Legislative Resolutions, Legislative Priorities for 2013: #1 Reduce Regulations

Given President Obama’s abdication in presenting select priorities to the Congress, Selfish Citizenship took the initiative to spell out the top seven legislative priorities for 2013 at the beginning of the year.

While spending and taxing are given high priority in partisan rhetoric, federal regulation of business has led to Obama’s retarded economy; although in fairness, this is a problem created by Congress over decades.

The stacks of federal regulations infringing upon our freedom to contract, trade, and associate plus the locust of lawyers associated with them need to be removed from the backs of American businessmen.  Job flight overseas is more a consequence of regulatory compliance costs than high wages.

Cutting regulations will reduce spending on enforcement, reduce private waste on compliance, increase revenue by freeing trade within our country, and increase employment opportunities for Americans.

In summary of the seven legislative priorities, Congress needs to take the lead in fixing the problems created by prior Congresses.  All of these man-made problems were the predictable consequence of choices made in the Congress.  Now is the time for Congress to choose differently and these seven New Year’s Resolutions for Congress are a solid start.

Extra point:  From Cox & Forkum,

Is the Great Recession really over?

I did not realize that we are many years into President Obama’s economic boom times.  Reportedly, the Great Recession ended only a couple months after our President took office, but that must be former President Bush’s fault.  Yet, to me, it does not seem like we are years into an economic expansion, so I smell a rat.

Beyond what I see with my eyes and the knowledge that I have that I am underutilized and less productive than I was, two points are coming to mind: (1) President Obama saying that we cannot cut federal spending or GDP would fall, and that we needed to support state and local government spending, and (2) John Allison’s point in The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope that federally mandated accounting obscures reality.  In addition, the Financial Times reports that the methodology used to calculate GDP will be changed by the government resulting in a 3% increase in GDP just from the change of method.  As Brent Moulton of the Bureau of Economic Analysis explains it, “We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history.”

According to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis’ FAQ, they provide the following guidance on defining a recession (emphasis added):

In general usage, the word recession connotes a marked slippage in economic activity. While gross domestic product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity, the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation. The designation of a recession is the province of a committee of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private non-profit research organization that focuses on understanding the U.S. economy.

The National Bureau of Economic Research provides the following description of their purpose and method (emphasis added):

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades…In determining whether a recession has occurred and in identifying the approximate dates of the peak and the trough, we therefore place considerable weight on the estimates of real GDP issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce…The committee places particular emphasis on two monthly measures of activity across the entire economy: (1) personal income less transfer payments, in real terms and (2) employment. In addition, we refer to two indicators with coverage primarily of manufacturing and goods: (3) industrial production and (4) the volume of sales of the manufacturing and wholesale-retail sectors adjusted for price changes…The committee’s approach to determining the dates of turning points is retrospective.

According to the NBER, the Great Recession ended June 2009 and we are in a period of economic expansion. Do you feel the economic expansion?  Me neither; I expect the same is true for all the unemployed and underemployed young people that I know.

Even if GDP is not the sole determiner of economic recessions, it is the key measure for that determination.  So how is GDP calculated?  As reported by Wikipedia:

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

REALLY???? Government spending?  No wonder our President warns that cutting government spending at the federal, state, and local level will reduce GDP; given a static analysis, it is right there in the equation.

Now, I am not an economist, and don’t pretend to have great insights into the field of economics.  However, I am pretty well familiar with something that I would like to introduce to our erudite economists:  “Economists, this is reality.  Reality, these are economists; please show them your consequences.”

Our governments’ share of GDP has risen by borrowing not production.  Let us look at some of that borrowing:

• At the municipal level, Detroit is trying to get bondholders to take 10 cents on the dollar for bonds that the city cannot pay, which is capital destroyed.
• At the state level, Illinois (the Land of Obama) is notorious for not paying its bills for services already received and is running a $100 billion funding deficit in its pension liabilities, which is causing Moody’s to plan downgrades based upon such deficits and the SEC to charge the state with securities fraud.
• More significantly at the federal level trillions of dollars of deficit spending is creating the mathematical appearance of GDP growth, but that borrowing is ultimately coming from dollars invented from nothing by the Federal Reserve.

