the way through Barry Schwartz's The Cost of Living but I am intrigued by the premise of his book. Schwartz raises valid questions with regards to many aspects of our lives today, not only in this book but everything I have heard or read from him.

Here is a quote used in his book that captures the essence of his argument.

The burden of our civilization is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is ill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by embittered disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the provision of the material means of existence, is fit to occupy.
- R. H. Tawney, historian

Whether you refer to it as Western civilization, the rat race, or any other name I certainly feel this pull in my life. Perhaps this is only a problem we can have at this point in history when so many of us have so much leisure freedom. If we were living on the edge of hunger or survival from danger I am sure we wouldn't have these worries. The realities of our lives though is that we must face the question of where to place material goods and the getting of them in the priorities of our lives.

Pleasures of eating

I recently finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. I highly recommend both that book and Pollan's earlier The Omnivore's Dilemma. Mentioned in Defense of Food is a short essay by Wendell Berry entitled The Pleasures of Eating.

I recommend the essay as it has some practical recommendations to bring our relationships with food into a healthier perspective. I found the following quote especially relevant.

Our kitchens and other eating places more and more resemble filling stations, as our homes more and more resemble motels. "Life is not very interesting," we seem to have decided. "Let its satisfactions be minimal, perfunctory, and fast." We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to "recreate" ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation - for what? To eat the billionth hamburger at some fast-food joint hellbent on increasing the "quality" of our life? And all this is carried out in a remarkable obliviousness to the causes and effects, the possibilities and the purposes, of the life of the body in the world.

A prophet's voice

I has set a personal goal to post to my blog on a more reliable schedule. I haven't always been keeping to it, partly because of the time it takes.

With the LDS general conference this past weekend one of the bits of counsel was to not spend too much time in things of little value. With that counsel in mind I now have no regrets in dialing back my efforts to post to my blog as often as I have.

Rule of Law

I came across the following quote that I wanted to share.

The rule of law, in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law. Thomas Paine stated in his pamphlet Common Sense (1776):

"For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

I can't speak to the how the rule of law applies in contemporary America, but I love the ideal.

Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense was written in argument for the American separation from Great Britain. I have put it onto my to-read list. I am curious what things still apply today.

Who will defend the Constitution?

The topic of executive bonuses seems to have quieted down a bit, or at least I am not listening as closely, but the topic of this post I feel is too important to let go.

I am frustrated at a number of things that the previous U.S. presidency did that in my opinion are obviously against the original intentions of the United States Constitution. I am thinking of habeas corpus and warrantless wiretapping. I am even more disappointed that the encroachments on rights explicit in the constitution may continue.

An article by Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune that I came across thanks to Russell Roberts of Cafe Hayek brought up the an interesting point. Chapman's article discusses a number of the recent attempts of congress to get involved in how things are run in business. Specifically the idea that up to a ninety percent tax be placed on the bonuses given to certain employees. Chapman ends with the following point.

Expropriating property from people who did nothing more than accept money they were legally due sounds uncannily like a bill of attainder—a legislative measure declaring someone guilty of a crime, and imposing punishment, without trial. This weapon was expressly forbidden by the framers of the Constitution because it is fundamentally unfair, at odds with the rule of law and driven by mass hysteria rather than dispassionate fact-finding.

Once upon a time, those were considered bad things.

I can't seem to find my Political Science Dictionary, probably a casualty of a past cleaning effort, so I am relying upon Wikipedia. The United States Constitution explicitly forbids a bill of attainder in Article I, section 9, clause 3. This is a part of our constitution because it had a history in British law (though no longer). The Wikipedia entry includes some relevant legal references that I found interesting.

from Cummings v. Missouri:
A bill of attainder, is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment.

Since in the case of bonuses I have read that contracts existed concerning these bonuses the following portion concerning bills of attainder from various state constitutions is intersting.

The constitution of every State also expressly forbids bills of attainder. For example, Wisconsin's constitution Article I, Section 12 reads:
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.

Contrast this with the subtly more modern variation of the Texas version: Article 1 (Titled Bill of Rights) Section 16, entitled Bills of Attainder; Ex Post Facto or Retroactive Laws: Impairing Obligation of Contracts: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made".

We find ourselves on a slippery slope when we forget the freedoms which the founders of this country found so important and fail to defend these freedoms in the face of a perceived public uproar or panic. I for one fear the actions of our government in attempting to protect us more than those things from which they are attempting to protect us.

Bonuses abound

I know Wal-Mart can be a controversial subject of conversation among some circles. With all the talk of bonuses Wal-Mart now has the gall to give out hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses, to their hourly employees.

I learned of this from Russell Roberts' blog Cafe Hayek. The original news article is from bloomberg.com and contains a fair amount of details. I appreciated Roberts' comments.

Don't they know there's a recession going on? How dare they award their employees for doing a good job? They should all give a bunch of the money back to the government. What? The bonuses aren't being funded by taxpayers? How yes, I remember. This is how capitalism once worked. Successful companies rewarded their employees and lousy companies disappeared.