The Grand Theme of Governing
The Grand Theme of Governing
By Bruce Walker
How can Republicans clean Democrat clocks all over the country? All it will take is a simple message: Republicans can govern. Democrats can't.
Think of all the contrasts available between adroit Republican governors and flailing Democratic ones. For one, the surreal spectacle of Wisconsin Democrats focusing resources on their third election campaign since the 2010 election to defeat Scott Walker's collective bargaining reform, even when that reform is no longer a real issue, shows that Democrats are in election mode every moment of every year.
This difference has shown up elsewhere in state and local government. Rudy Giuliani may not have been a conservative, but as Mayor of New York, he was a courageous and effective leader, which gained him admiration from conservatives. The contrast between Giuliani and Dinkins, the hapless Democrat cipher who preceded him, is stark.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is also not conservative, but he is an honest and courageous executive in the spirit of Giuliani. The contrast between Christie and Jon Corzine, his Democrat predecessor who has managed to mislay one billion dollars of investors' money, is stunning.
In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina blasted the states around the Gulf of Mexico, Democrat Governor Blanco of Louisiana engaged in crass political maneuvering against her rival Democrat Mayor Negin of New Orleans. Republican Governor Barbour, meanwhile, in neighboring Mississippi, acted decisively and effectively to protect his fellow Mississippians.
Two years ago, when the BP oil spill was threatening the livelihood and safety of Americans, Obama was that nervous skinny man who spouted meaningless rhetoric, while Republican Governor Jindal was the effective executive who inspired Louisianans with his quick actions to minimize the damage.
Governor Jerry Brown ought to know as much about California government as any person around, and yet he has been unable to turn the state around. Indianans will be picking a new governor to succeed term-limited Mitch Daniels, but the sheer administrative brilliance of Daniels has preserved a state right in the middle of the rust belt.
Governor Nikki Haley brought jobs to South Carolina, something which the politically naïve might think organizations representing South Carolina workers would applaud, and the outgoing AFL-CIO president in the state, Donna Dewitt, smashed the governor's face on a piñata. (NOW, of course, immediately condemned this as an egregious mockery of the serious problem of battered women...just kidding!)
This is a recurring pattern. Republican government executives take political risks, spend political capital, and challenge political bosses after they win elections. What has Obama done? His latest "budget" was recently shot down, with no one in his own party in either house of Congress voting for it. Obama has tried to gain points by silly attacks upon a serious budget, the one proposed by Congressman Ryan. Obama is utterly incapable of doing anything but politicking and campaigning; he is a pawn of Saul Alinsky's and Bill Ayers's radical political theater.
No wonder, then, that Obama sounds as if he is running against Republicans in power, even though his party won Congress in 2006 and he won the White House in 2008, and no wonder that David Axelrod last month spoke so directly against the status quo that one cannot imagine that he or his boss sees Obama as responsible for anything.
If Republicans handle this theme well, then the corporate executive experience of Mitt Romney can be used to highlight how his presidency would differ from the drifting wreckage of the Obama presidency. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has said on several occasions, dating back at least to February, that Mitt Romney "likes" firing people. Good executives, of course, must be willing to let poorly situated companies shrink or even go into bankruptcy and must be willing to trim unnecessary personnel costs.
The Republican retort to this sort of attack should be that Republicans government executives like Scott Walker and Chris Christie have shown a willingness to make hard and unpopular decisions. Mitt Romney, for his part, has shown at Bain Capital and in his handling of the 2002 Winter Olympics, which had been mired in cronyism and corruption, that he can take risks and do things which cause people pain, if his office requires it.
The options for real leadership in the White House are shrinking fast. Last August we suffered a downgrade in federal sovereign debt, which means that saving our nation cannot be accomplished with smoke and mirrors. Four years ago, Americans gave Democrats massive majorities in Congress (a filibuster-proof Senate majority) and gave Obama not just the presidency, but a huge reservoir of personal goodwill.
Republicans like Walker, Christie, Giuliani, and Jindal have shown that they will use executive offices to solve problems even if that means being made into a Nikki Haley-headed piñata. If Romney can convince Americans that the way back is neither easy nor painless, but will grow harder and more problematic the longer we wait, then this theme of governing may give Republicans the muscle they need to get the job done.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Only one "first time"
Only one "first time"
Much is made of the Hispanic community being the fastest growing ethnic demographic group in the United States, which it is. The truth though is that despite a lot of anxiety by those, mostly on the right, it is doubtful that Hispanics will continue to grow at the rate they now are for much longer and probably a leveling off of population growth has already started. There are many reasons for this but the primary reason is that despite its many problems the economy of Mexico is growing and the population growth is slowing. These two simple realities will make the migration, legal and illegal of Mexicans to the United States begin to taper off. This is also true for nearly every other Latin American country.
So despite all the concentration about the Hispanic community as a voting block by political analyst, the fact remains that the single largest minority in US political calculations are blacks. Never have more Hispanics voted for President than African Americans and it is doubtful that Hispanics will in this decade though they could equal Blacks at some point in electoral size.
The difference is the almost monolithic voting pattern of African American's for Democratic candidates. The Hispanic vote can fluctuate between the parties, though always favoring the Democrats, blacks unlike any other demographic in American politics vote Democrat and this is important in the upcoming election in a way few people may realize because as I said almost all blacks vote Democrat- but not all.
Let me first give you a bit of recent history on the black vote, when I say recent I refer to the last six Presidential elections beginning in 1988 but for the time being we will leave out 2008 which was obviously not a normal election regarding the African American vote. All these figures can be found here.
