If Mitt Romney becomes president, there are a lot of important foreign policy decisions that he’d leave up to others. Most notably, Romney often says that whatever the generals decide, that’s the course he’ll take in Afghanistan (although he backtracked on that stance when pressed recently).

Now it seems that a President Romney will allow the Israeli government to decide American policy toward that country. The free daily newspaper Israel Hayom — a media outlet closely associated with right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — asked Romney if, as president, he would ever consider moving the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In his answer, Romney made some astonishing claims. First, that his policy toward Israel will be guided by Israeli leaders; second, on the Jerusalem issue, he’d do whatever Israel tells him to do; and third, he does not think the United States should take a leadership role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

ROMNEY: The actions that I will take will be actions recommended and supported by Israeli leaders. I don’t seek to take actions independent of what our allies think is best, and if Israel’s leaders thought that a move of that nature would be helpful to their efforts, then that’s something I’ll be inclined to do. But again, that’s a decision which I would look to the Israeli leadership to help guide. I don’t think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process, instead we should stand by our ally. Again, my inclination is to follow the guidance of our ally Israel, as to where our facilities and embassies would exist.

The policy that the American Embassy reside in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem pre-dates the current administration. In fact, as Lara Friedman notes at Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. “does not recognize the sovereignty of any party in any part of Jerusalem (East or West)” and it’s “a policy that dates back to pre-1948, and has been followed by every U.S. Administration since, regardless of the President or party in the White House.”

Is the United States, or are the United States?

If one were to consult nearly every textbook written on the subject of the United States after the Reconstruction era, one would certainly choose the former grammatical arrangement by default. Consensus seems to have it: the United States is. But what performs the action is? Is it the “United” or the “States”? Traditional logic seems to fly in the face of post–Civil War standard American English, because logic would not allow us to make the “Union” that hides in the shadows behind the adjective “United” perform the verb that the States are supposed to be performing of their own volition.[1] Only “States” can perform an action when the noun phrase “United States” appears in the subject position. Clearly, the United States are, and they are by the rules of logic.

This problem in the application of subject-verb agreement may seem like a small quibble, but perhaps every issue at stake in the American political scene between the era of the Civil War and today’s increasing mess of government intervention can be boiled down to this same grammatical quandary. Is the United States, or are the United States? The difference lies in where we can place the power of action. Do the states, as the representatives of the people, have that power, or does the unitary power of the federal government retain a monopoly on the power of action?

In 1903, one particularly perplexed grammarian of the states’-rights position tried to tackle this issue in a letter to Harper’s Weekly. Alarmed by the change in grammar, which seemed to be making its way into the state machinery, he wrote,

It seems to be practically impossible to convince some persons of what ought to be self-evident, namely, that the text of the Constitution of the United States cannot be altered or amended in the slightest particular except by the machinery for emendation expressly provided in the text of the document itself. A paragraph is going the rounds of the press to the effect that the question whether the “United States” should be regarded as a plural or as a singular noun has been definitely settled by the Committee on the Revision of the Laws, which, it seems, in reviewing the Federal Statutes, has presumed to decide that the United States is.[2]

James Madison, the great architect of the Constitution, preferred are to that consolidated is precisely for the reason that the United States are not the singular United State.[3] Indeed, the “United State” has the ring of something dark and ominous, perhaps something not unlike Mussolini’s conception of the state as a unico mystico of man and government machinery: “No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State.” (Read more)

The discovery of the mother of all accounting errors at a troubled bank under government protection has made Germany some 55 billion euros richer, the Finance Ministry said late on Friday.

The discovery of a whopping accounting error has made Germany instantly 55.5 billon euros ($78.5 billion) richer.

The error was caused by a double booking at the state-owned bad bank, created to handle the toxic assets of bankrupt Hypo Real Estate bank, which was nationalized in 2009.

Freeing up the cash means that German national debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, dropped from 83.7 to 81.1 percent. The error was caused when accountants subtracted funds, instead of adding them. (Read more)

Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1 + 1 does not equal 5.

tories of eye-popping waste and abuse of power among Greece’s bureaucrats are legion, including officials who hire their wives, and managers who submit $38,000 bills for office curtains.

The work force in Greece’s Parliament is so bloated, according to a local press investigation, that some employees do not even bother to come to work because there are not enough places for all of them to sit.

But as Europe looks for any sign of hope that Greece is on the road to reform, there are growing concerns about its ability — and willingness — to trim its payroll, a crucial element in bringing expenses under control enough to win continued international financing. (Read more)

I’m pleasantly surprised to see this reported on. Usually, anybody who calls for cuts is condemned as a right wing fascist nut job.

EU Considers Ban on Country Ratings

This week alone has seen a ratings downgrade for Spain as well as a threat by agencies to review France’s AAA status — and the markets have taken notice. Once again, it would seem, ratings agencies are making things difficult for European countries.

Now, the European Union is considering doing something about it.

European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is considering a move to ban the agencies from publishing outlook reports on EU countries entangled in a crisis, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.

In an internal draft of a reform to an EU law applying to ratings agencies obtained by the paper, Barnier proposes providing the new EU securities authority, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), with the right to “temporarily prohibit” the publication of forecasts of a country’s liquidity. (read more)

Un-flipping believable.

And for a philosophical criticism of publicly produced security and justice, I present, Hans Hermann Hoppe:

After battling the teacher’s union in Wisconsin, that state’s governor, Scott Walker, proposed a state budget that would have eliminated mandatory recycling. The outrage came fast and furious. An editorial at TheJournalTimes.com began with

Recycling has developed into a service too valuable to toss on the scrap heap.

