From the Archives - Nipping ahead of regulators: Nick Gillespie discusses Reason.tv, free speech, and restraint (2010)

Nipping ahead of regulators: Nick Gillespie discusses Reason.tv, free speech, and restraint
August 2, 2010 3:27 AM MST

Reason.tv was started in October 2007 as a video journalism site designed to complement the work of the Reason Foundation, the print edition of Reason magazine, and the magazine’s web site, Reason.com.

Since then, according to Reason.tv’s editor-in-chief, Nick Gillespie, the site has grown every month, not only “in terms of web traffic but more importantly in terms of a kind of recognition among free-market-oriented, libertarian think tanks [for which] we are setting the standard for video.”

Gillespie spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner after a panel discussion hosted at Reason’s Washington office on July 12. (Another article based on this interview with Gillespie, focusing on the potential for privatizing Virginia’s liquor trade, appeared on Examiner.com on July 19.)

Measures of Success
In addition to its own web site, Reason.tv has a YouTube channel with 410 uploaded videos that have been viewed at least 5,840,679 times; it also has 16,363 subscribers and 7,398 “friends” on YouTube.

From among those 400-plus videos, Gillespie points to two of them as his favorites.

“One of them,” he says, “is Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey, a fifty minute, six-part series about how Cleveland might turn around a 60-year decline in population and economic fortunes. It’s a really interesting piece where we leverage all of the expertise we have in the public policy division of Reason Foundation, the journalism angle, etc.”

The other one he likes is called “UPS vs. FedEx, which was a two-minute long piece that looked at the way in which UPS is trying to get FedEx’s labor classification reclassified. We used a technologically advanced understanding of green screens and white screens and we had a lot of fun with it. It got a very complex message out in a very short period of time.”

Finding Government Nannies
A regular feature on Reason.tv is the “Nanny of the Month,” which looks at examples of paternalistic government action. Gillespie explained how he and his team find these “Nannies.”

Nick Gillespie

“We find the Nanny of the Month through two ways,” he said, first through original reporting by the staff of Reason, and second, through submissions by readers. “We get a hell of a lot – 50 to 100 – submissions a month.”

Gillespie noted that “that’s actually one of the things that’s interesting about the Web in general, that it’s a distributed intelligence network, so we’re getting a lot of information from people” who are strangers to the organization but who nonetheless “send us stuff.”

As the interview drew to a close, Gillespie mused that, “if there’s a message from Reason.tv, it’s that the 21st century, far from delivering on the utopian dreams of the 20th century, is a weird world where technology has continued to barely nip ahead of [the] government regulators at their heels across a wide variety of levels.”

Still, he remains optimistic, expressing the hope that “we’ll be able to outpace” government controls. The problem he sees is that the past two administrations – George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s – each have tried to restrict liberty in their own ways.

‘Worst continuity possible’
“This is something that I think people should understand,” he said, “which is that we tend to think in dichotomous terms about conservatives/liberals [or] Republicans/Democrats,” but these artificial divisions are “wrong.”

Gillespie pointed out that “George Bush signed the most restrictive campaign finance regulation act known to history, the McCain-Feingold law, which was then basically routed around by new technology. Barack Obama wants to control your political speech, he wants to control what is available on cable and satellite TV, and he wants to control what you can buy and sell on the Internet, just like George Bush.”

He concluded:

“Anybody who considers himself a liberal or a conservative should be concerned because what we are seeing is the worst continuity possible between a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat.”



Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on August 2, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Libertarian youth leader from New Zealand discusses his party’s politics

Libertarian youth leader from New Zealand discusses his party’s politics
May 22, 2012 12:25 PM MST

Libertarians are not active in politics solely in the United States. There are libertarian movements and political parties scattered through the Western democracies.

In New Zealand, for instance, there is the ACT Party. That name may seem funny, at first, until one understands that it began as an acronym.

Peter McCaffrey was a parliamentary candidate for the ACT Party in 2008 and 2011, when he was just 21 and 24 years old, respectively. He recently sat down for an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during a Republican Liberty Caucus social event.

At the time, McCaffrey was traveling through the United States on his way to take a job with a free-market think-tank in Regina, Saskatchewan.

About that acronym

The letters A-C-T, he explained, “used to stand for the ‘Association of Consumers and Taxpayers.’ That was when ACT was set up as a think-tank” almost 20 years ago.

“New Zealand adopted the mixed-member proportional electoral system” in 1994, he continued, with plans to hold the first election under that system in 1996. At that time, “the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers decided that with the implementation of a proportional electoral system, actually it would be better to be set up as a party rather than a think tank and so it became the ACT Party.”

