Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Virginia Statewide Ballot Issues, 2012

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Seal of Virginia

Citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia will be voting on two state constitutional amendments in this year’s general election. These amendments would each add, remove, or change text in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Question #1: Restoring Property Rights

Article 1, Section 11 of the Virginia Constitution, a part of the Virginia Bill of Rights that is similar to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It goes on to say that the General Assembly may not pass “any law whereby private property shall be taken or damaged for public uses, without just compensation, the term ‘public uses’ to be defined by the General Assembly. . . .”

Unfortunately, our Fifth Amendment property protections have been utterly eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2005 case Kelo v. New London. In that case, a narrow 5-4 majority of the justices found that governments may seize private property and turn it over to private businesses in the name of vaguely-defined ‘economic development.’ Since the wording in the Virginia Bill of Rights is very similar to that in the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Kelo ruling likely abrogates our state-level property rights as well. In fact, the Virginia version is probably in worse shape, since it explicitly leaves it to the General Assembly to define what constitutes ‘public use.’

Read more . . .

Loudoun County Bond Referendums, 2012

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Loudoun County Seal

Virginia county governments are required to put bond issuance to a voter referendum in order to borrow money on behalf of the county. Bond issuance is usually used by governments to raise money for large capital expenditures, and those bonds are repaid to their purchasers at a later date (plus interest). Bond referendums in Virginia almost always pass by a large margin, in large part because people think they are voting in favor of the agencies that will benefit (after all, who wants to vote ‘against’ schools, parks, or transportation?). Many voters do not realize that bond issuance contributes to government debt and should be used sparingly.

Acquisition of Fire and Rescue Apparatus

Citizens of Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked through a bond referendum to authorize the Board of Supervisors to borrow up to $2.75 million to finance, in whole or in part, new fire and rescue apparatus. You might be forgiven for experiencing a bit of deja-vu here; an almost-identical bond referendum for 3 million dollars was on the Loudoun County ballot last year.

In 2011, Off on a Tangent endorsed voting yes on that referendum, and it passed with a seventy-two percent vote on the day of the election. Loudoun is a fast-growing county with unique public safety challenges, and it is essential that our emergency services are appropriately funded. On our northern border is a large river, on our eastern border is a major international airport, and on our western border is a mountain range. We have two-lane rural highways and eight-lane expressways. We have acres upon acres of suburban communities, and acres upon acres of rural forests. We have towering office buildings and sprawling farms and wineries. As I said in 2011, the men and women of Loudoun County Fire and Rescue “need to be ready to face anything—residential fires, plane crashes, urban evacuations, water rescues, national emergencies, and skateboarding accidents.”

Read more . . .

‘Quantitative Easing’ and Inflation

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The United States Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that it is embarking on a third round of ‘quantitative easing,’ buying up forty billion dollars of securities each month in an effort to boost the economy. ‘Quantitative easing’ is the preferred Fed euphemism for printing money and ‘injecting’ it into the American economic system. These buys will continue until the “outlook for the labor market . . . [improves] substantially,” and will be increased if necessary. Some analysts expect that the Fed may end up adding a whopping $1.7 trillion to its balance sheet over the next several years as part of QE3, in addition to the $1.75 trillion it added in QE1 and the 600 billion dollars in QE2.

So what is the purpose of these QE money-printing schemes? Well, the idea is that by making more money available to banks for loans, that will then make it easier for companies to expand and grow. This ‘easy money’ will hopefully allow businesses to increase their hiring, which will reduce the unemployment rate—the end goal. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that QE1 and QE2 contributed to restoration of market confidence and reduced systemic economic risks, but former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan calculates that they had virtually no impact whatsoever. Whoever is right, unemployment remains well above eight percent. The Fed is clearly dissatisfied with the results of its QE programs, or else it wouldn’t need to try a third round. Of course, I tend to think that when a policy fails you ought to try a different policy, rather than doubling-down on the one that didn’t work.

When more money is put in circulation, it tends to reduce the value of that currency—in other words, it causes inflation. Inflation has been hovering in the five-to-ten percent range since 2008, meaning that each year the cost of living is getting significantly higher. The Fed and other government agencies have reduced the impact of this inflation by lying about it; according to the official cost of living values, inflation is at record lows below two percent. Federal agencies and most companies index their cost of living wage increases against these official numbers, which are achieved by arbitrarily excluding food and fuel costs (among others) from the calculations. So, although actual cost of living is increasing, wages have stayed-put. This has allowed companies to avoid broad layoffs and, more importantly, to keep their prices from skyrocketing . . . but it has also meant that most workers in the United States have taken a hidden pay cut, and their savings aren’t worth what they should be.

Read more . . .

U.S. Ambassador Killed in Libya

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J. Christoper Stevens, the United States Ambassador to Libya, has been killed in a rocket attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Three other consulate officials were also killed. Angry protests have occurred over the last two days at the U.S. missions in Libya and Egypt, supposedly due to the content of an online film called Innocence of Muslims that is said to be offensive to Islam.

During the attack in Cairo, Egypt, men scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy, tore down the American flag, and raised a black flag with the white Arabic text of the Islamic Kalma prayer, which can be translated into English as, ‘There is no God but Allah, and the Prophet Mohammed is his messenger.’ The Benghazi attack left our mission there in shambles; attackers stormed the consulate then looted and burned it, leaving the bodies of the four murdered American officials in the street outside.

These attacks have been strongly condemned by President Barack Obama (D) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D). However, Clinton has been criticized by former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA)—the Republican presidential nominee—for saying in her initial statement regarding the Cairo attacks that, ‘The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.’ Romney said that, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged [them].”

In an official statement released via Libya’s official news agency, the governing party condemned the attacks and promised to “track down the perpetrators and to maintain the country’s security and the safety and security of its guests.” A spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry also said that, “This is an expression of a feeling that is thought to be an insult, but events like this are extremely deplorable. And we have to work to get things under control.”

Under long-standing international laws governing diplomatic relations, embassies and consulates are considered to be extraterritorial, and may not be entered without the permission of the guest nation. As such, these attacks should be considered a direct assault on U.S. citizens in U.S. territory. The host nations—Egypt and Libya, in this case—have a duty to protect the territorial integrity and safety of all foreign diplomatic missions in their countries.

Stevens is the first U.S. ambassador to be killed by violence in the line of duty since 1979, and only the sixth in all of U.S. history.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.