The SEC Proposes Rule on Infrared-Absorbing Gas Emissions and Climate Risk

The SEC wants to force publicly traded businesses to predict how climate change might harm their businesses and how they might be a cause of global warming themselves.  They proposed rules for such on Monday, 21 March 2022.

Few companies are themselves expert in predicting the future climate or future weather.  They are being asked to use the available scientific knowledge about future climate and future weather. They also have to use this available scientific knowledge about the role that emissions of infrared-absorbing gases, commonly called greenhouse gases, will have on these future climate and weather conditions.  What is more, they are to be forced to predict how governments in the USA will limit and condition their operations based on fears of climate change.  Still worse, they are to be forced to make predictions of how people and nations around the world will respond to fears of climate change.

All of these requirements are proposed within a framework of censored science and of poor science with a very wide range of predictions, most of which predict much larger effects due to infrared-absorbing gases then have actually been observed.  For instance, temperature increases and the frequency of bad weather events have consistently failed to live up to the predictions of the greenhouse gas climate scare-mongers.  How can a company predict what the effect of global warming and increased bad weather events will be on its operations when the published, rubbish science cannot predict what the relation between infrared-absorbing gas emissions and subsequent warming and nasty weather events will be?  The reality, which the Democrats who have proposed these SEC rules ignore, is that increased infrared-absorbing gases in the atmosphere has a very, very small effect in causing additional warming.  The requirement, however, will be that companies will have to make their predictions based on exaggerated warming and bad weather events in line with the climate scare-mongers.

The climate fright-masters will no doubt also require that companies make these exaggerated effect predictions based on exaggerated negative effects upon their own business.  These predictions will also have to be based on some exaggerated overall effects upon the US economy and on the world economy.  They will also assume that many nations will long continue to raise the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations due to lax regulations limiting their emissions.  Exaggerated individual company effects will justify further exaggerations of the general negative effects upon the US and the world economies.

The effort for a company to perform these predictions honestly would be tremendous.  Honest predictions have nothing to do with the purpose of the proposed SEC regulations, however.  Formulas will be adopted for this purpose, which the publicly traded companies will be forced to adhere to.

So why is this being done?  The reason is that every publicly traded company is to be made to appear to believe in catastrophic man-made global warming and to take it seriously.  This in turn is to rachet up the fear that Americans have of catastrophic man-made global warming.  The self-reporting of company activities that might be affected by bad and warming weather and of company gas emissions will also give the government further information it can twist into a story of future disaster.  That disaster story will then allow even more regulation of businesses, no doubt expanding far beyond those that are publicly traded.

Catastrophic man-made global warming due to adding infrared-absorbing gases to the atmosphere given its present composition is a failed hypothesis.  For Democrats and some Republicans, this is not a reason not to use the fear of it to justify ever-increasing governmental controls over our lives.  Governmental controls are always resisted by the people, unless they are afraid of something.  Catastrophic man-made global warming is another such fear-creating tool.  The claim that businesses generally want to do harm to people has long been such a tool and is still at play in this SEC proposed rule as well.

Contrary to the Washington Post, a Company Should Spend its Hard-Earned Income Based on its Own Judgment

The Washington Post's top of the Business Section article on Sunday, 16 December is headlined "How have corporations spent their tax cut windfall?"  Thomas Heath, the author, notes that many experts believe that corporations should spend the money no longer taken from them by force to build new facilities, buy equipment, invest in R&D, hire more employees, and pay their employees more.  Stock buybacks and higher dividends for stockholders are rather immoral and not in the spirit of the tax cut law.

You see, the government taxes a business, forcibly depriving it of the income it worked hard to earn in a competitive global economy.  The government thereby gains the moral right to expect the company upon the government's graciously deciding to take a bit less of the company income to spend that income according to the government's wishes.  Those wishes require that the company creates more and better jobs and does so in a way that is as obvious to the voters as possible.

What has become of the money that companies are now able to keep since the tax cut last year?  Business investment by Standard & Poor's 500 largest public corporations on new equipment and factories is up 19% in the first three quarters of 2018.  Research and development spending increased by 34%.  A Federal Reserve statistic shows that independent businesses in general increased business investment by 16% so far this year, which is the highest increase since 1993.  For years, capital expenditure by business has been very weak and productivity growth has been less than 1% per year.  Private sector employee average earnings are up 2.8% in 2018, after many years of stagnation under the Obama Regime.

The 2018 increases in business capital expenditures, R&D, employee earnings, and the expected increases in productivity should make Americans very happy.  Unless you are a Democrat socialist, in which case you bemoan the fact that stock buybacks cost companies $579 billion in the first 3 quarters of 2018.  This will set a new record for a year, replacing the record of 2007, just prior to the Great Recession.  Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin says "It's just wrong for big corporations to pocket massive, permanent tax breaks and reward the wealth of top executives with more corporate stock buybacks, while workers are given pink slips and face layoffs."  Never mind that unemployment is at a record low, that millions of open positions cannot be filled with qualified workers, and that average employee earnings are up 2.8% this year.  Never, ever allow the facts to get in the way of a very emotional argument for the villainy of businesses.

The left also complains about the fact that dividends to shareholders this year will set a record previously set in 2017. 

