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STOP SOPA/PIPA Efforts Showing Favorable Signs

2012-01-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activist Trevor Timm on The Alyona Show on Russia Today discusses the PIPA and SOPA bills which would censor the Internet by shutting down sites on copyright issues. The proposed law is believed to be subject to a great deal of abuse. The government has tried several ways to restrict and eventually take over the internet, this being the latest.

EFF is one of the most active organizations in protecting Internet freedom. Content providers and media entities (MPAA, Time-Warner, RIAA, etc.) are more than able to protect their own interests. Special government help for these rent-seeking organizations is unnecessary and dangerous.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Video: fightforthefuture.org/pipa Tell Congress.
via Vimeo

Further reading:

Free Speech Is Only as Strong as the Weakest Link (eff.org)

Let’s Hear It for Romney!

2012-01-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Photo: Dreamstime

Mitt Romney, who created jobs as CEO of Bain Capital, amid some layoffs and failures, is, to say the least, a man who believes in free-market capitalism. From the criticisms of Romney’s Bain Capital experience coming from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, one would wonder if belief in capitalism is not so much a Republican principle as we thought.

Of course, Gingrich has rescinded his criticism (sort of), and Perry has quieted his after losing a key donor over it, but the fact is that capitalism, properly understood and practiced, is simply economic freedom. That’s what we’re losing under the Obama Administration. It is true that this criticism of Romney sounds eerily like Obama.

Romney’s comment that he “likes to be able to fire people” ought to be taken as a positive statement about competition, in stark contrast to liberals’ ideal that says no one should ever be fired, especially if they are part of government. See Ann Coulter’s excellent column on this.

Maybe Romney’s strategy now is to simply wait out the campaign until his rivals knock each other off by such ill-advised criticisms of him and each other. He’s been a presidential candidate for years now, so he has learned something about what it might take for success in politics. It begins to look more and more like he’s the inevitable candidate, and if that trend continues, Republicans had better get behind him (or someone) in a unified manner, or else we’ll see four more years of Obama.

The only “capitalism” President Obama likes is crony capitalism which is very like fascist corporatism. This, of course, is not capitalism, but “private enterprise” in collusion with government, involving exchanges of political favors. It also involves government taking over private companies, removing them from their owners and handing them over to unions and other politically-connected cronies, meanwhile, leaving investors with little to nothing (see GM and Chrysler).

Obama’s “green-energy” policy has brought some “green” to some of his cronies, at the expense of taxpayers and future generations, with nothing worthwhile to show for it. Solyndra got an over-half-billion dollar loan guarantee, then went bankrupt (as should have been expected). The government even considered bailing them out. Chevy Volt draws a subsidy now equal to about $250,000 per car. Its flaws are becoming more evident. The problem is that this is crony capitalism at its worst. It’s incompetent, and possibly criminal, government involvement in things that, if financially viable, would be developed by private industry, perhaps profitably, and without government involvement.

The Obama Administration showcases their abysmal economic ignorance. Normally, everything the government finances or helps finance, is a money-losing operation, but under the current regime, it’s not just marginal losses, but incredibly huge, economy-damaging losses, that show no sign of improvement.

Romney, like all the candidates, has his flaws. He does not seem to be as thoroughly conservative as we might prefer. But which candidate is? The main smaller-government conservatives are/were candidates Michele Bachmann (now out) and Rick Perry (slipping, but still in the race so far). Ron Paul is for smaller government, but has troubling positions on some foreign policy and other issues. We’re left with Romney, Gingrich, Santorum and Huntsman, of whom, it seems to me, only Romney speaks of smaller government.

I like Huntsman’s position on stopping corporate welfare and all subsidies. I like some of Gingrich’s ideas on entitlements, for example, stop paying crooks. I like Santorum’s social conservatism. I liked Herman Cain’s refreshing approach to running for office and his tea party appeal. I actually thought Michele Bachmann might be the best all-around conservative in the race, but, alas, she couldn’t get going.

What I want to see is a Republican president who can get this country back to normal. Something like Warren G. Harding did after the unbearable Wilson. Something like Ronald Reagan did after the unbearable Carter. We now have a president who’s more unbearable than either Wilson or Carter, and four more years of the Obama regime will come close, if not actually accomplish, the final decline of America as a free and prosperous country. We’ll be more like a third-world dictatorship. We’ll be more like Cuba, the workers’ paradise.

Employment is the top issue. Romney knows more about correcting the problems than anyone else in the race. Private-sector experience trumps all political career experience in this issue. Romney says he knows how the economy works. Obama does not know how it works, except he seems to know how to hurt it.

In the Washington world of deeply confused Keynesianism, the great contrast of the Austrian School of economic thought offers much common-sense counsel and analysis of the problems of today and the past. A plain explanation of Austrian principles is contained in a fairly brief video found below. Austrian economists (so called because pioneers of their school of thought were Austrians, such as Ludwig von Mises and Frederich A. Hayek) accurately predicted such events as the Great Depression and the more recent housing bust. Austrian theory provides a rational explanation for the business cycle.

Actually, the only candidate who claims Austrian economic views is Ron Paul, and in the economic area, he is right. But to me, the main requirement for economic views of a presidential candidate is economic freedom: low taxes, free-market capitalism, reasonable, i.e., minimal, regulation, and a strong non-interventionist bias, and no collusion between government and business. In other words, keep government out of the economy (and most other things) as much as possible.

Perhaps our next president will recognize the ticking time bombs of our economy, as well as those of our world. The present regime does not.

Christmas Greetings

2011-12-15T12:58:00.000-08:00

Even when Christmas is only a few days away, there usually isn’t a pause in everyday activity until the day itself, or perhaps Christmas Eve. In politics, the charges, counter-charges, and occasional dirty tricks continue. But even so, Christmas and the end of the year usually present an occasion to reflect on past and future. There often isn’t enough time or opportunity to rest and think about things in a serious way. But at Christmas, we may have a special opportunity.

Christians and others need to consider the gift God gave to us in Christ, whose birth we celebrate. He came for the express purpose of dying for our sins, and to offer eternal salvation to all who would believe in Him. His is the greatest and most beneficial message mankind has ever received. It is truly Good News.

The following video features the Christmas story read by Herman Cain with his wife Gloria and some military family members, as well as Christmas greetings and a song “It's Christmas in America.” (YouTube video I found at Daily Caller.)

I hope you enjoy it, and, especially, I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This is (probably) my last post of 2011. We look for better things in 2012. God bless.

Some Comments on President Obama’s Economic Speech of December 6, 2011

2011-12-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

President Theodore Roosevelt. Photo via Wikipedia

The president spoke in Osawatomie, Kansas on Tuesday, December 6, 2011, on his version of Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism,” essentially trying to make a case for a more socialistic approach to the economy, with the idea of government striving to make everything “fair” and supposedly advancing the middle class.

The comments cover a good deal less than the entire speech (video found here and here), but I believe they address the main ideas he expressed. The text is found at the Washington Post website. The president’s words are in bold, mine are not.

For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the harsh realities of this new economy. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets – and huge bonuses – made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions – innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag.

The president conveniently leaves out the fact that banks were under heavy pressure from the government to make these loans, and Fannie and Freddie purchased them. The Democrats in Congress, led by Barney Frank, would not permit the needed regulation of Fannie and Freddie, claiming that they were on sound footing. Financial companies issued extremely risky derivatives, which should have been stopped by government regulators but weren’t, and now, banks have it set up where derivatives take priority in bankruptcy, over the interests of investors. See Gary North’s informative article here.

Community agitators like ACORN (which previously employed Barack Obama) increased pressure on banks to make the bad loans. The “breathtaking greed” was driven and incentivized by the government through purchase guarantees and “affordable housing” pressure. Banks shared blame as well, but it was primarily a government- and Federal Reserve-caused situation. The bailouts (under Bush’s administration) set the tone for further legislation handled in an “emergency” fashion, (Obamacare, cap and trade, etc.), with little to no debate and in the dark of night, with 1,000-plus-page bills which were not read and perhaps not yet entirely written when voted upon. This is the fault of government.

But this isn’t just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.

Obama is correct that the middle class is at stake. It is Obama’s policies that are destroying the middle class through ensuring massive unemployment and an economic environment that discourages business growth and hiring. His answer is higher taxes and more spending. More “stimulus,” when the stimulus to date is proven ineffective.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules….

According to Obama, the government needs to make sure a good outcome is experienced by all who “work hard.” The task of government in the economy is punish fraud and abuse, and to provide an appropriate, rather than oppressive, tax and regulation environment. The Federal Reserve has harmed the economy through massive money printing and artificially low interest rates that discourage investment and saving. The government should not interfere with the free market, which they constantly do through corporate welfare and “crony capitalism” which is actually not capitalism but more like fascist corporatism.

They should stop all subsidies, bailouts, and special tax treatment, and trust the free market, in which companies and individuals pursue their own self interest without government interference.

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

It’s called free market capitalism and it does work and will work whenever it’s allowed to operate. The reason the Great Depression got so bad and lasted so long is that government tried to fix it. There was a depression in 1920 that started out as bad as the one in the 1930’s, but lasted less than two years, because neither the government nor the Fed did anything to interfere. They didn’t enshrine the mistakes as they did in the 1930’s and in the 2008 collapse. The government should have simply let the recession run its course, and by now, bad debt would be liquidated and we’d be back to normal growth. But no, politics trumps all. See Tom Woods's eye-opening video on the 1920 depression here.

When Obama says “It’s not political,” he would be more accurate in saying, “It’s not just political, it’s very, very political.” He is the servant of the unions, the radical environmentalists, and the socialist left.

This speech, delivered in the form of populist rhetoric, is an attempt to make the case for socialism. Theodore Roosevelt was something of a “Progressive,” as some liberals like to be called today, but people don’t generally understand that Progressivism is the belief that economic, social and cultural decisions that people traditionally make for themselves, should instead be made by a group of elite “experts,” acting for all. Thus we got big government, big bureaucracy, less freedom, and even eugenics. Now we have abortion, and may soon have more government-rationed health care and government-rationed or mandated who-knows-what.

Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.

Actually, we had strong job growth, compared to today. The deficits came mainly from wars that started after 9/11/2001 and continue today. And Bush’s worst deficits pale in comparison to those racked up under the Obama Administration.

Obama wants more “investment,” i.e. government spending, in education and infrastructure. But if the economy could just be allowed to recover, these issues would be taken care of without massive borrowing and endless debt.

We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own (sic.) economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future. It doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens....

According to Obama, we need government in control to make sure the incomes and outcomes are what they should be. But experience has shown that government is hardly qualified to run anything outside its actual constitutional responsibilities. They are poorly qualified to give guidance on running business or the economy, when their own business and their own finances are out of control. It’s the private sector that needs to be able to invest, not the government. But politicians put many roadblocks in the way: bans on energy development and oppressive EPA regulations, just to name two.

America can’t afford four more years of Obama. That should be the focus of the GOP message. A few more years down the current path and we’ll be worse off than Greece.

Wealth and income inequality is not the problem. It’s simply a convenient propaganda component to stir up class envy, which, I repeat, is the very life blood of liberalism, and class warfare is its process.

Some Thoughts on GOP Candidates after the Debate of November 22

2011-11-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich at CPAC FL 2011. Photo: Dreamstime.com

In the Tuesday (November 22) GOP debate, we have been treated to a Thanksgiving feast of discussion of foreign policy, in which all the candidates did an acceptable job of making their points. There were no major gaffes. All the candidates seemed confident and competent. Any of these candidates would be greatly preferable to Mr. Obama.

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in the polls for now among GOP presidential candidates. His debate performances have been impressive and, for his campaign, efficient, since it doesn’t cost anything (other than transportation and scheduling) for him to participate. With his campaign all but written off earlier, he has come back to score substantially improved poll numbers.

Gingrich looks like a candidate with the depth of knowledge and ability to articulate his positions that a president needs to have. He has years of experience in government and in study of the important issues. It appears that he can be trusted with presidential responsibility. He has avoided shouting matches with his GOP opponents and saved his strong criticism for Barack Obama and the Democrats. He correctly foresaw the failure of the super committee and early and rightly pointed out the foolishness of that process.

(It’s a campaign video, but his assessment of the super committee is quite correct.)

On immigration, he said that long-time residents who came to the

U.S.

illegally, but have become productive workers, taxpayers, and contributors to the community, should not have their families broken up through deportation. This would represent a minority of illegal immigrants. Gingrich’s “humane” approach sounds mainly like common sense.

If Newt is the nominee, he will be under intense scrutiny and will be attacked for his personal moral failures. If he succeeds in getting elected, it will be because the voters see him as such a great improvement over Obama that his past sins can be overlooked, or at least left in the past. Presumably, he has overcome the personal mistakes of past years.

I’m sure I wouldn’t agree with him on every issue, but I don’t agree with anyone on all the issues. I think he would make a fine president, and that he would get America on track back to normalcy. He understands the threat of radical Islam and the threat represented by our soaring budget deficits and incessant borrowing.

Brit Hume of Fox News commented on Newt’s poll numbers improvement (Daily Caller via Yahoo! News):

Another candidate showing depth of understanding is the much-unfairly-maligned Rep. Michele Bachmann. She demonstrated an impressive knowledge of complex foreign affairs issues, such as Pakistan policy. Given this and her previous debates, she has shown a good grasp of economic and social issues. I think she is thoroughly qualified to serve as president. She is hampered mainly by liberal smears against her that too many people unthinkingly accept, as with Sarah Palin. Generally, whom liberals fear, they smear.

Speaking of smears, Herman Cain was given the treatment by the Democrats, being accused by a woman who (just coincidentally – not!) lives in the same building as David Axelrod, and another woman who happens to work for the Obama Administration. These charges didn’t stick because voters have better access these days to sources other than the toadying Mainstream Media, and could find no substance to them. Cain’s defenders appear far more reliable than his accusers.

Probably none of the candidates can really be written off now, but, in my view, the race is going to get down to Romney vs. an anti-Romney in the person of Gingrich, Bachmann, or Cain. Possibly Rick Perry, if he can continue his improved debating. Ron Paul is still a factor. As for Santorum and Huntsman, their numbers remain very low, but it’s a year until the election and a lot can happen. There’s also a vice-presidential slot to fill.

As for “electability,” if Republicans can get together on a nominee, and run a reasonably competent campaign, they should be able to defeat Obama very decisively. America’s hopes for prosperity, military strength, freedom, and constitutional government increasingly depend on that.

Cain’s Current Skirmish Shouldn’t Stop Him

2011-11-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

Herman Cain Photo: Dreamstime.com

A new industry has sprung up, started by Politico and their numerous articles about sexual harassment accusations against Herman Cain. Many articles appeared, articles which contained no names or specific allegations, even noting that the supposedly offending actions were “not overtly sexual.” The writers were protecting the accusers, who had signed agreements of confidentiality after agreeing to cash settlements from the National Restaurant Association.

Now, a woman has come forward to accuse Cain of something specific, which supposedly happened in 1997, but was not dealt with at that time. The allegations against Cain appear to be politically motivated attacks, likely dug up by political opponents, and eagerly pounced upon by the liberal media, anxious to destroy Cain’s candidacy even though numerous articles were printed, stating no facts, offering no evidence and no justification.

Of course, liberal Reuters was quick to find three criminal lawyers who agree that Cain could have been accused of sex abuse by his latest accuser, if she had chosen to press charges, though prosecutors likely wouldn’t have wanted to take up this type of he-said-she-said case. In any event, it would be time barred now.

Herman Cain’s campaign success is definitely not liked by liberals or by some members of the Republican establishment, not to mention his GOP rivals. But this whole scenario smacks of the “politics of personal destruction” favored by the socialist liberals. Much like the vicious and spurious attacks on Sarah Palin.

Most Americans have enough of a sense of justice to understand that an accusation is not enough. Cain confidently maintains that these allegations are baseless, and his supporters have responded with increased financial contributions to his campaign. His poll numbers are holding up well.

Whether Cain’s enemies can do him real damage through these allegations remains to be seen, but a great many people see it, correctly, I think, as a media circus designed to cut down a black conservative who is also an unconventional candidate. It’s their choice of methods to avoid dealing with the serious problems for which he is offering solutions.

For media liberals, this circus is hypocritical, since there is no actual evidence to support the allegations, while they went all out to protect Bill Clinton, who actually was guilty of sexual improprieties. As Rush Limbaugh has said, for liberals, this type of behavior is a resume enhancement.

Scott Whitlock at Media Research Center reported on Friday, November 4, that networks had aired “a staggering 63 stories in just four and a half days.”

Further,

The ABC reporter [Brian Ross] also talked to Ricki Seidman, who he simply identified as a "political operative." Ross left out the fact that Seidman has worked for Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis and other Democrats.

Of Cain's accusers, who are anonymous, the political operative sympathized, "They've been called by all kinds of names already by people who have no idea who they are." (Ross did explain that Seidman worked with Anita Hill when she testified against Clarence Thomas.)

Of course, since there’s a woman who has come forward to accuse Cain and is represented by Gloria Allred (who else?), Cain’s enemies probably think they’ve sealed the deal. But if this doesn’t work, they’ll try something else. Cain has a thick-enough skin that he will weather this, and he knows he can expect every kind of phony charge the liberal media can blow up against him.

All this obscures Cain’s debate/discussion with Newt Gingrich, carried on C-SPAN, which was quite a refreshing change from the usual debate format. Cain demonstrated considerable knowledge of the entitlement issues, as did Gingrich. So far, Cain hasn’t missed any speeches or events. He continues to hammer away on his message. I’m listening, and I am sure a lot of others are. (See brief interview dated November 6 here).

I’m about ready to send a check to his campaign. Through his campaign, he’s earned my respect and admiration. I believe him when he says the charges are baseless, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone proving him wrong. Guilty until proven innocent? I don’t think so.

Government Policies Are Bringing About America’s National Decline

2011-10-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street protester. Photo: Dreamstime.com

The New York Times reports that “a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with Americans’ distrust of government at its highest level ever.”

Further, “Not only do 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress — warnings for Democrats and Republicans alike.”

The distrust of government and impatience with the status quo is reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” period. The cure for the “malaise” turned out to be serious changes in economic policy, a sense of cheerful optimism, and pride in America, things championed by President Ronald Reagan.

Today, the Tea Party represents a responsible citizen movement with actual ideas for improving the nation’s economic situation, and actions taken toward accomplishing an improvement. The mob known as Occupy Wall Street (or Occupy ---) demands that the government redistribute the wealth of the rich to them in the form of free college tuition, housing, health care, etc. They are in sympathy with Europeans who have demanded to keep their government benefits uninterrupted, despite the fact that their nations' governments are on the verge of default and bankruptcy.

As Chris Adamo at Renew America points out,

Throughout Europe, the spurious and unsustainable promises of socialist utopia, Ponzi schemes all, are collapsing, leaving entire segments of the population in the throes of riots and revolt. The few remaining adults on the continent are faced with the reality that the massive funding needed to prop up the sham was bound to eventually run out, and now no longer exists. As a result the dream of socialist beneficence simply cannot keep going, no matter how hysterically the short-sighted and morally vacant masses demand it.

These OWSers seem convinced that there is plenty of money to go around, if only the wealthy would “pay their fair share.” More likely, they have no clue about it except they don’t like the idea of people having more than they have – unless they’re celebrities. Actually, America’s public debt obligations are so huge that even if the rich gave up all their annual income to be redistributed, it would not even begin to solve the problem.

The challenge the GOP candidates face is this: Somehow, face up to the fact that nothing being done by the Obama Administration, nothing being suggested by OWS, and nothing the “super committee” is likely to come up with will help in the least. In fact, any of these are making and will make the situation much worse. The results of the 2012 presidential election will in all probability mean the difference between economic and currency collapse, or a real chance at a recovery that everyone can recognize as a recovery.

How the OWS protesters could support Barack Obama in view of the economic damage his administration has done, can be explained only by the fact that the protest’s money and energy is coming largely from people who have no use for America as it has been anyway, and would like to see the whole system fall. Communists, Socialists, Nazis, and fascists are eagerly awaiting what they hope will be the collapse of capitalism and the inauguration of a socialist paradise.

Economically, what they want is not only not feasible, it is not possible, unless they want something like Soviet communism, which is bound to fail. This involves the end of individual liberty and the institution of slavery. We are on Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” already; we need to reverse this, not accelerate it. People who are willing to trade their liberty for government “benefits” will be disappointed if they get their request.

See short video depicting the ideas of Hayek’s classic book in cartoon form here. The presentation is a bit dated, but the ideas are not:

Class warfare, stirring up the mob against the supposedly unjust success of the wealthy is the classic appeal. Liberal agitators, and probably the mainstream media, are just waiting for more violent outbursts to occur.

People who want some corrections made, but not a violent upheaval, ought to consider the fact that it is possible to address America’s economic situation in a responsible way that would bring about substantial improvement fairly quickly. This involves electing a competent Republican president and a Congress that will get rid of the “super committee” and reverse their results, and face up to the task of cutting the size and scope of the federal government and reining in the ridiculous spending.

At the least, it should be recognized that Obama has accomplished nothing positive for the economy. Actually, he has brought about much economic, social and cultural destruction. Short of direct divine intervention, four more years of Barack Obama would bring about the tragic failure of American freedom and prosperity for many years to come. That’s how serious our plight is.

Democrats’ Last Stand? or, This Ain’t the Tea Party

2011-10-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaThe Occupy Wall Street protest, trying to become a movement, is in essence another left-wing demand for a socialist utopia. Lacking identified leaders and lacking a focus on issues, and finding a convenient scapegoat in “Wall Street,” the protests appear to be an attempt to reawaken the 1960’s protests against things in general. It is basically “juvenile rabble,” as Rich Lowry calls it, and only in a very narrow and superficial sense is it anything like the Tea Party.

Those Democrats! They’ve got no record that they can run on, so now their tactic is to stir up some of those people who are always wanting to protest something (people whom Obama’s policies have failed) and direct them toward blaming “Wall Street” for their troubles. The entire Occupy Wall Street event has been to some extent coordinated, supported, and/or financed by the usual DNC suspects: MoveOn.org, George Soros, White House advisers, etc. In supporting this reprehensible mob action, the White House, already grasping at straws for some kind of election advantage, may be holding on to their last one, for they are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel with this. Rather than simply “embracing” the OWS thing, it’s more likely that they had a hand in drawing it up and implementing it. Hopefully, American voters will see the foolishness of this whole episode.