Should this governmental malfeasance really be included in any measure of the health of the US economy?  As GDP is currently calculated, it is all good; happy days are here again!   In reality, the piper will have to be paid; these irrational government policies are a disaster that we are choosing to create and such is encouraged by the use of government spending in GDP.

In general, I am pretty sure that from some low point private business in aggregate has increased a bit; however, given the economic risks being created by government, I am not certain that we have actually hit the bottom of the trough.  Having some productivity numbers from economists that better reflected reality and eliminated government’s efforts to fake reality would be a benefit in understanding whether the Great Recession is really over.

When a cop gives you a traffic ticket, is that money in his pocket? In Georgia, yes.

The Augusta Chronicle reports that 5% of the money collected from traffic tickets go to a supplemental pension fund called Georgia Peace Officers’ Annuity and Benefit Fund.  That’s right folks; that is money in the officer’s pocket eventually.  The more tickets the officer makes the more money he will get in his retirement, plus more money into his supervisor’s pocket in retirement.  In Georgia, don’t even try to talk yourself out of a ticket as you will be trying to convince the officer that he can do with a smaller fishing boat during his retirement years.

Currently, this fund has more than half a billion dollars in it!  In addition to their regular generous pension, that averages to more than $30,000 per cop, but don’t worry as tomorrow’s tickets will increase that haul.  An officer can expect up to $732.30 more per month during his retirement years paid from traffic tickets.

Not to worry about whether this is another case of policing for profits?  Executive Director Bob Carter said, “The fund is not an incentive to write traffic tickets, by any stretch.  Most officers do not even realize the fund is in part funded by traffic ticket fines.”  Given the extent to which public employees around the country have been gaming public pension system with leave payouts, overtime, and last minute salary increases that does not seem credible; those most concerned about their imminent retirement compensation are supervising and setting priorities for those who might be ignorant of this benefit.

While other causes of pension maximization result in an increasing trend of municipal bankruptcy and crippling local taxation, this case raises the issue of corrupting justice.  The officer’s future pension income depends upon writing more tickets and his testimony in court will directly impact the financing of his future income.  Judges should consider the officers’ testimony in that context.

Outside of Georgia and separate from cops financially benefiting from traffic tickets, I hear a distrust of police related to traffic tickets, including the veracity of their testimony in court.  There is widespread questioning of the priority given by the police to traffic tickets and ridicule of the police for enforcement that has nothing to do with increasing safety on our roads.  In general, as currently conducted, traffic ticketing is reducing the respect that the public has for their police force.

Obama is Brer Donkey’s Tar Baby

As part of the Obama Administration’s attack upon free speech (see IRS scandal), Obama partisans smear as racist anyone who disagrees with what our President reads from the teleprompter.  In doing so, they forget the story of the boy who cried wolf.

As individuals who are not racist go out of their way not to say anything that can be misconstrued as racist, our political discourse is crippled by putting out-of-bounds otherwise non-racist comments associating our current Administration with savagery, cannibalism, theft, and the evil of slavery.  As evidence of innocent statements being used as cudgels by actually racist Democrats, see former Senator George Allen’s macaca moment in 2006 and subsequent Democrat slurs that Allen was a secret Jew.

To spit in the face of such rhetorical thuggery, I will liken our President Obama to a tar baby without it being racist in the context of the reference.

I assume that everyone is familiar with the story of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby; if not, perhaps because your early education might have been administered in an Indonesian madrasa instead of America, see AmericanFolklore.net recounting of the tale.  In summary, Brer Fox sculpted a small child out of tar (a tar baby), which he left in the road as a trap for Brer Rabbit; upon finding the unfriendly rudely non-responsive tar baby, Brer Rabbit fought with it and got himself stuck so bad that Brer Rabbit was at the mercy of Brer Fox.

When opponents of our current Administration’s policies personalize such bad policies as the fabrications of Obama the political magician, these criticisms are misdirected, because Barack Obama is essentially just a tar baby created by Brer Donkey.

Regarding President Obama, I describe his tenure as a period in which the presidential office has been left vacant and instead a congressional spokesmodel pretends to be our President.  During the 2008 preconvention period, neither Obama nor Clinton won sufficient delegates in the primaries and caucuses to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.  Thus, the nominee was chosen by the party’s Super Delegates, which are elected party officials and especially national legislators.  Obama was selected because he was a never-done-anything-backbencher who knew how to do only one thing…follow the orders of the party’s legislative leaders; in contrast, Clinton had her own constituency and power base, which could make her more independent of then-Speaker  Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid.   Our President is actually a patsy, a fall guy for the Democrats in Congress.