The initials do not “stand for anything now but that’s the origin of the name,” McCaffrey said.

‘Classical liberal’

He describes the party as “a classical liberal party but there’s a bit of a fusion there.”

Older members, he explained, tend to be “more conservative-leaning” or split among liberals and conservatives, while “the younger membership tends to be much more liberal, even leaning towards libertarian.”

During the most recent parliamentary elections in November 2011, McCaffrey explained, the party’s “main focus was on the economy, getting tax rates down, [and] cutting regulation,” as well as advocating for school choice.

“We’ve been doing a big push for charter schools,” he said.

“In New Zealand, we have some private schools that are generally privately funded and we have state schools that are state-funded and state-run but there’s not a lot of choice in between those, so we ran a big push for more choice in education,” he said.

During the election campaign, he noted, the ACT Party made a coalition agreement with the National Party, a conservative party in New Zealand, and the two partners “pushed for an implementation of some trials of charter schools in New Zealand.” As a result, he said, “we’ll be setting up a couple of charter schools, one in South Auckland and one in Christ Church and hopefully more over the next three years as part of that deal.”

Under the new charter school law, he explained, the schools may “be run by any number of different non-profit organizations. Whether that’s Iwi, which are local Maori groups (Maori are the indigenous people in New Zealand) or charities, church groups, anything like that will be able to set up a school and run it.”

The new rules allow “more flexibility in the arrangements of the school so that there’s more choice for people in which schools they send their children to,” he said.

Liberalized drug laws

Generally, McCaffrey said, the ACT Party does not “get too involved in social issues. We try to focus on economics but that doesn’t always happen. Our leader last year” -- Donald Brash, a former New Zealand reserve bank governor – “surprised a lot of the journalists when he came out in support of liberalization of marijuana laws,” including decriminalization or legalization. That position came after heavy lobbying on the part of “some of the younger members of the party.”

That position, he pointed out, “startled a lot of people and maybe scared off some of our older members and supporters but it really got the media talking about the issue. It surprised a lot of people who saw us as sort of an old white conservative party, which, I think, was good for the image of the party long run.”

McCaffrey’s own involvement in ACT is relatively recent but it has spanned his whole adult life, so far.

Learning in high school

“I turned 18 in 2005,” he said, which is the voting age in New Zealand, as it is in the United States.

While he was still in high school, he said, “I just read the web sites of all the main parties that were in the parliament and had a bit of a think. ACT seemed to make the most sense, and so I voted for ACT in 2005,” the first year he was eligible to cast a ballot.

Then, he said, “having voted for ACT, when I got to university, there was a table at the orientation week for ACT on Campus, which is the youth wing of the ACT Party. I signed up to ACT on Campus and then over the next couple of years I got more and more involved in the ACT on Campus group and also in the party itself.”

McCaffrey explained that the “party is very open to young people, volunteers coming in, even coming into the parliamentary offices, helping out, volunteering, doing research -- all that sort of stuff -- so just sort of slowly I got more and more involved.”

Eventually, he “ended up being the ACT on Campus president, leading the youth wing of the party” and later he was selected to serve on “the board for the Wellington region” (equivalent to the unit committee of an American political party) “and stood as a candidate for the party for parliament in 2008 and 2011 in my local district,” Otaki.

He was not elected, however, noting modestly that “to be honest, my district isn’t a very good area for ACT, so I was kind of the only one who was willing to do it in my area.”

That turn of events, of course, is what brought McCaffrey to North America, where he continues to work on the sorts of issues that brought him into politics in his native New Zealand.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 22, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: 'Keep the Lottery -- It's Better Than Taxes" (1997)

This article originally appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot on Tuesday, April 29, 1997, under the headline, "Keep the Lottery -- It's Better Than Taxes."

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A minor tempest is brewing in the Virginia attorney general's race. Two candidates for the Republican nomination for that office have attacked the Virginia Lottery. State Sen. Mark Earley of Chesapeake complains there ``is too much state-sponsored gambling'' while former Public Safety Secretary Jerry Kilgore proposes that if lottery proceeds are not returned to local governments, then voters should have an opportunity to repeal the lottery's authorization.

Virginia State Capitol, Richmond

Pointing out that the lottery brings in more than $330 million to the Virginia treasury each year, state Sen. Ken Stolle of Virginia Beach criticizes his opponents for being fiscally irresponsible, challenging them to ``show me the money.'' Similarly, Fairfax attorney Gil Davis, the fourth candidate for the GOP nomination, asks them to explain how they will make up for lost revenues.