It’s as if the protesters like what Obama has done for them so far, so much that they’re wanting four more years of his kind of “change.”

The White House continues its much-used, but false, line, with more than a hint of “Blame Bush,”

“If you’re concerned about Wall Street and our financial system, the president is standing on the side of consumers and the middle class,” senior White House adviser David Plouffe said when asked about the demonstrations during an interview today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And a lot of these Republicans are basically saying, ‘You know what? Let’s go back to the same policies that led to the Great Recession in the first place.’” [Emphasis added]

No, Republicans are saying let’s not continue with those policies. They’re saying, we should stop bailouts, profligate spending, over-regulation, and basically get the government out of the way of prosperity. At least some Republicans are saying that. And Obama isn’t “standing with the middle class,” he’s destroying the middle class through harebrained economic policies designed to increase dependence upon government.

Funny, guess who some of Obama’s biggest donors are. Right. Wall Street firms. The “proposed” lists of demands, such as, cancelling all debt, free college education for all, etc., demonstrate the protesters’ profound ignorance of anything to do with actual economics. Of course, the Marxist supporters of OWS see it as a way to help bring about the downfall of capitalism, a goal shared by top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, who applauds the effort.

An OWS web site referred to how they stand in “solidarity” with the people of Greece, who are just lately starting to pay the price for receiving the goodies they wanted from the government: impending default, bankruptcy and poverty. But everyone is supposed to bail them out, for reasons that are very unclear. America is already on the route taken by Greece, and if these protesters have their way, the end result is chaos, then tyranny.

The OWS protesters are a mob and are proving Ann Coulter’s point in her recent book Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. Leftists like mobs and operate through mobs, dating back at least to the French Revolution. And that was well before George Soros and Saul Alinsky.

Fox News via The Daily Caller

Eugene Robinson, token liberal columnist for Investors’ Business Daily writes,

Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love 'em.

I love every little thing about these gloriously amateurish sit-ins. I love that they are spontaneous, leaderless and open-ended. I love that the protesters refuse to issue specific demands beyond a forceful call for economic justice.

Apparently he loves the fact that some of these people are defecating on police cars and the American flag, and are otherwise creating a huge mess that some other people, who actually work for a living, are going to have to clean up. And that’s even if the OWSers don’t turn violent and start burning and looting.

To compare this thing to the Tea Party is like comparing the latest Nancy Pelosi speech you’ve heard to the Gettysburg Address or Hamlet’s soliloquy. Put simply, as Ann Coulter said it: “I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point.”

But OWS too shall pass, and the sooner the better.

Keynesians Keep Trying to Control the Economy

2011-09-23T17:28:00.000-07:00


Henry Hazlitt

President Obama’s economic policies have been based largely on his administration’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936). Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke likes Keynesianism also. Keynes became popular largely by proposing massive deficit spending as a key element for getting out of the Great Depression. Politicians loved the idea, because they like to spend money, and Keynesianism gave them cover to do so without raising taxes, should they so choose.

America has been accumulating the results of Keynesianism for decades, and is now dangerously close to a real day of reckoning concerning our huge national debt. Europe is already considering seeking a bailout from China. What Americans often fail to think about is: Who’s going to bail the U.S. when we get to that point? And we surely will unless some serious changes in direction are made fairly soon. The answer: No one. There is no one to bail us out. Would we end up repudiating our debt? Would we write it off in bankruptcy, allowing treasury bills to become worthless? Who knows?

Henry Hazlitt’s 1959 book, The Failure of the New Economics: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.) refutes Keynes at numerous points, quoting extensively from his book. (Ebook version of the Hazlitt work is available for free download at Mises.org.) Hazlitt was closely associated with Austrian school economics of Ludwig von Mises, Fredrich A. Hayek and others, and was a prolific writer and champion of individual liberty. [1]

Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Keynesians have dominated government economic policy and academic instruction, countered somewhat by classical theorists and monetarists, vastly growing the government, with some relief along the way, but leading to the distress we have experienced since the 2008 financial crisis and the concurrent recession. Keynes held “full employment” as the goal, but the Keynesians have delivered now-chronic high unemployment.

When Michelle Bachmann says that it “wouldn’t take that long” to turn the economy around, and when she says that her policies would lead us back to $2.00-a-gallon gasoline, she should be taken seriously, because she has a much better grasp of our economic situation than the current powers that be. She has some understanding of market forces, and does not have the contempt for the free market that the socialist regime has.

It is an axiom of economics that for economic growth, there must be saving and investment, and profits. Saving leads to availability of credit and it leads to investment. Keynesianism has led the Federal Reserve to set interest rates at near zero, and they have announced plans to keep them there for a long time. This stifles saving and investment. The Fed has encouraged easy availability of credit by pumping money, created out of thin air, into the system. Keynes discouraged individual saving and wanted low interest rates. He also wanted government to control investment. Small excepts from Hazlitt:

“The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live,” Keynes begins, “are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes” ([Keynes] p. 372).

There are four chief things wrong with this statement:
(1) The vagueness of Keynes's "full employment" concept …
(2) Prolonged mass unemployment is not the fault of our economic “society,” but of governmental interventions in labor-management relations, wage-rates, and money and
banking policy—the very kind of intervention that Keynes wished to increase.
(3) The distribution of wealth and incomes is in the main neither “arbitrary" nor “inequitable” in a competitive free market system. As John Bates Clark showed so brilliantly in “The Distribution of Wealth” (1899) “free competition tends to give to labor what labor creates, to capitalists what capital creates, and to entrepreneurs what the coordinating function creates.” Individual inequities are bound to occur, but they are not systematic. Capitalism itself tends constantly to reduce them by its rewards to production. If we are looking for really “arbitrary” and “inequitable” distribution, we can find it in the East, or in backward and “underdeveloped” countries, or in Communist Russia and China—in short, in either pre-capitalistic or socialist societies.
(4) It is even a misnomer in capitalist countries to call this process “distribution.” Income and wealth are not “distributed” but produced, and in general go to those who produce them. [Hazlitt, Pp. 374-375]

Keynes's arguments against “liquidity” and against “speculation” are untenable. Speculative anticipations and risks are necessarily involved in all economic activity.
Somebody must bear them. What Keynes is saying is that people cannot be trusted to invest the money they have themselves earned, and that this money should be seized from them by government officials and spent or “invested” in the directions in which those officials (seeking to hold on to political power) deem best. [Hazlitt, Page 430]
(Emphasis added)

President Obama has been accused of a “class warfare” attitude because of his insistence upon raising taxes on millionaires. His liberal base likes any policy aimed at going after the “rich,” or, redistribution of income. The president in his September 20 speech accused House Majority Leader John Boehner of having a “my way or the highway” position for not being willing to accept any tax increases, but Obama himself adopts a “my way or the highway” stance with the opposite position.

Obama wants to take more money out of the hands of job creators to “invest” in things his administration would like to “invest” in, i.e., spend for. Government, in their view, owns all the money, and they only let us keep whatever portion of it they choose.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on Fox News Sunday the day before the president’s speech and indicated that Republicans would not be able to accept much of what the president was expected to propose, and characterizing it as “class warfare” approach. Ryan explained why more new taxes are not the answer:

Socialist policies lead to authoritarian controls and less freedom. Obama’s jobs bill and tax proposal, though unlikely to become law, do illustrate the Keynesian tax and spend philosophy. Obama’s wish is to get higher taxes now, and make “cuts” some time in the future – cuts which are unlikely to happen if liberals have their way.

As I have said before, class envy is the very lifeblood of liberalism, and exploiting and promoting the class struggle is the process. It has this in common with communism. Obama, the great uniter, is now reduced to pandering to labor unions by threatening “the rich” with higher taxes and more regulations, for his own political purposes. Neither his “jobs” bill nor his proposal for “paying for it” is likely to gain any ground, nor would they help with the actual problems if they were to be passed. The proposals are certainly no better than the previous “stimulus” and would create at least one more new government agency, the “Infrastructure Bank.” As if we didn’t have enough slush funds already (see Fannie and Freddie).

[1] See Keynes vs. Hayek rap video here. Sequel here.

Photo: Ludwig von Mises Institute, via Wikipedia.

Economic Principles That Should Be Put into Practice

2011-09-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

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Paul Volcker, President Obama, and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt

The same people in government who create economic crises and problems for America are the ones who propose to solve them, by doing more of the things that created them. The futility of this approach should be obvious, but somehow isn’t. Since so many economists have been taken in by Keynesianism, they are thereby largely precluded from considering other approaches. Therefore, we have things like President Obama’s latest “jobs” bill proposal. It’s like the previous “stimulus” plan, except it would also add an “infrastructure bank,” i.e. a slush fund/piggy bank for liberal politicians to fund union-friendly projects that would create little to nothing in terms of addressing the actual problems of unemployment.

The “jobs” bill would cost nearly half a trillion dollars, which the president proposed to pay for, initially, by letting the super committee figure it out, and then, more recently, proposed raising taxes on those awful oil companies and rich people.

Government officials could get a clue about how the economy works if they would listen to Peter Schiff in the following video of Schiff’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe (video via The Daily Bail, dated March 25, 2009) [1]:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Quoth Schiff: “Keynes. It's nonsense. He's like a witch doctor in medicine. You can't follow Keynes. Keynes didn't understand economics.”

That the economy should be based on savings, investment, and production, rather than endless borrowing and spending, ought not to be such a hard concept to grasp. Also, politicians should understand that propping up, even enshrining the mistakes that led to the crisis simply compounds the errors and prevents market corrections.

The more spending the government does to try to jump-start the economy, and the more money the Fed prints to put into the system, the worse the situation will become. Unless definite measures are taken to reduce the size and scope of government and to make actual significant cuts in federal spending, and to stop all bailouts, subsidies, and other corporate welfare, the outlook is for more economic deterioration to an extent determined by how much of this is not done.

Obama calls for “investment,” meaning government spending, but what is needed is for government and the Fed to step aside and let private saving and investment take place. If there could be some certainty as to low taxes and less regulation (get rid of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and rein in the EPA), the business climate would look much more favorable, and the economy would soon improve. If interest rates could be set by the free market, investors could experience acceptable returns, and would be willing to risk capital.

Until the GOP can take control of House, Senate, and White House, there won’t likely be a lot of progress, and even if they do, it will remain to be seen how they would proceed. But it isn’t yet too late to start improving things. It’s over a year until election time, and during the interim, we’ll have to cope with high unemployment, high deficits, and whatever the “super committee” comes up with. If the economy can be interfered with less by government and the Fed, some good things can still happen over the next year or so. Let the recession play itself out, and the market will begin correcting the economy.

[1] “Look Out Krugman, Belief In Keynes Is Belief In Self-Delusion: Peter Schiff Tells The Truth About The Recession And Government Spending (MSNBC Morning Joe Video),” The Daily Bail.

Infrastructure Bank – Another Plan That Won’t – and Can’t – Work

2011-09-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaWhen you see a “jobs creation” approach that didn’t work, doesn’t work, and can never work, why urge Congress to try it again?

Back in March of this year Eric Jaffe at Infrastructurist.com wrote

Democrats John Kerry and Mark Warner joined Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison to propose the BUILD Act yesterday. The bipartisan legislation would create a national infrastructure bank the senators are calling the American Infrastructure Financing Authority — the term “bank” being anathema these days. [1]

I’ve always admired Sen. Hutchison, but this may be evidence that her decision to retire from the Senate is a good one.

This proposal didn’t get anywhere at the time, but the “Infrastructure Bank” is on President Obama’s list of ideas for job creation. According to Jaffe’s article, the Federal Government would provide billions of dollars and many billions more would come from private investors (Wall Street, etc.) and these funds would be invested and applied to infrastructure projects. Wow, what an idea.

According to Jaffe, “The upside is clearly good. Less clear is whether the plan can get off the ground.” Of course it didn’t, fortunately, at the time.

Conn Carroll at The Washington Examiner (08/14/2011), has a better evaluation of the idea: it’s just another “stimulus.”

The first thing to note about this proposal is that it's not really a bank. Banks use deposits from some customers to fund loans to other customers, and they make money by charging interest to borrowers at higher rates than they offer to depositors.

Obama would run his bank a little differently. Instead of forcing borrowers to pay money back, Obama's National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund would “directly provide resources for projects through grants, loans, or a blend of both.” Another word for “grant” is “gift,” so basically Obama's infrastructure bank would be just giving money away.

But then how would Obama's bank stay in business? Simple. Congress would give it $5 billion to spend every year…. [2]

Tackling those “shovel ready” jobs, I suppose.

Carroll mentions other similar failed measures associated with “stimulus” projects. The article is well worth reading.

It’s clear that Keynesian spending will not bring about the desired recovery, but will likely put us back into recession. The August jobs figures (zero net jobs added, prior month revised downward, nominal unemployment rate still 9.1%) suggest that nothing being done now is helping much at all. And more billions added to the debt? As Victor Davis Hanson observes, the ever-present Keynesian excuse is that we haven’t spent enough.

But how much would be enough? We already have so much debt it will never be paid back except through massive inflation.

The entire approach of government intervention, and Federal Reserve intervention in the free market not only doesn’t help the situation, but promotes the false idea that somehow the free market has failed. In fact, the entire financial crisis and the current economic downturn are the fault of government and the Fed. Private sector blame consists of failing to adequately protest bad government policies, creating bad securities, and, understandably, accepting the bailouts when bankruptcy was deserved, which would have liquidated the debts rather than sticking the taxpayers with them.

But Keynesianism, as currently practiced, knows no real limit of spending to try to stimulate the economy. See how it has stimulated things so far.

[1] Eric Jaffe, “Kerry, Hutchison Propose National Infrastructure Bank,” 03/16/2011, Infrastructurist.com.

[2] Conn Carroll, “Infrastructure bank is just another stimulus boondoggle,” 08/14/2011, The Washington Examiner.

Ron Paul Deserves Serious Consideration in the Presidential Race

2011-08-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Presidential Candidate

The fiscal and monetary mess America finds herself in these days, daily aggravated by the current administration and the Federal Reserve, brings positive attention to the candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The establishment and the media usually try to portray him as a fringe candidate or “cult” figure who need not be taken seriously, and really try to ignore him entirely. But that is a tactic that won’t work as his principles become more widely known.

There is much about Ron Paul’s candidacy that is appealing, and to a lot of people. It’s true that his devotees are very highly motivated and loyal. But his presidential candidacy, if it is to have a chance at success, must reach people who know little to nothing about him, or are just beginning pay attention to him. Certainly he had been calling attention to the nation’s financial troubles well before they reached a crisis stage.

Also, Ron Paul calls for strict adherence to the Constitution and wonders why this should make him seem extreme. Let’s take a look at some of his main positions on issues. He has shown himself to be a principled and consistent advocate on these things, and can show documentation and make convincing arguments for most, if not all, of his stands. One may agree or disagree, but one doesn’t have to be in doubt about what he thinks.

1. He is a proponent of individual liberty. This is supposed to be a purpose of the Constitution and yet his detractors think that this is somehow unseemly, and are too willing to ask Americans to give up liberty in exchange for promises of security. As a libertarian, one might expect individual liberty to be high on his list of priorities. It certainly is not high on President Obama’s list. The top thing on his list seems to be expansion of government size and power.

2. He believes in protecting property rights. This is another aspect of the Constitution which has been too often ignored, but the right to own and use one’s private property is a fundamental principle of freedom. As Thomas Jefferson said, “He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.” [1]

3. He believes in protecting life. Dr. Paul is a physician who has delivered many babies and has an understanding of not only the physical beginning of life, but also the tragic brutality of abortion. His concern extends to all stages of human life.

4. He understands the facts of economics: the futility of deficit spending, the dangers of fiat money, and the unsustainability of America’s current economic trajectory. A hit piece on Rep. Paul and Austrian School economics appears at The Daily Caller, but its points are well refuted by some who commented on the article.

5. He wants to phase out our central bank, the Federal Reserve, and get America back to the gold standard. Otherwise, we will never see the end of the boom-and-bust cycles, constant inflation and thereby, devaluation of the dollar. The ability to create money out of thin air must lead in due course to monetary collapse. Paul would like to restore to Congress its constitutional duty to deal with monetary policy, which they have handed off to the Fed, whose main interest has been in protecting big banks.

6. He opposes our constant wars. In addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, we now have military operations in Libya, Yemen and other places, possibly soon to include Syria. These wars are either not approved beforehand by Congress, or not being fought with a view to winning, or both. These wars are a constant and huge drain on financial and other resources, and especially human life, and mostly fail to actually advance our vital interests. I believe he would want to maintain a strong defense capability, but he certainly is not interested in forced nation building around the world, or trying to maintain an empire.

7. He would end foreign aid. Most of it is wasted on regimes that oppress their people and don’t wish us well either. I would rather maintain some support to countries, such as Israel, that are our actual allies, so I would disagree with him here.

8. He would scale back government regulation. He does not recognize the Executive Branch as having legislative power. He would help the states to claim their constitutional rights and responsibilities.

All these things and others, to me, represent legitimate conservative views that deserve serious consideration. The media say Paul has no chance of becoming president. Despite a virtual media blackout on Ron Paul, even though he was barely edged out in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll by Michele Bachmann, he did manage to appear on Piers Morgan’s TV program (interview video here), and also was defended on The Daily Show by Jon Stewart.

To say the least, the election of Ron Paul as president would be something of a shock to the establishment (like the Tea Party?) He would make some fairly fast changes in our government, but he would still have to deal with Congress and the bureaucracy. I think he would be far better in the White House than Mr. Obama.

There are some good GOP candidates. The campaign will give each of them a significant test. I believe that Ron Paul deserves consideration as a leading candidate. He will get his message out, whether the MSM wants him to or not. It is true that the establishment has some fear of him. They have a vested interest in the status quo. Maybe Ron Paul just makes too much sense.

[1] Thomas Jefferson, to Bancroft, 1788. Quoted by Patriot Post 08/17/2011.

Our Tax Dollars at Work: Obama’s Bus Tour

2011-08-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

Not Obama's bus

No one doubts that an incumbent officeholder has some advantages when running for re-election. President Obama, of course, has the power of his office working for him during the presidential campaign. But to what extent is this advantage ethical or even legal? It would surely be hard to get anywhere with legal action against Obama’s campaign activities, but one might question a couple of the excesses. I mean (1) his supposed need for two taxpayer-funded buses costing $1.1 million each on which to make his (2) taxpayer-funded campaign tour.

The following video, via Dakota Voice tells something about this:

The president has carped and lectured on excesses of spending to private jet owners, Las Vegas vacationers, etc., but he has seen no reason not to send Michelle and friends on a vacation to Spain, where they had to clear public beaches to allow the First Lady’s group to frolic in the sand, nor to use Air Force One for personal “dates” with the First Lady in New York, Europe, or wherever.

I haven’t heard from anyone who doubts that the President’s “listening tour” is simply a campaign tour, or that the ultra-fancy bus is a campaigning vehicle. The expenses of these things should be paid for by political supporters, not taxpayers in general.

Of course, the president can also get free TV time whenever he wishes, but by now, he may be reluctant to use it too much, since each appearance lately seems to be followed by a drop in the stock market, and also his poll numbers.

I suppose the president believes in public funding for (his) political campaigns. But where does this cross the line? Of course, all this is a minor issue compared to the economic threats currently facing our country. But Obama’s tactics do not seem to represent financial caution or much concern about the public treasury.

Don’t Blame Me, I’m Just the President

2011-08-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

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President Barack Obama

News item:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign.

* * *

President Barack Obama would have us believe that he’s doing, and has done, his dead-level best to get America’s economy back to where it should be. But he’s been obstructed by everyone else, especially those Tea-Partiers, GOP leaders, and European problems, not to mention the Japanese tsunami, and probably global warming.

There are numerous issues on which Obama and Company are so wrong that the U.S. economy is being wrecked, or, as Ben Stein mentioned a year or two ago, they’re standing on the economic oxygen hose and the patient is getting worse.

“A Theme Likely To Dominate His 2012 Re-election Campaign”

In 2008, Mr. Obama campaigned as one who seemed to have the answers, knew the best strategies, and, while criticizing the Bush Administration, offered no hint of thinking that they had created any problems that he couldn’t overcome. Yet now, Bush is going to be blamed as Obama runs for a second term? He’s going to have to spend eight years undoing Bush’s damage? Seems that will be his message, according to Reuters.

“Tea Party Downgrade”

A recent Democrat talking points memo had David Axelrod, John Kerry, and others putting forth the phrase “Tea Party Downgrade,” as though the intransigence of the Tea Party is what resulted in the credit rating downgrade of U.S. securities by Standard and Poor’s. The agency followed up on Monday, August 8, 2011, with downgrading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other federal institutions. The explanation for blaming the Tea Party for any of this is the ludicrous claim that they refused to “compromise,” and that, as Axelrod stated, the ratings agency was looking for revenues. Standard and Poor’s explicitly said that they weren’t addressing that aspect, but they were concerned with the increasing debt, and the lack of any viable efforts to get it under control.

I suppose it’s George W. Bush’s fault that the Democrats in Congress have not passed a budget in over two years, and that the budget Obama submitted would have accelerated spending and the deficit. Congress could not support it. Nor could they support a bill to increase the debt ceiling without regard to the deficit or spending cuts. Republicans, meanwhile, have submitted actual plans, Paul Ryan’s, and the Cut, Cap and Balance proposals, for instance. All of which were said to be DOA in the Senate and/or on the President’s desk. Tea Partiers were trying to do what they were elected to do, and in the end were influenced by Speaker John Boehner’s fear of allowing a default, and got into line to vote for the insipid plan that finally passed. But at least they held the line on taxes, a not-insignificant thing.

“The Grand Plan”

Obama wanted a “grand plan.” That way, he could put off any cuts until two years down the road (slowed acceleration of spending being regarded as a “cut”), get significant tax increases quickly, and spend several hundred billions more in “stimulus.” But of course he bears no responsibility for the credit rating downgrade. If you believe that he doesn’t, perhaps you’d be interested in a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. But even the “grand plan,” never saw the form of an actual proposal written down on paper. So of course the President couldn’t be held to anything he might have said.

If you listen to the president and his helpers, you get the idea that our economic problems would be solved if only those corporate jet owners and the “rich” would pay their fair share. Not mentioned is the fact that the top percentiles of earners pay the overwhelming majority of income taxes, and about 47 percent of American workers pay no income tax. But the problem is not taxes. The problem is spending. You can be sure that if taxes were increased today, Obama would quickly find ways to spend every cent of any increased revenue (and not toward retiring the debt), and soon revenues would actually be lower because the economy would shrink even more. Liberals will never reduce spending and they will always want higher taxes. This should be axiomatic by now. Promises of future reductions are made, but never fulfilled.