There is a very unrealistic expectation in the criticisms of the Democrat socialists which we are not supposed to notice.  The management of a large corporation now able to keep enough of its earnings to contemplate building a new facility first has to evaluate a number of purposes for that facility, where it will be built, design it, get building and environmental permits, find and hire the people to build it, evaluate and purchase the equipment to put into the facility, and find and hire the people to be employed in the facility.  If you have just had a substantial change in the parameters under which your business operates, you are also likely to have to hire more managers to make all of these decisions and kick this whole process into gear.  How much of this process can be accomplished in the first 3 quarters of operations under the new tax conditions?

Consider R&D.  You have long been doing less R&D than your company should have been doing because too much of your company earnings were taxed away and the regulatory environment was too expensive.  During the Great Recession and the numbingly glacial recovery, you released many company scientists and engineers or did not expand their numbers.  Your company did not invest much in analytical equipment, your laboratories, the training of your technical experts, prototyping capabilities, and your forward-looking plans for R&D were scaled to your very modest means to do R&D.  Now conditions have changed.  You want to invest in R&D, but you have to figure out what directions to explore and develop with your greater R&D effort.  You consult with your technical people, make decisions on new directions based on evaluations of markets and technical possibilities, figure out what laboratory equipment is needed, evaluate the instruments available from vendors, prepare facilities for their installation, and hire more people to operate the equipment and to solve the technical problems.  By the way, the people with the brains, the dedication, and the training for these R&D tasks are hard to find.  What fraction of this process is likely to be completed within 9 months of a changed tax environment?

So, while your company is trying to become more productive and to offer new products and services, but is limited on the rate of its spending by these limits of time and resources, what do you do with your suddenly increased available funds?  Rationally, you use it for some combination of paying back debts, buying back stock, and offering improved dividends to your shareholders.

Not only is this rational from the company viewpoint, but it is hardly bad for the economy.  Lower company debt makes companies more able to weather future downturns and to minimize the layoffs of valuable employees when a downturn occurs, as they always will.  The buyback of stock, puts more money in the hands of investors who will then either spend that money or invest it in other firms that need that investment.  The increases in dividends help many investors to be able to spend more money in the economy and helps pension funds to be less unstable, as so many of them are.  To be sure, some of this money will go to foreign investors.  Some of these foreign investors will put their money back into US investments because our economy is about the best in the world.  Some will leave our economy.  But, if we suppose that money had been left in the hands of the government, what fraction of it would have been utterly wasted and gone to not only unproductive use, but to uses that cause our national productivity to have negative components?  Yes, the Democrat socialists believe that government spending is the Gold Standard for the good use of our money.  But you have to be loony to think that is the reality.

Comments from Comments Following an Article Attacking Ayn Rand's Ideas

A very scurrilous article called This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand Seriously by Denise Cummings has elicited many comments.  The article itself sets up many a straw man interpretation of Ayn Rand's ideas and makes some incredibly obvious false statements about her ideas.  I have commented rather extensively in the comments following it.  Here is one of my comments in reply to other comments opposing Ayn Rand's ideas:

Blaming businessmen for their business practices is one of the frauds most commonly used to justify governments that micromanage our lives and prevent us from individually choosing our own values and pursuing them in a rich and robust private sector. The bogeyman businessman is all too often the false justification for forcing us to give up our individually optimal choices for the sake of one-size-fits-all laws and regulations which are not enforced on the friends of big government, but are often enforced on those who just want to get on with their lives.

Average Joe is always free to start his own business, except that governments make it hard for him to do so and will require him to spend huge blocks of time on paperwork and tax him at every turn. Big government institutes many of its regulations more for the purpose of preventing the formation of small businesses and for preventing them from competing with bigger businesses who find it much easier to comply with the 80,000 pages of new regulations each year. Of course, even some big businesses are not favored by Big Government, such as the fossil fuel businesses.

It is only when a business is allied with big government that it can get away with mistreating employees and customers. A really free market always offers alternatives, as people take advantage of their freedom of association and either start competing businesses or turn to existing competitors or make suitable substitutions. Of course government should prevent the actual use of force or fraud throughout our society. But, what we find is that government itself is the abuser and uses much too much force and defrauds the citizens on a routine basis.

To which one Paul Ruggiero, who often shows up whenever Ayn Rand is the subject, replied:

"Bogeyman businessman" - how about tobacco companies? Was it rational to sell products to people that the company knew were addictive and highly likely to kill them over time? Where was the "self regulation" or rational or moral nature of this?
Businesses can mistreat employees or their customers very easily without the help of government. You are making a lot of assumptions about free market capitalism in your argument without stating them. Many of your assumptions though are not true. State some, and I'm happy to knock them down.

Rand's ideas about companies are unfortunately not true. She assumes that without govt interference all businesses would be rational. This is crap.

To which this patient soul replied:

The left likes to picture the businessman as frequently a predator and government as a protection against these powerful and many predators. Yes, bad people can be found in the business world, but they are actually much less likely to be bad than the politicians and bureaucrats of the government which wields much more power than do businessmen.
Tobacco is addictive and I have never used it for that reason and for health and hygiene reasons. Everyone else also has had this choice, whereas when government runs up the cost of energy or denies me paying a high school summer intern less than the minimum wage, I have no choice. I am forced to comply. It is worse to be robbed of a choice and forced to comply than to be offered a product I should not choose to buy.

