• Fouad Ajami posts from the Syrian refugee camps in Turkey.

• One of those days at Hoover when we have to gleefully embrace what nerds we really are. Share our excitement at the release by the Hoover Library and Archives of more than three hundred programs from William F. Buckley’s Firing Line television series now available on Amazon Instant Video, which offers instant streaming on compatible devices.

• “Can California be fixed?” Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO’s The Corner.

• A New York Times reported story on Gov. Brown’s leadership during the Golden State’s fiscal crisis, quoting Bill Whalen, Hoover fellow, former speechwriter to Gov. Pete Wilson, and adviser to Republican governors in the state.

• On NBC Bay Area News, a 6-min interview with Tammy Frisby on Gov. Brown’s May Revision to the state budget, upcoming tax initiative, and the need for real tax reform.

• Speaking of tax reform for economic growth and steadier state revenues in California — from The Wall Street Journal archives – and worth going back to read: economists Michael Boskin & John Cogan on “How California Can Get Its Groove Back.”

•  Also from the WSJ archives: Boskin & Cogan on “California’s Greek Tragedy.”

• While you’re at Taylor’s blog, Economics One, Taylor assigns some required reading – a 1988 Hoover working paper by Milton Friedman (E-88-48) describing the “plucking model” of business cycles. Also two graphs, curated by Taylor, that provide more evidence on how government action is interfering with the usual “plucking” response and holding back the economic recovery.

• Fouad Ajami traveled to Turkey with Anderson Cooper to meet Syrian families living in refugee camps.

• “Michael Sandel Is Wrong on Markets…and (no surprise!) Tom Friedman is wrong, too.” It’s too bad Richard Epstein never tells us what he really thinks.

These lines were a throwback to the class rhetoric not only of Theodore Roosevelt, whose speech President Obama was channeling, but also of cousin Franklin, who fulminated in his First Inaugural against “the unscrupulous money changers [who] stand indicted in the court of public opinion.” These attacks are ostensibly not on the rich themselves, but on the undeserving rich. These poor souls were formerly characterized mostly by their practices and disposition (unscrupulousness and greed) and their occupation (finance). President Obama has added a political dimension: refusing to buckle to his idea of paying a “fair share.” The good or deserving rich, by contrast, are those like Warren Buffet, George Clooney, and Jon Corzine, who abhor the Bush tax cuts.

In the selection of Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee President Obama has found a target too rich to pass up.

Last week marked the official start of a campaign that has been going non-stop for over a year. Addressing a large crowd at Virginia Commonwealth University, Obama directly measured his opponent, praising him as a “patriotic American” who had “run a large financial firm.” He continued: “But I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from that experience. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and investors like him make money, the rest of us will automatically do well as well.”

This sketch of Republican economic theory followed Michelle Obama’s introduction, which, without directly mentioning the investor opponent, invited the audience to draw a contrast between average folks, like herself and Barack, and the privileged, who know little of life’s difficulties: “Barack Obama, he is the son of a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. He’s the grandson of a woman who woke up before dawn every day to catch a bus to her job at a bank.”

Since the Obama campaign is assiduously courting the woman’s vote, especially the demographic of the unmarried, there was certainly no reason to mention that Barack had a grandfather too, and that the couple, who brought Obama up for a large part of his childhood, lived a comfortable life in Hawaii. It was more important to expand on his grandmother’s plight: “And even though Barack’s grandmother worked hard to help support her family — and she was good at her job — like so many women, she hit that glass ceiling.  And men no more qualified than she was were promoted up that ladder ahead of her.”

The contrast here is to Mitt Romney, who had the misfortune to be the son of an intact family and to enjoy the advantages of his parents’ considerable wealth. As for the previous generation, however, it is noteworthy that Mitt’s paternal grandparents, after leaving Mexico, initially had quite a tough time of it, rising very early in the morning, no doubt before dawn, to eke potatoes out of marginal farmland in Idaho.