So far, there have been no spending cuts, and the Democrats are calling for more spending. Somewhere, John Maynard Keynes is probably smiling. But most of us are not.

Thoughts on the Federal Reserve and the Banking Cartel (OK, a Rant)

2011-08-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

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Mayer Amschel Rothschild

“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), “founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty….”

The well-known formula for making money, “buy cheap and sell high,” is practiced to the extreme by the Federal Reserve, which has monopoly control of the nation’s currency. They literally “make,” i.e., create, money out of nothing, and then loan it out at interest. As Ron Paul has reminded us, the U.S. owes $1.6 trillion to the Fed (a “debt” which he has introduced a bill to cancel). A nice business to be in, and the private banks that own the Federal Reserve system likely wouldn’t trade it for anything. The big banks are able to rely on the Federal Reserve for bailouts, if needed, allowing them to keep their earnings privatized, but socializing their losses, i.e., charging them to the taxpayers, if they get into trouble from, say, high-risk transactions.

And the Fed and the Treasury Department are all too ready to come to the rescue if needed, as they did in 2008. They even forced some banks to take money whether they wanted to or not. That way, they could keep secret the identities of banks that were actually in big trouble. The bailouts also included some foreign banks. One can’t help wondering why Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, but others were not.

Well, that’s water under the bridge now, I suppose, except it really isn’t. Nothing prevents further bailouts, and there are still entities “too big to fail.” It must be nice being part of a cartel where profits are assured, and if for some reason they don’t happen, government, or the Federal Reserve, or both, step in to save the day. Within months, the situation is well in hand, and executives who drove the organizations to near-bankruptcy are (with some exceptions) back to receiving their large bonuses, and waiting for the next bubble to burst.

With the government’s gracious assistance, the Fed has to its credit numerous booms and busts, the Great Depression, the abolishment of the gold standard (and therefore, the end of sound money), the confiscation of citizens’ gold, the dollar’s continuing shrinkage in value, the meltdown of 2008, big bailouts, the dollar’s currently threatened status as the world’s reserve currency, and the current sour economy that shows very little sign of improving much any time soon. Yet the computers of the Fed continue to create whatever quantity of money might be desired, often with the stated hope of creating inflation. The ideal level of inflation is zero. Anything above that steals purchasing power from everyone who holds dollars. The ideal interest rate is that set by the free market. The artificially low rates rob savers of any appropriate return on savings, yet retains high-interest costs of commercial bank credit, e.g., credit cards, etc.

It seems the government wants everyone in a state of fear or anxiety over what government fiscal and domestic policy is going to turn out to be, leading to the likely conclusion that the government authorities are perfectly OK with the economic and social turmoil they create, as long as it helps increase and bolster government control of the economy, and expands citizen dependence upon government. I have about given up on thinking that either the Fed or the Obama Administration is really interested in improving the economy, and am inclined to think that they are accomplishing what they set out to do, that is, impoverish and control people more and more. If this is not the case, they must be hopelessly inept. But they are very willing to cooperate and plan things together, things which now threaten to topple our currency and our economy.

I am optimistic that, with strong and sustained effort, this trend can be reversed; but there will be no cooperation from the Fed or the current administration, and success is far from assured. It’s either staying optimistic or studying those conspiracy theories more.

Is This the Best We Can Do on Debt Right Now?

2011-08-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

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President Obama and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

The debt-limit deal appears to be about par for the course of the incumbent federal government:

     1. Cuts that border on being meaningless
     2. Debt-limit increase that will encourage Democrats to demand more spending
     3. Creation of a “super committee” to recommend cuts. Remember Obama’s debt commission?
     4. Postponing actual cuts until after the 2012 elections
     5. Does nothing to make America’s credit rating look any better. If ratings agencies continue their AAA rating for U. S. debt, it just makes the agencies look like they’re in the pocket of the government.
     6. There is very little to encourage the financial markets, outside of forestalling an immediate, formal default – but for how long?

The only Tea Party victory seems to be that there were no new taxes in the measure, and this seriously offends leftists. President Obama says, not to worry, he’ll still demand tax increases, especially on those awful corporate jet owners and those “rich” people earning $250,000 or more per year. This is one area where the House GOP can put its foot down, if it has the will to do so.

The deal, in essence a kick-the-can strategy, is perhaps the best that could be expected with the current Administration in power. As long as liberals are in power, there can be no actual meaningful spending cuts, and there will always be strong pressure for higher taxes. They must fund their beloved projects and keep introducing new ones.

Meanwhile, the “non-political” (but really very political) Federal Reserve continues its secretive strategy of creating from thin air trillions of dollars to eventually bring us hyperinflation. Neither the Obama Administration nor the Fed cares a whit about “transparency,” as they feel their operations are beyond the understanding of the public, who aren’t interested anyway. But that view is becoming less and less justified.

Note the video via The Daily Bail, in which it is pointed out that presidential candidate Obama lied seven times in under two minutes:

Sure, no more secrecy.

Via the same site, a video with some input about the secrecy of the Fed, whose so-called Inspector General seems to know little to nothing about what the agency has been doing, months after the fact of some multi-trillion-dollar transactions. Or if she knows, she’s not talking about it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is correct in saying that the budget/debt/deficit problem will not be solved while Barack Obama is in office.

The only real opportunity to fix this extremely serious problem will happen when Republicans take control of not only the House, as now, but also the Senate and the White House. Even then it will remain to be seen what actual steps will be taken that are more effective than letting the situation fester until we see a currency collapse. But with liberals in charge, such an eventual collapse appears inevitable.

Whoever the GOP nominee turns out to be, he or she ought to listen to Ron Paul and the Austrian School economists on these issues. We have some promising candidates who were not on board with debt limit increase, and who have knowledge of what needs to be done. Michele Bachmann and, of course, Ron Paul himself, come to mind. Either of them would operate within the Constitution far more than the does the current regime. It will take an extremely tough and forthright conservative campaign to drive home the extreme danger of four more years of Obama, and an unfettered Federal Reserve, to the American people.

If the GOP fails, we are in for four more years of massive unemployment, higher prices, out-of-control spending, higher taxes, and an economy that will likely take two or more steps backward for every small step forward, with collapse hanging over America’s head like the sword of Damocles. Also more regulation of everything, more endless wars we don’t win, far less personal liberty, and even further lowered standing in the world.

Other than that, everything would be fine.

The Debt Dilemma Is Only a Symptom of the Real Problem

2011-07-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)

Why do politicians believe they can finance anything they may choose to, welfare, war, or whatever may come to mind, regardless of the cost? The availability of easy money created out of thin air is just too tempting, and the power associated with the ability to create money this way is also too tempting, for those in power to resist for long. Thus we have the Federal Reserve masterminding all sorts of crony-benefiting bailouts, highly secret deals with foreign central banks, and deluding the public (and themselves?) that they are providing a valuable service to the public, when in fact they are mainly protecting powerful banks, corporations, and politicians.

Therefore, we experience constant inflation, prolonged booms and busts, and illusions of prosperity, resulting in bad investments, minimal savings, and the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the wealthy. Ron Paul’s excellent book End the Fed [1] describes and documents these phenomena plainly and convincingly. As Paul points out, there is a growing movement to transition away from the Federal Reserve and their power to create money and control interest rates.

A degree of secrecy far more than found in any government agency prevails at the Fed, and no one breaks their barrier or forces any transparency. Congress has the authority to control the Fed, but up to now, little will to do so. There are several aspects which Ron Paul and others have noted about the disadvantages and dangers of the Fed, showing that their (the Fed's) work creates tremendous danger to the country. The Fed was the main factor in causing the Great Depression, which the Federal Government wasted no time in prolonging and deepening through bad, and often ridiculous, economic policies. The Fed is also the main culprit behind today’s economic crisis, which is being made far worse by the economic policies of the Obama Administration.

Austrian School economists predicted the housing bust and described the dangers of the Fed’s actions:

As adherents to Austrian economics know, the Federal Reserve-induced economic boom must turn to bust. People who have lived high, yet have truly earned nothing, will not fare well in the coming bust. Such cash-strapped and indebted families will head toward financial collapse and thus will turn to the state for welfare and credit relief. As to welfare, parent and child become virtual wards of the state….

The loan markets are profoundly distorted due to the nature of fiat money machinations. Because of this intervention, lending is now dramatically different. It is no longer necessary to know your borrowers. The bank – sustained by its cat-and-mouse scheme of fractional-reserve banking — has a huge incentive to fund the loan, and then sell the loan off to intermediaries who package the loans into mortgage-backed securities. In turn, this toxic junk is sold to mutual funds, insurance companies and other institutions starved for yield. The debt-o-rama grabs hold, and as for the borrowers, there is no longer a fear of debt….

Is it possible that the two-thousandaire is merely a precursor to the "new man" (a pliant, unthinking being) Mao and Lenin attempted to socially engineer via central planning? It would seem that the communists had it backwards thinking that banning money was integral to transforming mankind. For it certainly appears that easy money and credit do the trick in eroding the human spirit, morality, and basic decency, along with intellectual and financial independence. [2]

Constant Inflation

The monetarists argue that a top-down central bank guarantees monetary stability. Well, sure if your definition of stability is a grinding erosion of value through incessant inflation: today's dollar is worth $0.19 in 1971 dollars (the year the United States officially dropped any pretense of abiding by a gold standard) and worth only a nickel in 1913 dollars (the year the Federal Reserve was voted into existence). [3]

Moral Hazard
As has frequently been pointed out, numerous large bailouts have brought attention to moral hazard, that is, knowing that if a bank or company is considered “too big to fail,” it will be bailed out if it gets into trouble; therefore their management will likely be less cautious and willing to take more risks than would otherwise be the case. The other moral hazard, or more properly, moral failure, is that a monopoly on money, along with the unlimited power to create it at will, must lead to abuse and serious economic trouble and finally, collapse.

Political Connections
While the Fed is often thought of as non-political, it has usually tried to help the incumbent president politically. Ben Bernanke risked criticism by supporting (concocting?) President Barack Obama’s (and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s) politically unpopular auto bailouts and the Bush TARP bailouts which Obama also supported.

Tom Dilorenzo gives another example in this paragraph from a 2000 article:

As long as [President Bill] Clinton was fearful of impeachment, [Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan kept the monetary spigots wide open, even while voicing "concern" about an "irrationally exuberant" economy. With Clinton out of the woods and the presidential race in full swing, Greenspan is attempting to reverse the irreversible economic forces that he set in motion over the past two and a half years. [4]

There is no easy answer to the current crisis. Even after something passes and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, we will still have this enormous debt and the longer-term problem unsolved. The conservative consensus, which I have supported, is that the Republicans must avoid caving to the Democrats in this situation, which, I think, could be politically damaging to the GOP. But if politics would allow it, Ron Paul offers, perhaps, the best approach, and that involves not paying the debt of the U.S. to the Fed (via Tulsa Change):

Over the years, the Fed has forestalled quick recoveries by preventing the corrections from taking place at times when the least amount of damage could have been sustained. Eliminating the Fed would put a lot of currency and economic troubles behind us, and ultimately lead to increased personal liberty and national prosperity.

[1] Ron Paul, End the Fed, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009. This is important reading for anyone interested in the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve. I highly recommend it.

[2] Karen De Coster and Eric Englund, “Will the Federal Reserve Create the New Socialist Man?” 06/26/2006, Mises.org.

[3] Stephen Mauzy, “Don’t Blame the Federal Reserve,” 12/15/2009, Mises.org.

[4] Tom Dilorenzo, “The Federal Reserve and Political Corruption,” May 2000, Mises.org.

Time for a Tea Party: the most fiscally irresponsible President in history blasts Congress, saying it 'should be responsible and do its job'

2011-07-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

Time for a Tea Party: the most fiscally irresponsible President in history blasts Congress, saying it 'should be responsible and do its job'
(Link to Doug Ross @ Journal, showing the arrogance and incompetence of the regime)

Krauthammer On Target about 2012 Budget Cuts; Will Obama Allow Default?

2011-07-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

U.S. Treasury Dept. building (Dreamstime.com)

Where are we on the debt-ceiling negotiations? Do we need to raise the debt ceiling? What if there is a default? Will the military get paid? Will Social Security and disability checks, and veterans’ benefit checks go out?

We are faced with a weird combination of actual danger and fear mongering. There are some facts to be considered when following the “negotiations,” which increasingly look like a stalemated process, but which, as August 2 nears, are likely to end in some kind of agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Conservatives can only hope that the GOP leaders can manage to assert their House majority power and hold firm on (1) real cuts and (2) no tax increases.

One way of addressing this is the “cut, cap and balance” legislation the House Republicans are uniting behind. It addresses the issues of the day and offers a mechanism to bring spending under control for the longer term.

I think GOP should consider the advice of Charles Krauthammer, and require substantial cuts in the 2012 fiscal year. The president wants everything to happen after the 2012 elections, giving him an election-year pass on these issues. Also, Mr. Krauthammer suggests, wisely, I think, that the GOP should point out the president’s way of framing all his arguments, that only he is the one trying to resolve the issue, while his opponents are only seeking to help billionaires and special interests, and further their own political interests. If the president is so serious about budget cuts, where was he in the last two years? Along with the congressional Democrats, who presented no budget at all, he was very busy not presenting a budget that might cut spending, knowing full well that a serious, extended agreement on the debt ceiling was needed. Now, he’s suddenly the hero of the hour?

Social Security checks’ status in the event of default represents a curious issue. Mr. Obama, cynically using seniors’ and veterans’ checks as a bargaining chip in the negotiations, says August checks may not go out if default happens. This contradicts his Office of Management and Budget Director’s statement that the Social Security Trust Fund is solvent through 2037, so no discussion is needed. However, this is untrue. As pointed out, again by Charles Krauthammer, as well as others (Gary North, for example), the Social Security Trust Fund has no tangible assets. It has been raided and spent by the politicians for decades. What it has are non-negotiable government bonds (IOU’s). It’s not only not solvent through 2037, it’s barely, if at all, solvent now.

In fact, the big three programs, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are a ticking financial time bomb, representing unfunded obligations of tens of trillions of dollars. Yet the Democrats have no desire to deal with this.

It has been said that military and Social Security checks, etc. for August will go out unless either President Obama or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issues orders to stop them. If there is any real possibility of them not going out, then the Administration needs to get its priorities in order. And they ought to apologize for lying to us about the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. Rep. Allen West views Obama’s threat as “sad, pathetic, and fear mongering” (video via CNS News):

Of course there are other consequences if default happens: Markets will respond negatively, America’s creditors may be ready to cash in, etc. The world’s safest investments, U.S. Treasury bonds, may be seen as not so safe after all. Anyway, a default would be bad. How bad, we’ll have to wait and see, if it happens.

A few points to remember:

1. Even though G. W. Bush over-spent, his deficits pale in comparison to what the Obama regime has added to our debt.

2. Obama has never been serious, and is not now serious about spending cuts. He still wants a trillion-dollar tax increase (in addition to what we’re scheduled to get under Obamacare). He wants any spending cuts that are agreed to, to happen in the out years, well past election day.

3. He constantly says the Republicans are only interested in political posturing, when what they are trying to do is the thing they were elected to do. Obama is the one who wants smooth sailing into the 2012 elections. He wants to blame the GOP for anything that goes wrong, and he steadfastly refuses to show actual leadership on anything to do with the debt or budget. He threatens to veto “cut, cap and balance” if the Congress passes it. His strategy is to stir up class warfare.

4. As has been pointed out numerous times, even if Obama could take all the money from all the rich, it wouldn’t even begin to solve the problem.

If “cut, cap, and balance” somehow passes both houses of Congress and lands on Obama’s desk, the GOP should not offer any further deals. In fact, they shouldn’t anyway. Let Obama deal with the default. It will be his choice. Sen. Mitch McConnell is right about one thing: these problems cannot be adequately dealt with while Obama is still in office. But Republicans need to stand strong if they are serious about spending cuts. Otherwise, it’s just more of the same tax-and-spend and the Republicans will be weakened as a result of caving.

Unemployment Up! What a Surprise! But Why Is It Surprising?

2011-07-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dreamstime.com

Economists were reportedly taken by surprise when the June unemployment figures showed 9.2 per cent unemployment, with only 18,000 jobs added. May’s figures were revised downward from 54,000 jobs added to only 25,000. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show 14.1 million people unemployed, including 6.3 million unemployed for 27 weeks or more, and 982,000 discouraged workers among 2.7 million “marginally attached” to the labor force, people who wanted and were available for work, but not counted as unemployed because they had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the BLS survey. Another 8.6 million were working part time when they would prefer to work full-time.

For an article on comparatively rosy expectations, see this.

The New York Times reports as follows:

Economists were stunned. They had been expecting job growth to strengthen in June as oil prices eased and supply disruptions caused by the Japanese tsunami and earthquake receded. Instead, the government’s monthly snapshot of the labor market showed that several industries, including construction, finance and temporary services, shrank. At the same time, leading indicators like wages and the length of the average workweek, which tend to grow before employers begin adding more jobs, actually contracted. [1]

Of course, these days, analysts always seem surprised at unfavorable economic news, perhaps still waiting for good results from Obama’s “stimulus,” and when the results don’t come, some complain that it’s because the stimulus was too small. Anyway, they don’t want us to cut spending any time soon.

The reasons for the unfavorable unemployment picture and its continuation are not that difficult to understand. The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell blog article of July 8 sums it pretty well. Mike Brownfield explains that in order to keep up with population growth, 100,000 to 125,000 new jobs are needed each month. Also, he quotes Rep. Paul Ryan and comments as follows:

“Investors and businesses make decisions on a forward-looking basis. They know that today’s large debt levels are simply tomorrow’s tax hikes, interest rate increases, or inflation – and they act accordingly.” [– Ryan]

It is this “debt overhang,” and the President’s threatened tax hikes, Obamacare, his incessant meddling in business (whether through the EPA or the NLRB) and the uncertainty those actions generate that are weighing on U.S. growth, investment and job creation today. [2]

The article contains some interesting insights, and I recommend reading the whole piece.

At best, business is risky, and when government adds threats of higher taxes, publishes new and invasive, costly regulations, and takes on ever-increasing debt, these things add to the already substantial market risks and can hardly help but slow things down. Everything we buy has been produced and sold by businesses, who have seen to it that we have stores (or website warehouses) filled with merchandise. Merchants are trying to put on the market the things that people want, in spite of all government’s efforts to stop innovation, competition, and profitability, and punish success. We should appreciate the fact that in order to have job growth, there must be profits and expansion. For some good information on the nature of business, see this.

The result of Obama’s economic activities will be to further slow or reverse economic growth unless serious changes are made. The Administration shows no inclination toward a pro-growth approach, but instead wants more spending and more taxes.

[1] Motoko Rich, “Job Growth Falters Badly, Clouding Hope for Recovery,” 07/08/2011, The New York Times.

[2] Mike Brownfield, “Morning Bell: An Economy in Panic,” 07/08/2011, The Foundry blog at The Heritage Foundation.

RINO Alert: Jon Huntsman

2011-06-23T18:26:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Ambassador Jon Huntsman, official portrait

Is Republican-in-Name-Only Jon Huntsman serious about the GOP presidential nomination? He seems to be following in the footsteps of John McCain. The media likes him because he criticizes Republicans, agrees with Obama on major issues, and tries to project “civility.” He, like McCain, will be reluctant to criticize the president, whom he considers a “remarkable leader.”

Most conservatives consider Obama a poor leader, if a leader at all. His own staff member said his strategy is to “lead from behind.” That’s leadership? No, that’s why we have confused policies on Afghanistan, Libya, energy, the budget, and many other things.

Also, the policies Mr. Obama has supported have made our country worse, not better. So Republicans have every right and even obligation to criticize the president sternly and often over his policies, and to emphasize the contrast between their views and his.

Civility
“Civility” means that Republicans are supposed to politely accept what the White House and congressional Democrats are selling. Maybe a few questions would be allowed if they are sufficiently deferential. If nominated, Mr. Huntsman would basically be the second coming of John McCain, and would get about as far in the general election as McCain did.

Conservatives who actually want a conservative president would be well advised to support someone who articulates a conservative viewpoint and is willing to boldly criticize the president and his administration. There are so many areas where this is needed, it might be impossible to get to them all in during the campaign, but there should be a focus on some of the main issues: spending, defense, the free market, low taxes, and the number one item: jobs.

Cap and Trade
Mr. Huntsman has enthusiastically supported cap and trade. Not so much today:

Republican White House hopeful Jon Huntsman has found a way to explain his embrace of cap-and-trade when he was governor of Utah: Everyone was doing it. [1]

Huntsman seems to think that the economy won’t allow that approach at this time, but it seems clear that he has no fundamental philosophical problem with it.

The Economy
Another concern about Huntsman: He was apparently right in step with Administration economic policy while serving as Ambassador to China, according to David Axelrod, Obama’s chief advisor:

A senior strategist to the president's reelection campaign, Axelrod said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union” that Huntsman's recent criticism of Obama's “failed” economic policy is “in conflict with what he communicated to us in 2009.” [2]

Health Care

“He was encouraging on health care. He was encouraging on the whole range of issues,” Axelrod said. [3]

Etc.
Steve Benen at a Washington Monthly political blog summarizes Huntsman the candidate thusly:

So, what are we left with? A Republican presidential candidate who believes health care is a right, supported an individual health care mandate, wanted a bigger stimulus in 2009 with fewer tax cuts, expressed support for the Affordable Care Act, wanted to combat climate change with either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, and has endorsed civil unions, TARP, and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally. [4]

Oh, and Jimmy Carter likes him. What more could he want?

Huntsman resists being called a “conservative” (actually, for good reason), preferring instead to be thought of as a pragmatic problem-solver. But if pragmatism is really his core philosophy, that leaves much to be desired in terms of principle. It indicates more opportunism than principled leadership. Huntsman is simply in the wrong party. If conservatives support him, there remains little reason why the GOP and the Democratic Party don’t just merge into one big socialist entity.

Fortunately, the GOP has several good candidates that are not in the RINO category.

[1] Ben Geman, “Huntsman on past cap-and-trade support: Everyone was doing it,” 06/22/2011, The Hill.