While Stolle and Davis seem to be looking at the lottery from a pragmatic perspective, all of the candidates seem to be missing the larger point: When compared to taxes, a lottery is a morally superior means to raise money for government programs.

The reason for this moral superiority can be explained simply. Taxes are always obtained through coercion (the threat of punishment for nonpayment) while lottery proceeds are obtained from voluntary action (an individual willingly purchases a lottery ticket). Acts that are coerced are always morally inferior to those that are done voluntarily.

As Robert Ringer wrote in his 1979 book, Restoring the American Dream, ``It is instructive to note that, among the many dictionary definitions, a `tax' is described as: `a heavy demand'; `a burden'; `a compulsory payment of a percentage of income . . . for the support of a government.''' Ringer adds: If something is compulsory, it means you are forced to do it. And the use of force is . . . the act of aggressing on a person's rights.'' Thus he concludes: ``No matter how much good certain people may believe is accomplished with `tax' money, the good can never negate the immorality of theft. You cannot change the nature of stealing by calling it taxation and explaining that it is a patriotic means of `raising revenue.'''

There is also a pragmatic case against taxes, made succinctly by the Cato Institute's David Boaz in his 1997 book, Libertarianism: A Primer:

``Now let's consider an ever-popular form of coercion by which governments extract money directly from those who earn it: taxation. Taxes reduce the return each individual gets from economic activity. Since one of the important functions of income - including profits and losses - is to direct resources toward their most highly valued uses, an artificial reduction in the return has a distorting effect on economic calculation. . . . Taxes always have different effects on different economic actors. They drive the marginal supplier or the marginal purchaser out of the market. . . . High taxes discourage work effort. Why work overtime if the government will take half of what you earn? Why invest in a risky business opportunity when the government promises to take half of any profit but to let you bear the losses? In all these ways, taxes reduce the productive effort directed toward serving human needs.''

A lottery is preferable to coercive taxation because compulsory actions eliminate the possibility of virtuous behavior: Virtue is only possible as the result of free will. The 19th century German philosopher Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt explained it this way: ``Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.''

Opponents of the lottery argue that gambling is itself an ignoble act. Yet buying a lottery ticket is always and everywhere a free choice. No one holds a gun to your head to force you to buy a ticket, and no one will throw you in jail if you refuse to buy one.

Other opponents argue that the lottery is more tempting, and therefore more burdensome, to the poor, who buy more tickets as a proportion of their income than wealthy people do. This is patronizing and ultimately insulting, for the essence of the argument is that poor people are not smart enough, or prudent enough, to decide for themselves how to spend their own money, but ``we who know better'' can decide for them.

A strong pragmatic and moral case can be made for reducing taxes and expanding the lottery and other voluntary means to raise government revenue (such as increasing user fees paid by those who actually benefit from government services).

Our attorney general candidates should be on notice: Rather than eliminate the lottery, a morally superior form of raising government revenues through voluntary (rather then coercive) means, we should expand it.

Memo: Richard Sincere Jr. is state coordinator for the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia.

From the Archives: Legal scholar Richard Epstein discusses new book ‘Design for Liberty’

Legal scholar Richard Epstein discusses new book ‘Design for Liberty’
February 23, 2012 4:01 PM MST

Already well-known for such works as Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, and a widely used legal textbook on torts, New York University law professor Richard A. Epstein has just published Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (Harvard University Press).

At a recent Cato Institute event, Professor Epstein spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about his new book and his next project, a book about classical liberalism and constitutional law.

What is ‘Design for Liberty’?
Design for Liberty, he said, differs from his previous books in that “it’s a little bit more philosophical. It spends much more time talking directly about public administration, which I have not talked about much in previous books.”

Moreover, Epstein added, it reflects his “newfound interest in public administrative law, which is usually missing from the earlier works, and of course, it has material which I could never have covered earlier because things like the Dodd-Frank [banking] statute and the current health-care [law] are creatures of the last year or so and therefore I never spoke about them before.”

Digging further beneath the surface, Epstein pointed out that his new book contains “a fairly detailed explanation of first and second order rules, a sort of technical subject,” which involves the question of “when is it that you have to have to resort to reasonableness rules?”

That happens, he said, when “it turns out that hard-line rules don’t work and what you have to do in order to make the rule of law work is to understand that the mere fact that there’s a reasonableness in some legal system doesn’t disqualify from the rule of the law.”