Let us also note that government, your tainted angel, long subsidized tobacco farming. It also delighted and still does in the taxes it collects on this dangerous product.

Rand absolutely does not assume that all businesses will be rational or that those that are usually fairly rational will always be so. She also does not assume that all purchases of goods and services will be rational. The trades of the free market and private sector generally are akin to freedom of speech. We do not assume that everything everyone says will be rational or true. We know it will not be. But, there will be a rich diversity of ideas and knowledge in that flow of speech in a free society. People are free to evaluate what others have to say and incorporate or reject viewpoints and ideas according to their own choice. The same is true of the many products and services offered in the private sector.

To the degree that the customer chooses badly, he will be hurt. But he is also free to choose wisely and to benefit greatly from good choices. It is stultifying to be so terrified of making bad choices that one refuses to allow oneself the opportunity to make good choices. I have confidence that most people make more good choices than bad ones and that they benefit greatly from the diversity of choices offered by the free market, just as we benefit greatly from the rich and diverse flow of ideas and information we are offered due to freedom of speech. Just as we tend to stop listening to people who always rattle off nonsensical viewpoints, so do most people refuse to buy goods and services from companies that do not meet their needs. Bad products and poor service tend to bring an end to the company that offers them.

Now, I understand that you think that most people are bad and will fleece everyone else at every opportunity. You also have no confidence in the people to be mostly rational consumers. I do not think so. Then you turn around and seem to believe that the same bad sellers and consumers are capable of choosing good representative politicians and good government policies to protect these basically incompetent people. Your inconsistency could not be more apparent.

To which a good man (Threnody) added:

Savin' this one.

Echoes of Bastiat

"When it is time to vote, apparently the voter is not to be asked for any guarantee of his wisdom. His will and capacity to choose wisely are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What! are the people always to be kept on leashes? Have they not won their rights by great effort and sacrifice? Have they not given ample proof of their intelligence and wisdom? Are they not adults? Are they not capable of judging for themselves? Do they not know what is best for themselves? Is there a class or a man who would be so bold as to set himself above the people, and judge and act for them? No, no, the people are and should be free. They desire to manage their own affairs, and they shall do so.

But when the legislator is finally elected — ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation."

The comments following articles misrepresenting and misunderstanding Ayn Rand's ideas are often very interesting.  There really are huge numbers of people who either cannot understand her or who are endlessly eager to misrepresent her ideas.  Many people become so deeply rutted in their line of "thought" that they literally are unable to see any other viewpoint, especially when that viewpoint fundamentally differs with all of their own reference points.  The most blatant inconsistencies in their own viewpoint go totally unrecognized and unaddressed.  Even when you bring such a person to admit they have a problem through hours of discussions, by the next day almost everyone of them will have found some way to forget that they admitted a severe inconsistency the prior day.

Few people can change their worldview after they have held it for many years.  It is often claimed that Ayn Rand's ideas appeal only to the young and therefor to the immature.  It is not entirely true that only the young are greatly influenced by her ideas and it is certainly not the case that her ideas only attract interest from the immature.  But, there is a reason why so many individuals who do become interested in Ayn Rand's ideas do so when they are young.  It is because such a large fraction of those older are mired in deep ruts in the mud of ideas they have held a long time and which have so distorted their view of the world that they cannot see or will not see the truth anymore.

Congressman John Sarbanes Favors FCC Takeover of the Internet

In response to my e-mail in opposition to the FCC subjecting the Internet to its ancient and bureaucratic controls, the Democrat Congressman of my unbelievably gerrymandered district in Maryland replied today:

Mr. Anderson,

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to net neutrality. I always appreciate hearing from individuals who carefully follow the legislative proceedings of Congress.  On February 4, 2015, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Wheeler proposed a set of rules to safeguard net neutrality. These rules include reclassifying broadband service as a public utility under Title II to allow for greater oversight and consumer protection; prohibiting the blocking of lawful websites, the impairing of lawful Internet traffic, and the prioritization of certain traffic for a fee; requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to protect customers' private information; and providing widespread access to Internet service. February 26, 2015, the FCC voted to approve the proposed rules.

 I strongly believe that technology-including broadband, digital communications and other information technology - is an important tool for the economic and social advancement of individuals and communities. Going forward, I also believe that we must put in place a regulatory framework that ensures the relationships between consumers and providers are fair and equitable. As a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications issues, I will be certain to keep your views in mind when the House of Representatives considers any relevant legislation.

Again, thank you for your input on this important issue. If I can be of further assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

John P. Sarbanes
Member of Congress

To which I replied:

John,

Government does not make the affairs of man fair and equitable. It simply replaces voluntary acts of cooperation in the private sector with coercion to achieve political, rather than individual, purposes. With government so big that the People do not understand what it is doing, let alone the effects of its actions, those political purposes become the purposes of special interests. The takeover of the free Internet by the FCC only means that my individual choices will be replaced by the government's enforcement of special interests' will. All of the verbiage about protecting individuals is just the usual smokescreen behind which government once again wrests individual value choices out of our hands. It is a false front so that government can further expand its ignorant micromanagement of our individual lives.