Some officials worry Wisconsin communities will revert to a sort of Wild West dumping ground if Gov. Scott Walker’s budget passes as is. Under the plan, subsidies for local recycling programs would end and municipalities would no longer be required to run those programs.

The editorial went on to say recycling is cleaner than garbage, trims energy use, creates jobs, and keeps tons of waste from ending up in landfills.

The governor quickly folded his plan when he failed to get the backing of key Republican lawmakers, who said his plan goes too far. So Wisconsin residents can look forward to sorting and separating their paper, plastic, and cans under the thumb of Wisconsin authorities. It’s now radical to believe that people should just throw unwanted items away. To allow people to do this is “going too far.”

Forcing people to spend time separating garbage turns the division of labor on its head. . . . Plus, the government mandate gives no consideration to which materials have value in the scrap market.

So while in certain cities of the United States, people are forced to sort through their own garbage, in a number of places in the world, residents throw away their trash with no worries. The trash will be sorted and removed by the estimated 15 million waste pickers in the world.

Spend any time in Istanbul and you see (mostly) men pulling what look to be large canvas bags strapped to steel frames on two wheels. They are everywhere — residential and commercial areas. . . .

Waste pickers collect materials for hours and then take them to depots where junk dealers buy and sell the thrown-away goods. Emir Altıngöller deals in recyclables by the kilogram, buying for 40 kuruş and selling for 60 kuruş. On the worst of days he makes 10 lira, while on the best of days it’s ten times that. “He is thankful and content with his lot because he says he appreciates being self-employed,” writes Fatma Turan for Today’s Zaman.

Americans who are forced to recycle receive nothing for separating their glass and plastic and must pay a monthly fee to hand over their recyclables free of charge in the proper bins, on the appointed days, to employees making union wages and working for the local monopoly-protected waste companies. (Read more)

A really cool thing is happening in Germany. After decades of strict laws regulating when stores can open and close (Ladenschlussgesetz), the laws are progressively liberalizing. Since 2006, the decision has been left to the individual states. Whereas commercial establishments once could not open their doors before 6 a.m. or keep them open past 10 p.m., now many open earlier and close later.

Consumers are celebrating, while labor unions and regulators are not.

In the United States, we have no national history of such laws, apart from restrictions on Sunday shopping, which are left to the states and counties. And even with these so-called blue laws, the general trend has been toward liberalization. (Read more)

Years ago our fathers founded this nation on the premise of the rights of man. As they expressed it, “the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In those days they knew what those words meant, not only the ones who expressed them, but the ones who heard and believed and accepted and subscribed to them. Because until that time, men did not always have those rights. At least, until that time, no nation had ever been founded on the idea that those rights were possible, let alone inalienable. So not only the ones who said the words, but the ones who merely heard them, knew what they meant. Which was this: “Life and liberty in which to pursue happiness. Life free and secure from oppression and tyranny, in which all men would have the liberty to pursue happiness.”

And both of them knew what they meant by “pursue.” They did not mean just to chase happiness, but to work for it. And they both knew what they meant by “happiness” too: not just pleasure, idleness, but peace, dignity, independence and self-respect; that man’s inalienable right was the peace and freedom in which, by his own efforts and sweat, he could gain dignity and independence, owing nothing to any man.

We knew what the words meant then, because we didn’t have these things. And, since we didn’t have them, we knew their worth. . . .

We founded a land, and founded in it not just our right to be free and independent and responsible, but the inalienable duty of man to be free and independent and responsible. What I am talking about is responsibility. Not just the right but the duty of man to be responsible, the necessity of man to be responsible if he wishes to remain free; not just responsible to and for his fellow man, but to himself; the duty of a man, the individual, each individual, every individual, to be responsible for the consequences of his own acts, to pay his own score, owing nothing to any man. . . .

the enemy of our freedom now has changed his shirt, his coat, his face.

He no longer threatens us from across an international boundary, let alone across an ocean. He faces us now from beneath the eagle-perched domes of our capitals and from behind the alphabetical splatters on the doors of welfare and other bureaus of economic or industrial regimentation, dressed not in martial brass but in the habiliments of what the enemy himself has taught us to call peace and progress, a civilization and plenty where we never before had it as good, let alone better. His artillery is a debased and respectless currency which has emasculated the initiative for independence by robbing initiative of the only mutual scale it knew to measure independence by.

The economists and sociologists say that the reason for this condition is too many people. . . . that man’s crime against his freedom is that there are too many of him, is to believe that man’s sufferance on the face of the earth is threatened, not by his environment, but by himself: that he cannot hope to cope with his environment and its evils, because he cannot even cope with his own mass. . . .

And to believe that, you have already written off the hope of man, as they who have reft him of his inalienable right to be responsible have done, and you might as well quit now and let man stew on in peace in his own recordless and oblivious juice, to his deserved and ungrieved doom.

I, for one, decline to believe this. . . .

I believe that the true heirs of the old tough, durable fathers are still capable of responsibility and self-respect, if only they can remember them again.

What we need is not fewer people, but more room between them, where those who would stand on their own feet, could, and those who won’t, might have to. Then the welfare, the relief, the compensation, instead of being nationally sponsored cash prizes for idleness and ineptitude, could go where the old independent uncompromising fathers themselves would have intended it and blessed it. [emphases added] (Read more)