“On the other hand,” he argued, “you can’t let reasonableness determinations overwhelm the whole system, so I try to develop protocols to how it is that you separate those things.”

Future project on classical liberalism
Also a columnist for the Hoover Institution's online journal, Defining Ideas, where he writes regularly as "The Libertarian," Epstein is working on his next project, which will be what he describes as “a very long book” with the working title “The Classical Liberal Constitution.”

That book, he said, is “about 90 percent done.”

In it, Epstein “takes the fundamental insights that I’ve developed over the years and basically gives a comprehensive analysis of every major constitutional area with a hell of a lot of compression, but it starts with basic theories of constitutional interpretation. It talks about the conflict between the progressive and the classical liberal visions. Those,” he said, “are things I’ve talked about before.”

Epstein’s forthcoming book “goes through systematically the judicial, the executive, and legislative branches, and then does all the various threads of individual rights, each getting a chapter.”

Unlike Design for Liberty, “which is slim,” The Classical Liberal Constitution “will be fat,” he said, with a likely publication date in late 2012 or early 2013.

“It’s been a book that’s been in the making for many years now,” Epstein explained. “It’s an effort to give a comprehensive way in which, if you take the positions that I do, various cases and various issues have to come out.”

Given Epstein’s past work, The Classical Liberal Constitution will have “some stuff on takings, but that’s not the main focus of it. It has things on freedom of religion and executive power and foreign affairs and so forth.”

Epstein concedes that his “knowledge base is not uniform across all these areas" but notes that "what makes it possible to do this project is that the Supreme Court doctrine generally tends to be comprised in a relatively few key cases.”

Consequently, “if you have a strong theory, and you pick the right cases to read, you can write the kind of book that I’m talking about.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 23, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Moving Picture Institute announces first annual Liberty in Film Awards

Moving Picture Institute announces first annual Liberty in Film Awards
February 19, 2013 4:06 PM MST

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on February 19, Adam Guillette of the Moving Picture Institute announced the winners of the first annual Liberty in Film Awards, timed to coincide with the awarding of the Oscars in Hollywood on February 24.

Among the winners he listed:

• Best explanation of what makes charity possible: The Dark Knight Rises. When Bruce Wayne asks Alfred why the Wayne Family Foundation is no longer contributing to the boys’ home, Alfred explains that contributions are made possible by the profits of their company. ”No profits, no charity.”
• Best adaptation of an impossible-to-adapt book: Atlas Shrugged: Part II. The rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor, Atlas Shrugged: Part II does an incredible job of showing both the terrible destruction of big government and the incredible power of the individual.
• Fan Favorite: The Hunger Games. MPI supporters demanded an award for this dystopian tale of an evil centralized government that forces its teenaged citizens to kill each other for sport.

Among the “negative” awards on the list:

• Best performance as a publicist for Arab Oil: Matt Damon in Promised Land. Damon’s anti-fracking film was funded by the government of Abu Dhabi.
• Best propaganda piece for toddlers: The Lorax. The writers of this film turned Dr. Suess’ story about conservation into blatant anti-capitalist propaganda aimed at children.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner after his presentation, Guillette explained that the mission of the Moving Picture Institute is “to promote freedom through film.”

The organization does that, he said, “by supporting films and filmmakers that can make a significant impact, either change laws or change the culture to promote freedom-oriented ideas.”

'Different approach'
The Moving Picture Institute's “strategy is an entirely different approach than An American Carol,” for instance, a Kelsey Grammer-Jon Voight vehicle from 2008 that tried to portray conservative values through a lighthearted comedy/satire.

“What we do” instead, he explained, is to “support rising filmmakers rather than [make] the massive gamble of an expensive film.”

The institute supports young directors and screenwriters by helping them “make short films to pitch their talent to the major studios in Hollywood, which helps get them development deals and representation” to make more movies commercially.

“At the same time,” Guillette continued, “their films made for these purposes end up going viral on line or end up in classrooms being viewed by hundreds of thousands of students.”

Incentives
Whether the Liberty in Film Awards have an impact on thinking in Hollywood relies on old-fashioned incentives, he said.

“Like anything else,” Guillette explained, “you've got to reward good behavior and point out bad behavior. This is an excellent opportunity to point out some of the bad behavior in Hollywood but reward those doing an excellent job promoting freedom.”

To learn about the films produced by or supported by the Moving Picture Institute, Guillette pointed to the organization's web site.

