economics

How to fire big bird

Romney has promised to defund the Public Broadcasting System.

Reagan promised to defund the left, and did not seriously try it. If Reagan did not, what chance Romney? But if Romney is serious about it, which I doubt, here is how to do it:

The Public Broadcasting System is, in large part, half a billion dollars paying media people to be left wing, which includes paying them to be nasty to Republicans in general and Romney in particular. If you are going to defund the Public Broadcasting System, might as well defund the other key major left wing institutions: the State Department, the Justice Department, the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Harvard. You will have the same sized conflict either way. Theoretically this is a straightforward application of financial power of congress, but in actual practice, will be more like a military coup.

Theoretically money is allocated by Congress in a budget every year, and then spent for the approved purposes by public servants. Theoretically, congress controls the purse strings. That is civics 101. Theoretically, they could simply pass a budget with zero funding for the major centers of the left.

Now if that was the way it actually worked, the budget would be power, and you could not stop congress from passing a budget every year except by cutting off their hands with chainsaws, because getting their hands on the budget would be getting their hands on power.

If the budget had such power, they would hunger and thirst to pass a budget.

They have not bothered to pass a budget in several years, and nothing much has changed as a result, revealing that the budget was an empty ritual, like the Queen of England proceeding to the houses of parliament in a stagecoach. Therefore, passing a budget zeroing out funding allocated to the public broadcasting system, the state department, the justice department, and Harvard would have no effect. The public service would ignore it, the way they have ignored the fact that they have been operating without a budget, the way various laws and plebiscites abolishing affirmative action and so forth have been ignored.

A budget that actually mattered would be an event as extraordinary and dramatic as Meiji Restoration. Sometimes political systems revert to their past, but that is not the way to bet. The Meiji restoration required quite a lot of bloodshed, even though officially nothing happened and it was no change at all.

The Meiji Restoration was the restoration of a simple and workable system which had existed and worked in the remembered past: Monarchy. It is far from clear that US system described by civics 101 has ever worked.

To actually make the system work in accordance with civics 101, there needs to be a credible threat that if it does not function in accordance with civics 101, there will be a pile of dead public servants with bullets in their heads lying by the side of the street outside the Justice Department, and smoke and flames coming out of the Justice Department.

From time to time, State Department proxies kill Pentagon proxies, and vice versa.

For a long time, Australia and Indonesia have been theoretically allied in the war on terror. For a long time, Australia was less than happy with the Indonesian government’s performance in this supposed alliance. It came to pass that there were a series of accidental Australian army incursions into Indonesian territory, doubtless due to faulty map reading. Indonesian troops would then accidentally open fire on Australian troops, who would then accidentally fire back, with such accidental effect that Indonesian troops would run away. After several such unfortunate accidents, each followed by pious apologies from both sides, Indonesia developed a somewhat more cooperative policy on suppressing Islamic terror.

I would suggest to Romney, therefore, that should he encounter a lack of cooperation in foreign policy from the state department, a series of unfortunate targeting accidents in which the Pentagon accidentally blows up State Department facilities and personnel. After several such unfortunate accidents, such as perhaps several one ton bombs accidentally landing on 2401 East Street, it might then be possible to zero out the budget for the State Department, the Justice Department, Harvard, and, oh yes, also the Public Broadcasting system.

But while I hope for the Public Broadcasting System to be zeroed out as promised, I really do not expect it until after currency collapse and similar dramatic events.

9 comments How to fire big bird

spandrell says:

The Meiji emperor didn’t count for shit, and in 45 years the army had take total control of the country.

The Restoration was a power grab by a peripheral oligarchy. It was as monarchical as Britain. Hell they even had universal suffrage with widespread pork barrelling in no time.

jim says:

True, but it was a different oligarchy.

Thales says:

Yeah…I have a hard time imagining any Gov. of Mass starting CWII…or any Prez for that matter given that the Left controls access to the GOP Prez ballot via the media.

guest says:

Speaking of Reagan, you all might get a kick out of this:

Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html

Eight years, eight dreary, miserable, mind-numbing years, the years of the Age of Reagan, are at long last coming to an end. These years have surely left an ominous legacy for the future: we shall undoubtedly suffer from the after-shocks of Reaganism for years to come.

How did Reagan manage to pursue egregiously statist policies in the name of liberty and of “getting government off our backs?” How was he able to follow this course of deception and mendacity?

There was no “Reagan Revolution.” Any “revolution” in the direction of liberty (in Ronnie’s words “to get government off our backs”) would reduce the total level of government spending. And that means reduce in absolute terms, not as proportion of the gross national product, or corrected for inflation, or anything else.

Alex J. says:

The most important turn-around under Reagan was in foreign policy, and at the end of his term, the USSR was on the ropes.

jim says:

Reagan eliminated our second biggest enemy, and he arguably slowed down our biggest enemy somewhat.

josh says:

Like this:

http://www.stevenroyedwards.com/bombingofnijmegen.html

Maps are tough.

Fiat money creation doesn’t even really involve congress theoretically, and the cathedral has as many unofficial government arms with which to work as official. Bank created money can easily be funneled to these channels (did you know the Rockefeller foundation owns a substantial part of Chase Manhattan bank, Ford Foundation owned Ford motor company is at least as much a bank as a car company, etc.). It would follow that if congressmen are after status, they have to at least appear to be in control, which would require them to produce huge budgets so that the size of the official Cathedral-run government is relatively large compared to the unofficial. The same stuff would happen no matter the budget, but Congress is able to maintain de jure control and hold hearings and generally pretend to be in charge. This benefits every party involved including Congressmen and their personal patrons who actually do get to dispose of a little bit of largesse.

Run-on sentences aside, what do you think.

jim says:

The relative size of the Cathedral budget to the Congressional budget is revealed by who gets to dispense pork. Compare the Bridge to Nowhere with Obamaphones (off budget, regulatory authority), with the recent expansion of food stamps (by regulatory authority), and, biggest of all, mortgages for wetbacks, (off budget, discretionary application of regulatory authority, in that banks that failed to make no income, no job, no asset loans were apt to be deemed non compliant with vague and incomprehensible regulations, or even regulations not yet written). Cathedral pork is many thousands of times larger than Congressional Pork. Congress eventually puts it retroactively on its budget, but no congressman gets any credit for these handouts, showing who has the power, and who does not.

Every congressman would love to be able to say to the Gimmedats “I got you food stamps and obamaphones”, but he cannot. If they had the power, they would make sure they got a good share of the credit. They would grandstand over handouts every news cycle.

If congress allocated the pork, the way Civics 101 says they do, they would holding highly theatrical budget hearings every day. If they don’t get to hand out most of the pork, they don’t get to zero out the Public Broadcasting budget.

To have actual power over the budget, congress would have to penalize those who spend money without congressional authority – audit the fed, audit Fort Knox, and so on and so forth, but to punish them, would need to have actual power over the budget.

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