Government Policies Are Bringing About America’s National Decline

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.

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

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.

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Keynesians Keep Trying to Control the Economy

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

Image via Wikipedia

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.

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

                      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.

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Ron Paul Deserves Serious Consideration in the Presidential Race

Image via Wikipedia

 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.

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Our Tax Dollars at Work: Obama’s Bus Tour

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.

Further reading:

Emily Miller, “MILLER: Obama’s Bus Force One,” 08/15/2011, The Washington Times.

via GDS44’s Blog.

“The Magical Misery Obama Bus Tour Begins with $1,100,000.00Custom Made Buses…. Two of em at a cost of $2.2 Million for 3 days use,” 08/15/2011, The Last Refuge. (with quotes from a CNS News article)

Illustration: Public domain image courtesy of The Crittenden Automotive Library.

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