[2] Andy Barr, “Axelrod: Huntsman’s views on economy changed,” 06/19/2011, Politico.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Steve Benen, “Calling Out a RINO,” 05/26/2011, Washington Monthly.

The Endangered Rule of Law

2011-06-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaGovernments at all levels routinely violate the principles of the rule of law. The concept of the rule of law is supposed to protect citizens’ equality before the law, but this equality is not too often held in high regard by government, and especially not by the federal government as we have it today.

The clearest examples of violations of the principles of the rule of law come in the form of various kinds of crony capitalism. The government interferes with individuals’ rights, and the free market, by granting some special privilege to some favored group at the expense of other citizens. This is done through various kinds of corporate welfare, including bailouts, monopolies, tax incentives, subsides, etc.

Today we have liberals calling for the abolition of special tax breaks for oil companies, which, in fact have minimal percentage effect on oil companies’ profits. I agree that they are not needed. However, the same liberals in government want to subsidize alternative energy development at taxpayer expense. Alternative energy sources should be developed in the free market, and if they can be made profitable, entrepreneurs and investors will reap the appropriate rewards for their own efforts, not from the confiscation of money from taxpayers.

Similarly, mandates and subsidies for ethanol are also unjust, as are agricultural subsidies and government control of industry in general. Also, the principles of the rule of law are violated when government enforces advantages for unions beyond what the free market would permit.

These things have been happening for generations. In my home city of Fort Worth, the city currently has a huge debt of unfunded pension obligations, and is having to cut various services to try to balance the budget. Yet not long ago, the city invested substantially in the construction of a new downtown hotel, and various private commercial projects. It seems inappropriate that the city can’t maintain public swimming pools and recreation centers that have operated for decades, but they seem to have the means to invest in “private” business, even to the point of being on the hook should these businesses not succeed.

But perhaps the big prize for present-day destruction of the rule of law should go to the Obama Administration and Congress for such things as Obamacare exemptions that were granted in exchange for support during the legislative process, and now that the law has been passed, waivers from the law, notably to entities in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district. It helps to be politically connected.

The rule of law is a casualty of attacks on the free market through government interference. Some so-called “capitalist” executives have no problem with trying to persuade government to side with them against their competitors or even their customers. Whatever material gain they can get through government (as opposed to competition) is quite acceptable. This is the true robber baron mentality. Government participation happens through, if not direct bribery, then some kind of political help or support, or else a reward for past political support. What else could explain the bizarre lawsuit against Boeing over their plans to build airplanes in South Carolina, for example? Could it be a matter of rewarding unions and thus appealing to part of the liberal base?

In a free market, the market, not government, picks winners and losers. There are no bailouts, and entrepreneurs are willing to take a risk because they believe that have a product or service that can compete in the market on its merits, not on some central-planning bureaucrat’s idea of what needs to be offered. If the entrepreneur fails, this provides a lesson to others to avoid the same mistakes. This is fairly simple. It certainly is not rocket science.

The rule of law suffers and eventually dies when government tries too often and too forcefully to step outside its proper functions and take control of things it shouldn’t. Barack Obama didn’t invent this. But he is one of the worst offenders. When the rule of law is replaced by the arbitrary decrees of the ruling elite, it is difficult to restore, and it places citizens in danger of great financial loss, abusive punishment for political purposes, and tyrannical rule. When the government lacks accountability to the law, the result is a lawless government. In some respects, we’re already there.

Fear Not, GOP, You Have the Initiative on the Budget

2011-05-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Dreamstime.com

President Barack Obama, after dissing Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, only to put himself in the position of receiving a stern and well-deserved lecture from said prime minister, is spending time traveling and seemingly trying to ignore the national debt and deficits.

It is to be hoped that Republican congressional leaders will stand firm on the idea of serious budget cuts, but this is far from certain. The best way forward, in my view, is to unite behind the Paul Ryan plan and not accept anything else, other than minor (and I mean minor) tweaking. This will require more political courage than some have seemed willing to show. And the Democrats are feverishly working to advance their weak position. Can the GOP rise to the challenge?

First, of course, the Democrats are already attacking the Medicare provisions of Ryan’s plan. Never mind that these provisions fall into the out years and won’t affect anyone who is now over 55 years of age. Even then, it will be a more efficient and means-tested plan that assures the likelihood that Medicare will still be around. If nothing is done, it will surprisingly soon be extremely difficult to fund Medicare and Social Security. The liberals would rather demagogue the issue and try to scare the recipients of these benefits, than face up to their responsibility to deal with reality.

The Democrats’ actions should be seen as a good political opportunity for the Republicans, assuming that the GOP doesn’t cower in fear of political risks. Whenever such challenges present themselves, there is going to be substantial risk to any person or group that attempts to responsibly take them on. Remember G. W. Bush’s Social Security proposals? He took extreme heat from the opposition, who couldn’t be bothered to suggest anything of their own. Here are some suggestions for the Republicans (which mostly they’ve already thought of, I hope).

1. Don’t fear a government shutdown. This may very well be the only way to effectively assert majority power in the House of Representatives, where the GOP has control of the purse strings.

2. Counter the Democrats’ fear tactics with the facts on the unsustainability of Medicare if changes aren’t made. The right changes will preserve it.

3. Understand that up to now there has been no serious proposal to effectively cut spending, other than Paul Ryan’s plan. Rep. Ryan seems to be the best defender of his work. GOP leaders should understand what he is proposing. They would do well to support it if they are actually serious about the deficit. Cutting a trillion dollars over ten years won’t help much when the debt is increasing well over $1 trillion per year. Someone should be doing the math.

4. Don’t allow any tax increases. This would stop the recovery. Point out the absurdity of raising taxes on the “rich” who earn $250,000 a year and still struggle to stay in business because of government over-regulation. Tax increases on the “rich” would hurt everyone.

5. Be aware that the Democrats want to increase the number of Americans who pay no income tax (currently about half), then count on them to support increasing taxes on everyone else. If possible, they will try to promote the entitlement mentality and encourage Wisconsin-type demonstrations by anyone who fears there may be a reduction in government benefits.

6. Help people to understand the problem: If serious measures aren’t undertaken now, there probably won’t be any, this side of a serious collapse that would make 2008’s financial crisis look like a minor downturn.

7. Understand the weakness of the Democrats’ position. They have offered little to nothing outside of demagoguery and scare tactics. But they can’t deny that there are serious fiscal problems.

It’s still possible to get on top of this debt problem. But it ultimately must include serious reform of entitlements if these programs are to be preserved at all. Paul Ryan has offered a credible approach. Certainly no Democrat has done that. The Democratic leadership sees no need to submit a budget proposal at all. They just demand tax increases.

Who to Support for President in 2012? Why Not Herman Cain?

2011-05-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Herman Cain of Georgia (Photo: lifenews.com)

I am prepared to support the GOP nominee in 2012 against President Barack Obama. I don’t know of any that I wouldn’t prefer over Mr. Obama. The race has gotten off to a rather rocky start, with several supposed contenders not showing up for the South Carolina debate. People there will probably remember who was there and who wasn’t.

Herman Cain was declared the winner of the debate – a fairly obvious choice in my view. He gave thoughtful, logical, and clear answers to the questions that came his way. His track record shows that he is well-informed on the issues and can articulate a conservative point of view. Back to him a bit later.

Newt Gingrich’s well-publicized “gaffe” on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan didn’t help his cause, and, just as bad, was his statement about health insurance mandates being OK. That alone shows a serious problem vis-à-vis the Constitution. He tried to backtrack on all this, but some damage was done, and if Charles Krauthammer is right, that’s enough to wreck whatever chance Newt had for the nomination. I’m not quite so sure, since comebacks are not at all uncommon in politics.

Mitt Romney’s chances are in doubt because of his unapologetic support of Romneycare in Massachusetts. While that program is on only slightly firmer constitutional ground than Obamacare (which is clearly unconstitutional), it’s still a government insurance mandate, and a form of socialized medicine.

Rep. Ron Paul (TX) is running, and while he is unlikely to win, he could be a factor because of money-raising ability, and the fact that his ideas are being taken a good deal more seriously now than in past years. The deficit and general economic situation make the idea of sound money seem more attractive, and the Fed has brought plenty of doubt upon itself in terms of monetary policy. On the other hand, his debate performance was overshadowed by Cain's. And not many people support legalizing heroin.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MN) would probably be a good compromise candidate, but may not have enough appeal to be the front-runner.

Out of the race, as we all know, are Mike Huckabee, Hayley Barbour, and Donald Trump. Trump appeared to have little to no chance for the nomination, but the other two were potentially viable candidates.

We still haven’t heard (as of this writing) whether former Gov. Sarah Palin (AK), Gov. Mitch Daniels (IN), Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN), or Gov. Chris Christie (NJ) will be running, although at least two of these probably will. Establishment figures are said to be enthusiastically courting Mitch Daniels to run, fearing that no one else might be attractive enough to defeat Barack Obama. [1] If the GOP gets a genuine conservative, Tea Party-type candidate who can explain and advance actual conservatism (limited government, low taxes, strong defense, and free markets), that candidate can win. If another “moderate” like McCain (e.g., Huntsman or Gary Johnson) is nominated, the race will probably be lost.

Back to Herman Cain. The Daily Caller reported on May 18 that polls after the S. C. debate show that Cain is one of the leading candidates, rather than near last place as previously [2]. He does not have the name recognition (yet) that the others have, some having run and lost in 2008, but he has several things some of the others do not: real-world leadership experience, private sector work experience, executive responsibility in business, and an appealing common-sense approach to things. He can see the conservative side of the issues, which should be obvious to all who are supposed to be conservatives, but for some reason isn’t. Some “conservatives” like the big-government approach to things, and would be content to try to “improve” the Democrats’ socialist ideas.

C. Edmund Wright, at American Thinker, lists his countdown of reasons why Cain should make a good candidate. One of these is

7. Will break every rule set for him by “strategists”: This one might be my favorite. Cain has never counted on political strategists to get him where he is now, and this alone separates him from all other candidates. Lord help the first “strategist” from the RNC who advises Cain to “tone it down” or “soften his position.” [3]

Another plus Wright emphasizes is that Cain’s candidacy would neutralize the race card and maybe we could just get over this race thing. He lists several other good reasons to consider Cain.

In case you missed the S. C. debate or haven’t heard much about or from Herman Cain, here are a couple of short videos that may interest you. See YouTube for more.

Cain announces exploratory committee with Neil Cavuto on 1/12/11:

On gasoline prices:

[1] Mike Allen, “GOP elite see Mitch Daniels as 2012 savior,” 05/18/2011, Politico.

[2] Alexis Levinson, “What a difference a debate makes: Cain surges to the top in latest TheDC/ConservativeHome Tracking Poll,” 05/18/2011, The Daily Caller.

[3] C. Edmund Wright, “Top Ten Reasons to Support Herman Cain for President,” 01/26/2011, American Thinker.

Paul Ryan-type Budget Plan Is Best Hope for Budget Sanity; Boehner Should Maintain His Strong Stand

2011-05-15T16:49:00.000-07:00


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), official portrait

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has said that there will be no raising of the debt limit unless serious budget cuts, involving “trillions, not billions,” accompany any such legislation. Here is one area the GOP must stand firm on. The hope that they would is the main thing that contributed to their 2010 election success.

The Democrats have shown that they really don’t want anything beyond simply nominal cuts, those being cuts that won’t matter in the actual spending situation. Republicans have, I think, been too shy about the idea of shutting down the government, if the need should arise.

As I mentioned recently, the House GOP majority must assert its power over the budget if any actual progress is to be made, shutdown or not. If the GOP doesn’t approve it, it can’t happen. If somehow a GOP budget is passed by Congress, it would still face a possible presidential veto. Boehner needs to maintain his position that there will be substantial cuts, or no debt limit increase will be approved. Period.

Americans for Limited Government posted the following video of remarks by Boehner to the Economic Club of New York, and added their own comments:

As reported by The Hill,

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Boehner was being inflexible by refusing to move from his opening position that the nation’s borrowing limit should only be raised with a deficit-reduction deal built on trillions in spending cuts and no new taxes…. “Maximalist positions do not produce compromise,” said Carney, who described Boehner as restating his “starting position” with his New York speech. [1]

It would be nice to get Democrats on board with the kind of cuts Boehner has in mind, but it will likely require a stand of inflexibility, at least no compromise on major points, to get any kind of budget that will keep our economy viable over the next few years, let alone growing. Democrats have very little in the way of ideas to grow anything except debt and government. They have demonstrated that they are unable to improve the employment picture to any significant degree.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has done admirable work in producing his “Plan for Prosperity,” and, while it may need some tweaking here and there, it currently represents one of the few, if not the only, serious plan to address the actual problems, including entitlements. Democrats are anxious to use his plan to scare seniors into thinking that Medicare is going away, when in fact, if the types of changes he proposes are not implemented, Medicare will have to go away, because it will not be possible to fund it. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security represent tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities, which do not show up on the formal budget.

A Ryan-type plan that seriously and credibly addresses the entitlement issues, and seriously cuts current spending, even into the future, is probably the only route, at this point, to avoiding a disastrous collapse. Even if the plan became law, there are still deep concerns. One, a future Congress can repeal it; two, the Fed can so damage the dollar that the numbers may become meaningless in a currency collapse. But without a cut on the scale proposed by Ryan, or even greater, we are only greasing the skid to the edge of the cliff. And gravity will take over.

[1] Erik Wasson, “Carney: Boehner being inflexible on debt,” 05/10/2011, The Hill.

Illustration: Public domain.

Fiscal Fantasy World of the White House and Congress

2011-03-18T17:30:00.001-07:00

Dreamstime.com

With the election of a strong Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, many Americans entertained some hopes of seeing a significant reduction in government spending, and a refusal to increase the federal debt limit without such a reduction. What we have had so far are continuing resolutions (CR’s) with only minor cuts, funding the government for a few weeks at most.

Now, some say, there won’t be any more CR’s and serious negotiations must begin on the budget, even if it means a government shutdown. A government shutdown would be fine if it would lead to serious cuts in spending. Republican leaders seem to be overly anxious to avoid a shutdown, and therefore reluctant to forcefully push for major cuts. It’s true that jobs ought to be a high priority, but it is also true that out-of-control spending is quickly becoming a problem of such magnitude that we will be very fortunate indeed if we can avoid a major financial/currency collapse within a fairly short time.

Even the $61 billion in GOP-proposed cuts (or even $100 billion, if that could be done) is truly minor compared to the almost incomprehensible levels of federal spending going on day by day. To add to the deficit what President Obama’s proposed budget calls for is hardly short of asking for catastrophic results. We won’t “win the future” that way, because in all likelihood the U.S. dollar will lose so much value that the focus will shift more to financial (and maybe physical) survival rather than “winning.”

Senator Rand Paul is proposing $200 billion in spending cuts, but, unfortunately, that would need to be followed by many more billions to be seriously helpful. But it would be a start.

According to CNS News, the national debt increased by $72 billion the same day (March 15, 2011) that the House voted to cut $6 billion for the three-week period covered by the CR. [1] As you may notice, that one day’s increase is greater than the $61 billion the GOP wants to cut, and, of course the Democrats don’t want to cut much of anything.

David Stockman, in a lecture for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, explained how TARP marked the definitive triumph of crony capitalism over sound money. He went on to say,

The 1984 rescue of Continental Illinois; the 1994 Mexican peso crisis bailouts; the Fed's 1998 life-support operation for LTCM [prominent hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management] — were all just steps along the way to the fall of 2008.

Then, faced with the collapse of their own handiwork, Washington panicked and joined the Fed in unleashing an indiscriminate bailout capitalism that has now thoroughly corrupted the halls of government, even as it has become a debilitating blight on the free market.

In this context, the linkage between printing-press money and fiscal profligacy merits special attention. In the post-TARP world, there remain no fiscal rules at all, and already we have had cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, and under the homebuyer's credit, cash for convicts.

Indeed, my belief is that the subprime meltdown was only a warm-up. The real financial widow-maker of the present era is likely to be US government debt itself. [2]

In the context of total spending, there don’t seem to be any proposals for cuts of the magnitude that would make a meaningful contribution to solving the problem, let alone viable proposals for reform that could help prevent such errors (e.g., a Balanced Budget Amendment), other than Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” campaign, and, of course, Austrian school economists’ call for sound money in the form of the gold standard. But these ideas are anathema to the government establishment.

I support defunding of NPR, EPA, FCC, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood, but we’re going to have defund a great deal more things than those to get out of the debt situation that is driving us toward the edge of the cliff a lot faster than Congress and the White House seem to realize. If this collapse happens, we may not even be in a position to decide what to do about other issues which urgently need attention, such as jobs, the Middle East, our energy situation, etc., etc. Our way of life and national security will be compromised, to put it mildly.

In an essay asserting that Obama and his “socialist cadre” are attempting to transform America into a “Democrat Socialism State,” through massive debt, and offering some evidence to support his assertion, Mark Alexander of Patriot Post, also says this:

Republicans scraped together a few more cuts for their feeble $61 billion in proposed 2011 budget reductions, but Obama and his Senate Democrats declared they would approve only $4.7 billion in additional cuts. "Do we want jobs?" asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). "If we do, then we simply cannot pass the plan the Tea Party has already pushed through the House."

What is needed, if we're to have jobs in five years, is $4.7 billion in additional cuts for every day of this year's budget, and those that follow. [3]

The American people have noticed the profligate spending and have demanded action to get spending under control. The Congress and the White House, while giving lip service to the idea of reducing deficits, have offered very little in the way of actually accomplishing it. Republicans need to assert their House majority, and act as though they know that they control the purse strings and nothing can be appropriated unless they approve. There needs to be more emphasis on the fact that debt is quickly becoming the dominant issue, which, if not adequately dealt with, could make many other issues moot for a long time.

[1] Terrence P. Jeffrey, “U.S. Debt Jumped $72 Billion Same Day U.S. House Voted to Cut Spending $6 Billion,” 03/16/2011, CNSNews.com.

[2] David Stockman, “The End of Sound Money and the Triumph of Crony Capitalism,” transcript (published 03/14/2011) of the Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture given March 12, 2011 at the Austrian Scholar’s Conference of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It is a lengthy and detailed piece, well worth reading and study. Mises.org.

[3] Mark Alexander, “Democratic Socialism: Political Consequences of the Looming Debt Bomb Shockwave,” 03/10/2011, Patriot Post. Emphasis added.

NOTICE

2011-02-22T12:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

I am placing this blog on hold for a while in order to focus on my ministry blog Eddie's Sermon Notes and Outlines.

Thanks for reading. I'll return to this one fairly soon with more updates. Meanwhile, welcome to the other blog.

Eddie

Blueprint for Fiscal Failure

2011-02-16T20:54:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

(2008 estimate, Per cent of GDP)

President Obama’s recently released budget proposal defies comparison with the president’s words about reining in the deficit while “investing” in necessary programs. The numbers have become so astronomical that, to me, it seems doubtful that those who crafted this budget really comprehend how huge these figures are.

We’ve already increased the national debt massively in the past two years. As of now, one national debt clock is showing $14.233 trillion plus. And the administration wants to raise the debt limit. Republicans say, “Not without significant spending cuts.”

Conservative House members are striving to reach the $100 billion level in cuts promised in the GOP’s “Pledge to America.” They may accomplish this. Even so, it’s a modest amount compared to the $3.7 trillion called for in the budget for Fiscal 2012. Somehow this budget proposal, if enacted, is supposed to help reduce deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade. But we would be running a deficit of $1.6 trillion just for FY 2012. Most of Obama’s proposed cuts, of course, are to be made in the out years, well after his current term expires.

The problem with trying to budget over ten years is that we have a new Congress every two years, and all that budgeting, were it to be enacted, is only suggestions to future lawmakers.

As stated by Christopher S. Rugaber at The Daily Caller,

The budget plan President Barack Obama sent Congress on Monday foresees a record deficit of $1.65 trillion this year. That would be just under 11 percent of the $14 trillion economy — the largest proportion since 1945, when wartime spending swelled the deficit to 21.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. [1]

Some Proposed Budget Spending Items
Of course, now, our national debt is about the size of our GDP. For all the talk about reducing future deficits, it’s hard to view this budget proposal as a sincere effort. Apparently, things we just can’t do without, according to the Administration, include big spending increases for the following (partial list by departments), according to FederalNewsRadio.com:

Education, $68 billion, increase of 38.5%
Commerce, $10.4 billion, increase of 13.9%
Transportation, $128.6 billion, increase of 68% (includes $53 billion for high-speed trains)
Some agencies received decreases. See the excellent article for a comprehensive listing and comments. [2]

As J.D. Foster points out in a Heritage Foundation article,

The President continues to speak of painful spending cuts even as spending continues to soar. He continues his call for future tax hikes driven by ideology. He continues to express concern over budget deficits while offering only gimmicks in the short term and silence for the long-term problems for which he appointed a now-ignored deficit reduction commission. [3]

Here are some comments by conservative members of Congress on a Heritage video:

Election Results = House Mandate
Republicans won in the 2010 elections largely on the promise of restoring fiscal sanity in Washington. As long as liberals are in charge, there will be excessive spending and increasing national debt until our currency collapses, then liberals will try to start the whole process over. Fiscal irresponsibility is so evident in the president’s proposed budget that it’s difficult to believe anyone can really take it seriously. It increases rather than decreases entitlements, it proposes very costly and unnecessary programs, like high-speed rail, and calls more government intervention in just about every facet of life. And I did mention significant tax increases.

What About the Recovery?
If the GOP’s proposed cuts result in some lost government jobs, they are likely to also result in many new private-sector jobs. When “economic growth” is basically government growth, it falls well short of a healthy recovery. I hope the House GOP leaders and members will stand firm on their “Pledge to America,” and make at least $100 billion in cuts to current spending, and defund Obamacare entirely. Even all that would be relatively small compared to overall spending, but it’s a start that would demonstrate a sincere effort to save our country’s fiscal policy from disastrous results: Chronic high unemployment and possible collapse of our economy and currency. The president’s proposal represents basically just more of the same thing we already have, but made worse.

What’s needed is a substantial reduction in the size and scope of government, not just slower government growth. And the cutting should start now.

[1] Christopher S. Rugaber, “Deficit is biggest share of economy since 1945,” 02/15/2011,
The Daily Caller.

[2] Jolie Lee and the Associated Press, “Breakdown of FY2012 Budget by Agency,” 02/14/2011, FederalNewsRadio.com.