You have to admit that you do not know me, so it is not plausible when you claim to be protecting my interests, about which you know nothing. What is more, it is highly pretentious of you to assume that you know better how to manage my life than I do. Because I know this, I much prefer making the voluntary associations with others in the private sector of my choice, compared to being the subject of government coercion in my associations.

Charles

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D.

http://www.AndersonMaterials.com
http://AndersonMaterials.blogspot.com
http://ObjectivistIndividualist.blogspot.com/

Of course the Big Government proponents have a biased viewpoint that government is benevolent, while companies operating in the private sector are largely malevolent. It is assumed by many that the profit motive pushes companies to behave immorally and without regard to the interests of their customers. How odd it is that the profit motive which is exactly what mostly motivates companies to behave morally and with a great regard for the interests of their customers is assumed by so many to have the opposite effects. Meanwhile, governments which have the power motive are assumed to be benevolent!

To be sure, when governments are small and effectively managed by the People with the intelligent use of their votes, government has a substantial interest in the best interest of the People. But as I have so frequently argued, when government becomes big enough, the People are no longer able to effectively manage it. While with the occasional company that comes along and has little interest in its customer's welfare, it can usually be avoided by taking one's business elsewhere, except when government has given that company a monopoly. The action to deny a government coercive control over us is usually more drastic. It requires us to uproot ourselves, our families, and our businesses to move out of the jurisdiction of that government. This is a sufficiently drastic remedy that its avoidance is a powerful argument for highly limited government.

Is New York State Really a Great Job Creator?

New York state government is spending its taxpayer's money advertising 10 areas near state universities into which a new company or an out-of-state company can move and pay no taxes for 10 years, provided the government likes your business and is given significant controls over your business.  Mostly New York's Democrat Socialist Party controlled government likes certain high technology companies, such as biotechnology companies.

They do not like the vast majority of businesses, at least not enough to give them any tax breaks.  Indeed, most businesses have to be taxed heavily so that the few anointed companies can be lured into the high tax trap of New York and so such advertising can be carried out in Maryland and Oklahoma and many another state.  Even more expensive is the huge welfare state apparatus of New York state.  The only way to fund that redistribution of income is to tax both businesses and better paid persons heavily.

Among the claims in the ad, New York state government claims it has created 400,000 jobs.  They neglect to say over what time period and whether these are net jobs or these are all new jobs with any lost jobs ignored.  The high tax and heavily regulated state of New York is undoubtedly very good at killing jobs, so it is perilous to ignore the jobs destroyed.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the non-farm seasonally adjusted establishment job tally of private sector jobs increased in New York state from March 2013 to March 2014 by 103,500.  So maybe the 400,000 jobs were net jobs since the depth of the never-ending Great Socialist Recession.  They were not recently created net jobs.  I have ignored any added government jobs since such jobs would only create greater burdens for any private sector company moving to New York.

New York claimed that the 400,000 jobs were the second largest number of jobs created in any state in the US.  In 2010, New York state was the third most populous state, so just to stay even on jobs, it would likely have to produce at least the third most jobs.  Actually, New York state has a population growth estimated from 1 April 2010 to 1 July 2013 of 1.4%, which lags the population growth of 2.4% of the nation as a whole.  What is more, a larger fraction of its population is over 65 years old and a smaller fraction is under 18 years old.  There seems to be no rush of people into New York state owing to good jobs, despite the huge sums of bailout money that the federal government has dumped into New York City and its financial institutions.  That bailout in the form of quantitative easing continues to this day.

Let us examine the growth in the number of non-farm private sector jobs relative to the other states:

There were 26 states in which a higher percentage private sector job increase occurred compared to the 1.45% increase in New York.  This is not such a remarkable achievement by New York as it is represented to be in its ubiquitous ad.  The New New York is not so very different.  It is North Dakota that is the jobs creation giant, albeit in percentage terms only.  Six states have had private sector job growth rates more than twice that of New York state.  In fact, we can see that in this recent period, the claim that New York created the second most jobs in number is clearly wrong.  The population of the state of Texas is greater than that of New York and its job increase of 2.99% clearly means it added many more jobs than did New York.  The population of Florida is about the same as that of New York, so its job increase of 3.49% also means more jobs were created in Florida than in New York.  So, in this time period, at least two states added more jobs than New York did.

The New York state government is running an ad which is very misleading.  There may be some convoluted manner in which it is not a literal lie, but it is surely a serious attempt to mislead the People.

The employment increases in the table above allow us to make a few interesting comments about some other states and the possible presidential prospects for their governors.  Note that Gov. Rick Perry's state of Texas is still tearing up the racetrack in creating jobs with a 2.99% increase between March 2013 and March 2014.  On the other hand, Gov. Chris Christy of New Jersey heads a state government where the private sector job increase is essentially zero at 0.07%, the next to the worst record of any state.  Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has a state with a 1.24% increase, a 32nd ranking counting DC, but at least greater than the population growth in that time.  Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has a state that is not doing great in the business of job creation either at 1.08% increase and a rank of 35.  On the Democrat Socialist Party side, Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland earns his moniker of O'Folley with 40 straight tax increases, a job increase of only 0.52%, and a ranking of 45.  Maryland's population since April 2010 is estimated to have grown by 0.90% a year, so Maryland is not keeping up with the population growth with its meager 0.52% increase in jobs.  I marvel at the ability of some governors to seek higher office when they have not demonstrated that their states can create private sector jobs.

