More Famous Claremont McKenna Alums

A reader sent me this list of folks I hadn't included in our famous alums list. Please feel free to send more.

Dr. Jeff Eisenach '79, founder of The Progress and Freedom Foundation and former Executive Director of GOPAC (back when it was part of Newt Gingrich's world).

Mr. Don Hall, Jr. '79, Co-Chairman, Chief Executive Officer of Hallmark Cards, President of Hallmark Cards, Director of Hallmark Cards and Director of Hallmark Entertainment Holdings.

Michael Shear, current National Political Reporter, Washington Post.

Build those Cell Towers in Claremont!

Last year's cell service for Verizon was horrendous thanks to a plan by the City of Claremont to ban the towers. Calls dropped for no apparent reason and my room happened to be a dead-zone.

They cited some kind of "concerns" about the health effects of building towers in the town. Fortunately, with the changing economy and the bank account of the city smaller than it would otherwise be, some of our Claremont elected officials approved a plan to expedite the process of installing towers in our fair town.

The Claremont Insider has more...

If you like cellular towers, get ready for more.

The Claremont City Council last night approved a streamlined process for getting the beasts installed. They're much nicer now than they were 10 years ago, so you may see them masquerading as trees or even barns.

The wireless industry pays cities well for the use of parks and other public places to set their towers, and with our town's habit of spending like a drunken sailor, even with the current economic climate, an ever-shrinking municipal General Fund reserve, and a now-deferred $15.2 billion state deficit waiting to raise its ugly head in a year, Claremont is seeking out every available revenue stream possible.

Desperate times require desperate measures. Or, a cell-tower in every park.

How Shocking : Yet Another Foreign Anti-Globalization Speaker at Scripps II

Below, you will find a list of our questions and notes for Klein's talk

About the Book

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine:_The_Rise_of_Disaster_Capitalism
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieyjfZDUIc

Rebuttals Online

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9384
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9626
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/09/05/johan-norberg-vs-naomi-klein-round-3/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/books/29redb.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.slate.com/id/2175133/pagenum/2/
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto101920072036549490&page=2
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n09/holm01_.html
http://www.nysun.com/arts/shock-jock/63867/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112101919.html
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2007/09/shcoked.html
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126575.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/books/books-okonski081101.shtml
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/07/naomi-klein-an.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/10/naomi_klein_smackdown_roundup.cfm
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/05/22/l-1-and-china-oh-nevermind-naomi-klein/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/10/02/more-on-klein-and-cusack/

From Johan Norberg's initial Critique of the Shock Doctrine:

1. Given that your family moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft, how did you overlook Milton Friedman's pivotal role in ending the draft? These are Hardly the actions of a so-called neocon warmonger, who in fact was not only against the Iraq invasion, but also the Gulf War. Of course, it seems highly unlikely that you didn't know this as you quote from interviews where he opposes the Iraq war.

3. From where or whom do you draw the evidence that free markets are unpopular? A survey of 46 countries conducted in 2007 by Pew Research Center showed a plurality, and in some cases an overwhelming majority of support for the free market. Why also do you ignore the rapidly liberalizing democracies like Iceland, Ireland, Estonia, Australia or the United States, where reforms were given renewed political support in several elections? In fact, Estonia liberated from the anti-free market ideology you espouse through a democratically elected government. Estonia's former Prime Minister, Mart Laar, cited Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, which I'm sure you've read, as the inspiration for the wildly popular free market reforms that catapulted Estonia from abject poverty to among the highest standards of living in Europe today.

4. How does the thesis of your book reconcile with the fact that World War 1 led to Communism in Russia and Hyperinflation in Germany led to National Socialism, or the incredible growth in Government spending, size and regulation during the Great Depression years and WWII? Were these examples of shock therapy?

General:

1. Professor R.J. Rummel standardized Freedom House's Political Freedom and Civil Liberties index with the Economic Freedom of the World index and found a strong correlation between political, civil and economic freedom. Countries with low economic freedom, i.e. a lack of free markets, had low political freedom. How do you explain this phenomenon? How does it fit into the thesis of your book?