Obama’s primary role, as assigned to him by his superiors in Congress, is to be a distraction as the target for all the blowback against the Democratic Party’s policy choices, either in the Congress or the bureaucracy.  Obama is the tar baby; we are Brer Rabbit getting ourselves stuck fighting him; meanwhile, Brer Donkey happily continues over spending the public’s money and regulating our lives, while we distract ourselves with the empty chair.

Before you disagree with me, name a single Obama Administration policy that would be different if a different Democrat had been elected president instead of Obama.  If you cannot name one, then why credit Obama as an individual being of any consequence in his own Administration?  Take down Obama, and the subsequent Democratic Administration’s policies will be just the same.  So the point is to engage this Democratic faction in the field of ideas and policy instead of being distracted by the ineffective blood sport which is the politics of personal destruction.

Don’t be at the mercy of Brer Donkey!

Extra Point: 

From visual artist John Cox: 

Matthew Yglesias, Slate: You are too stupid to save, so give your money to the government

From back in the day, I recall a comedian, whose name I can not recall, do a bit in which he proposed a Stupid Tax.  Anytime that you caught somebody doing something stupid, then you could collect $5 from them as a tax…and if they paid you the Stupid Tax, then they had done something stupid again and so they should give you another $5.

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias now proposes something similar as if it were a serious policy proposal.

As he summarizes his solution to Americans’ failure to adequately save for retirement, “What’s needed is a much more forceful, much more statist approach to forced savings, whether that’s quasi-savings in the form of higher taxes and more Social Security benefits or something like a Singapore-style system where ‘private’ savings are pooled into a state-run investment fund.” (emphasis added)

Let us take a moment to explore his underlying premises, beyond his appeal to the gun to impose his judgment on everybody else:

• Individual choice is bad because “a very large share” of people will choose wrong.
• As the correct choice in retirement savings is obvious, those people who choose independently and differently are stupid or duped.
• Only investments in diversified funds with low fees are valid for retirement savings and that judgment should be enforced by law.
• Need (not individual rights) should be the standard in government policy.
• Money should be transferred from wealthy people that do save for retirement and given to poor and middle class people who cannot save enough.

Do you agree with Yglesias?  Are you too stupid to manage your own money, so it is better for the smart people in the government to have it?  Alternatively, you know that you are smart, but you know stupid people exist who should be forced to do the right thing according to the majority’s judgment?

There are many new proposals out there for providing retirement security, but they have a few things in common:  (1) individuals should not be able to choose, (2) the government can eliminate risk by centralizing everything federally, and (3) savings should be taken from the rich to subsidize the retirement of those who are not rich.

These three points ignore history, even the recent history of the financial crisis.    When government violates its hedgehog concept (the protection of individual rights) by attempting to regulate all risk out of life, the result is a single point of failure that will break under the cumulative strain to impose a greater cost of failure upon everyone.

Meanwhile, the federal government has failed to even cover the promised pensions of federal employees; that alone is more than $760 BILLION in broken promises and growing.

Doubt this last historical point, how confident are you that the federal government will repay the full value of your substantial payments into Social Security, which is approaching failure?  The reason behind new proposals for federal retirement taxes and confiscations is that money is to be used by the federal government to paper over the actuarial deficits in Social Security.

Daniel Pipes Recommends US Actively Prop Up a Failing and Unrepentant State Sponsor of Terrorism, Assad’s Syria

Somehow, Daniel Pipes must have come to the conclusion that there are bad terrorists and worse terrorists, so we should be friends with the bad ones.

Last month, Pipes shifted his recommendation of neutrality in the Syrian civil war to a policy of actively supporting the Assad government as they are the weaker party in the conflict of evil against evil.  The basis for his recommendation is that it is in the US interest for the conflict to continue if it is nicely limited to a civilized dispute of one group of bad guys killing another group of bad guys.

Ironically, the terrorist have previously claimed that the US support for local bad regimes is the reason that the regimes do not fall in the face of internal opposition.  This was the cited justification for taking local conflicts within a country to an international stage and attacking Americans.  While I disagree with such claimed “facts” and justification, Pipes is arguing that American policy should be to actively protect evil regimes from their more evil internal enemies.