Winning votes is the name of the game in a political campaign. What political value does the President hope to extract from his appeal to class antagonisms? Some have supposed that what is in play here is the classic ploy to stoke envy, the desire to take away what others have. The problem with this analysis is that most Americans are not much moved by this passion. A recent Gallup poll shows that almost two-thirds of Americans believe that the nation benefits from having a class of the rich, which is the same result as twelve years ago. Still, this tactic may work to fire up his base, as Democrats are split down the middle on this question. Where President Obama might score some additional points is among those who are angry (and this would include many Republicans) at the better off who were bailed out under the doctrine of  “too big to fail.”

Probably the most important support for these attacks on the rich comes from within the intellectual classes, where various ideas of fairness and social justice have been making inroads. The simplest idea is that the level of benefits that has now been voted into law represents an unalterable minimum, secured as a matter of every person’s rights. If this level cannot be sustained under current tax rates, the money must be gotten from somewhere, which means from the rich. Forget whether the numbers add up; for the moment, it is the point of fairness that is at issue. If the current level is the minimum, being already part of a collective pact, it is impossible to ask anyone to give up a benefit before taking more from the wealthy.

The exploding budget deficit has been used, paradoxically, to work in favor of this position. Just as conservatives once employed swelling deficits as an argument to strangle the beast and stop government spending, so liberals employ the huge overhang today to justify taxes on the wealthy. The deficit, it is rightly said, is a common liability. It is therefore not a matter of anyone being against the rich or of taking from some to give to others; it is a matter of paying for what we all owe.

These arguments about fairness are backed by a developing set of ideas about the collective ownership of the wealth of society. The notion is that property is not, as our economic theory and understandings of natural rights have held, owned chiefly by individuals; instead, property is in reality and by right ought to be owned by the collectivity. This idea goes much further than the simple point, accepted by all, that judges and legislators must define the contours of private property by rulings and laws that fix contracts and modes of ownership. It challenges the very concept of the primacy of private property. The popular spokesperson for this position has been Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School whom President Obama appointed as interim chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 and who is now running for Senator of Massachusetts, challenging Scott Brown. Professor Warren instructed her audience during the campaign:

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Because we live in an interdependent society, in which certain benefits are given to all, no one has a genuine primary claim to property. Differences in individual effort or ability (or differences in luck) are secondary, not primary factors. Morally speaking, property is public in the first instance, after which, perhaps, the law may decide on some residual basis to allow individuals to keep different amounts.

This logic can be taken a step further. It can be said that the collectivity has the primary claim to ownership not only because we all pay for essential services, but also because we happen, by chance, to belong to that collectivity itself. Michael Kinsley, the well-known political commentator, working now at Bloomberg, has argued this position:

[E]very American selling anything benefits from doing so in the world’s richest market. An American doctor earns many times what the same doctor would earn in, say, India. This is not because he or she works many times harder. It’s not even primarily because our government doles out hundreds of billions for health care each year. It’s because we are a richer society, for reasons the American doctor had nothing to do with.

Where and when we happen to have been born—in what country and in what century—are the primary factors that determine wealth, an obvious observation that is somehow thought to undermine the claims of the industrious and the rational to individual property.  We stand on the backs of those in previous generations who built our economy and society, which in the Leftist view transfers ownership of property from the person to the collectivity, and perhaps beyond to the world community. Academics are enthralled by such sophistry, which translates into support for Occupy Wall Street. Of course, the same line of reasoning applies to their own work, as they can hardly claim primary title to their thoughts. They went to schools and universities paid for in part by the collectivity, and they live in a culture that has been created by past thinkers. Many academics acknowledge this truth, and the scrupulous among them pay their debt in the currency of the footnote. It’s a lot less expensive than a thirty-percent tax increase.

• Let the General election begin! Bill Whalen analyzes the politics of the President’s new position on gay marriage on KQED’s (San Francisco public radio) Forum with Michael Krasny.

• Hoover fellows take over the WSJ‘s Op-Ed page and have a few things to say about European political economy – Robert J. Barro here and Josef Joffe here.

• Other happenings on the Continent – a look at the critical problems of Russian state companies by economist and Soviet & Russian specialist Paul Gregory.

• Ying Ma on the saga of another Chinese dissident, writer Yu Jie, who refers to himself as “a nerd who stutters,” and the glimpse his story provides into the Chinese authoritarian state.

• And hearty congratulations to Hoover Senior Fellow John Taylor, who won the Hayek Award for his book First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring American Prosperity.