“The easiest way is to go to movingpictureinstitute.org. We have all of our films listed and you can instantly click through to NetFlix, Amazon, or anywhere that film is available. It compiles all of them at one place.”


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 19, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Guest Post: On December 7, Remember an English Libertarian Hero

by Gary M. Galles

December 7 has “lived in infamy” since Pearl Harbor. But that date was infamous before America was a country. On that date in 1683, Algernon Sydney, who opposed Charles II for overstepping his powers, was executed for treason after a trial so blatantly violating his rights that Parliament overturned his conviction in 1689. The key evidence was an unpublished manuscript arguing that kings were not above the law, which, 15 years later, became Discourses Concerning Government.

Sydney died for asserting citizens’ right of revolution against a king who exceeded his legal authority. That radical claim helped inspire the American Revolution, because, according to Thomas West, “His death as a martyr to liberty inspired [colonists] with a model in their own risky enterprise against the force of English arms.” On December 7, Sydney’s revolutionary words for liberty from government abuse merits reconsideration.

Our rights and liberties are innate, inherent....from God and nature, not from Kings…He who enjoys [liberty] cannot be deprived of it, unless by his own consent, or by force...In relation to my house, land, or estate; I may do what I please with them, if I bring no damage upon others.

Our natural liberty…is of so great importance that from thence only can we know whether we are freemen of slaves.

The liberty of one man cannot be limited or diminished by…any number of men, and none can give away the right of another…ambition...cannot give a right to any over the liberties of a whole nation. Those who are so set up…are rather to be accounted robbers and pirates than magistrates.

Government[s]...degenerate into a most unjust and despicable tyranny, so soon as the supreme lord begins to prefer his own interest…before the good of his subjects...such an extreme deviation from the end of their institution annuls it; and the wound thereby given to the natural and original rights of those nations cannot be cured, unless they resume the liberties of which they have been deprived.

Prerogative is instituted only for the preservation of liberty...governments...in which every man’s liberty is least restrained...would be the most just, rational and natural...

The supreme law…[is] the preservation of liberties, goods, lands and lives…all laws must be subservient and subordinate to it…if there be no other law…than the will of [government], there is no such thing as liberty. Property is also an appendage to liberty; and ‘tis...impossible for a man to have a right to lands or goods, if he has no liberty...overthrown by those who…ought with the utmost industry and vigor to have defended it.

Magistracy is not instituted…but for the preservation of the whole people, and the defense of the liberty, life and estate of every private man.

Is it possible that any one man can make himself lord of a people...to whom God had given the liberty of governing themselves, by any other means than violence or fraud...the most outrageous injury that can be done…We are free-men...no man has a power over us, which is not given...the ends for which they are given…can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary power.

Shall it be lawful for [rulers] to usurp a power over the liberty of others, and shall it not be lawful for an injured people to resume their own?...The people…cannot but have a right to preserve their liberty…Those who defend, or endeavor to recover their violated liberties…act vigorously in a cause that God does evidently patronize.

Algernon Sydney defended “the natural, universal liberty of mankind.” He helped inspire the American Revolution, because “a people from all ages in love with liberty and desirous to maintain their own privileges could never be brought to resign them.” However, it is unclear that Americans retain such beliefs, judging from government’s massive overstepping on our rights. We should revisit his understanding and commitment if we are to reclaim our heritage of liberty.




Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Old Man Potter Lived a Wonderful Life

by Tom Mullen

December is upon us and that means plentiful opportunities to watch the enduring classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of viewers completely misinterpret Frank Capra’s dystopian nightmare as a heartwarming Christmas tale.

The emotional appeal of angels getting their wings is undeniable. Crying out for correction, however, are the vicious slanders regarding the film’s real hero, Henry Potter.

We first hear of Potter from George Bailey’s father, Peter Bailey, who badmouths Potter with the usual falsehoods about businessmen. But during Bailey’s envious rant, we learn something important: Henry Potter is a board member of the building and loan. We later learn Potter is, in fact, a stockholder.

That puts a somewhat different light on his subsequent motion to liquidate the business upon Peter Bailey’s death. Yes, we hear George Bailey repeating the familiar socialist tropes his father did: that Potter only wants to close the building and loan because he “can’t get his hands on it” and considers the little people cattle, etc. 

But Potter responds with some rather inconvenient facts: the building and loan has been making bad business decisions, providing what we’d now call subprime loans to people who can’t pay them back.


Potter the Stockholder
The Baileys squander their investors’ money on a do-gooder, subprime loan scheme to make everyone a homeowner.