I have to ask…what US interests are at stake in Syria?  Is Pipes’ recommendation to prolong the Syrian civil war by aiding the Assad regime consistent with protecting those interests?  Pipes claims Realpolitik, and I call bullshit; specifically Pipes’ shift is unprincipled Pragmatist bullshit.

Do not get me wrong, I am no anti-American libertarian pacifist.  If it was in the US interest to do so, then I would be calling for a Sheridan style campaign (see the Shenandoah Valley and pacification of the West).  Instead I am looking at fundamentals, “what are our specific relevant interests” and “do Pipes’ policies protect those interests”.

I see that relevant interests include protecting the US and our allies from terrorism, containing WMDs, and stabilizing the Middle East to protect the free flow of oil, which principally benefits our allies and is related to our post WWII anti-colonial policy.  I do not see those interests protected by supporting Assad nor by supporting the anti-Assad forces nor by encouraging ongoing civil war.

Instead, we need to find different and better alternatives that will allow the US to selfishly pursue our interests.

As an option, I suggest that the US could seek the political partition of Syria as it is a failed state that can only maintain itself through dictatorship and international intrigues.  The post-Syria pieces will be a mix of better and worse with the potential for improvement from dictatorship or continuing localized warfare (as Pipes’ recommends), but such would be the post-Syrians choice to pursue life or death.

Further, I do not object to material aid from the US to Assad’s Syria if such is the result of (1) officially ending Syria’s state sponsorship of terrorism, (2) Syria surrendering their WMDs stockpiles and capacity, and (3) Syria ending their alliance with Iran.  This would be similar to bipartisan and multi-administration efforts to turn Libya.  In contrast, Pipes advises giving Assad’s Syria support without addressing any of Syria’s threats to US interests.

Seeing two choices in Syria, Pipes has jumped off the fence to choose a side.  In contrast, the US should identify and pursue other options that actually focus on advancing American interests.  Unfortunately, America chose twice to leave our presidency vacant by electing Obama, when we actually need a real president who will led from the front in pursuing our selfish American interests.

Question 9: Why be a selfish citizen?

Much of the search traffic to this site involves a combination of terms that include selfish.

Today, someone was looking for the “Top 10 Selfish Politicians”; limited to current politicians, I am at a loss to come up with 10.  I can name one:  Paul McKeever, the leader of Freedom Party of Ontario.  How many actually selfish politicians can you name?

Our politicians lack a self and are instead an empty reflection of the electorate, which contains a solid majority with an anti-selfish worldview.  Look at the crises created by the anti-selfish character of our politics, which I have called our orgy of self-sacrifice.

Given the band wagon momentum, why go against it?  Why be a selfish citizen?

Popularly, there is a serious misunderstanding about what it is to be selfish.  In the 2008, President Obama claimed that his opponents wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.  Of course, that “charge” is not true of McCain/Palin and the Republicans, who are fully on board for accelerating our orgy of self-sacrifice; however, it is true for Obama’s actual opponents…selfish Americans.  Are you on board for today’s orgy of self-sacrifice, or opposed to it?

Popularly, selfish is used to refer to anything that the accuser thinks is evil…but selfish is not a synonym for evil.  Literally, and ironically, when an individual disdainfully hurls the accusation of selfish that individual is saying, “I disagree with the choice that person made and I think that person should subordinate their own judgment to mine.”  Don’t get me wrong, those accusers are not being selfish; it is not selfish to assert that someone else should be your slave.

So what is it to be selfish?  Literally, it is to be concerned with your self.  You are concerned with your self, aren’t you?  Or does your lack of self-esteem cause you to believe that you are unworthy of concern?  By self, I refer to your life, your person, your passions, including the people you love, the values that you actively pursue, and hopefully the virtues of America.

To be a selfish citizen requires one to see and pursue the centrality of your life and values in our politics; in other words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is about your life, your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness.  Such considerations are not based upon the whim of the moment (“me want free stuff” or “me want to force others to give free stuff to whom I say”), but in the rational context of one’s lifetime and values.

The following quote focuses on man’s nature and moral redemption.  As our country is an aggregate of independent individuals, such redemption of many individuals creates the momentum to redeem America.  Via the Ayn Rand Lexicon, quoting from the introduction to Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness:

To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of “selfishness” that one has to redeem.