The People should be paying attention to this.  I will acknowledge that some of these states were basket cases and it will take several good governors to allow private industry to turn the states around.  Their state governments have bollixed up the state economies for a very long time in many cases.  The damage done can take a long time to correct and the healing process can take time.  Yet, when good government policies are established, some great results often occur quickly.  The engine of growth is in the private sector, but governments have to stop stuffing the gas tank with sand and sugar.

Freedom of Association and Anti-Gay Discrimination

As I have made it clear many times, I do not believe that homosexuality is in any way immoral.  Morality as it applies to homosexual acts is very similar to the application of morality to heterosexual acts in many important respects, though clearly it is differentiated by the absence of concern for the potential of responsibility for creating a baby.  I have supported gay domestic partnership contracts in their governmental form and noted that government really has no business addressing the spiritual aspects of marriage for anyone.  It should only grant domestic partnership contracts to consenting adults with no more concern for their sex or numbers than is appropriate for a business partnership contract. Adult individuals have the right to form the voluntary associations and contracts of their choice.

I have long been embarrassed by the stand of many Republicans for whom I have often voted on their stance on the issue of homosexual discrimination by government.  Government has absolutely no business discriminating against homosexuals or bisexuals or heterosexuals.  Government must support the rights of every individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of their personal happiness.  This does not allow exceptions for homosexuals, bisexuals, or heterosexuals or many other characteristics individuals have or choices that they make.  Of course, for every Republican who embarrasses me in this regard, there are many more destructive and immoral choices made by almost every Democrat Socialist Party candidate.  Political candidates are never entirely rational and moral.

I argued for an end to the Clinton Defense of Marriage Act and for the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  I contributed to the Log Cabin Republican effort in accomplishing these tasks and praised their work.  I contributed to the Marylanders for Marriage Equality group when it was trying to promote the ballot initiative to equalize same-sex marriages in Maryland.  That campaign was successful, with about half of all Maryland Republicans voting for it.  Unfortunately, these groups are now turning to attempts to make it unlawful for businesses in the private sector to discriminate against gay people.  On this matter, I part ways with these groups, for reasons of general principle and because their effort actually undermines their own right to freedom of association in a very fundamental and harmful way.

I find it an immoral act for a business to refuse service to someone because they are homosexual or because a gay couple may be married. I prefer not to do business with such a business and I applaud others who would not do so also.  In doing so, I am discriminating in accordance with my values.  This personal choice and expression of my own values and moral code is not one that I have the right to impose on others by the initiated use of force.  It changes nothing morally if I join a majority of voters and elect politicians who will use the force wielded by government to accomplish this same goal of imposing my values and my morality on others.  They too have a right to choose their own values and their own moral code.  The fact that I disapprove of the choices some people make does not give me the right to marshal the force of government to suppress their choices of values and actions made in accordance with their moral values.

Good government cannot be achieved or evaluated without a rational reference to principle.  Legitimate government has one and only one purpose.  That purpose is to secure and protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own body, mind, and labor, and to the pursuit of one's own happiness.  Government cannot do this if it does not allow individuals the implied freedom of conscience and the freedom of association.  The individual in possession of his own mind establishes the principles and values of his conscience and he acts in his life upon those principles and values in forming associations with others.  Good government imposes very little in the way of morality on its citizens.  It only requires that they respect the equal rights of others by not initiating the use of force against others and by not defrauding them.

So if a person forms his moral principles and values in accordance with a Bible verse of the Old Testament such as Leviticus 20:13

Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

without regard for the primitive, brutal nature of the times and the need of a small tribe to procreate madly in the interest of survival, it is not the role of good government to instruct this person on morality or to take actions against his discrimination in putting his moral beliefs into action, so long as his actions do not involve the initiated use of force or fraud.  Government should not require that the believer in Leviticus 20:13 not have an aversion for gay sex, though it must draw the line in not allowing the believer in this brutal dictum to kill or use other violence against those who have voluntary gay sex as adults.  In general, good government will no more prescribe morality than it will prescribe speech or dictate who one will marry or befriend.  Individuals have the freedom to choose their values and the moral principles by which they will live.  They enjoy freedom of conscience and freedom of association by choice.

These are freedoms are as critically essential to gay individuals as they are to heterosexual individuals.  Indeed, when the general principles of individual rights are not respected by government, it is various small minorities who usually suffer the most.  Historically, this has been clearly the case for homosexual and bisexual individuals.

Gay marriage is most often sold as a matter of equality, but that is a weak argument.  The response of some conservatives and other religious people is that everyone has the equal opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex, so equality is maintained.  Of course, the freedom to enjoy one's own mind and body and to pursue one's own happiness may not be served by the equal opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex.  In the context of rights, only the even-handed behavior of government is mandated.  Government must not differentiate the availability of equal domestic partnership contracts.  A person of religious belief or otherwise in the private sector, however, need not regard a domestic contract as the equivalent of a requirement of respect for that partnership that he might grant to other partnerships approved by his religion.  The private individual retains all rights to discrimination outside of governmental actions.

