“Wasting resources, capital and income on stuff nobody really needs,” Charles Hugh Smith wrote in 2017, “is a monumental disaster on multiple fronts. Rather than establish incentives to conserve and invest wisely, our system glorifies waste and the destruction of income and capital, as if burning time, capital, resources and wealth on stuff nobody needs is strengthening the economy.”

I come across the “stuff nobody needs” argument frequently, from voices all across the political spectrum, for reasons ranging from economic to environmental to spiritual.

I also notice that in the featured portrait on Smith’s blog, he’s holding what appears to be a pretty sweet Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.

Does anyone “really need” an electric guitar?

Presumably Smith believes he needs one. Maybe even an authentic Les Paul. Maybe even more than one guitar (like the Fender Stratocaster or clone thereof pictured elsewhere on his site).

And who has the right to veto his judgment on the issue, so long as the “resources, capital and income” he’s “wasting” on it are his own?

I settled for an inexpensive Epiphone model of the Les Paul for my own, perhaps larger than justifiable, guitar collection (my wife frowned at the price tag of the genuine Gibson).

I wouldn’t dream of claiming that my “need” for a Les Paul is more urgent than, say, a starving child’s need for a hot meal or a homeless person’s need for shelter.

On the other hand, my purchase of that guitar helped create paychecks that put meals in bellies and roofs over heads.

Economic demands are mutually self-fulfilling. Your purchase of a cup of fancy coffee puts caffeine in your bloodstream and money in the pockets of those who brought it to you — money they can spend fulfilling THEIR needs.

The same thing goes for planes, trains, automobiles, electric guitars, and the latest slice-it, dice-it, cook-it contraptions you (yes, I know it’s you) buy after watching those cheesy infomercials.

Yes, large-scale consumer economies produce negative “externalities” such as environmental damage.

Yes, those externalities are bad things which a more just economic system would build back into prices so as to discourage “over-consumption” and/or encourage more efficient and less damaging production techniques.

Current economic systems, including all state regulatory schemes, be they called “capitalist,” or “socialist,” or some hybrid, tend to subsidize those externalities. You pay for them with your taxes, whether you actually buy the subsidized goods or not.

That being the case, there’s no reason to feel guilty for buying this year’s “frivolous” holiday gifts that “nobody really needs.” Not because holiday shopping “strengthens the economy,” but because you want to give them and the recipients want to get them.

PS: Santa, bring me a Gretsch, please.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“If the facts are your side,” famed attorney and former law professor Alan Dershowitz instructed his students, “pound the facts into the table. If the law is on your side, pound the law into the table. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.”

As Republican attacks on the US House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry grow in fury, they more and more resemble the third instruction in Dershowitz’s maxim.

The latest Republican angle on the inquiry is that House Democrats are violating President Donald Trump’s constitutional rights under the Sixth Amendment.

“Impeachment is a legal proceeding,” writes Federalist Society Chairman and law professor Steve Calabresi at The Daily Caller, “and just as criminal defendants have constitutional rights in criminal trials so too does Trump have constitutional rights, which House Democrats are denying him.”

These rights, says Calabresi (and the US Constitution’s Sixth Amendment) include the right to a speedy public trial, the right to be informed of the charges against him, and the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him.

At first blush, these might sound like cogent legal arguments — pounding the law into the table, so to speak. But they’re not. They’re just pounding the table.

Calabresi calls impeachment a “legal proceeding,” but that term appears nowhere in the Sixth Amendment. The rights protected therein are protected in “criminal prosecutions.” Impeachment is not a criminal prosecution.  The maximum penalty is removal from office. It’s an employee disciplinary proceeding of sorts.

To the extent that the process does resemble a criminal prosecution, the House inquiry function is analogous to a police investigation or a grand jury probe. As of yet there are no “charges” for the president to be informed of.  A House vote to impeach is the equivalent of  filing charges or handing down an indictment. That happens at the end of, not during, the inquiry.

If the House votes to impeach, there will be a trial in the US Senate. At that point the “prosecution” will identify those whom it intends to call as witnesses, and Trump’s attorneys will “be confronted with” those witnesses and have an opportunity to vigorously cross-examine them.

Calabresi’s claims are the equivalent of arguing that if a 911 caller reports a bank robbery in progress, the suspects’ constitutional rights are violated unless the police chief takes them and the 911 caller out on the bank’s front steps and lets them argue the matter in front of a crowd — before charging the suspects, and whether or not the caller would be summoned as a trial witness.

When Trump’s defenders merely pound the table, the presumptive reason is that they’re fresh out of fact and law to pound instead.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

The US House of Representatives soberly fulfills its constitutional obligation to investigate alleged wrongdoing by a sitting president, steadily building its case for that president’s impeachment.

The Deep State schemes to remove a sitting president, trumping up (pun intended) supposed “high crimes and misdemeanors” and gaming a faux-constitutional “impeachment probe” to deny that president due process to which he’s entitled.

Both of the previous paragraphs describe the same set of events. We’re living through them right now, and we’re in the grip of a second-level “Rashomon effect.”

Per Wikipedia, that effect (named for a movie in which four witnesses offer contradictory descriptions of a murder) “describes a situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved.”

Extended to the audience, the effect plays out as two people watching the same film, each seeing it so differently from the other that for all intents and purposes they’re “watching two different movies.”

Both viewers are quite sure that their interpretations are correct, and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll come to any agreement as to what they both just objectively saw.

There’s one thing that both viewers probably know, though:

The House is going to vote to impeach, because the President Donald J. Trump impeachment version of Rashomon is directed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a student of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov.

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall,” wrote Chekhov, “in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

When Pelosi announced the House impeachment inquiry on September 24, she was figuratively hanging a gun on the wall of the House chamber, after 2 1/2 years of resisting impeachment talk and suppressing impeachment efforts in the House.

Why? In addition to her theatrical acumen, Pelosi also knows basic arithmetic. She saw the votes were there to impeach.

SOMEONE was going to hang the gun on the wall.

SOMEONE was going to fire the gun.

Pelosi could direct the play, or she could settle for a bit part (and probably lose her position as Speaker).

If Pelosi’s the director of Rashomon: The House Impeaches Trump, Trump himself is both producer and leading man. He’s been begging for this role since before his inauguration. He commissioned the script, donated the props, and spent 2 1/2 years trying to get Pelosi to take the bait. He loves drama above all else and expects, based on experience, to profit politically from this production.

You’ve got opinions on the impeachment process. I do too. We’re probably watching two different movies to at least some extent.

But in our hearts, we both know how this movie ends: The House will vote  to impeach Trump, probably before Thanksgiving (disclosure: I’ve got a small bet in a prediction market that it will happen before the end of the year).

Coming soon: Trump returns as Colonel Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men: This Time It’s Senatorial.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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