We don’t know how Potter became a stockholder, but the Bailey Building and Loan does not appear to be a publicly traded company. The most likely explanation is Peter Bailey asked Potter for capital, just as George Bailey does later in the film, in between rounds of disparaging Potter as a greedy capitalist. That would be perfectly consistent with today’s “progressives,” who rail against capitalists out of one side of their mouths while sucking up to them for money out of the other.

But regardless of how Potter became a stockholder, Peter Bailey has a fiduciary duty to him to run the business for maximum profit, providing Potter and the other stockholders a return on their investments, something George Bailey confirms they never intended to do. Instead, the Baileys squander their investors’ money on a do-gooder, subprime loan scheme to make everyone a homeowner. It worked out in fictional Bedford Falls about as well as it did in early 2000s America.

Meanwhile, the Baileys constantly slander Potter’s rental houses as “overpriced slums.” These are the same Baileys whose housing opportunities are more expensive than Potter’s.


But People Like Potter’s Houses
Their accusations constantly beg the question: If Potter’s houses are so bad, why do so many people choose to live in them? It’s constantly implied Potter’s customers have no other choice, but what exactly does that mean? Why has no one else, including any of the businessmen on the board of the Bailey Building and Loan, developed rental properties that are higher in quality, lower in price, or both?

The inescapable truth is Potter is wealthy because he provides a product that most satisfies his customers’ preferences for quality and price. If there were an opportunity to provide a higher quality product at a lower price than Potter was charging, a competitor would do so and take market share away from Potter, until Potter either raised his quality, lowered his price, or both.

The Baileys burn with resentment that so many residents of Bedford Falls prudently choose to live in Potter’s less expensive housing than buy a house they can’t afford, financed by the Baileys’ Ponzi scheme. Thus, even after shirking their fiduciary duty to run the business properly, the Baileys spend decades assaulting Potter’s character in a transparent attempt to lure away his customers.


Potter the Rescuer
When the Depression hits and the Bailey Building and Loan is exposed for the fractional reserve fraud it is, Potter offers to come to the rescue with a generous offer to buy out its customers. It is noteworthy there is a run on the Bailey Building and Loan and the local bank, but Potter is financially secure enough to save them both, proving once again he is the only honorable businessman in the film.

But we must give the devil his due. George Bailey, the ultimate huckster, saves the building and loan without Potter’s help, convincing the yokel mob making a run on his business to keep their money tied up in his fundamentally insolvent confidence game.

That brings us to the one regrettable act Potter is guilty of, which is concealing the $8,000.00 the incompetent Billy Bailey inadvertently handed him while attempting to make a deposit. It’s true this was an underhanded act, although not unprovoked.

We don’t know how much Potter had invested in the Building and Loan to become a stockholder, but suspect it was a lot more than $8,000. One could make the case he was merely getting back some of the money the Baileys had previously defrauded him of, but there are courts for such matters and Potter should have sought their help if he had a case.


Smearing Potter
Nevertheless, two generations of Baileys had led a decades-long assault on Potter’s good name, resulting in most townspeople disliking him, even though he has quite literally saved their lives on numerous occasions. Without him, a large portion of Bedford Falls would be unemployed, have nowhere to live, or both. It is not an exaggeration to say that without Henry Potter, Bedford Falls would cease to exist. Yet, thanks to the Baileys, he is the most hated man in town.

Compare Potter’s vindictive reaction when George Bailey crawls to him for help after the $8,000.00 is lost to Potter’s reaction at the board meeting at the beginning of the movie. At the board meeting, Potter dismisses George’s unhinged attack upon him and redirects the discussion to the subject of the meeting: what is best for Bedford Falls. By the latter confrontation, Potter tries to have George arrested for embezzling.

Potter’s dastardly act is totally out of character with the Potter of the earlier scene or any other event we know of in Potter’s life. As far as we know, he has always been a hard-nosed, unsentimental businessman, but has never committed a crime or held a grudge, as he does now. Everything we know about Potter up to this point tells us his vindictive attempt to have George Bailey prosecuted is precisely the kind of emotional decision-making Potter has avoided for most of his life. That is why he is so wealthy at the beginning of the film.


Potter’s Breaking Point
Everyone has a breaking point. Potter had evidently reached his. Had he been prosecuted for keeping the $8,000.00, which may have been tricky from a legal standpoint, given that Billy Bailey had handed the money to him, he could easily have plead temporary insanity caused by years of psychological warfare waged against him by the Baileys.