[3] J.D. Foster, Ph.D., “President Obama’s 2012 Budget Builds on Failures of the Past,” 02/14/2011, www.Heritage.org.

Illustration: Public domain.

Constitution Wins in Judge Vinson’s Decision

2011-02-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

President's signature on Health Care bill

The Obama Administration has introduced numerous measures which are unconstitutional or constitutionally questionable: Cap and Trade, restrictive regulations, shutting down offshore oil drilling, etc., but none more blatantly outside constitutional limits than Obamacare. The majority of states have legal action against this law currently going on in Federal courts.

The most damaging decision to the socialized medicine law is a decision by a federal judge in Florida. This story is fairly familiar by now, but as it fades from the news cycle, it needs to be pointed out that this ongoing legal battle very well could (and should) result in the end of Obamacare.

The decision should remind the elites in charge in Washington that we still have a constitution, and that they are obligated to follow it.

In Pensacola, Florida, on Monday, January 31, 2011, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled the Obama health care reform law unconstitutional. According to his ruling, the mandate to purchase insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional, and is not severable from the rest of the law. Therefore, the entire law is invalid. In his ruling, the judge sided with 26 states, which, along with the National Federation of Independent Business, brought the lawsuit. [1]

This ruling (found here) is a serious blow to the health care law, and apparently ends it, unless the decision is overturned by a higher court. The judge rejected the administration’s argument that the case should be dismissed because the states did not have standing to bring the lawsuit.

One refreshing thing about the decision is that it shows respect for what the Constitution actually says, and is not simply an act of bench legislation. If the individual mandate is allowed to stand, what can’t the government require? But our Constitution establishes a federal system and a central government with limited and enumerated powers.

Meanwhile, in Congress, following the House’s vote to repeal the act, the Senate voted on February 2, by a 51-47 majority, on a strict party line vote, against repeal. The Democrats are determined to protect the law, regardless of the facts that (a) the majority of the states are suing to have it overturned, (b) the majority of American voters disapprove of the law, and (c) a federal judge has ruled it unconstitutional.

According to the ruling (Page 42 of 78)

It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting --- as was done in the Act --- that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce” [see Act § 1501(a)(1)], it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power”[Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.

From Page 75 of 78 of the ruling:

(5) Injunction
The last issue to be resolved is the plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief enjoining implementation of the Act, which can be disposed of very quickly. Injunctive relief is an “extraordinary” [citations]. It is even more so when the party to be enjoined is the federal government, for there is a long-standing presumption “that officials of the Executive Branch will adhere to the law as declared by the court. As a result, the declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction.” …..Thus, the award of declaratory relief is adequate and separate injunctive relief is not necessary.
[Emphasis added]

It might seem that the Administration would give this decision its due, but the Administration has chosen to ignore it as far as implementation is concerned, even for the 26 states involved in the lawsuit.

According to Heritage legal expert Robert Alt, Judge Vinson’s declaratory judgment binds the parties to the suit, which includes 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business and the federal government. This means that, absent a court-issued stay, Obamacare cannot be further implemented as it pertains to these 26 states. So the White House now faces a simple choice: Will President Obama abide by a valid decision by a federal district court, or will he unilaterally ignore the rule of law? If the past is any indicator, the rule of law is in for a continued beating. [2]

According to Bill Wilson at IBD Editorials,

[Wisconsin Attorney General J.B.] Van Hollen has taken the proper step of following the law, which now says that ObamaCare is unconstitutional in its entirety, relieving Wisconsin of any obligation to follow it.

It is the responsibility of every state attorney general in the nation to follow Van Hollen's lead, and halt any actions to implement this unconstitutional law. To do otherwise will open states up to legal liability. [3]

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that the Obama Administration should enforce the law regardless of the court’s decision:

Given the judge’s ruling, CNSNews.com asked Durbin on Wednesday whether he thinks the Obama administration should stop implementing the health care law.

Durbin, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said, “Personally, I don’t, because the judge was asked for an injunction, and he didn’t rule that there would be one. So he hasn’t enjoined any conduct or activity. At this point, we have 16 courts that have considered this case. [4]

As mentioned in the judge’s ruling, an injunction was considered unnecessary because of the presumption that the government would honor the ruling.

Obama apparently will continue to ignore this until the Supreme Court rules on it. Then what? The Administration has already been held in contempt of court by another federal judge.

As reported by Joe Newby of The Examiner, the Obama is ignoring another court order. The Administration has been found to be in contempt of court for defying an order to end the deepwater drilling moratorium. [5]

Newby quotes from Bloomberg’s article on the decision:

Interior Department regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.

“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling. [6]

So, does anyone notice a pattern developing? Apparently, the Administration is all for the rule of law when it suits their purposes. Otherwise, not so much.

[1] Melissa Nelson, Associated Press, “Florida Judge Strikes Down Obamacare, Says Individual Mandate Is Unconstitutional,” 01/31/2011, via CNS News.

[2] Conn Carroll, “Morning Bell: The Obamacare Assault on the Rule of Law,” 02/03/2011, The Foundry, The Heritage Foundation.

[3] Bill Wilson, “Obama Invites Crisis If He Ignores Ruling,” 02/02/2011, IBD Editorials.

[4] Nicholas Ballasy, “Durbin: Obama Administration Should Enforce Obamacare Even Though Judge Ruled It Unconstitutional,” 02/03/2011, CNS News.com.

[5] Joe Newby, “Obama Administration found in contempt of court over drilling moratotium,” The Examiner (Spokane), 02/04/2011.

[6] Ibid.

Photo: President's signature on health care bill. Public domain.

Would You Take “Investment Advice” from This Man? Or, Is This Our “Sputnik Moment?”

2011-01-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

How do you make over-the-top, multi-trillion-dollar government spending sound good? Well, you can try calling it “investment.” That’s been President Barack Obama’s strategy for trying to sell what should be unsellable. In his State of the Union speech, he tried to appear more “centrist,” and some media figures said he was “Reaganesque,” and I think he just read a book about Ronald Reagan.

In the election of 1960, anti-Nixon forces came up with a popular slogan. “Would you buy a used car from this man?” My question is, “Would you take ‘investment’ advice from Barack Obama?”

“Investment” Advice
Mr. Obama wasn’t channeling his inner Reagan. He was giving us more of the same spend, spend, spend “investment” advice while still trying sound as though he was prepared to clamp down on spending. I suppose he thinks he can have it both ways. But after two years of record-smashing deficits with no end in sight, is he really the one to tell us we should be spending less, while at the same time urging us to spend more? Something here doesn’t quite compute.

When Mr. Obama starts advising us about the economy, we would do well to consider the obvious, as explained by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). The thing that’s been the worst problem for many people, unemployment, is the very thing that the least has been done about in terms of success. Meanwhile, we are quickly becoming a nation in decline as a result of the spending orgy of the Obama era, which makes G.W. Bush look like Mr. Frugal.

I suppose we received a lesson in how to do things like China, a nation much admired by our president. I know there are many fine people and admirable things in China, but the “successes” of their economy depend largely on the fact that there are no human rights in China, thus leaving open the use of child labor, virtual slave labor, and total ignoring of “environmental impact.” Probably to build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. would take decades by the time the required permits and processes were completed, and by then the technology would likely be obsolete. Not so in China. I’m not saying we should be like them. Not at all. But maybe a little less determined to stop this kind of construction before it starts. Similarly for oil refineries, etc.

As Glenn Beck explained on his Fox News Channel show January 26, 2011, The fuels we are now using are going to be the main ones for years to come. Right now, less than one percent of our energy is provided by either wind or solar power. Wood provides two percent. So these new energy sources aren’t going to be our mainstays any time soon.

What’s wrong with letting private industry develop these things when they can be made profitable, rather than throwing good money after bad with government “investment?” Of course it’s questionable whether we have any “good” money to throw at anything – just money hot off the printing press, created out of thin air.

Did I hear him right? Did he actually have some good things to say about America? After bowing to every despotic dictator he meets and apologizing for the U.S. at every opportunity; after wining and dining Mr. “Human Rights” Hu of China? Well, that’s supposed to convince us of his “new tone” and his turn toward the center. Well, not quite.

Our Sputnik Moment?
Here in our “Sputnik Moment,” the president wants us to “invest” (i.e., spend boatloads of government funds) in the following things, among others:

Biomedical research – for what? Cloning?
Information technology – I thought we had Google and Facebook, etc. Oh, I see – so we can give him an effective Internet kill switch….
Clean energy technology – see discussion above.
High-speed rail -- For whom? They can't get enough passengers to ride Amtrak. (As Glenn Beck mentioned, we'd have to lay a whole new track system. I say, not needed and not cost-effective.)
Infrastructure – ah, good old infrastructure, the area where everyone excels us. He may not have noticed, but infrastructure is being worked on all the time. In front of my house, we are getting new curbs and a resurfaced street, All over our city, you can’t go two miles without some major road or bridge construction going on and new buildings going up. Maybe some stimulus funds? And yet our country has 9.4 percent unemployment with the “real” unemployment rate getting worse because people have given up looking for jobs.
Education – he seems to want every American to get a college degree. He’s going to “invest” in education to help people pay for college, but when is he going to ask colleges and universities to make their tuition costs realistic by dipping into some of their multi-billion-dollar endowments? There really is no excuse for these rates being so high.

As others have pointed out, the government did nothing to help Edison or the Wright Brothers. Probably not much to help Facebook. Google, I don’t know. Since Al Gore is a prominent figure in that, maybe they got government welfare. Lots of companies do. But government is not the engine of innovation or invention, or the economy in general. It is almost always the impediment that keeps the economy from improving, due to high taxes and endless regulation.

I suggest that this is not our “Sputnik moment.” Yes, we need to compete in the global market. This will be not be accomplished by government “investing” in and controlling so many things. It will be accomplished by unfettered free markets in which entrepreneurs and large companies can be free from government intervention and allowed to pursue their self interest. And government could save a lot by cutting off the corporate welfare spending.

Obama still wants our students to spend more hours and longer school years in the classroom, and to focus more on math and science. Or else, saith he, we won’t be able to compete with the smart kids from other countries. Of course, in some of these countries, kids are taken away from their parents and given special training if they excel in some particular area. I say, get the federal government out of education, return it to local control, and see what happens. Probably, more vocational education, less spirit-strangling student debt, and generally a better economy.

G.K. Chesterton said that many people think they are members of the last generation simply because they can’t imagine the world getting on without them. I think that sort of thinking affects our government. It’s so involved in every aspect of life that it thinks life would simply fall apart if it pulled back. It wouldn’t, of course. Someday, we’ll get back to being a society willing to try it. Or so I hope.

Recommended Reading: R.J. Moeller, "State of the Union On My Mind," A Voice in the Wilderness.

Photo: Barack Obama official portrait by Pete Souza. Public domain.

The FCC Wants More Control of Broadcast Media

2011-01-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaMichael Copps’ speech (PDF here) was on December 2, 2010, but the issue remains open for discussion. Conservatives should target this for fierce debate.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says that American journalism is in bad way, and that it’s up to the federal government, specifically the Federal Communications Commission, to fix it. Of course, to the current powers that be in the Executive Branch and Democratic leaders in Congress, it’s the federal government’s duty to define and fix everything they imagine to be wrong, and to assign blame to conservatives.

Copps wants to spruce up traditional media by requiring a “public value test” for licensing, and reducing time between renewals from eight years to four years. How he longs for the days when the FCC could closely control or influence content, based on the fact that spectrum was scarce, and as a public resource, could be controlled to a great extent by government.

If that line of argument ever had merit, it has next to none now. There is no lack of “diversity” (which government claims to want but doesn’t want to allow), as there are innumerable sources of information available to anyone who has cable or satellite TV and the Internet. The only diversity the government wants is ethnic diversity and male-female diversity, and not diversity of ideas that may stray from the liberal-socialist-fascist mold.

Copps’ “enhanced disclosure,” especially in regard to political advertising, serves no real purpose except to place onerous restrictions and red tape on broadcasters.

As reported by CNS News.com, concerning Copps’ speech at Columbia:

Copps said the FCC and Congress in the future will need to examine the rules governing the structure of media ownership. And he advocated increasing support for public broadcasting, which he described as “the jewel of our media landscape.” [1]

Apparently, he’d like all broadcasting to be more like NPR and PBS. Ghastly thought!

The problem with all this is that it seriously would violate the First Amendment. But liberals are a lot less interested in the Constitution and Bill of Rights than they are in silencing their opposition. Where is it written that the federal government shall control public discourse? Not in the Constitution. It is a document which prescribes a government that is strong where it needs to be, but strictly limited in its powers.

As Michael Hurd points out in Capitalism Magazine.com,

Obama undoubtedly realizes that his greatest enemy is dissent. The apparatus is in place for impairing if not crushing dissent, and it’s known as the FCC. It's probably true that no prior President could have gotten away with it. This one might, not because he's widely respected or wildly popular (he's neither). But America, especially in the last few years, has been in a downward spiral of what psychology calls, “learned helplessness.” The more the government takes away our freedoms, the more helpless too many of us feel – leaving the government in a position to take away still more powers. It's a vicious cycle that ends with totalitarianism. [2]

According to Adweek.com,

In a Dec. 6 letter to Copps, [Rep. Joe] Barton [R-TX] asked Copps to explain in more detail what he meant by imposing a public-value test on broadcast news every four years as a contingency of license renewal.

“I hope...that you do not mean to suggest that it is the job of the federal government, through the FCC, to determine the content that is available for Americans to consume,” said Barton.

“Although your concern for providing American citizens information they need to ‘make intelligent decisions about the full direction of their country’ may stem from the very best of intentions, increasing the federal government’s role in the composition of the information Americans have at their disposal—in an information marketplace that is bigger and more easily accessible than ever before—is unwise policy and raises serious questions of constitutionality.” [3]

I would urge the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, as they prepare to defund Obamacare, to also defund NPR, PBS, and the FCC. And while they’re at it, the EPA and a several other government agencies.

When we have officials such as Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) calling for restructuring the boundaries of free speech, and Michael Copps advocating such federal control of broadcasting, along with the FCC’s other initiatives to censor the internet, we are in danger of losing constitutional freedoms. It doesn’t have to happen. Conservatives in government now have enough power to stop it. I hope they have the courage to do so.

[1] Susan Jones, “FCC Commissioner Wants to Test the ‘Public Value’ of Every Broadcast Station,” 12/03/2010, CNS News.com.

[2] Michael Hurd, “FCC’s ‘Public Value Test’: An Essential Step to Dictatorship,” 12/10/2010, Capitalism Magazine.com.

[3] Katy Bachman, “GOPer Pounds Proposed ‘Public Value Test,’” 12/06/2010, Adweek.com.

Photo: Portrait of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Public Domain.

As Expected, but Wrongly: Left Blames Right for Tragic Shooting

2011-01-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

Seeking to turn a terrible tragedy into political gain, many voices of the left wing of American politics, including the mainstream media, have put forth the idea that the Arizona shooting which took six lives and critically wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and hurt others, was incited by politicians of the right. Specifically, Sarah Palin is being blamed, since she had an electoral map showing targeted congressional seats with a crosshairs graphic.

But the left’s brush is big enough to smear not only Palin, but the entire Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck, and others.

“Progressive Arizona Rep Gabrielle Giffords is shot. In her ads, Sarah Palin had her targeted in a gun site. Inciting to violence.” – Jane Fonda on Twitter [1]

“In addition to issuing the map with cross-hairs on it, Palin told her supporters on Twitter: ‘Don't Retreat, Instead-RELOAD!’” [2]

Additionally, within minutes of the attack, hard left-winger Paul Krugman of the New York Times asserted that the reason Giffords was shot was because her seat was not turned over to Republicans. Despite that no political motive was at all known, Krugman immediately asserted that it was the fault of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.

As to Andrew Sullivan, on his DailyDish blog for the Atlantic, Sullivan posted an unconfirmed and anonymous claim from “a reader” who claimed to have heard people in a store callously saying that they were glad that a Republican could be appointed to replace the wounded Giffords. This “reader” also claimed that one of them said, “Well, that’s to be expected when you’re so liberal.” [3]

This horrific incident is being exploited for political advantage in a way that is devious and desperate. The left has a new opportunity to falsely blame their opponents for something for which those being blamed have zero responsibility. The media will repeat the lie often and loudly enough that some will believe it.

Let’s consider a few relevant points:

1. Political partisanship has always been part of our culture. It is the main reason that we are not already enslaved by people like Barack Obama. It has never been wrong to use metaphors involving targets, guns, etc. for political purposes. That is taken by only the mentally unstable as being anything other than a metaphor. It is not anyone’s responsibility to make sure that what they’re saying won’t send some insane or mentally unstable person over the edge. Anything might do that for someone. Our Constitution designed our political structure to be an adversarial system on the belief that this would help prevent anyone from gaining too much power. Otherwise, we would have one-party rule and a communist-type government.

2. Extreme rhetoric is not nearly as much a problem as the extreme political positions and actions of radical fascist-socialists in positions of power in the federal government. Right-wing and Tea Party responses to government have necessarily and rightly been loud and strong. Our freedom is at stake. But none of this is responsible for the violence. The shooter is.

3. The Obama Administration has been steadily working to reduce and eventually virtually eliminate freedom of speech, especially political speech that opposes them. They will seize upon this as an excuse to try to force people to make their speech more friendly to the government, and to crack down on guns.

4. The person charged in these shootings cannot be classified as a right winger or Tea Party type. He appears to be a lunatic with political beliefs that are simply weird. He likes the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf , for example, and does not seem to have made any political statement that makes any sense. His alleged crime is on the order of that of John Hinckley, Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan, or Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into the IRS.

To try to link this crime to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, or the Tea Party, etc. is a disgusting display, and those who are doing it will not be successful. The American people (mostly) are able to see through this travesty.

Meanwhile, we express our sincere sympathy and offer prayers for all who have been hurt by this senseless and tragic event.

[1] Quoted by Boyce Watkins, Ph. D., “Critics Blame Sarah Palin, Tea Party for Shooting of Congresswoman,” 01/08/2011, BV Black Spin.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Warner Todd Huston, “As Arizona Shooting Story Unfolds, Media Already Blaming Tea Party/Sarah Palin,” 01/08/2011, Big Journalism. (Good analysis, recommended reading)

FCC Should Stay Away from Internet Regulation

2011-01-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaOn December 21, 2010, the FCC issued regulations for “Network Neutrality” for the Internet. Despite FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s stated intention to regulate with a “light touch,” the regulations (found here) weigh in at 194 pages.

There are several reasons why FCC regulation of the Internet is a bad idea.

Nick Gillespie of Reason.tv describes three of them in a YouTube video that takes less than three minutes:

The rules were issued on a 3-2 party line vote and represent simply another Obama Administration power grab. Al least one commissioner agrees that the FCC lacks the authority to do this kind of regulating.

Robert McDowell, a Republican, dissented from the vote, saying the FCC did not have the legal authority to enact Internet regulations. The real effect, he predicted, would be: “Less investment. Less innovation. Increased business costs. Increased prices for consumers. Disadvantages to smaller ISPs. Jobs lost.” [1]

As Gillespie pointed out, these rules would inevitably lead to content regulation as well. The FCC claims the power to regulate TV content and to impose substantial fines. In the past week, a judge has ruled against the FCC’s attempt to levy a maximum fine for a NYPD Blue episode that contained a seven-second shot of a woman’s bare behind. And of course we remember Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” and how that offended the government watchdogs.

AT&T and Verizon claim, with good reason, the right to provide “premium services” that result in handling some customers’ messages in a better way than others’. There are enough ISP’s that if a user is dissatisfied, he/she may choose another provider. The Internet lends itself to innovation and competition. No government regulation such as the FCC has issued has been necessary up to now, and if and when abuses occur, there are already adequate means to deal with them.

Must we have government regulating every detail of our lives? The FCC has long been wanting to regulate cable and satellite TV. They should stick to their original mission of supervising use of scarce spectrum and such narrow issues where regulation is actually needed.

As Larry Downes sees it,

Caught between a rock and a hard place, and with a skeptical Republican majority set to take over the House in January, today's decision is a Hail Mary pass. It was the chairman's last hope of passing something and moving on to other important, and languishing, matters, including spectrum reform and the forgotten National Broadband Plan. If carriers decide to challenge the order, the FCC will have to relitigate the Comcast decision without the benefit of any new authority from Congress. [2]

I have not addressed the idea that the FCC is no longer needed. For me, that is an article for another time. For now, I simply say, let’s hope the courts won’t allow these regulations to stand, and that Congress won’t give the FCC any more power.

[1] Declan McCullagh, “FCC Net neutrality rules reach mobile apps,” 12/23/2010, CNet News.

[2] Larry Downes, “FCC’s Net neutrality ruling: Misplaced nostalgia,” 12/21/2010, CNet News.

Photo: FCC seal. Public domain.

Three Routes the Government Is Following To Take Over the Internet

2010-12-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaThe Obama Administration has been trying at least three distinct approaches to ending freedom on the Internet, initially under the pretext of copyright protection or consumer protection. The main goal is to take the internet under government control, so that content ultimately has to have government approval or be subject to removal and websites controlled to the point of removal and the banning of “offenders” from using the Internet.

The triple-threat strategy has been to act (1) through a legislative initiative, promoted in Congress by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and sponsored by Hollywood, known as COICA (2) through a treaty styled as a trade agreement called an Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement (ACTA), and (3) through a decree by the Federal Communications Commission (“Net Neutrality”).

COICA
The COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) bill received unanimous approval in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I find quite disappointing. This bill is a form of generous corporate welfare and collusion with “intellectual property owners,” with government preparing to go after any and all who might displease the mighty RIAA and MPAA, whether or not any law is broken, The Attorney General would become the copyright errand boy for these interests, as well as large content providers, taking over the work they don’t want to be bothered with doing for themselves, i.e. protecting their interests. Why not get the government to do it for them and save them a few millions?