The first step is to assert man’s right to a moral existence—that is: to recognize his need of a moral code to guide the course and the fulfillment of his own life . . . .

The reasons why man needs a moral code will tell you that the purpose of morality is to define man’s proper values and interests, that concern with his own interests is the essence of a moral existence, and that man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions.

Since all values have to be gained and/or kept by men’s actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates an injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors to the nonactors, of the moral to the immoral. Nothing could ever justify such a breach, and no one ever has.

We Americans are fortunate to live in the context of the greatest country that the minds of individual men have produced.  The inconveniences of our current politics are small compared to the obstacles that were overcome to create in reality the ideas of America.  To overcome the vacuous dolts who are destroying this country, we begin by being selfish in our personal lives, which includes being selfish citizens of our republic.

Extra Point: Today’s offering is the 100^th post at Selfish Citizenship.  Below are the top ten posts since July 4, 2012.

1. Obama Attacks Free Speech Again
2. A Tale of Two Homeless Men
3. Open Letter to Gary Johnson
4. Obama Using Accounting Cheat to Hide $761.5 Billion in Deficit Spending
5. Bipartisan Deal – Status Quo Continuing Resolution for FY 2013
6. On Foreign Policy, American Founders vs. Ron Paul
7. 6 Causes of India’s Mega-Blackout, Lessons for US
8. IRS’ 401k Early Withdrawal Penalties vs. Americans in Reality
9. Top Three Reasons to Vote Obama for President
10. Cannibal Culture

The Federal Sequester Has Delayed Your Life and Cancelled Your Flight

Today the FAA began its sequester furloughs with a resulting rash of flight delays, especially in NYC and DC.

I became aware of the issue when a coworker was trapped in New York and we did not know when to expect him in the office.  Although he did eventually get a flight, the delay reduced productivity and delayed action on critical deliverables.

With the federal government’s sequester cuts designed to inflict as much pain on the American people as possible, so that Americans will accede to President Obama’s demands to increase tax rates on the wealthy even though such rate increases will result in lower revenue due to tax avoidance and malinvestment rewarded by the federal tax code (like more bond debt for our bankrupt cities) becoming even more pronounced.

Let me suggest an alternative.  Wherever you feel the pain of federal sequester cuts, consider that a sign that those functions should be privatized.  Obviously, the federal government does not have enough money to pay for that function.

Far from eliminating risk as promised by the government monopolizing what should be a private business enterprise based upon private property, the government’s underfunding of those functions increases our risk, because the federal government is unable to get the job done.

The irrational character of the cuts increases risk and will reduce economic productivity.  How can producers make long term plans when the government introduces arbitrary delays and the possibility of shortages as a hostage taking for increased tax rates?

The furlough of the air traffic controllers, as well as threatened cut backs to meat inspectors, demonstrate a risk management function that should not be in the government’s domain, and not just because the Obama Administration has demonstrated that it can not be trusted to effectively manage these risks.  Privatize, privatize, privatize!!  Reduce not only federal spending, but also the constraints that our federal government puts on our attempts in the private sector at economic recovery.

Understanding Terrorist Organizations and The DIM Hypothesis

Back in September 2001, I was taking a class titled “The Politics of the Middle East and North Africa,” which took an immediate unexpected significance following the 9-11 attacks.  Over the next couple years, on the topic of terrorism, I was fortunate enough to have classes that gave me an inside view into academia’s and the Administration’s thinking, including on deep background straight for the lips of those making policy to implement the Bush Administration’s strategy in the War on Terror.

My study of the subject culminated in a thesis titled “Incentive Systems in Terrorist Organizations;” in which, I applied my professional experience managing debt collection organizations to the study of how terrorist organizations function as an organization.  Looking back on that paper, I did not really break new ground in understanding what counter-terrorism policies disrupt terrorist organizations, instead I explained in a way that no one else had the cause and effect of why those counter-terrorism policies (backlash, deterrence, and reform) are effective.

The recent Boston Marathon bombing terrorist attack started me to think back again upon my ol’ paper.  While there are relevant issues from the paper about organizational affiliation and how distributed networks are able to be maintained by the terrorist organization to achieve organizational goals, I think that most people (including our ignoramus President) are primarily perplexed by how the younger brother could have gone from successful student to terrorist.