This comes on the heels of several high-profile cases of accounting fraud in recent years, and the Securities and Exchange Commission charging accounting firm Deloitte for refusing to hand over documents in a fraud case of a Chinese firm listed in the U.S. (Deloitte claims it would violate Chinese law to do so).  The Finance Ministry’s action will be read as validating concerns about the opaque and often corrupt practices of Chinese firms.

Given the collusion of Chinese government and business, both through state-owned firms and politicized decisions on everything from bank lending to police investigations, the regulatory take-over of auditing firms bodes ill for investors getting reliable information on the business practices of companies in which they take an interest.

Academics and politicians often marvel at what French Finance Minister (and later President) Valery Giscard d’Estaing called the “exorbitant privilege” that accrues to the United States by the U.S. dollar being the world’s major holding currency.  And it is a privilege, often undeserved by us, as now, when our government proves unwilling to make sensible choices about economic fundamentals such as debt reduction.  But it merits remembering that American dominance is not alone a function of American choices.  It also results from the choices of others.

For all the talk of a rising China, they are making quite a number of choices that will keep the dollar a safe harbor of value and call into question the reliability of information so important to encourage investment.  China may not rise either so far or so fast as predicted unless they reform the crony authoritarianism that looks to be the hallmark of their economic model.

• New data on the effect of regulations on business, highlighted by David Henderson at EconLog.

• True blue California calls out the Obama administration on its waiver policy for No Child Left Behind – read Michael Petrilli at the EducationNext blog.

• Behind the curtain at Massachusetts schools, which are lauded as some of the finest in the nation. Paul Peterson on why all is not as it seems – and how bright kids suffer.

• How will the American people sum up the economy over the last two years? First, ask how the media will sum it up. Victor Davis Hanson over at National Review Online’s The Corner.

Our inaugural data post is a graph generated by John F. Cogan, the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University. The graph shows federal government outlays as a percent of GDP from 1994 to 2022. The graph presents historical outlays and the striking contrast between two different future scenarios: one that follows the Obama administration’s budget and the other that follows the budget path that would be created under Paul Ryan’s plan.

Sign up for the Advancing a Free Society RSS feed to follow our data stream.

“The history of African Americans in Pennsylvania reflects a diverse and unique blend of cultural, social and economic influences which have had and continue to have a beneficial impact on life in the commonwealth,” Corbett said.

The commission advises and makes recommendations to the governor on policies, procedures, legislation, and regulations that affect the African American community. It works to articulate and address the unique needs and issues of concerns of the African American community.

The following individuals have been named as commission members:

Otto Banks, Dauphin County
Wayne Barnett, Philadelphia County
Rev. James Breese, Luzerne County
Fred Clark, Dauphin County
Elizabeth Dennis, Allegheny County
Evan Frazier, Allegheny County
Maurice Goodman, Philadelphia County
Rev. Terrence Griffith, Philadelphia County
Cathy Hardaway, Lackawanna County
Rodney Little, Philadelphia County
Sara Lomax Reese, Montgomery County
Marcia Perry, Dauphin County
Rev. Michael Robinson, Delaware County
Dr. Kiron Skinner, Allegheny County
Ronald Steele, Erie County
Karen Stokes, Philadelphia County (Chair)
Bishop A.E. Sullivan Jr., Dauphin County
Floyd Titus, Allegheny County

• Europe’s austerity experiment has failed, according to John Cassidy at The New Yorker. Over at Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts responds that the Europeans haven’t even stepped up the lab bench.

• Mark Harrison on the two conflicting purposes of taxation in a democracy.

• And in today’s Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz assigns some required reading.

• Also in Afghanistan this week – make that every week – American drones. Victor Davis Hanson asks: “Have drones killed the traditional American way of war?“

• On the eve of new jobs numbers, John Taylor highlights three graphs of data on the slow recovery. Spoiler alert: “History is not on the side of those who blame the preceeding deep recession and financial crisis.”

• “About 10 months ago, more than 400 ‘regular’ Californians from around the state gathered for a weekend in Torrance to discuss major issues facing California. It was the first-ever California Deliberative Poll, sponsored by reformers, academics and foundations. A random sample of Californians sat down, discussed and analyzed some important matters. It was a remarkable experience in honest-to-goodness democracy.” In The Sacramento Bee, Hoover’s David Davenport and Lenny Mendonca of California Forward report on what these Californians say they want done to the initiative process.