As Daniel Greenfield reports at his Sultan Knish blog,

Some conservatives are defending COICA as a means of protecting private property, but it's not. It creates a privileged status for specific industries through government action, which those specific industries paid for. This is classic 'Rent Seeking Behavior' which uses government force to protect a bad business model. Hollywood is suffering from the plague of piracy because of its own convoluted structure and its need to negotiate every iota of every action with its own unions. Rather than adapt and evolve, it uses lawyers and lobbyists to protect its defective business practices. And having a 'red phone' to the AG's office in order to protect defective business practices does the entertainment industry no favors in the long term. [1]

RIAA, MPAA, Time Warner, etc., can defend their own interests without special help from the government. As usual, most economic and social abuses from the private sector involve the misuse of government power. This is not an example of free-market activity, but its opposite.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a hold on the COICA bill, meaning it must be reintroduced in the new Congress in order for it to be considered. [2]

The final outcome remains to be seen, but, as Webster writes, “It's too early to say for sure, but Oregon Senator Ron Wyden could very well go down in the history books as the man who saved the Internet.” [3]

ACTA
ACTA, according to the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, has seen its eleventh and final round of formal negotiations, with only a few issues remaining to be resolved. [4]

As mentioned in my previous article, quoting published sources, negotiations have been conducted in secret, and the U.S. denied Freedom of Information Act requests on “national security” grounds.

With ACTA, powerful intellectual property holders are getting several, and eventually many, governments to go after citizens and companies that do things they don’t like, inflicting punishment without sufficient due process or even proof that wrong has been done.

Presumably, nations could modify their participation in the agreement through their own legislation, but there would likely be strong pressure on even non-signatory nations to comply. The agreement would co-opt the present mechanisms for protecting intellectual property and nations which had no input in the negotiations would have to obey, or else face economic consequences.

Worse, since ACTA is structured as a “trade agreement,” it would not need Senate approval like a normal treaty. It’s a bureaucratic takeover of great proportions, aimed largely at the Internet.

Some of the more controversial items have been watered down or removed, but ACTA is still an objectionable, unnecessary, and dangerous agreement.

Net Neutrality
As for “Net Neutrality,” the FCC has overstepped its bounds. In fact, the agency has outlived its usefulness and ought to be abolished. I plan to write another article on the FCC’s issuance of “Net Neutrality” regulations. As of now, the new regulations have been approved, but not released.

Conclusion
The Obama Administration has seen an opportunity to take control of the Internet. As mentioned above, it is a move to use government power to protect “intellectual property” interests of the entertainment industry, using unconstitutional and unethical measures that will destroy Internet freedom.

However, the problem goes much deeper and, if unchecked, must ultimately lead to government control of Internet content. Through claims of copyright violation, the government can go after any Internet site that they oppose, and largely silence opposition. In the hands of a power-seeking government (the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats), partnered with other governments that want bureaucratic control over the people (the EU, for example), the groundwork is being laid for tyrannical rule of the Internet by unelected bureaucrats through means that defy direct opposition.

Traditionally, intellectual property issues have been dealt with as civil matters, but in line with the government’s trend of a few decades, more and more actions have been criminalized. So “violators” may face jail time or fines and a criminal record even where nothing wrong has been done. An allegation might be sufficient.

COICA seems to be off the table for the moment, but don’t doubt that it will be back soon. We’ve yet to see the impact of the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” rules, or how the courts will finally rule in any of these matters. Internet freedom at this moment is more endangered than ever. Our best hope is citizen awareness and involvement putting pressure on our government officials to do their duty and protect our rights. The Tea Party has demonstrated that concerned citizens can affect public policy.

[1] Daniel Greenfield, “$335,906 is the Price of the Constitution,” 11/22/2010, Sultan Knish.

via Free Republic.

[2] Stephen C. Webster, “Oregon Senator Wyden effectively kills Internet censorship bill,”
11/19/2010, The Raw Story.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Negotiations on an Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement (ACTA),” last modified 12/14/2010, Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

Photo: Portrait of Senator Ron Wyden. Public domain.

New TSA Procedures = Stupidity Itself

2010-11-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaIt’s a good thing we have the Tea Party and citizens’ groups unafraid to take on our too-often ridiculous federal government over outrageous insults to our people. Look for more well-deserved protests over the Transportation Safety Administration’s nude body scans and “enhanced” pat-downs. I predict that these unreasonable procedures won’t hold up for long.

Things like this make it harder to have proper respect for government, particularly some of the more contemptible and pathetic features of the Obama Administration. It’s not enough to spend our country into financial oblivion and take over major industries, now they have crossed yet another line that should never be crossed, for reasons which, like the “climate change” nonsense, bear little resemblance to reality.

Under the phony guise of “safety” they treat people (as Ron Paul described) “like cattle,” and some people are willing to meekly accept it. Rep. Paul (R-TX) has introduced legislation to fix the problem. You may have seen this video before, but it’s worth another look:

If the authorities are really interested in protecting anyone, they should adopt Israel’s policy of putting people into a booth that will detonate any explosives they’re carrying. That would solve the problem.

But instead, the Porn and Pervert Department (TSA) is going to feel up passengers, child or adult, in ways that would constitute a sex crime if done by anyone else. An exception would possibly be Muslim women in burquas, since they are members of a special favored group these days. Or else, passengers must be run through a nude body scanner that will give the bureaucratic pervs something to chuckle over. What total nonsense. Americans simply can’t, and, I believe, won’t put up with this patently offensive and unconstitutional procedure.

Meanwhile George Soros and former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff stand to make a lot of money on the equipment used for this demeaning and sorry process. I predict they’ll be called to testify in a House investigation in 2011. Someone should be investigating the TSA and firing Janet Napolitano. She should demonstrate her approval of the TSA process by receiving a pat-down, joined by members of Congress, like Ron Paul suggested.

As for Chertoff, according to the Washington Examiner,

After the undie-bomber attempt on Christmas 2009, Chertoff went on a media tour promoting the use of these scanners, without disclosing that he was getting paid by Rapiscan, one of the two companies currently contracted by TSA to take a nude picture of you at the airport…

Chertoff was quickly reamed for not disclosing how he had monetized his public service.

The whole situation is depressing for two reasons:
1) It’s tawdry how much our “public servants” use their government jobs as meal tickets.2) It’s sad how much companies set up their businesses to depend on government, and thus lobbyists. [1]

George Soros?

As for the company’s other political connections, it also appears that none other than George Soros, the billionaire funder of the country’s liberal political infrastructure, owns 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. Not surprisingly, OSI’s stock has appreciated considerably over the course of the year. Soros certainly is a savvy investor. [2]

Maybe not illegal, but bad form anyway. Whatever the means that led to the acquisition of these devices, the real offense is in their use.

Fortunately (I suppose), not every passenger is being subjected to this insufferable (I’m running out of adjectives here) treatment, which makes it look even more stupid. So Big Brother has yet another way to intrude into our private (and I mean private) lives. If this is allowed to continue, I hate to contemplate what the next step might be. Between this and Obamacare, your government appears to think that your body belongs to them.

The concerns over this outrageous procedure include possibly harmful radiation from the scans. TechNewsDaily reports that a lawsuit has been filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., seeking suspension of the scanning process until health concerns are addressed:

Radiation acts as a multiplier of natural cancer rates, Brenner said. There are 800,000 cases of basal cell carcinoma diagnosed in the United States each year, which is one of the most common cancers associated with X-ray exposure…

“There is no good reason why [TSA] scans the head and neck, especially since you can’t hide explosives there,” [David] Brenner [of Columbia University] said. [3]

Back to privacy concerns, the article reports,

The EPIC lawsuit states that the program run by the DHS violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. It also alleges that the systems violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, referencing religious laws about modesty.

“It violates modesty for many religions,” McCall said. “We’ve seen Catholics, Orthodox Jews and Muslims all upset by the invasive scanning technologies. It’s a violation of their religious freedom.” [4]

Not simply stating the problem, the article discusses a better alternative that doesn’t have the most objectionable features of the Rapiscan process. [5]

TSA procedures have been duly objected to by George Will and Charles Krauthammer, brilliant and eloquent columnists I greatly respect. You’ve probably read several things about this, but I thought I needed to toss in my two cents.

Full disclosure: I haven’t flown in several years, and I probably won’t again. But these government attacks on human dignity and liberty threaten everyone and make me angry. I admire John Tyner for voicing his famous objection. He is facing a possible large fine for his trouble.

[1] Timothy P. Carney, “Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary flacking for nudie-scanners, too,” 11/14/10, The Washington Examiner.

[2] Mark Hemingway, “George Soros also profiting off controversial new TSA scanners,”
11/14/2010, The Washington Examiner.

[3] Samantha Murphy, “Lawsuit Filed Over Airport Scanner Privacy, Health Concerns,” 08/06/2010, TechNewsDaily.

[4] and [5] Ibid.

QE2: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

2010-11-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaWhat is QE2 and what is the Federal Reserve trying to accomplish?
The Fed decided to embark on a $600 billion plan to buy Treasury securities in order to balance out economic components to better fulfill their mandate for price stability and full employment.
Ben Bernanke’s statement:

“Measures of underlying inflation are currently at levels somewhat below those the [Federal Open Market] Committee judges most consistent, over the longer run, with its mandate to promote maximum employment and price stability. With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to remain subdued for some time before rising to levels the Committee considers consistent with its mandate …
“The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.” [1]

What happened with QE1?
Mike Larson at FXStreet.com writes,

[In the housing and mortgage arena], [t]he Fed bought $175 billion in debt sold by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It also bought $300 billion in U.S. Treasuries, and $1.25 TRILLION in mortgage backed securities — bonds made up of bundles of home loans. [2]

Larson notes that key housing indicators such as housing starts, sales of existing homes, etc. demonstrate the failure of the QE1 effort to help the economy. [3]
Another writer sees the effort as likely to fail:

Mr. Bernanke is making the same blunder that we made with the past bubbles busts – if we can create paper profits and convince consumers that they should spend those paper profits then we’ll be on our way to economic prosperity. The problems arise when asset prices readjust lower to meet their true fundamentals. It’s ponzi finance and nothing more.
As I have previously explained, the goal of QE is to increase aggregate demand by creating a fictitious wealth effect and by increasing bank loans. [4]

Fed Independence in Danger? Or Fed Independence Is a Danger?
The Federal Reserve’s massive involvement in the TARP bailouts and QE1 have led to criticism of the Fed for getting involved in fiscal (in addition to monetary) policy. Thus the Fed has been subjected to more than usual political criticism and calls for its abolishment, and a return to the gold standard.
When the Fed is arbitrarily inflating the money supply by trillions, there will eventually be much more inflation than they claim to want. Bernanke says QE2 is supposed to ramp up inflation a bit so as to balance out with increased employment, thus getting both the Fed’s mandates into line.

It is certain that the Fed has not succeeded in its full-employment mandate. There hasn’t been a great amount of inflation because much of the newly-created money has sat in banks’ Federal Reserve accounts drawing minimal interest because banks don’t see much demand for loans due to the Obama Administration’s promotion of threatening conditions, i.e. higher taxes, Obamacare, and general hostility toward business large and small.

Do We Know the Real Reason for This Project?
J. D. Foster at National Review Online thinks Bernanke is not forthcoming about his actual reasons for wanting this “stimulus,” because of possible political consequences, but apparently it is not wanted simply to stave off deflation:

… If the economy is expected to muddle through, let alone accelerate, then there is no reason to embark on a highly risky, highly controversial new round of quantitative easing [to prevent deflation].

Why won’t Bernanke be transparent in this? Because he also worries about the Fed’s independence. Imagine President Obama’s reaction if the chairman of the Federal Reserve were to point out the obvious truth that the economy dare not sustain a massive tax hike at this time. Or if he were to say that the prospect of such a tax hike is what forced the Fed’s hand on QE, despite the risks. Whatever Bernanke’s intentions, this would be interpreted as a blatantly partisan act by the non-partisan Fed. [5]

Turn Off the Bubble Machine!
According to some of the Fed’s critics, especially of the Austrian school, the central bank’s manipulation of the currency is what brings on the bubbles, booms, busts, and accumulating inflation that our economy experiences. They point out that the Fed was slow to recognize (publicly, anyway) the housing bubble, leading to a deep recession which Peter Schiff was ridiculed for correctly predicting.

Marvin Hutchinson of Money Morning sees the Fed’s move as creating a commodities bubble that must burst:

By encouraging higher inflation - a stance that was clear in the recent statement of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) - Bernanke is creating a commodities bubble that is already showing signs of distorting the global market. By keeping interest rates below inflation for years at a time, he is discouraging U.S. saving and encouraging leverage.

That leads to the creation of massive bubbles - such as are currently appearing in the junk bond market, and occurred in dot-com bubble of 1997-2000 and the housing bubble of 2003-06.

In the long run, the losses from those bubbles bursting - combined with the low savings rates - will destroy the U.S. capital base. Once the United States no longer has more available capital than its competitors, it will have less and less ability to create good-paying jobs and preserve U.S. living standards. Thus, unemployment will increase and real wages will decline. [6]

A satirical article at The Onion was headlined, “Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In.”
But we’ve had enough of the bubble-and-burst cycles.
World financial leaders oppose it.
Reuters reports:

Resentment abroad stems from worry that Fed pump-priming will hasten the U.S. dollar's slide and cause their currencies to shoot up in value, setting the stage for asset bubbles and making a future burst of inflation more likely.

“With all due respect, U.S. policy is clueless,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a conference.

“(The problem) is not a shortage of liquidity. It's not that the Americans haven't pumped enough liquidity into the market, and now to say let's pump more into the market is not going to solve their problems.” [7]

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph reports that the world views the Fed action as a move to devalue the dollar:

China's commerce ministry fired an irate broadside against Washington on Monday. "The continued and drastic US dollar depreciation recently has led countries including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand to intervene in the currency market, intensifying a 'currency war'. In the mid-term, the US dollar will continue to weaken and gaming between major currencies will escalate," it said. [8]

Further, Evans-Pritchard writes,

As this anti-dollar revolt gathers momentum worldwide, the US risks losing its "exorbitant privilege" of currency hegemony – to use the term of Charles de Gaulle. [9]

Evans-Pritchard expects the Fed’s policy to bring more food inflation to countries that can least afford it:

The innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Fed policy are poor countries such as India, where primary goods make up 60pc of the price index and food inflation is now running at 14pc. It is hard to gauge the impact of a falling dollar on commodities, but the pattern in mid-2008 was that it led to oil, metal, and grain price rises with multiple leverage. The core victims were the poorest food-importing countries in Africa and South Asia. Tell them that QE2 brings good news. [10]

Conclusion
The Fed’s decision to implement QE2 will lead to inflation, reducing the value of the dollar, and aggravate currency relationships with other countries. This will contribute to weakened purchasing power for Americans, who already are cheated of the ability to gain from saving, and will contribute little to nothing to economic recovery. It will do nothing to increase demand in America or elsewhere.

Loosening money and credit even more won’t help when interest rates are near zero already, and banks are lacking customers who want to borrow. QE2 exacerbates the problem by introducing more risk and uncertainly into the markets. It’s been correctly characterized as a back-door tax increase.

Also, the Fed subjects itself to even more scrutiny and criticism, and risks the independence it so wants to protect. Both the dollar and the economy would benefit greatly from less manipulation and “help” from the government and the Fed.

[1] Mike Larson, “Fed confirms: QE2 on tap … despite dismal failure of QE1! Have these guys gone nuts??” 09/24/2010, FXStreet.com.

[2] and [3] Ibid.

[4] Pragmatic Capitalism, “Northern Trust: QE1 Failed, Why Will QE2 Work?” 10/10/2010.

[5] J.D. Foster, “Why Bernanke’s QE Justifications Don’t Wash,” 11/15/2010, The Corner, National Review Online.

[6] Marvin Hutchinson, “As QE2 Looms, Is the Fed Focusing on the Wrong Things?” 10/08/2010, Money Morning. (Emphasis added)

[7] Glenn Somerville and Zhou Xin, “Global anger swells at Fed Actions.” 11/05/2010, Reuters, via Yahoo! News.

[8] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “QE2 risks currency wars and the end of dollar hegemony,” 11/18/2010, The Telegraph (U.K.).

[9] and [10] Ibid.

Photo: Portrait of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Public domain.

Debt Commission Co-Chairs: Raise Taxes, Cut Spending, Including Social Security and Medicare

2010-11-11T19:37:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaReport Gathers Negative Comments
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Debt Commission”) has issued a draft report by its Co-Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY). As the co-chairmen said, it is not likely to be well-received by all.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [of California] called the targeting of Social Security and Medicare “simply unacceptable,” and Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas expressed opposition to proposals to raise taxes. [1]

Business and Media Institute, in an article, points out that of the three major broadcast evening news programs, only CBS reporter Chip Reid mentioned that the report calls for tax increases of $961 billion over 10 years as estimated by Americans for Tax Reform.

The BMI article noted that “ATR slammed the report saying, ‘It confirms what everyone has known – this commission is merely an excuse to raise net taxes on the American people.’” [2]
The plan is calculated to reduce the federal deficit by $3.8 billion over 10 years. It arguably falls well short of what is needed, since we would still have massive deficits and very high national debt. But the political will to reduce the deficit substantially seems to be lacking, because it would interfere with important benefits.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the chairmen had told “working Americans to ‘Drop Dead,’” while Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) faulted the report for cutting Social Security benefits while reducing corporate and upper-income taxes. [3]

Spending Cuts Are Necessary, Higher Taxes Are Not
What’s missing in Trumka’s and Grijalva’s analyses is the concept that “reducing corporate and upper-income taxes” is precisely the thing that would help more “working Americans” get back to work. Union members are going to find an increasingly difficult marketplace for the products and services they provide if more and more people are out of work because of the unfavorable and uncertain tax picture.

Also, it is not safe to assume that raising taxes and cutting out popular deductions will increase revenues. Increased revenues will result from policies that encourage business expansion and hiring, especially lower income tax rates that are not offset by tax and fee increases elsewhere. Increased net taxes don’t free up capital. Also, the proposal to tax capital gains at ordinary income tax rates will slow, not encourage investment. If you want less of something, tax it.

But significant spending cuts are essential to any improvement in the deficit picture. Deficits and debt in the range we’re seeing today cannot continue for many years. At current spending levels, debt service alone takes up a very large share of the budget. The spending cuts mentioned are good, but not enough. Defund NPR and PBS. Yes, fine.

Welfare can be cut extensively. It has been recently increased dramatically. We could get back to 2008 levels and further. The biggest sacred cows are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These items represent unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars, and the Social Security Trust Fund will never be adequate because it is basically worthless. My suggestion is to phase out these programs over a period of 25 to 30 years while grandfathering in current recipients and people who are scheduled to receive benefits fairly soon. Younger people should be advised to provide for their own retirements and health care.

The commission report calls for increasing the retirement age and trimming certain benefits over a long period of years.

Of course, the trouble with any plan, the Debt Commission’s or any other that covers a lot of years, is that there’s no assurance that it will be carried out beyond the current Congressional term if enacted into current law. Any future Congress can greatly change or scrap the program or any part of it. So for future officials, it’s simply a suggestion.

Steps That Will Definitely Help the Economy
The report seems to have been timed for, as Rush Limbaugh suggested, the lame-duck session of Congress. It is seen by some (including me) as an excuse to raise taxes, but it is also more than that, in that it seriously proposes substantial spending cuts. If America is to avoid a financial collapse certain things need to be done:
1. Significantly reduce spending, including entitlements.
2. Hold the line on taxes. If businesses were assured of a level tax burden, especially if the tax code could be simplified so that compliance costs would be lower, there would be much more incentive to hire people.
3. Pull back on intrusive regulations. These regulations are really just another kind of tax, considering the time and money required to comply.
4. Substantially cut the size of government, eliminating some Cabinet departments and large programs.
Remember:
To effectively reduce the deficit and national debt, we must improve the economy.

Conclusion
The Hill article reports,

The White House reserved judgment in a statement that said the president would not comment until a full commission report is released.
It’s unclear whether that will even happen. The commission report must be agreed by 14 of the 18 members to win approval, and some liberals on the panel criticized the chairman’s proposal. [4]

I think Bowles may be correct in characterizing the report as a “strong starting point.” [5]Congress and the Administration, sometime soon, must take responsibility for getting spending under control and stopping the lemming-like stampede to the edge of the cliff.

Otherwise, the laws of economics and finance will take over and we’ll see not only a bad economy, but a currency collapse and the degrading of our standard of living. There is time to avoid that and turn things around. Economic growth and job growth can happen fairly soon, but not with endless spending and new taxes.

The National Inflation Association said all Americans will be millionaires due to hyperinflation. Are they right? Remember Zimbabwe. The Fed is already monetizing the debt, i.e., beginning to pay it off with newly-printed money. That’s what their $600 billion “QE2” plan is about. Until some new collapse actually hits, it may seem like no action is needed. But things are not always what they seem to be.

[1] Heidi Przybyla and Brian Faler, “Deficit Plan Matches $3.8 Trillion Math With Tough Politics,” 11/11/2010, Bloomberg.

[2] Julia A. Seymour, “‘Explosive’ Debt Commission Recommendations Include $961 billion Tax Hikes,” 11/11/2010, Business and Media Institute.

[3] Alexander Bolton, “Pelosi, political left rip proposal from debt commission chairmen,” 11/10/2010, On the Money blog, The Hill.

[4] and [5] Ibid.

Photo: Portrait of Mr. Erskine Bowles. Public domain.

Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You: GOP Mainstreamers Attack Tea Party

2010-11-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaMaybe it’s just that some of their friends lost their GOP primary races to Tea Party candidates. Maybe some good-old-boy networks are feeling the heat. Could be it’s more the changing times that are uncomfortable to some established officials.

But the complaints about the Tea Party, coming from Republican establishment figures are off the mark.

For example: Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama) claimed that Sarah Palin prevented the GOP from taking control of the Senate because Tea Party candidates Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, who won their primary races, failed to defeat their Democratic opponents in the general election, although it was believed that had they not challenged other GOP candidates, the Senate seats would have ended up in the GOP column. The Hill reported:

“The Senate would be Republican today except for states [in which Palin endorsed candidates] like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware,” Bachus said at a local Chamber of Commerce event last week, the Shelby County Reporter wrote Sunday. “Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate.” [1]

The Tea Party backed candidates on the basis of principle, which trumped some people’s idea of electability, thinking that electing a RINO (Republican in name only) is hardly better than electing a Democrat. The Tea Party is issues-oriented.

While it may be true that certain Tea Party candidates were less electable than their establishment primary opponents, the Tea Party should be given a lot of credit for the Republicans’ success in the general election. What they brought to the table was great energy and a focus on issues. Perceived RINO’s did not receive their support because they did not support the Tea Party’s issue positions, notably, small government, spending cuts, and repeal of Obamacare.