I would note that higher education is a breeding ground for terrorists; not my insight as it is a decades old observation in the study of terrorist organization.

In my paper, I noted that there are three conditions for an organization to be a terrorist organization, instead of something else like a criminal gang: (1) the justification to violence (provided by the ideological leaders), (2) the drive to violence (provided by the criminal element who is recruited into the organization as a corrective for their individual past sins), and (3) the capacity for effective action (provided by able individuals who are motivated by fighting what they judge to be injustice).

That last point is hard to believe, but all of the evidence that I examined demonstrated it to be true and it explains the cause and effect relationships for Ted Robert Gurr’s conclusions about which combination of counterterrorism policies are effective.

In 2002 or 2003, while writing my paper, I gave a presentation of my preliminary findings to a group of friends through our philosophy club (George Mason University Objectivist Club).  They correctly challenged me on that last point.  At the time, I replied that it was necessary to understand that these generally capable and productive individuals were in pre-Aristotelian cultures or subcultures in which logic had not been made a consistent part of their lives.

After reading John Lewis’ Solon the Thinker, I would now add that these individual’s ideas of freedom are pre-Solon.

While my quick response related to culture and the basis in Greek thought satisfied me that I was not jumping off the deep end without support from reality, I had not really thought through the full consequences of that idea.  Fortunately for me, Dr. Leonard Peikoff was thinking through those issues and has recently published The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out, which begins with the brilliant observation:

THE FALL OF Western civilization—if it does fall—can be traced to its beginning.  I do not mean that its beginning led to its end.  I mean the opposite: Our rejection of our beginning is what is killing us.

I have been lucky enough to enjoy some of Peikoff’s lectures that led to the book, so I have an early preview of Peikoff’s thinking.  My friends and I have been using terms from the book related to integration vs. misintegration vs. disintegration, and the designations I, M1, M2, D1, and D2 for years now.  I have not read the full book yet, but I did attended a discussion with friends on the book’s 1^st chapter today.

To be clear, Peikoff is examining broad issues of culture and philosophic systems.  However, as a friend and I used to joke about system building, if you can not use an application or component to create value in at least three things that it was never intended to do then you do not really understand it.  As such, I am interested in how Peikoff’s hypothesis can (1) explain the relationship between certain philosophic ideas (M1 and M2) and particular mental illnesses, (2) explain the ideological conflicts at the frontiers of civilization and what I think of as the Globalization Wars of local traditionalism versus modernity, and (3) explain presence of the productive individuals who make terrorist organizations a threat.

I look forward to reading more of Peikoff’s final integration to see how I can apply it to concerns in my interests, and improve my understanding of the current American crisis.

Should We Stop Letting Terrorist Attacks Scare Us?

Related to the bombings at the Boston Marathon, I read a recommendation that we Americans and the media should stop overplaying the significance of the attack as its casualty count is small compared to the violence that criminals commit everyday in this country.  Essentially, the point was that we should stop letting the terrorist win by allowing their violence to terrorize us.

I disagree as the point drops context. If this was a terrorist act as it appears to be, then it is a political act.

To down play its significance does a service to the terrorist organization behind the attack by refusing to use one of the most effective counterterrorism strategies, backlash (see Ted Robert Gurr, “Terrorism in Democracies: Its Social and Political Bases“). Through backlash, violence is repudiated as a method of achieving political change; backlash has the consequence of weakening terrorist organizations by depriving them of new recruits, member retention, and other support.

At this point, without a claim of responsibility, the political result being achieved by the Boston Marathon bombing is to delegitimize our government by challenging its monopoly on force and its failure to protect innocents from an initiation of force. As we have seen over the years, reliance by the government on anti-terrorist defensive policies (like TSA) as part of a deterrence strategy can further the aims of the terrorist organization by further delegitimizing the government.

Effectively ignoring the significance of terrorist violence results in greater violence:  al Qaeda issues a declaration of war, bombs US forces in Saudi Arabia, bombs two US embassies, bombs a US warship, and then 9-11. If the earlier events had not been downplayed as of small significance and simply criminal events during the Clinton Administration, then could the later have been prevented?

Terrorism is not about making people afraid…it is about a belief that the initiation of force, against symbolic targets, by a non-state organization can effectively create political change.