But the same-sex marriage advocates seemed rarely to worry about making a fundamental argument based on individual rights.  Too few of them have thought in general principles of the legitimate function of government and its very limited purpose.  Support for same-sex marriage has been based on a popularity contest riding the crest of a recent fad.  The broad and necessary right of a gay individual to choose his own values, who he wants to associate intimately with, who he wants as a domestic partner, and who else he will discriminate against for these purposes, is apparently unknown to him, with few exceptions.  Part of the problem is that most gay people do not think in terms of general good political principles because that would be inconsistent with the fact that most are too closely associated with the Democrat Socialist Party.  It is very difficult to find a valid and strong argument for freedom of conscience and freedom of association from the perspective of a collectivist!  Those arguments derive their strength from individualism and the clear and certain recognition that individuals are complex and highly differentiated.  Every individual has the right to life and the right to pursue his own happiness.  The nature of our lives, of our bodies and minds, and the paths to our happiness are rich in their variety.

I am discussing these fundamental issues of individual freedom pertaining to gay individuals now because of the recent hullabaloo over the Arizona state Senate Bill 1062 which allowed business owners to make association choices based on their religious beliefs.  Now my objection to that bill is that it is defective in limiting the freedom of conscience to that subset of conscience deriving from religious beliefs.  This is a common error in American law.  In reality, the individual has a broad freedom of conscience and it is wrong for government to limit that freedom to only its religious expressions.  I do not believe that when one owns a business, one gives up one's basic freedoms.  If that were so, then every business owner in exercising his right to earn a living and to own property for the purpose of doing so, would be losing other fundamental and necessary rights.  Our rights are broadly owned by each of us and we are rightly and properly deprived of them only when we initiate the use of force against others.

If a businessman is deprived of the right to discriminate against others for some choices or actions they take, can he long expect that he will be allowed to fire an employee who does not perform his job well.  Will he soon be forced to buy goods and services for his business from inept suppliers because a supplier might be a brother-in-law of the governor or represent an industry that makes large campaign contributions?  Must he sell items or services to some people preferred by the government at lower cost than to others?  Will he be allowed to fire an employee or not do business with a supplier who lies to him?  Businessmen have every bit as much need to discriminate among people based on their values as those who are not businessmen. An employee of a business has the right to judge his employer and if he finds him wanting, he is free to leave employment.  The consumer is free to discriminate against a businessman and not buy the goods and services he offers for sale, unless the service falls under ObamaCare, if you go along with one important aberrant claim on how limited our rights are.  In reality, our individual rights are not narrow, as American law tends to mistakenly take them to be, but they are broad, generous, and rich.

Legitimate and good government recognizes this fact.  The presumption of good government is that the freedom of the individual is sovereign and inalienable.  Only extremely rational reasons, agreed upon by most everyone, can be used to limit individual rights.  It does not impose the moral preferences bare majorities or a favored faction on others.  It must allow the individual the freedom to use his own mind and to act upon his own view of reality with only the most necessary limitation that we all have the equal right to do that.  None of us has the right to initiate the use of force to limit the choices and actions of others and we do not gain that right by manipulating a government to do this for us.  The presumption of individual freedom must be very strong in the healthy, individualist society.

Does the gay person refused service by a business suffer a measure of harm?  Yes he does.  He is done an injustice.  But, if the government forces a business owner whose moral beliefs dictate that he should not serve the gay person to serve him, then the business owner has also suffered a harm.  There is no way violating the rights of one person to prevent a harm or an injustice to another can be worked to prevent harm and injustice.  That course of action simply guarantees more harm and more injustice.  We have to expect in life that some people are going to make moral choices others of us will not like.  We cannot treat someone as a slave to be ordered about just because we believe they have done an injustice and that their morality is not as good as ours is.  No, in a free society one simply seeks out other adults who are willing to associate with us.  This is so for much the same fundamental reason that we do not force someone to associate with us for the purposes of sex.  Voluntary consent is critical in a free society.

While the modern Progressive Elitist does not believe freedom of speech and of the press is a broad right anymore and often wishes to limit them based on harm or hurt feelings, these rights are very broad.  It has served us well to enjoy a broad right to speak and write our minds.  It has served our society well to allow people to choose their own values, formulate or adopt their own moral ideas, and to manage their own lives.  While freedom of conscience and freedom of association are not always given the broad protections they should be given, for the most part in the non-business private sector they are tolerated by our government.  They should be equally tolerated in the business sector.  Indeed, they should be given a very committed and strong protection in all of the private sector in America.  If they are, gay individuals will prosper and flourish more certainly than if they are not.

Representative John Sarbanes Proposes Law to Control Free Speech

The Representative of my incredibly gerrymandered Congressional District in Maryland is the socialist John Sarbanes, son of the former Maryland Senator.  He has just sent out a letter to his constituents in which he complains that:

In the 2012 election cycle alone, big interests such as the oil and gas industry and Wall Street contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Congressional campaigns and equally vast sums to lobbying groups. Meanwhile, upwards of $1.3 billion poured in from Super PACs and “dark money” groups that float outside the reaches of our campaign finance laws.