• Looking for worthwhile distractions as you wait for the Supreme Court to issue its health care law ruling? Clint Bolick’s new book Two-Fer: Electing a President and a Supreme Court.

• Beyond Bo Xilai — The new issue of The China Leadership Monitor has been released.

First, the financial health – a state budget that’s reached “code red”, as in a rising tide of red ink.

According to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state’s General Fund is now $3 billion shy of the year-to-date target. Unless that changes, it’ll mean more nasty budget cuts this summer regardless of the outcome of Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax-hike ballot proposition.

This latest bad news didn’t go unnoticed by Standard & Poor’s, which already gives the Golden State a nation’s-worst A- minus rating. S&P likely won’t downgrade California any further (for now), but it is concerned about Sacramento’s direction.

Which takes us to the second reason to reach for the Tums: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s plan to amend California’s initiative process.

Steinberg’s fix, introduced in this speech to the Sacramento Press Club:

1)  Allow the Legislature to place initiatives on the ballot via a simple-majority vote (at present, a two-thirds majority is required – Steinberg wouldn’t change that for constitutional amendments);

2)  Allow initiative proponents to negotiate with the governor and Legislature – either to amend the ballot measure, or pass a law without the hassle of going to the polls.

3)  Free up the Legislature to amend or repeal an initiative once it’s been on the books for 10 years.

So how would all of this make a “bad” situation worse? Let’s take them, in order:

1)  Removing the Two-Thirds Requirement. The argument here is the Legislature, like the initiative process itself, reflects vox populi – if Democratic lawmakers want to place a tax hike on the ballot, they’re simply reflecting a majority of Californians’ wishes as they constitute an overwhelming majority of the Legislature.  The problem with this: the Legislature doesn’t reflect California either in its polarized ideology deep or its partisan makeup (both chambers are nearly two-thirds Democratic, yet Democrats account for only 43.5% of all registered voters). And it gives the Dems an easy out for avoiding spending cuts. Like 2010’s Proposition 25, which changed approval of the budget approval from a two-thirds to a simple majority (translation: majority power play), this is simply another means of preventing minority Republicans from throwing up a roadblock to the majority’s plans. Clever politics by the Senate Democratic leader, but misleading advertising.

2)  Amending Ballot Measures. It sounds like meddling, but Steinberg has a legitimate gripe. Take, for example, Proposition 71 – California’s stem-cell research initiative – which, with a little fine-tuning (and some rewriting), perhaps could have avoided a legal challenge that kept the measure tied up in legal knots for the better part of 18 months. The so-called “indirect initiative process” was proposed a decade ago by a bipartisan commission on California initiative reform, in part as a means of reducing initiative clutter (now a bigger concern for California, with all ballot props relegated to the November ballot).

3)  The 10-Year Review. A red flag – say, the size of one of those gigantic banners they roll out at the World Series. Give liberal lawmakers a chance to undo recent ballot history, and you can say bye-bye to some if not all of the following: Prop 209 (university racial quotas); Prop 227 (bilingual education) – and the bane of the left’s existence in Sacramento, the landmark Proposition 13.

The fact is: California lawmakers have a love-hate relationship with the initiative process, Sen. Steinberg being no exception. He bemoans having his hands tied by ballot box budgeting (the latest installment: this fall’s Proposition 29, which would tax tobacco but dictates that the money be spent on cancer research). Yet Steinberg was the author of 2004’s Prop 63, which imposed a 1% tax on millionaires and earmarked the revenue for mental-health programs.

Reform of California’s initiative is long overdue – a consensus opinion, save for those folks who find signature-gathering to be a lucrative industry in the Golden State’s otherwise languid economy (California’s “recovery” running about three years’ behind the rest of the nation).

But giving the Legislature a greater say in what makes it way to the ballot? Or, in Steinberg’s case, making it easier to dump tax increases on the ballot and look for voter-stamped bailout, as opposed to tackling the chronic deficit as not just only revenue but a spending problem? And giving his party a means of killing initiatives that don’t pass its p.c. litmus test?

Buyers beware.