According to The Hill’s article, Bachus spoke for others in the GOP as well: “Some Republicans have privately groused that Tea Party-backed candidates who were not electable prevented the GOP from taking control of the upper chamber.” [2]

Well, the GOP picked up enough seats to deny the Democrats anything near the 60-vote supermajority that they wanted, and now they are in a position to stop legislation they don’t want. That’s a substantial increase in power. Even though the Democrats may have lacked the full 60 votes before, they could sometimes get some Republicans to vote with them. Now (that is, starting in 2011), that will be much more difficult.

Some mainstreamers, especially those who were defeated in the primaries, will probably never have any love for the Tea Party, but the GOP is actually better off without the ones who are too timid to put up opposition to the Democrats, and are just as out of touch with voters as the Democrats are.

Senator Lindsey Graham has gone from wholesale dissing of the Tea Party movement in early July to “reaching out” to them by September.

A New York Times Magazine article of July 4, 2010, quotes Graham:

"Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was “very, very contentious,” he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: “ ‘What do you want to do? You take back your country — and do what with it?’ . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.” [3]

He went on to predict the demise of the Tea Party movement: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” [4]

An angry reaction by the Tea Party was forthcoming, as one might expect, as reported by The Democrat Daily:

“Lindsey Graham’s repeated public attacks on the hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians like me who have participated in tea party events displays an arrogance and contempt for the views of his constituents that is beyond the pale,” says Allen Olson, chairman of the Columbia (S.C.) Tea Party. “It is among the reasons three South Carolina GOP committees from Charleston, Greenville and Lexington Counties have censured him in the past two years.” [5]

However, Sen. Graham, while not changing his views on the issues and on working across the aisle, seemed more conciliatory in September. According to an article in The Hill, Graham met with a Tea Party group in Charleston, SC:

Graham defended himself as a mainstream conservative, and expressed worry that public officials like himself were being effectively prohibited from expressing disagreement with the party.

“If you can't accept me pushing back, then our party does have a problem. It's OK for you to push back against me, but it's OK for me to push back against you,” Graham said on WTMA radio in South Carolina, where he received a grilling over his record. “You may not like my political style of trying to find compromise on the big issues of our time, but I think it's the heart and soul of what makes America great.” [6]

A Politico article states:

With tea party-backed candidates going down in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, depriving Republicans of what would have been a 50-50 Senate, a bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states. [7]

So, the GOP is involved in a needless and possibly destructive quarrel, when they need to be united in their election victories. Where would they be today without the Tea Party? Probably where they were before the election, with citizens deeply dissatisfied with Obama’s policies, yet finding inadequate response from the GOP in Congress, mainly because of low numbers. There would be public protests, but with a lot less organized action to change things.

The Tea Party led the way to the GOP victory. They understood and shared the dissatisfaction of most Americans with Washington and found ways to make changes. To me, this is the epitome of citizenship in action. The energy they contributed was indispensable. And it should serve notice that the people still have some power. Democrats and Republicans, take notice.

And to the complaining GOP members of Congress: You will have a House majority and a much-improved Senate-seat count largely because of the energy and determination of the Tea Party. They didn’t win all their races. But they were successful enough that there shouldn’t be a lot of whining from you. Count your blessings.

[1] Jordan Fabian, “Key Republican: Palin cost us the senate,” 11/08/2010, Blog Briefing Room, The Hill.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Robert Draper, “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick,” 07/04/2010, The New York Times Magazine.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Scott Nance, “Tea Party Groups Blast Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham For Criticism In Times Profile,” 07/06/2010, The Democrat Daily.

[6] Michael O’Brien, “Sen. Graham reaches out to Tea Party,” 09/03/2010, Blog Briefing Room, The Hill.

[7] Jonathan Martin and Manu Raju, “GOP senators fight over failure,” 11/03/2010, Politico.
Photo: Portrait of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina). Public domain.

Obama’s Plan To Embarrass America in the UN: “Human Rights” To Be “Reviewed”

2010-11-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama, supposed champion of “diplomacy,” has arranged for America’s detractors to judge us on our human rights record. The U.S. is to be evaluated by countries whose own human rights records range from dismal to inhuman. Continuing President George W. Bush’s policy of non-participation in this farce would be a no-brainer to anyone except those of the radical-liberal-fascist-socialist persuasion. But not to Mr. Obama. It’s a diplomatic mistake rarely equaled short of war-or-peace negotiations.

The politicization of the process is obvious to all but the most ignorant of the situation. Here is an unusual opportunity for such regimes as Libya, Cuba, Iran, etc. to paint America as an international villain, when, in fact, America is a shining example of an excellent human rights record, one far better than those of her critics. One must conclude that our involvement in this charade is an example of extremely inept “diplomacy” on the part of the Obama Administration, or else a deliberate attempt to undermine America’s international standing.

As Patrick Goodenough of CNS News points out, countries under review get the speakers’ slots stacked with their allies, many of whom have terrible human rights records, and the process can become simply mutual praise of oppressive regimes, or, in the case of, say, the U.S., the opposite occurs:

In a bid to preempt anticipated criticism from liberal democracies, countries with poor records are reportedly ensuring that their allies sign up in large numbers so as to dominate proceedings with anodyne expressions of support.

Conversely, when a state under review (SuR) is a democracy that for some reason is viewed with antagonism by other countries, the speakers’ list is quickly filled by countries wishing to use the UPR as an opportunity to attack their chosen target. [1]

This has been the pattern. So look for dictatorial regimes to criticize America for every possible problem that can be blown out of proportion. Obama helped set the agenda for this with his criticism at the UN of Arizona’s immigration law (See my previous article here). While most Americans would rightly view America’s race relations as much improved and greatly better than in past decades, the professional race-baiting community is never going to accept anything, since doing so would be admitting that their activity is no longer needed. And opponents of capital punishment can’t resist another forum to criticize the U.S. on that score.

If it weren’t for the fact that this ridiculous process touches on serious international relations, it would certainly be laughable. Iran criticizing U.S. human rights? Venezuela? Cuba? Countries where there are no human rights?

Examples of the “violations” prevalent in the U.S., [Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast] said, were police brutality, discrimination toward minorities, and insults directed [at] religion under the pretext of freedom of speech.

A Tehran Times article quoting Mehmanparast’s remarks reported that there were 45 executions in the United States in 2009, up from 37 in of 2008. [2]

The U.S. has submitted a report listing some of America’s human rights shortcomings. No one claims that America is perfect but to invite the sort of dishonest and exaggerated criticism that will likely be leveled by nations who wish the U.S. no good is neither cathartic nor helpful in any other way, except to the truly vicious regimes that want to sit in judgment. The report “[l]ists achievements as a democracy guided by ‘simple but powerful principles,’ but admits to discrimination against blacks and Hispanics and a ‘broken’ immigration system.” [3]

So, Iranian, Cuban, and Venezuelan “spokespersons” are lining up to trash the U.S. when their own countries are filled with incidents of political murder and imprisonment, and whose own people are suffering oppression at the hands of their cruel and hypocritical regimes.

[1] Patrick Goodenough, “Cuba, Venezuela, Iran Top the List of Countries Lining Up to Scrutinize U.S. Human Rights Record During U.N. Review,” 11/04/2010, CNS News.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Stephanie Nebehay, “Factbox: U.S. Report to U.N. Human Rights Council,” 11/03/2010, Reuters.
Apparently this article is no longer available.

Photo: Dreamstime.com

On November 2, Democrats Will Reap the Rewards for Ignoring the People

2010-10-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaOctober 29, 2010
“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.” -- President Barack Obama [1]

Yeah, clinging to our guns and religion.

Republicans Poised for Big Wins
It has been generally predicted that the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives. Nate Silver of The New York Times calculates that the GOP will end up with about 232 seats. Control of the Senate is somewhat less likely, but there should be good gains. Silver predicts 48 seats for the GOP. Anyway, the Democrats should be well short of the 60-vote supermajority they need to pass their controversial bills. Republicans will also gain significantly in governorships. [2]

Obama Says Voters Can’t Think Straight
Obama doesn’t seem to understand that people don’t like his policies, and that they have good reason not to like them.

He has previously said that he hasn’t done a good enough job of selling his agenda. But he has made it too clear, and the majority of voters are rejecting it.

The president still blames Bush at every opportunity, saying his policies got us into the economic mess we’re in. Well, Bush over-spent and caved to Paulson’s bailout demands. But Obama carried the bailouts to the next level, spent almost a trillion dollars on the failed “stimulus,” and wants to spend a lot more. Bush’s deficit, though large, will pale in comparison to Obama’s. Obama’s talk about deficit reduction is simply a joke.

The majority of voters are not ignoring, but using “fact and science and argument” to rebut Obama’s ideas. They are scared of what Obamaism is bringing, and they are suffering from its effects. Common sense tells them that endless spending will not help the economy, but will eventually destroy it. Higher taxes, more and stricter regulations, and government’s anti-business attitude will not help the unemployment situation, but exacerbate it. They are angry because they are losing jobs and prosperity, and Obama either doesn‘t know what to do, or else is deliberately letting this happen.. And they are thinking more clearly than the out-of-touch Obama and his elite advisers.

Obama, and this is too obvious, wants to adopt the same policies that have led Europe to its present state of rapid decline. Paul Krugman notwithstanding, we are on our way to where Britain is now, facing severe austerity measures just to save our economy and currency from complete collapse. Of course Obama thinks Britain and the EU should be spending more. And in socialist Europe, any kind of reduction of the too-generous government benefits tends to lead to riots, such as we’ve seen in Greece and France.

Tea Party Influence Is Crucial
Like them or not, the Tea Party has succeeded in bringing several issues to the forefront of national attention, and has established itself as an influential force in American politics. Liberals try to dismiss it, but they are losing power at its hands. The Republican Party has a chance to use a conservative mandate to advance a conservative agenda and stop or slow Obama’s plans. If the GOP fails to do this, the Tea Party will publicize their failures, and voters will hold them accountable. The Tea Party has helped voters to see that something can be done about the politicians who are causing the trouble, and that the voice of the people can ultimately prevail, even though it is being tuned out by the current Administration and congressional majority. Voters are too upset to think straight, y’know.

The Tea Party has helped to make this an issues-focused and accountability-intense election, and for that we can be grateful. Democrats’ thoughtless attacks and phony racism claims will hurt themselves much more than they will hurt the Tea Party.

A fact that liberals can’t seem to understand is that even though most people don’t claim any affiliation with the Tea Party, there are millions who do, and the Tea Party largely represents the views of the majority of American voters.

Most Voters Will Get It Right
If the polls indicate the actual election results, voters will largely reject the job-destroying, freedom-threatening Obama program. It is about Obama. His policies have led to the most widespread anti-government mood in memory, and justly so. There is a backlash because the Administration and Democratic congressional majority have blatantly ignored the will of the people, and are presenting them with the astronomical bill for their fascist-socialist, unconstitutional actions.

[1] Quoted by Michael Barone, “Voters Fed up With Obama’s Big, Bossy Government,” 10/25/2010, Patriot Post.

[2] See: Nate Silver, “‘Robopolls’ Significantly More Favorable to Republicans Than Traditional Surveys,” The New York Times.

Photo: President Obama signs "Stimulus" bill. Public domain.

Hidden (?) Agenda of Climate/Environmental Alarmists

2010-10-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia
The underlying purpose of the “climate-change” alarmist movement is to concentrate government power by claiming that climate changes are going to bring about such catastrophic events that dictatorial international government, supported by high taxes, must act to stop it. Some say it’s too late to act. Some say we must act quickly. UN climate conferences have attempted, unsuccessfully thus far, to get binding international agreements to address this so-called problem. It is unfortunate that the U.S. Government is so anxious to impose restrictions and regulations on everyone because of this false issue.

I do not believe that climate change is affected to any significant degree by mankind, nor do I believe that man can do anything significant to change it. It is possible to make things worse by pollution. The environmental movement has many radical proponents who are anti-Western, anti-prosperity, anti-business communists, including more extremist criminals than one might suppose.

Special Lord Monckton Interview: Scientific Misconduct Needed to Push Nwo Objective 2/5
One of the best explanations of the climate-change and environmentalist movements and their actual objectives (probably unknown to many organizational members) is given by Lord Christopher Monckton in the following video, one of a series of videos posted on YouTube:

His comments on Greenpeace strike me as quite interesting. Lest anyone think that the N.W.O. (New World Order) is simply a conspiracy theory, consider the actions of various governments in response to the climate “crisis,” not to mention the “financial meltdown,” both of which situations require little to no government action other than getting out of the way.

Conclusion
The radical fascist-socialist-Marxist Obama Administration is on board with central planning on world-wide basis. Of course, Obama sees himself as a “citizen of the world” rather than an American, and is anxious to engage our enemies diplomatically. We are in far greater danger from government action (loss of liberty and loss of national wealth) than we are from anything related to the climate or the environment due to nature.
Photo: UN Framework Convention on Climate Change COP14, Poznan, Poland (public domain).

Campaign of Desperation? Obama’s War on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

2010-10-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama and his people are engaged in a fairly strong effort to discredit the United States Chamber of Commerce by accusing them of spending foreign money in the current election campaigns. This has brought vehement denials from the Chamber and other groups the White House has been aiming at with similar accusations.

If you were wondering whether Obama is anti-business, this should be the clincher in that debate. (See my recent article). Now, of course, “Big Business” is the bad guy, more or less in the same category, rhetorically speaking, as “Wall Street,” just greedy fat cats who will stoop to anything to promote their agenda.

As reported by Politifact,
Here's what the president said at a rally on Oct. 7, 2010, on behalf of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley:

“Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations. So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections. And they won't tell you where the money (for) their ads comes from.”

On ABC's This Week on Oct. 10, 2010, George Will connected the dots: “Well, he won't tell us who he's talking about. He's talking about the Chamber of Commerce, which does indeed receive dues from foreign entities that are associated with American business, just as the AFL-CIO receives dues from foreign entities associated with it. And -- and the shock and awe that we're supposed to feel from this is somewhat selective.” ….

…[N]o one has offered any evidence that the Chamber of Commerce is not complying with that law [i.e., the law requiring that foreign funds be segregated.] [1]

Karl Rove rightly points out that Obama’s statements are not in keeping with a President’s proper behavior, as reported by Fox News:

“Have these people no shame? Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office that he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political enemies?” Rove said. “This is just beyond the pale. How dare the president do this.” …. [2]

Soon-to-depart Presidential adviser David Axelrod believes it’s OK for government officials to hurl charges and claim that the ones accused must prove they are not guilty. The Hill blogger Walter Alarkon writes:

Axelrod was pressed by CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Sunday for evidence that the foreign campaign contributions benefiting the GOP is more than “peanuts.”

“Do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob?” Axelrod said on “Face the Nation.” “The fact is that the Chamber has asserted that, but they won’t release any information about where their campaign money is coming from. And that’s at the core of the problem.” ….

“Don’t accuse those who are playing by the rules of somehow doing something that is unethical or illegal,” [Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed] Gillespie said on “Face the Nation.”

Gillespie added that it was “an unbelievable mentality” for Axelrod to assert charges about foreign contributions without backing them up [3]

As Fox News has noted:
“David Axelrod is either woefully uninformed or willfully deceptive and dishonest,” Gillespie said. [4]

Not even AP, usually a reliable helper for Obama, is ready to go along with these reckless accusations:

The Obama administration and its allies are going all out against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and GOP-leaning groups, accusing them of using foreign money to help finance political ads. Trouble is, they're providing no evidence …

“I challenge the Chamber of Commerce to tell us how much of the money they're investing is from foreign sources,” Biden said during a fundraiser for Democratic Rep. Chris Carney in Scranton. “I challenge them, if I'm wrong I will stand corrected. But show me, show me.” …. [5]

The AP article quotes a Chamber official as saying that no money from foreign sources is used for political purposes. [6] Also:

Bruce Josten, the chamber's top lobbyist, was even more pointed: “We are seeing an attempt to demonize specific groups and distract Americans from a failed economic agenda,” he said in a statement. [7]

Various published reports have said that the Chamber has spent $25 million for political advertising, and expects to spend $50 million more this election cycle. This is what has Obama’s forces worried, because most of that money will be in support of GOP-leaning causes. As the reader can see, there are several things the Republicans find objectionable about the president’s war on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

1. It makes a serious charge while offering no evidence.
2. It assumes guilt until innocence is proven.
3. It ignores the fact that unions and other Democratic-supporting organizations also receive foreign money and engage in political spending, but no one thus far has questioned their compliance with the law governing foreign funds.
4. It is seen as an attack on business and portrays Obama as anti-business.
5. It contributes to what businesses perceive as a hostile environment, one that discourages business expansion and hiring, through high taxes, over-regulation, and the federal government’s generally hostile attitude.
6. It is a lie and a cheap campaign trick perpetrated by people who ought to act better.

This charge could very well backfire, and open the Democrats up for more scrutiny. Remember Clinton‘s “Chinagate”? Also, voters these days are quite capable of seeing through such phoniness.

No one should be shocked or surprised at such a ridiculous charge. But, neither should anyone be ignorant of the fact that it is unsupported and hypocritical.

[1] “President Barack Obama says foreign money coming in to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may be helping to fund attack ads,” 10/11/2010, Politifact. According to the website, “PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in politics.”

[2] “Rove, Gillespie Slam Obama for Spreading ‘Baseless Lie’ Over Foreign Contributions,” 10/10/10, Fox News.

[3] Walter Alarkon, “Axelrod: Chamber must prove foreign money accusations false,” 10/10/10, Blog Briefing Room, The Hill.

[4] “Rove, Gillespie Slam Obama for Spreading ‘Baseless Lie’ Over Foreign Contributions,” See [2].

[5] Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press, “SPIN METER: Foreign money in politics? Not proven,” 10/11/2010, via Yahoo! News.

[6] and [7] Ibid.

Photo: Dreamstime.com

Eddie’s Simple But Reliable Voting Guide

2010-10-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

The primaries are over, and the general elections draweth nigh. It has been predicted that Republicans will make major gains in the November elections, but the Democrats are still in charge for one more session of Congress, a lame-duck affair, in which they may try to vote in some of their least-liked policies.

I am suggesting a highly simplified, yet very effective voting guide that will help our country avoid a good many problems, and solve some of the aggravating troubles we currently have. With President Barack Obama still in office and ready to wield the veto pen, the GOP can at least (1) propose better policies, and (2) slow down the Obama agenda. With the people supporting conservatism, the GOP can be surprisingly successful.

The voting guide I am recommending is simply this: Avoid voting for any candidates of the Democratic Party. For every Democratic congressional candidate defeated, Obama loses a vote in Congress. Even the “conservative” Democrats vote with the president most of the time, and in fact are not very conservative.

People who live in states where the budget is in a large deficit can generally see how this is most often attributable to liberal Democratic state officials who love to spend.

It’s true that there are some RINOs left. Not all the best conservatives won their primaries, but that should have been taken care of in the primary campaigns. Many good conservatives did win. None had a “D” by their name. It is important that Democrats be defeated if we are to stop Obama’s fascist-socialist-Marxist plans from coming to further fruition. It is to be hoped that Obamacare can be stopped by defunding, and later by repeal. That likely won’t happen unless there is a Republican majority in the House, but the Republicans, even if they fail to gain control of either house, should at least be able to deny the Democrats the 60-vote supermajority they would need in the Senate to pass controversial bills.

Some people are saying they’ll vote against all incumbents, but that is not a reliable way to change the direction of Washington. Voting against an incumbent Republican will only facilitate the election of some Democrat, who in all likelihood will be ten times worse than the Republican, even if the Republican leaves a lot to be desired.

The Tea Party is not essentially anti-incumbent, but pro-conservative. They know that with liberals in charge, we will face economic disaster through uncontrolled spending and higher taxes. Their policies will ensure perpetual high unemployment and an eventual currency collapse.

Continuing Democrat majorities will also ensure more anti-life policies, more anti-Christian and pro-Islamic attitudes, and less freedom for individuals. For those who want to vote for the “person, not the party,” when you vote Democratic, no matter how good the candidate seems, you are voting for the party of Chicago-style operations, forced unionism, food taxes, carbon taxes, and increasingly centralized government and endless Keynesian spending. Any thought of a balanced budget is a low priority with these people, no matter what is said.

This voting guide is simple, but will be found to be effective if it is used.

If Republicans win, strong effort must be made to hold them to their promises. They have disappointed us before. But this can be done, and is greatly preferable to giving the socialists more time in office.

(Not authorized by any candidate, party or campaign. Personal opinion only.)

Illustration: Dreamstime.com

“Pledge to America” Looks Like a Winner

2010-09-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

House GOP Leader John Boehner

According to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the “Pledge to America,” unveiled September 23, 2010 by House Republican Leader John Boehner and other GOP Congressional leaders, is a non-exhaustive list of items that represent the first things that should be done if the GOP gains a majority in Congress. As he points out, the whole conservative agenda could not be accomplished while Barack Obama is president, but many things could be done.

I see the “Pledge to America” as a strong positive statement that GOP members of Congress should be evaluated by, and to which its supporters must be held accountable. For all the possible criticisms of it, it represents something far, far superior to the Obama agenda, and, if adhered to faithfully, it should save our country from a lot of misery and loss, and correct some glaring problems.

The document represents a governing philosophy that is very much different from that of the current Administration. It honors the words of the founding documents, and recognizes such common-sense things as the need to control spending and to stop tax increases.

From a draft of the document, found here, I have quoted from it (in bold) and made some comments (not in bold).

America is an inspiration to those who yearn to be free and have the ability and the dignity to determine their own destiny.

Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course.

These first principles were proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, enshrined in the Constitution, and have endured through hard sacrifice and commitment by generations of Americans.

In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent.

It should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention that the current regime is consciously ruling contrary to the wishes of the American people in many policies, notably proposed tax increases and Obamacare, as well as a foreign policy that disrespects America’s past and panders to dictatorial regimes that wish us no good.

An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many….

The need for urgent action to repair our economy and reclaim our government for the people cannot be overstated.

The situation is serious and getting worse daily. The so-called recovery has led to very little economic growth or job growth, and a second dip appears probable. Meanwhile, our Federal government is aggressively pursuing European-style socialist policies that will result in permanent double-digit unemployment and a poorer, weaker nation. However, the ruling elites will fit in better with their international counterparts.

A plan to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive must be the first and most urgent domestic priority of our government. So first, we offer a plan to get people working again. We will end the attack on free enterprise by repealing job-killing policies and taking steps to assure current businesses and future entrepreneurs that the government will not stifle their ability to compete in the global marketplace.