 He has just proposed the following new law:

That’s why I am introducing the Government By the People Act.  This sensible and straightforward piece of legislation will do the following.

First, it will encourage the participation of everyday Americans in the funding of campaigns by providing a refundable $25 My Voice Tax Credit.  This will bring the voices of the broad public into the funding side of campaigns and democratize the relationship between money and speech.

Second, the bill will establish a Freedom From Influence Matching Fund to boost the power of small-dollar contributions.  To be eligible for these matching funds, a candidate must agree to a limit on large donations and must demonstrate broad-based support from a network of small-dollar contributors.  Amplified by the Freedom From Influence matching fund, the voices of everyday Americans would be just as powerful as the voices of the big donors.

Third, the Government By the People Act will provide candidates with an opportunity to earn additional resources in the home stretch of a campaign so that the voices of the people are not completely drowned out by Super PACs and other dark money interests.  In the wake of the Citizens United decision, this kind of support is critical to ensuring that citizen-backed candidates have staying power.

We can pay for these changes just by closing a few of the tax and regulatory loopholes that are the decades-old legacy of special interest influence in Congress.  It’s only fair that those who are responsible for breaking the policy-making machinery in Washington should bear the cost of fixing it.

It is very strange that he did not mention such special interest groups as trial lawyers, teachers, labor unions, environmental groups, feminist groups, Black American groups, and Hispanic groups.  Will his legislation equally suppress their freedom of speech as will his attempt to make taxes more unfavorable for groups who do not always reliably support Democrats?  It is clear that the only way to get the taxes to pay for this is to attack businesses and milk them.  His legislation can hardly acquire the funding it needs from labor unions, non-profit environmental, feminist, Black, and Hispanic groups.  This proposal is a very clearly anti-business proposal and makes no attempt at all to control many special interest groups.  What it does is force businesses to fund anti-business special interests.

The reason government is controlled by special interests is because government is too large for the People to understand what it is doing and how to control it.  Special interests step into the power vacuum and take over.  The People are frustrated with this situation, yet many do not understand that inherent in excessive government is control by special interests.  Good government limits itself to protecting the rights of the individual and is much, much smaller and much, much easier for the People to understand and control.

Big Government cannot be for the people or by the people.  Many will reject it with disgust because it tries to dictate what values the individual may pursue and will micromanage their lives.  Many others will actually want it to do more for them, but will be frustrated by what it does and unable to figure out how to make it do what they think is right.  Big Government can never be loved or even tolerated by the People.  Their present disgust is entirely understandable.  John Sarbanes proposed law is nothing but a veil to hide the real problem: the excessive size and scope of governmental power.

Are Americans Looney Tunes?

How can people be so unthinking and irrational as to hold this collection of beliefs at one time?  Some of these beliefs are rational, but others are highly irrational and contradictory.

From the most recent Rasmussen poll findings:

64% of Likely U.S. Voters now view the federal government unfavorably, with 34% who have a Very Unfavorable opinion of it.

Voters overwhelmingly want to scrap or change the new health care law, with 43% who want to repeal it entirely and start over and 35% who would prefer Congress go through the law piece by piece to improve it. Just 18% want to leave the law as is.

Just 25% of voters believe the United States is heading in the right direction. 

Voters are evenly divided at 42% apiece when asked whether they agree more politically with the president or with the average member of the Tea Party.

Democrats hold a six-point lead over Republicans – 43% to 37% - on the latest Generic Congressional Ballot. 

Most consumers and investors believe the country is still in a recession. 

Only 33% of Americans believe the U.S. economy will be stronger in a year's time, while 41% think it will grow weaker by then. 

Fewer than half (47%) of Americans believe it’s still possible for anyone in this country looking for work to find a job.  

OK, so 64% have no trust in government, yet 35% + 18% = 53% want it to run the entire medical industry and health insurance industry either with the ObamaCare law as it is or after Congress has re-worked this entirely wrongheaded law.  What on earth makes them think Congress can do a rework and make something rational and beneficial out of a government-controlled medical care system?

Only 25% believe the US is headed in the right direction, yet 42% side with Obama and the continued growth of government and the emasculation of the private sector.  They are in opposition to the 42% who want a change in direction, namely those who agree more with the Tea Party movement.

Most consumers and investors believe the US is still in recession, which it clearly is in terms that matter, namely the real per capita private sector GDP.  Only 33% believe it will be stronger in a year, yet 43% believe in the anti-business and anti-jobs notions of the Democrat Socialist Party over the more business and jobs friendly Republicans who can only muster 37% support in the Generic Congressional Ballot.  Note also the disconnect with the 42% who believe more like the Tea Party than with Obama.  Based on that, the Republicans should be equal with the Democrats in the Generic Congressional Ballot.  Based on the economy and jobs prospects and opposition to ObamaCare, the Republicans should be favored.

But no, Americans while right not to trust government, still favor the party of bigger government which has so completely bollixed things up.  Go figure.  They really are Looney Tunes.