2. Can you name any economists or their specific works who believe in this global strategy of using Shock Therapy or a crisis of some sort to impose free markets? Also, what do you make of the fact that economists from the University of Chicago had working documents on several economies, including the United States, India, China, Russia, Chile, and Great Britain.

3. The most recent Economic Freedom of the World Index showed a substantial drop in rank for the United States. In other words, economic freedom in the United States has declined in the past 8 years. In 2000, the US was ranked the 2nd most free economy, compared to the current position- 8th most free today. The report found huge increases in government spending, regulation and barriers to international trade. In fact, there had not been such a large increase in government size and spending since LBJ. How does this recent finding fit into your book and general thesis? Does it contradict your notion of President Bush as a free marketer using Iraq as the crisis.

4. How does the economic turnaround in India during the early 90's fit into your book and your main thesis? You briefly mention the Tsunami, but leave out the democratically elected governments throughout the 90's who ran on a platform of privatization and deregulation. Why were free markets so popular? Why have they been more successful than the previous 40 years of socialism.

5. In the Shock Doctrine, you make no reference to the system beliefs known as libertarianism. Milton Friedman often described himself as a libertarian and was associated with numerous libertarian think tanks and organizations. Was Friedman wrong or lying about being a libertarian, or, in your world, are libertarians part of the same crisis causing corporatist framework.

6. You mentioned the Tsunami in South Asia as another example of Milton Friedman's crisis therapy. Did Milton Friedman advocate land grabbing policies in the region? Since you've extensively studied the works of Dr. Friedman, you would have come across his argument stressing the importance of property rights, and their role in maintaining a free society and economy. Has Dr. Friedman ever advocated a land grabbing policy? Has he ever contradicted himself by saying that property rights can be violated?

7. Milton Friedman once said that the biggest enemy of the Free Market was business because they wanted competitive and open markets for everyone else but special privileges from the government for themselves. How would you define Friedman's beliefs. Was he a libertarian, neoconservative, liberal? Does he sound like a corporatist from the above statement?

8. John Maynard Keynes once described the Soviet Union as 'impressive' and felt that his ideas on the macroeconomy were adequately implemented in the totalitarian state. He thought that Britain had a lot to learn from this great social 'experiment.' For someone who demonizes Friedman's ideology for dictatorial brutality, how would you judge Keynes's impression of the Soviet Union. Using your logic, should we attribute the atrocities of the evil empire to Keynes?

How Shocking : Yet Another Foreign Anti-Globalization Speaker at Scripps

By Aditya Bindal and Ilan Wurman

Last week, we went to hear Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, rant about capitalism, Milton Friedman, and the Chicago School of Economics. The talk was sponsored by the Scripps Humanities Institute and as a part of their Global Media speaker series. Some of our readers may remember this Canadian anti-globalist from last spring when the CC went to her speech at UCLA. Soon after the talk, Charles Johnson wrote:

'Klein, ironically enough, claims to have written the anti-Friedman book against "radical free market reforms," knew nothing about Estonia's, India's, or China's economic transformations using Friedman policies when I questioned her in front of her audience of sycophants.'

That almost seems like advertising -- No Logo?

For our more fortunate readers who haven't read Klein's slander, Cato Institute Scholar Johan Norberg has written a devastating critique of The Shock Doctrine. I highly recommend his Cato Briefing Paper to set the record state and separate libel from argument. According to Norberg: (emphasis mine)

"Klein's analysis is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. Friedman's own words reveal him to be an advocate of peace, democracy, and individual rights. He argued that gradual economic reforms were often preferable to swift ones and that the public should be fully informed about them, the better to prepare themselves in advance. Further, Friedman condemned the Pinochet regime and opposed the war in Iraq."