By permanently stopping job-killing tax hikes, families will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money and small businesses will have the stability they need to invest in our economy and help grow our workforce. We will further encourage small businesses to create jobs by allowing them to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income.

Americans view the economic issues as most urgent. The GOP could do a lot to get government out of the way and let the markets solve the problem. At any rate, the government must promote private sector economic activity. The Keynesian approach of recent years has grown government, deficits and debt on a massive scale, but that’s about all. Even that phony growth is bound for collapse unless fundamental changes are made.

We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common-sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs. We will enact real medical liability reform; allow Americans to purchase health coverage across state lines; empower small businesses with greater purchasing power; and create new incentives to save for future health needs. We will protect the doctor-patient relationship, and ensure that those with pre-existing conditions gain access to the coverage they need. We will permanently end taxpayer funding of abortion and codify the Hyde Amendment.

The GOP could do a lot, if in the majority, to repeal or at least de-fund the hated Obamacare program. The steps listed for replacing it are meritorious, but even doing nothing would have been better than Obamacare. While the document is not strong on details about social issues, it certainly represents a strong step in the right direction from the anti-life positions of Obama and company.

Why the Pledge Is Important
The “Pledge to America” stakes out positions and principles showing great contrast with the Obama agenda. This includes the idea of self-government as opposed to central planning. It promotes the responsibility of Congress, as the people’s representatives, to act as needed without having legislative powers usurped by the president and executive agencies.

Just these changes of philosophy -- limited government, more freedom, and low taxes, are light years from Obama’s ultimate design.

Some Responses
Michelle Malkin offered her thoughts on the “Pledge” on Fox News:

Politico reports:

In confronting Obama, Republicans make clear that a takeover of the House could lead to a contentious two years, and possibly gridlock, if both sides aren’t willing to compromise. Most of the ideas have little chance of becoming law in a divided government, but the “Pledge to America” is aimed at defining an agenda for a party that has been accused of not having one in the Obama era. [1]

Divided government is very likely, but that would be immensely preferable to an authoritarian president supported by a rubber-stamp Congress that's even more radical than himself, if that's possible. Too bad we didn't have enough gridlock to prevent Obamacare and other unread thousand-plus-page bills from being passed.

The editors of National Review see the “Pledge” as a favorable development:

…The inevitable question will be: Is the pledge as bold as the Contract?

The answer is: The pledge is bolder. The Contract with America merely promised to hold votes on popular bills that had been bottled up during decades of Democratic control of the House. The pledge commits Republicans to working toward a broad conservative agenda that, if implemented, would make the federal government significantly smaller, Congress more accountable, and America more prosperous…. [2]

Eric Erickson of RedState ridicules the document as something that will very soon be forgotten by the GOP and everyone else.

There is no call for a Spending Limitation Amendment or a Balanced Budget Amendment. It is just meaningless stuff the Democrats can easily undo and that ultimately the Senate GOP will even turn its nose up at.

The entirety of this Promise is laughable. Why? It is an illusion that fixates on stuff the GOP already should be doing while not daring to touch on stuff that will have any meaningful longterm effects on the size and scope of the federal government. [3]

For me, the issue is not the document so much as the GOP maintaining a commitment to its content. Paul Ryan says there is specific legislation relating to the stated positions. The Pledge recognizes that Republicans have often failed to limit government and spending while they were in power.

It’s true that some enacted or became what they had campaigned against. That would demonstrate a problem with integrity, not with their stated goals. The dizzying cocktail-party circuit of the Beltway is said to pull people in, who then compromise their principles in order to gain popularity and maintain social standing. That represents human weakness, not weakness of the principles that had been claimed, then abandoned.

Conclusion
If the GOP would like to actually stay in power once they have gained it, they need to embrace their inner conservative and get on board with the Tea Party. Act boldly to fundamentally change the government’s attitude and the abuses in the way Congress operates. Place principle above self-promotion. Have more respect for the founding documents than for the New York Times’ latest comments.

Otherwise, after a short while in power, there’ll be another fascist-socialist-Marxist like Obama who will get his own party in power. The thing about liberals is that they never quit. They’re always there, ready to challenge. They must be held in check for the good of the country. With liberals in power, there will be no end of excessive spending until the currency is worthless, and no end to finding more “rights” and “victims” that taxpayers must support against their will.

But for now the “Pledge” appears to me to be a positive, timely, and possibly brilliant idea from the unfairly-maligned Republican Party. I hope it leads to a lot of success. Republicans need to regain power soon because our country is headed in exactly the wrong direction in too many ways. Democrats don’t have and won’t get the answers.

[1] Richard E. Cohen, Jake Sherman, and Jonathan Allen, “‘Pledge to America’ promises fight, gridlock” 09/23/2010, Politico.

[2] The Editors, “We’ll Take the Pledge,” 09/22/2010, National Review Online.

[3] Eric Erickson, “Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Thing to Come Out of Washington Since George McClellan,” 09/22/2010, RedState.com.

Photo: House Republican Leader John Boehner, official portrait, via Wikipedia.

Some Comments on President Obama’s Cleveland Speech on the Economy

2010-09-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

In this article, I am commenting on some of the things President Barack Obama said in his September 8, 2010 speech in Cleveland, Ohio (more precisely, Parma, Ohio). Lest his remarks be taken uncritically, I have tried to provide some counterpoint. The President’s statements are in bold and everything else is not in bold. [1]

Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care for folks who are sick, or let credit card companies go back to raising rates without any reason. Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth and eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class.

The argument is that we should not have socialized medicine, and while the insurance industry regulations need to be revisited, it was not necessary, and it is an unwise policy to replace the entire health care structure. Most Americans agree with this. Obama’s and liberals’ answer to everything is more government control and/or more government spending. I haven’t heard any conservatives “asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth and eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class.” Those are precisely the things Obamanomics are bringing us through higher taxes, over-regulation, bailouts and government takeovers. If government would simply get out of the way, a free market would very soon restore prosperity.

“Past generations” felt compelled to support the big government policies of FDR during the Great Depression, which vastly expanded government size and power, and contributed to worsening and prolonging the Depression. (See my previous article here.)

With all the other budgetary pressures we have – with all the Republicans’ talk about wanting to shrink the deficit – they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires. And keep in mind wealthy Americans are just about the only folks who saw their incomes rise when Republicans were in charge. And these are the folks who are less likely to spend the money – which is why economists don’t think tax breaks for the wealthy would do much to boost the economy.

“Economists” in that last sentence must refer to Keynesian economists who think the only solution to our economic problems involve massive government spending. Obama shows his narrow outlook on this situation when he says the wealthy are “less likely to spend the money.” If they did receive a continuation of the Bush tax cuts, they would be very likely to spend the money on business investment that would create jobs.

How they can still get people to believe the following myths is somewhat surprising:

Myth #1: The Bush tax cuts decreased, and continuation of them would decrease revenues to the government. Not so. Check tax cuts back to JFK, Reagan, and Bush, and you will find that revenues to the government increased under these tax cuts. Revenues would increase again if all the Bush tax cuts were extended. Boehner’s suggestion of extending all the Bush tax cuts for two years, and rolling back spending to 2008 levels, would produce a substantial improvement quickly. If businesses knew their tax rates were frozen for two years, they would feel free to expand and hire.

Myth #2: Increasing taxes on the wealthy does not harm others in society. Not so. Increasing taxes on the wealthy equals increasing taxes on those who are in a position to provide jobs, if the economy encouraged it. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show clearly that this isn’t happening now. Obama’s argument appeals mainly to class envy.

This isn’t to punish folks who are better off –- God bless them. It’s because we can’t afford the $700 billion price tag... And for those who claim that our approach would somehow be bad for growth and bad for small businesses, let me remind you that with those tax rates in place, under President Clinton, this country created 22 million jobs and raised incomes and had the largest surplus in our history.

Jobs were created and the surpluses happened after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. Clinton and Gore got on board with this reality, announcing that “the era of big government is over,” something that Obama would never do. For him, the era of big government is just beginning. And, punishing some of the wealthy by redistributing some of their wealth would please Obama.

As Jake Tapper of ABC News reported,

The president defined the Republican economic philosophy as, “Cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires. Cut regulations for special interests. Cut trade deals even if they didn’t benefit our workers. Cut back on investments in our people and our future.” [2]

“Millionaires, billionaires, and special interests” means employers, whose wealth and income Obama wants to redistribute. Of course, here, as elsewhere, when Obama says “investment,” he means “government spending.”

Also,

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement pushed back against Mr. Obama’s speech.

“If the President wanted to have an immediate impact on hiring, he could begin by changing his mind and announcing today his opposition to the job-killing tax hikes on small businesses,” McConnell said, “ America’s job creators have already been hit with higher health care costs and related taxes, new bureaucracy and a financial regulation bill. Americans want jobs, not more government, more debt and more taxes. Let’s start today with a declarative statement against tax hikes on the small businesses that are critical to expand and create jobs.” [3]

And, Obama would have us believe that it’s somehow John Boehner’s fault that our economy is in such dreadful condition.

The President derided House Minority Leader John Boehner as representing simply saying “no” to Obama’s policies without proposing any positive steps to helping the economy. Not true, of course, but the “no” aspect is valuable too. As one of Jake Tapper’s commenters said,

No is a pretty sound position when the nation is careening off a cliff in massive debt.

America is on a path to bankruptcy. This is no longer news and no longer debatable. What remains in question is, what are we going to do about it? [4]

Interestingly, The Hill is reporting today (09/08/2010) that momentum is building for extending all the Bush tax cuts, since the President avoided a direct veto threat, and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) expressed support for extending them:

Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a centrist who has been a key vote on several Obama administration initiatives, said Thursday that he supports extending all of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts until the economic recovery has taken root. Raising taxes on wealthier taxpayers could hurt the economy, he said….

Tax policy experts expect Congress to approve an extension of all of the Bush-era rates in a lame-duck session after the elections. [5]

This could make Obama’s argument a moot point, which would be good news. Also, that's the only good argument I've heard for having a lame-duck session. The Democrats are trying to figure out something to help the economy before the elections (such as announcing this?), and they know that Obama’s policies aren't working.

The past several months have helped many Americans gain perspective on Obama’s policies. People who previously had little desire to follow day-to-day politics now find that they must pay closer attention, because these things hit them in the pocket book, lessen their freedom, and weaken the nation. After Election Day, it appears that Obama’s party will be less powerful in Congress.

[1] Items in bold are from “Remarks by the President on the Economy in Parma, Ohio,” 09/08/2010, WhiteHouse.gov.

[2] Jake Tapper, “Still Fear vs. Hope? Obama Attacks John Boehner, GOP’s Economic Vision,” 09/08/2010, ABC News, Political Punch.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Commenter “Skip” at Tapper article 09/08/2010. See [2].

[5] Vicki Needham and Ian Swanson, “Momentum builds for extending all of President Bush’s tax cuts,” 09/09/10, The Hill, On the Money blog.

Photo: Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, official portrait, via Wikipedia.

Obama Blames Bush and Whines about the Economy, or Happy Labor Day to the Unemployed

2010-09-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Now President Barack Obama wants approval for a $50 billion “jobs bill,” that Republican leaders rightly point out would have little effect other than increasing US indebtedness when spending is already out of control. No new jobs would be brought about until next year perhaps, and the bill is hardly worth its price tag.

And Obama has turned up the volume, for campaign season, on his “Blame Bush” strategy, which by now is wearing quite thin. Obama, during his presidential campaign seemed to be confident about having all the answers, but since his economic policies have been a big failure thus far, he has to blame Bush, propose more stimulus, and do more whining.

An AP article reporting on Obama’s newest stimulus proposal includes the following about Obama’s statements to a “cheering crowd at a labor gathering” in Milwaukee:

Casual in brown slacks and open-collar white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, Obama took a populist tack in his speech, mixing attacks on Republicans with praise for working-class and middle-class Americans.

He said he'd “keep fighting, every single day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around.” He said interest groups he has battled “talk about me like a dog.” [1]

I’m not sure if he meant that even during vacation times he’d keep “fighting.” Or when he could spare some time from whining about groups that “talk about me like a dog,” he’d “fight.” He did say every single day, hour, and minute. That doesn’t leave much time for other things. Such inspirational rhetoric from the Chief.

He talks about helping the middle class at the same time he is destroying the middle class. And young people trying to enter the job market are probably rethinking their devotion to the Messiah’s “hope and change” promises. There have been changes, but not what was hoped for. There are 14.9 million people still unemployed, and another 8.9 million underemployed [2], and still more who have given up looking for work, but Obama hails the “positive news” of 54,000 private sector jobs created.

Oh, and by the way, Obama wants to exempt companies from paying Social Security taxes on newly-hired people that were unemployed. And, he wants to continue R&D tax benefits. In the context of the employment and tax picture as seen by employers, these things are not enough to encourage hiring to any significant degree.

Further, the AP article reports as follows:

He also acknowledged that the past eight months of modest private-sector job growth hasn't been enough to bring down the unemployment rate. He said economic problems facing families today are “more serious than ever,” and seemed to ask the audience in Milwaukee — and voters nationwide — for patience.

“Now here's the honest truth, the plain truth. There's no silver bullet, there's no quick fix to these problems,” he said, adding that it will take time to “reverse the damage of a decade worth of policies” that caused the recession. [3]

He’s right about the problems getting worse under his administration. And his policies certainly can’t and won’t improve things much. He is wrong about “‘a decade worth of policies’ that caused the recession,” if he means something other than the real estate bubble and the misbehavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, resulting from actions and inaction of the Democrats and the Fed, and Bush’s ill-advised last-minute acceptance of (Democrat) Paulson’s demand for a $700 billion bail-out blank check.

Obama’s beloved health care bill ensures that there won’t be fiscal sanity for the foreseeable future, and his promotion of the cap and trade bill proves he doesn’t care. Obamacare and the impending EPA regulations on CO-2, plus the end of the Bush tax cuts, the double-dip, and the worsening of real-estate troubles, virtually guarantee that banks and businesses will keep holding on to their cash for some time. Economists who say the economy will improve around 2014 may be counting on Obama being out of office by then. If Republicans gain control of Congress this year and de-fund Obama’s main initiatives and overturn his regulations, and extend the Bush tax cuts, things could get better much sooner.

Meanwhile, the President stays in campaign mode, though his message now is far less appealing to his election supporters than in 2008. But he can campaign. He just isn’t good at governing.

[1] Darlene Superville, Associated Press, “Obama assails GOP, promotes new jobs program,” 09/06/2010. Yahoo! News.

[2] Bureau of Labor Statistics, “The Employment Situation -- August 2010,” 09/03/2010.

[3] Superville, see [1].

Photo: Vintage 1956 postage stamp with Labor Day theme (Dreamstime.com)

Obama vs. Arizona at the UN

2010-09-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama’s continuing efforts to favorably impress the thug dictators of the United Nations recently included a report (found here) to the UN Human Rights Council as part of their Universal Periodic Review.

In a display of Obama’s sizeable ego, the report took credit for vast improvements that have not happened yet, and probably never will, such as the benefits of the Obamacare law.

The President, who seemingly never tires of criticizing America before her enemies, gave Arizona an unfavorable mention as a human rights problem (which it isn’t), and, not to worry, his administration has taken legal action against the disliked law, and a federal judge has issued an injunction against parts of it.

Perhaps he wished to embarrass the state of Arizona into making changes, but he has only succeeded in embarrassing himself, and, by extension, the United States. America has found Obama to be an embarrassment on numerous occasions, this being merely one of the latest.

The very mention of Arizona’s recently-passed immigration law is an act undermining not only the sovereignty of Arizona, but that of America. The logical end of this action would be UN observers in Arizona making sure no one’s rights are violated. That would sit well with some of Obama’s fascist and communist friends.

Governor Jan Brewer, who has courageously stood up for protecting Arizona from illegal aliens, including drug runners, people smugglers, and murderers, which Obama has resolutely refused to do, reacted in a proper and predictable way:

Brewer's office … says the law's mere inclusion is “downright offensive” because “human rights, as guaranteed by the United States and Arizona Constitutions, are expressly protected in SB 1070.” [1]

As Ben Johnson at Western Journalism reports:

On Obama’s command, Attorney General Eric Holder has sued the State of Arizona for passing a law that he criticized without reading, and which merely upholds federal law. (He gave sanctuary cities a pass.) He now threatens an additional lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling” when arresting illegal immigrants near the Mexican border. [2]

Johnson goes on to state that Obama has hauled not only Arizona, but also the two-thirds of the American people who support Arizona’s law, before the UN. [3]

Thus we have an act of poor representation and poor leadership of America and the state of Arizona. A President should not criticize internal laws before foreign officials. Period. Was it done for favor with repressive regimes of the world? For political gain with the socialist-Marxist base? Or perhaps mainly to feed his desire for personal admiration?

Brett Schaefer at the Heritage Foundation points out that the 25-page report mentions President Obama over 20 times, and that the report is used for political purposes. [4]

However:

[A]s discussed in a recent Heritage paper, the larger problem isn’t what is in the report; it is why we are participating in this farce in the first place. The Bush Administration rightly distanced the U.S. from the HRC and withheld the U.S. share of funding from it. When President Obama decided to support and engage the council, he extended America’s credibility to a fatally flawed body. He also made it inevitable that the U.S. would participate in the dog-and-pony UPR show that it has proven to be—a process little more than a “mutual praise society” for repressive regimes. [5]

The U.S. would do well to avoid this kind of interaction with this kind of body. There is nothing to be gained by it, and a good deal to be lost. Maybe we can get John Bolton back in a few years.

[1] Ginger Rough, Casey Newton, Mary Jo Pitzl and Alia Beard Rau, “Jan Brewer takes issue with report on immigration law,” Political Insider column, 08/29/2010, The Arizona Republic.

[2] Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports, “Obama Hauls Arizona Before the UN Human Rights Council,” 08/25/2010, posted by Caleb at Western Journalism.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Brett Schaefer, “Arizona Heat: Another Reason to Question U.S. Participation in the Human rights Council,” 08/30/2010. The Foundry blog at Heritage Foundation.

[5] Ibid.

Illustration: Arizona state flag, (Dreamstime.com).

Today’s Robber Barons and Socialists Practice Plunder and Dislike Liberty

2010-08-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Some books deserve to be read and reread because of the principles and ideas they present. One such book is French economist, author, and statesman Frederic Bastiat’s small 1850 masterpiece The Law. A careful reading of this little book will show the cause of many of America’s economic and social problems today. In a word, the problem is government. Government stepping far beyond its proper boundaries to impose its will on citizens.

Governments have always done this. The record of history is a record of slavery and oppression, dire poverty, discontent, and the general futility of human aspirations. All of which has been and is being paid for by the citizens, especially those who are not members of a favored group.

America historically has been something of a relief from this terrible vicious cycle. Government activism has been up and down, with consequences accordingly. Usually, whenever government makes a law, people’s freedom is diminished. Whenever the government feels a “philanthropic” urge to help someone, it does so, unjustly, at the expense of someone else.

President Barack Obama’s view of government, do not doubt, is the same as that which Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) expresses here:

That is, contempt for the citizens and, especially, the Constitution. This brazen arrogance and oppressive mentality must be stopped in the elections of 2010 and 2012. If it isn’t, there will be hell to pay. Citizens of America are not yet the docile socialist subjects one may find in other countries, and are not yet willing to become such. There is a line which the government cannot safely cross, and the “ruling class” is heading toward it at considerable speed.

But Obama’s contempt for the hated founding documents reflects attitudes that long predate these documents. To Obama and the “progressives,” the population represents a passive mass of ignorant and helpless guinea pigs on which the greatly enlightened and highly-educated (in the elite schools) elite may work their social experiments.

These experiments include Obama’s fascist-socialist agenda (with programs such as Obamacare) which calls for getting everyone in line with the state’s great program at the expense of their individual interests, and also for the trampling of individual rights. It calls for forced redistribution of income and wealth under the assumption that the rich got that way by mistreating the poor, and it’s time the rich (other than Obama’s big supporters) found out what it’s like to do without. And to hell with the economy. If people are without jobs, that must be the fault of the previous administration, which gave tax cuts to the rich.
Fascists like Obama believe that individual rights are dispensed by government as the rulers may desire.

Patriotic Americans recognize that their unalienable rights come from God and not man. Government cannot take away these rights, they can only try to force people not to exercise them. To the regime that’s in power now, it is not necessary to observe the rule of law, only to manipulate things so as to twist the law to their own desire. Thus we have government takeovers, trampling of the rights of states (such as Arizona, but also Texas and others, with more to come). If one of their pronouncements is overturned in court, they simply make another similar pronouncement worse than the first (as with the offshore drilling moratorium).

Many Americans are waking up to the fact that government must be watched and kept in check. The Tea Party movement is perhaps the most visible evidence of this. With the current government merrily spending its (and our) way to fiscal hell, people are beginning to question whether endless debt is a good idea. Pete Stark, who fancies himself to be some kind of economist (maybe like Paul Krugman) believes debt only demonstrates wealth:

How does this insufferable person keep getting elected?

Be that as it may, here you have Keynesianism in a nutshell, complete with the arrogance.

Bastiat’s The Law explains the way government plunders the people:

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim – when he defends himself – as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder…. [1]

This is the situation we have with both government takeovers of industry and with corporate welfare. Those who execute these things and those who end up operating the taken-over or “benefited” entities are the robber barons of our day, whether they are Obama and the new board of directors and executives of GM or Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones getting the taxpayers to finance his business, or any number of less publicized examples. As I have repeatedly said (in agreement with Ayn Rand – video here), economic abuses in the private sector almost always involve collusion with government. This includes labor unions as well. These things fly in the face of justice, not to mention the free market.

The American Republic has been history’s most successful attempt at a nation that recognizes and protects rather than denies and violates individual liberty (although with a good many notable failures), in contrast to the rest of the world, some nations of whom have seen America as a great example.

We are not as far from tyranny as we need to be. The next few years are going to require some very astute and bold decisions and actions on the part of patriotic Americans if we are to keep the liberty we’ve enjoyed for so long. Even now it is being seriously eroded. One Nation under God (who gave us our rights) needs to confront the ruling socialists and fascists who recognize no rights but their own.

[1] Frederic Bastiat, The Law (originally published in 1850), translated by Dean Russell, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1950, 15th printing, 1990, page 21.
Picture: Portrait of Frederic Bastiat found at Wikipedia. (Public domain)

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