We’ll never know, because before Potter has any opportunity to allow his passion to cool and clear up the misunderstanding, George Bailey sets off on his suicide melodrama, followed by a long, self-aggrandizing hallucination about angels and how Bedford Falls would be worse without him. By the time he concludes his childish escape from reality, the same yokels he previously conned during the Depression are now bailing him out once again, foreshadowing so many future bailouts of dishonest financiers whose assets should have been turned over to better management in bankruptcy court.


The Triumph of Evil
In one of the darkest moments of the film, George Bailey’s Christmas tree is jostled and one of the bells adorning it rings. George Bailey, now confident he and his fraudulent real estate scheme are safe, suggests the bell signifies an angel has earned his wings, as if his dishonest business dealings and ruthless defamation of legitimate competitors had divine sanction.

Nothing more is heard of Henry Potter, the man without whom Bedford Falls would not exist. He is left friendless and without the one thing he could cling to before George Bailey, the Devil incarnate, wrested it from his grasp: his honor. As the credits roll, evil has triumphed. The economic fallacies inherent in Baileyism become accepted truth, resulting in disaster after disaster, including the most recent in 2008.



Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? and A Return to Common  Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America. For more information and more of Tom's writing, visit www.tommullen.net.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: John Whitehead on 'What Went Wrong in Charlottesville"

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”—Ronald Reagan

Corruption. Graft. Intolerance. Greed. Incompetence. Ineptitude. Militarism. Lawlessness. Ignorance. Brutality. Deceit. Collusion. Corpulence. Bureaucracy. Immorality. Depravity. Censorship. Cruelty. Violence. Mediocrity. Tyranny.

These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic. Our dying republic.

The American experiment in freedom is failing fast.

John Whitehead (c) 2013 Rick Sincere

Through every fault of our own—our apathy, our ignorance, our intolerance, our disinclination to do the hard work of holding government leaders accountable to the rule of law, our inclination to let politics trump longstanding constitutional principles—we have been reduced to this sorry state in which we are little more than shackled inmates in a prison operated for the profit of a corporate elite.

We have been saddled with the wreckage of a government at all levels that no longer represents the citizenry, serves the citizenry, or is accountable to the citizenry.

We’re not the masters anymore.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the federal government, state governments, or local governing bodies: at all ends of the spectrum and every point in between, a shift has taken place.

“We the people” are not being seen, heard or valued.

We no longer count for much of anything beyond an occasional electoral vote and as a source of income for the government’s ever-burgeoning financial needs.

Everything happening at the national level is playing out at the local level, as well: the violence, the militarization, the intolerance, the lopsided governance, and an uneasy awareness that the citizenry have no say in how their communities are being governed.

Take my own hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, for instance.

In recent years, Charlottesville has been plagued by government leaders who are tone-deaf, focused on their own aggrandizement, and incapable of prioritizing the needs of their constituents over their own personal and political agendas; law enforcement officials for whom personal safety, heavy-handed militarized tactics, and power plays trump their duty to serve and protect; polarized citizens incapable of finding common ground, respecting each other’s rights, or agreeing to disagree; and a community held hostage by political correctness, divisive rhetoric and a growing intolerance for any views that may be unpopular or at odds with the mainstream.

It was a perfect storm just waiting for the right conditions to wreak havoc.

Unfortunately, the maelstrom hit in the summer of 2017, when Charlottesville, regularly cited as being one of the happiest cities in America, became ground zero for a heated war of words—and actions—over racism, “sanitizing history,” extremism (both right and left), political correctness, hate speech, partisan politics, and a growing fear that violent words will end in violent actions.

In Charlottesville, as in so many parts of the country right now, the conflict was over how to reconcile the nation’s checkered past, particularly as it relates to slavery, with the present need to sanitize the environment of anything—words and images—that might cause offense, especially if it’s a Confederate flag or monument.

That fear of offense prompted the Charlottesville City Council to get rid of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Leethat has graced one of its public parks for 82 years.

That’s when everything went haywire.

In attempting to pacify one particularly vocal and righteously offended group while railroading over the concerns of those with alternate viewpoints, Charlottesville attracted the unwanted attention of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the alt-Right, all of whom descended on the little college town with the intention of exercising their First Amendment right to be disagreeable, to assemble, and to protest.

When put to the test, Charlottesville did not handle things well at all.

No one—not the armed, violent, militant protesters nor the police—gave peace a chance, not on July 8 when the KKK descended, nor on August 12, when what should have been an exercise in free speech quickly became a brawl that left one dead and dozens more injured.