He adds,

"..in the absence of serious arguments against the consequences of free markets, we are left with Klein’s reasonable critique of torture, dictatorships, government corruption, and corporate welfare. In the final analysis, The Shock Doctrine boils down to the curious claim that Milton Friedman and free markets are bad because governments are incompetent, corrupt, and cruel. It is probably not a coincidence that there are blurbs from four fiction writers on the back of the book."

So it came as no surprise that Scripps College invited Klein to speak about the ills of globalization and free trade. Although Klein is far from being an economist or even an academic for that matter, her largely friendly audience was fully convinced that Friedman and the Chicago Boys conspired with other think tanks, dictators and military generals to impose market reforms on an unwilling population by using shock therapy.

In her talk at Scripps, Klein mentions that the first people to espouse this idea of "radical" deregulation and free markets were the dictatorships (a la Chile, Argentina) that imposed those policy ideas on their countries undemocratically. Last time we checked, Adam Smith and John Locke weren't dictators of anything. But that's neither here nor there. Her more insidious argument boils down essentially to the following: capitalism and free markets are imposed undemocratically. She mentions Bolivia as another example. In the Q&A session, I (Ilan Wurman) explained to her that, despite picking and choosing examples from particular countries in particular moments in time, when you apply a statistical study of economic freedom and political freedom across all countries, there is an impressively strong correlation between economic freedom and political freedom. The study referred to relates Cato's Index of Economic Freedom and Freedom House's Political and Civil Liberties Index.

So how can she say that free markets are imposed undemocratically, and how does she respond to the fact that the policies she espouses seem to exist concurrently with a lack of political freedom?

She doesn't. In her response, she essentially said, "You're wrong, but I can't tell you why." She skirted the question entirely. She said that she doesn't have a response now, because "it's complex," but that on her website there is a full rebuttal to that argument. (Unless we missed something, her website had nothing on the EFW and the proven statistical correlation between Economic Freedom, Political Freedom and Civil Liberties) But rather than moving on, she proceeded to say that most economists don't take the Index of Economic Freedom seriously because it is conducted by the Cato Institute and is ideologically skewed. The irony seems to be beyond Ms. Klein: that Cato's "ideological" criteria for economic freedom correlates with political freedom suggests that she should support those criteria! That is assuming, of course, that she supports political freedom. Despite her dodge and the blatant irony, the audience ate it up with applause.

Of course, keeping in character with her book, Klein fails to provide a source for her claim that the EFW isn't taken seriously by economists. Let alone that the EFW is compiled and analyzed by prominent economists, Dr. James Gwartney and Dr. Robert Lawson. For a full list of papers on the EFW and its findings, click here.

Klein went on to add psychology (or mind-reading) to the list of fields about which she is not qualified to speak yet does so anyway. When conservatives apply "radical" ideas in states of crisis (or "shock"), such as drilling for more oil when the price hits $130 a barrel, Klein seems to believe that they are genuinely doing so to try to keep the working man in a state of repression. She even seemed to acknowledge that FDR's 100 days of legislation may very well seem like "shock therapy" but from the liberal side. "But there's a real difference," says Klein. The liberals genuinely want to do good; the conservatives get together in smoke-filled, secret meetings and contemplate how to repress the lower classes. Yep, she's really pegged conservatives.

According to Klein, liberal shocks are democratic, while conservative shocks are undemocratic. Her naive understanding of history and economics is very telling -- she has no problem with the use of shock therapy as long as she agrees with policy being implemented. If the 'crisis' is used for market reforms and economic freedom, then the ideas and the people behind those ideas are evil, undemocratic conspirators. Using this dubious logic, Klein stamps every market reform in the world with words like 'crisis' and 'shock.' Her Wall of Shame includes Reagan, Thatcher, Tianemen Square (fortunately, Klein's lies don't quite fit the timeline for this one), Latin America and South East Asia. But, as Johan Norberg pointed out in his Briefing Paper, countries around the world have moved away from the failure of Socialism and Keynesian economics:

"If we look at the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World statistics, we find only four economies about which we have data that haven't liberalized at all since 1980.(31) All others have. Obviously this also means that we will see economic liberalization even in brutal dictatorships, just as in peaceful democracies."