Business Tax Climate Rankings by State

The Tax Foundation has produced the 2013 report on the tax climate rankings of the states as of July 2012.  The ten states with the most favorable business tax climate and the ten with the worst are color-coded in the map below with their rankings given.  The white states are the best.

2013 State Business Tax Climate Index Ranks and Component Tax Ranks
State	Overall Rank	Corporate Tax Rank	Individual Income Tax Rank	Sales Tax Rank	Unemployment Insurance Tax Rank	Property Tax Rank
Alabama	21	17	18	37	13	8
Alaska	4	27	1	5	28	13
Arizona	25	24	17	50	1	5
Arkansas	33	37	28	41	19	19
California	48	45	49	40	16	17
Colorado	18	20	16	44	39	9
Connecticut	40	35	31	30	31	50
Delaware	14	50	29	2	3	14
Florida	5	13	1	18	10	25
Georgia	34	9	40	13	25	30
Hawaii	37	4	41	31	30	15
Idaho	20	19	23	23	47	2
Illinois	29	47	13	34	43	44
Indiana	11	28	10	11	11	11
Iowa	42	49	33	24	34	37
Kansas	26	36	21	32	9	28
Kentucky	24	26	26	9	48	18
Louisiana	32	18	25	49	4	23
Maine	30	41	27	10	32	39
Maryland	41	15	45	8	46	40
Massachusetts	22	33	15	17	49	47
Michigan	12	7	11	7	44	31
Minnesota	45	44	44	35	40	26
Mississippi	17	11	19	28	7	29
Missouri	16	8	24	27	6	6
Montana	8	16	20	3	21	7
Nebraska	31	34	30	26	8	38
Nevada	3	1	1	42	41	16
New Hampshire	7	48	9	1	42	43
New Jersey	49	40	48	46	24	49
New Mexico	38	39	34	45	15	1
New York	50	23	50	38	45	45
North Carolina	44	29	43	47	5	36
North Dakota	28	21	35	16	17	4
Ohio	39	22	42	29	12	34
Oklahoma	35	12	36	39	2	12
Oregon	13	31	32	4	37	10
Pennsylvania	19	46	12	20	36	42
Rhode Island	46	42	37	25	50	46
South Carolina	36	10	39	21	33	21
South Dakota	2	1	1	33	35	20
Tennessee	15	14	8	43	26	41
Texas	9	38	7	36	14	32
Utah	10	5	14	22	20	3
Vermont	47	43	47	14	22	48
Virginia	27	6	38	6	38	27
Washington	6	30	1	48	18	22
West Virginia	23	25	22	19	27	24
Wisconsin	43	32	46	15	23	33
Wyoming	1	1	1	12	29	35
Dist. of Columbia	44	35	36	42	48	24
Note: A rank of 1 is more favorable for business than a rank of 50. Rankings do not average to total. States without a tax rank equally as 1. D.C. score and rank do not affect other states. Report shows tax systems as of July 1, 2012 (the beginning of Fiscal Year 2013).

The scores of the ten best business tax climate states are:

1)  Wyoming, 7.66
2)  South Dakota, 7.56
3)  Nevada, 7.45
4)  Alaska, 7.34
5)  Florida, 6.88
6)  Washington, 6.38
7)  New Hampshire, 6.25
8)  Montana, 6.22
9)  Texas, 6.09
10) Utah, 6.04

There is not much difference between the top four ranked states.  There also is not much difference in those ranked from 6 through 10.

The ignominious final ten states are:

50) New York, 3.40
49) New Jersey, 3.40
48) California, 3.67
47) Vermont, 4.08
46) Rhode Island, 4.12
45) Minnesota, 4.18
44) North Carolina, 4.21
43) Wisconsin, 4.37
42) Iowa, 4.47
41) Maryland, 4.47
40) Connecticut, 4.47

The three worst states, New York, New Jersey, and California really stand out from the rest with their very low scores.  The remainder of the worst ten states all have close scores between 4.08 and 4.47.

The middle states of Arizona with a score of 5.13 and Kansas with a score of 5.10 lag the lowest state of the top ten more than they exceed the best state of the bottom ten states.  There are more states with high tax policies than there are with low tax policies.  Indeed, the states ranked 20 (Idaho) through 30 (Maine) are only separated by scores differing by 0.27.  All of these states are closer to New York in score than they are to Wyoming.  The average of the Wyoming and New York scores is 5.53 and the state having the score closest to this is Missouri with a score of 5.46 and a rank of 16.  So, the top few states in the rankings are very much better than the average state.  Even in the top ten the differential score between #1 and #10 is much greater than that between #50 and #40.

I live in the beautiful state of Maryland with a really awful state government.  Its business tax climate rank of 41 makes it a terror for businesses.  Much of my family is in Oklahoma with a poor ranking of 35.  One sister owns a business in North Carolina, which actually worse than Maryland!  Another sister tries to do business in Kansas with a ranking of 26, which as I mentioned puts it much closer to New York than to Wyoming.

I hear that parts of Wyoming are beautiful.  I will have to do some business scouting there and see if there is a suitable way to do business as a materials laboratory there.  After all, almost all of our customers send us materials to analyze by Fed Ex and UPS anyway.  My laboratory could be anywhere.