Freespace

Where’s the Warren Buffet of the public employees unions?

We all know that public employee benefits—pensions and health care and whatnot—are driving our cities and states into bankruptcy. These agreements are contracts protected by the Constitution. But nothing’s stopping public-spirited recipients from voluntarily waiving them, and giving the money back to the taxpayer. Why haven’t we heard anyone doing that?

Funny, Warren Buffet and his friends keep being trotted out as examples of civic virtue because they’re so eager to give more of their earnings in taxes to the government…and therefore we should do likewise. Where’s the public spirited “Warren Buffet” of the public employees union, who’s willing to come out and say “I’m giving back my pension, because it’s driving California into bankruptcy, and my fellow public employees should do likewise”?

Reason.tv on Sackett case

Reason.tv has done an excellent video on the case of Sackett v. EPA, argued recently before the Supreme Court by my friend and colleague Damien Schiff.

A final word on substantive due process

I wrap up the discussion...and point to my next focus of interest.

Why Chapman and McConnell are wrong about substantive due process

Over at Cato Unbound, I react to the new Yale Law Journal article about substantive due process.

Lutheran insult generator

Hit us again, Martin!

Cato conference on Obamacare March 23

I’ll be participating in the Cato Institute’s conference on the Obamacare cases on March 23—that’s the Friday before the oral arguments, which are scheduled for March 26, 27, and 28. By that time we will all be chewing our fingernails for the upcoming argument, but all are welcome!

Lawful rule in The Oresteia, Richard III and Antigone

My latest draft article, Love And Solipsism: Lawful And Arbitrary Rule in Classical Drama is now available to download from SSRN. In it, I look at The Oresteia, Richard III, and the Antigones of Sophocles and Jean Anouilh to see what they have to say about law and tyranny. I argue that in the Oresteia, we see lawful rule as the domestication of force; the submission of coercion to rationality and public deliberation—to a willing cooperation in mutual enterprise. In this, law really is like love. In Richard III, by contrast, we see that the tyrant is a kind of solipsist, who seeks to force the world to comply with his will—he is a kind of rapist, trying compel the citizen into the act of union. In Antigone, by contrast, we see the dissident as she who clings to truth, refusing to collaborate in the fiction the tyrant demands. I especially reject the view that Sophocles’ Antigone has a “tragic flaw” of willfulness, and I look at the way Anouilh's Antigone is deprived of her ability to be honest, thanks to the pervasive totalitarian state.

This is just a draft, and I am eager for suggestions and comments, so please let me know if you have any thoughts.

Friday foto

Now, you and I know that "Bikini Bottom" is a place where Spongebob lives. But when the manufacturers of this pretend-shave kit were putting it together, didn't someone say "Hm... 'Pretend to Shave Bikini Bottom doesn't sound quite right...."

Downton Abbey paper dolls

Play at home!

The relationship of states to the federal government

My most recent post in the ongoing discussion about substantive due process discusses federalism, states' rights, and the Individual Mandate.