As the New York Times reported, “Protesters began to mace one another, throwing water bottles and urine-filled balloons— some of which hit reporters — and beating each other with flagpoles, clubs and makeshift weapons. Before long, the downtown area was a melee. People were ducking and covering with a constant stream of projectiles whizzing by our faces, and the air was filled with the sounds of fists and sticks against flesh.”

And then there was the police, who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence.

They failed to do either.

Indeed, a 220-page post-mortem of the protests and the Charlottesville government’s response by former U.S. attorney Timothy J. Heaphy merely corroborates our worst fears about what drives the government at all levels: power, money, ego, politics and ambition.

When presented with a situation in which the government and its agents were tasked with protecting free speech and safety, Heaphy concluded that “the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety.”

Heaphy continues: “The City was unable to protect the right of free expression and facilitate the permit holder’s offensive speech. This represents a failure of one of government’s core functions—the protection of fundamental rights. Law enforcement also failed to maintain order and protect citizens from harm, injury, and death. Charlottesville preserved neither of those principles on August 12, which has led to deep distrust of government within this community.”

In other words, the government failed to uphold its constitutional mandates. The police failed to carry out their duties as peace officers. And the citizens found themselves unable to trust either the police or the government to do its job in respecting their rights and ensuring their safety.

Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard)—many of whom had been preparing for the downtown rally for months—had been called on to work the event, despite the fact that police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, and despite the fact that Charlottesville had had what reporter David Graham referred to as “a dress rehearsal of sorts” a month earlier when 30 members of the Ku Klux Klan were confronted by 1000 counterprotesters, police failed to do their jobs.

In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.”

“Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville,” reported ProPublica.

Instead of establishing clear boundaries—buffer zones—between the warring groups and protecting the First Amendment rights of the protesters, police established two entrances into the permit areas of the park and created barriers “guiding rallygoers single-file into the park” past lines of white nationalists and antifa counterprotesters.

Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, Heaphy reports that the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”

Read Heaphy’s report for yourself.

It’s full of drama and intrigue, plots and dueling egos, petty tyrants and ambitious politicians. (There’s even mention of a personal email account and deleted text messages.)

Not much different from what is happening on the national scene.

Commissioned by the City of Charlottesville, this Heaphy report was intended to be an independent investigation of what went right and what went wrong in the government’s handling of the protests.

Heaphy found very little to commend.

What went right on Aug. 12 according to Heaphy: 1) Despite the presence of firearms, including members of the militia, and angry confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters, no person was shot and no significant property damage occurred; 2) Emergency personnel did their jobs effectively and treated a large number of people in a short period of time; and 3) Police intelligence gathering was thorough (that’s the best he had to say about police).

Now for what went wrong, according to the report:

1. Police failed to get input from other law enforcement agencies experienced in handling large protests.

2. Police failed to adequately train their officers in advance of the protest.

3. City officials failed to request assistance from outside agencies.

4. The City Council unduly interfered by ignoring legal advice, attempting to move the protesters elsewhere, and ignoring the concerns of law enforcement.

5. The city government failed to inform the public about their plans.

6. City officials were misguided in allowing weapons at the protest.

7. The police implemented a flawed operational plan that failed to protect public safety.

8. While police were provided with riot gear, they were never trained in how to use it, nor were they provided with any meaningful field training in how to deal with or de-escalate anticipated violence on the part of protesters.

9. Despite the input and advice of outside counsel, including The Rutherford Institute, the police failed to employ de-escalation tactics or establish clear barriers between warring factions of protesters.

10. Government officials and police leadership opted to advance their own agendas at the expense of constitutional rights and public safety.

11. For all intents and purposes, police abided by a stand down order that endangered the community and paved the way for civil unrest.

12. In failing to protect public safety, police and government officials undermined public faith in the government.

The Heaphy report focused on the events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it applies to almost every branch of government that fails to serve “we the people.”

As the Pew Research Center revealed, public trust in the government remains near historic lows and with good reason, too.

This isn’t America, land of the free, where the government is “of the people, by the people [and] for the people.”

Rather, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism work hand in hand.

So what’s the answer?

As always, it must start with “we the people.”

I’ve always advised people to think nationally, but act locally. Yet as Charlottesville makes clear, it’s hard to make a difference locally when the local government is as deaf, dumb and blind to the needs of its constituents as the national government.

Still, it’s time to clean house at all levels of government.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

Stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

Right now, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

Stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

WC: 1882

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Reprinted by permission of The Rutherford Institute.