Her complete disregard for statistical analysis and reliance on anecdotal evidence led her to believe that President Bush was the shining example of free markets and Friedman's ideas. She made the case that President Bush was pursuing Friedman's ideas through the 'privatized' Iraq war and his Katrina relief effort. The problem with this argument, like all other arguments in her book, is that the numbers just don't match up. The past 8 years have seen the largest increase in spending (total and non-defense) since the Nixon and LBJ. In addition to the growth in government size, the Bush administration observed a huge increase in regulation and barriers to international trade.

According to the Independent Institute:

"Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs, author of such key books as Crisis and Leviathan and the new Against Leviathan, (predicted that) this explosion of government power would only have been possible in the aftermath of 9/11. Times of crisis present the easiest opportunities for politicians to take advantage of a frightened American public."

President George W. Bush is now on his way to becoming the first full-term president since John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) to not veto a single bill. The result is a congress that has been completely unconstrained in satiating its appetite for pork and corporate welfare. In response, Democratic challenger John Kerry has maligned alleged spending cuts and called for even higher taxes and spending. The consequence is that we now have two parties competing to see which can grow government faster."

Higgs isn't the only one making such a claim. The EFW, which Klein chose to dismiss, found that economic freedom in the United States has declined in the past 8 years. Government spending, subsidies, regulation, tariffs, and other barriers to trade increased during the Bush presidency. So how does Noami Klein explain this phenomenon? Wasn't the shock from 9/11 and the Iraq war supposed to pave the way for free market reforms? How does she explain this increase in government?

Once again, she doesn't. When I asked Klein to address this apparent paradox, she stated, 'I don't believe in the free market ideology.' She claimed that I was correct in observing an increase in government over the past 8 years (actually the EFW made this observation) and said that, 'this is what they do.' According to Klein, the increase in government naturally follows a free market platform. She then switched topics and gave a confused reply, ranting about Pinochet and South East Asia. But her response raises a new problem in her thesis. Reagan and Thatcher explicitly campaigned and enacted on a platform of limited government, deregulation, and free markets. This was in contrast to Bush's 'compassionate conservatism', which is easily distinguishable from laissez-faire.

Towards the end of the Q&A session, Charles Johnson asked her to comment on Friedman and his role on ending the draft. At first, it seems that Naomi Klein would agree with Friedman on ending the draft, since her own family moved to Canada during the Vietnam war. But instead, Klein attacked Friedman by stating that the draft was socialist, and Friedman wanted to privatize the army. She even managed connect Friedman's advocacy to end the draft with Blackwater and Halliburton! Needless to say, defenders of liberty, including Milton Friedman, opposed the draft because it contradicted the principle of self ownership. In an argument with Gen. William Westmoreland, Friedman famously said: (emphasis mine)

"General, would you rather command an army of slaves?"
Retort by Milton Friedman to Gen. William Westmoreland's claim that he did not want to command "an army of mercenaries" during a heated discussion on the costs and benefits of endorsing a volunteer army vs. the draft in the 1960s

While we got this outrageous claim about Friedman and the draft on record, I wish Charles could ask her about Estonia and the Baltic states, like he did last spring. Unlike the UCLA talk -- where she admitted to not knowing anything about the Baltic tigers in her talk at Scripps, she vaguely mentioned the PBS Documentary, 'Commanding Heights: Battle for the World Economy' and gave an explanation for leaving out Estonia from her book.

Luckily, this time we have it all on video. Sometime next week, our Claremont Conservative YouTube channel will be operational and we will post all our videos from Klein's speech. Also, we will post our document that contained questions and notes for the talk. Unfortunately, we could only ask three, since the easily convinced audience had several 'What can I do (sometimes modified to include the word grassroots) to stop the evil right wing conspiracy?' type of questions.