Year % of vote Dem. Rep. Other
1988 10 89 11 -
1992 8 83 10 7
1996 10 84 12 4
2000 10 90 9 1
2004 11 88 11 -
Average 9.8 86.8 10.8 2.4
A few thoughts on these numbers. In normal election years the African American community accounts for a pretty consistent 10% of the vote. To give you an idea of what this means the year with the largest percentage of Hispanic vote was 2008 and it was 9%.
You will also notice that about 11% of blacks consistently vote Republican. Interesting to note that in the Perot elections of 92 and 96 it appears that Perot took votes from the Democrat (Clinton) rather than the Republicans in the black community. This either means that some blacks had a severe dislike for Clinton but could not vote for a Republican (doubtful) or their is a block of African American voters that may vote Democrat for other reasons but are fiscal conservatives and jumped on the Perot band wagon. In fact it is interesting to note that in those two elections, 1992 and 1996, seventeen and sixteen percent respectively of blacks did not vote for the Democrat.
But back to the historical turn out. I would say, based on these historical election results, that a normal election (without strong third party candidate) would look something like this for the black vote:
% of vote Dem. Rep.
Normal 10% 89% 11%
And then there was 2008:
2008 13% 95% 4%
Several points are obvious, not only was 2008 a record turn out for African Americans where they constituted 13% of the electorate, it was also a record vote for the Democratic candidate and the lowest voting percentage for the Republican candidate.
Although nearly everyone recognized at the time that there was a record turn out of black voters for Obama, few have really grasped the significance of it for this next election, after all there is only one "first time".
To show how big a shift from "normal" 2008 was, the difference between the black normal turn out and the "Obama effect" would be as much as an additional 3.9 million black voters and one would suspect that nearly all these additional African American votes went to Obama. I doubt many African Americans went to the trouble of registering and then voted for McCain.
There is no way to know if all these additional votes are the reason that the percentage of blacks who typically vote Republican was so small.In other words did the additional black voters simply swamp percentage wise the black vote or did a large number of black Republicans switch to vote for Obama. I suspect that it is a combination of the two, many black Republicans voted for Obama and since so many more blacks voted the percentages were skewed. But just based on the percentages as many as a million "usual" black Republican votes switched. Also remember that every black Republican who switched and voted for Obama is the equivalent of two votes, a new vote for Obama and one less for McCain.
I would wager that most black Republicans who voted for Obama in 2008, for whatever reason, are not likely to do so in 2012. To be an African American Republican in this day you must have some pretty strong convictions . While voting for the "first black" president may be a strong enough reason to put aside your political beliefs once, given Obama's now known radicalism I seriously doubt that many Republicans of any color will vote for Obama this time. Obama's most well known black Republican supporter Collin Powell has already said he has no plans to endorse him or say whether he will even vote for him.
Even taking the most generous view of the black turn out, in and of itself the black vote did not win Obama the election though it could have been critical in key states such North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Perhaps even more important now, four years later, states that were not so close in 2008 are now becoming swing states, where a change in black turn out could also mean the difference. States like Michigan, Pennsylvania,possibly even New Jersey could be in play and a diminished black turn out could make the difference.
To show how small margins can make a big difference, consider three states that were very close in 2008, two went for Obama North Carolina by .03%, Indiana by .09% and one went for McCain, Missouri by .01%. For many reasons it is doubtful that Obama can win any of these razor thin states this time, but without a strong black turn out and crossover it is virtually impossible. North Carolina and Indiana won't cost Obama the election but they would have insured his win.
In 2008 nearly every state the black vote exceeded their proportion of the population. For example in Pennsylvania which very much could be in play this year, African Americans make up 9% of the population but in 2008 they made up 13% of the vote. And that vote went 95% for Obama, in 2004 Kerry received 83% of the black vote in Pennsylvania. I do not believe that Obama will fall to the low 80's in Pennsylvania or anywhere else in the black community, but it goes to show that there was and is pockets of black voters that vote Republican. In 2004 17% of black voters voted for Bush in Pennsylvania and 11% did so nationally. In a close contest in state like Pennsylvania, black turnout and loyalty to Obama could be the key.
So the question is will the African American community turn out in the unprecedented numbers that they did in 2008 again in 2012? Will black Republicans, knowing what they know now, vote for Obama again? I think the answer to both questions is no. I believe the black turnout will be down to its normal 10%, not just because of less enthusiasm but because of the other reason that the percentage of blacks voting in 2008 was so high.
The other way that a group such as blacks can have a higher electoral percentage is if another group has a lower than normal turn out, which is exactly what happened in 2008. For the first time since 1980 Republicans made up less than 35% of the voters. In fact Republicans turned out in record low numbers for McCain-32%. In 2004 the electorate was 37% Democrat and 37% Republican, in 2008 it was 39% Democrat and 32% Republican, that is a huge change in turn out. Does anyone seriously believe that Republicans are not going to turn out in 2012?
In 2012 Republicans will show up to the polls in record numbers which will put states that were not in play in 2008 into play, at that point as I have pointed out what the black community does will become critical in several states. If they turn out and vote as they did in 2008, then perhaps they can help Obama hold onto some of the "new" swing states, if not then several very well could flip. The reason for this is simple, who has replaced these voters in Obama's camp? What group of voters have switched and are now supporting Obama that were not before?
The answer is there are not any, Obama has not strengthened his support, he has weakened it...across the board. Every key demographic that Obama needs to win in order to be reelected is down from his 2008 level of support.
If Obama can not generate the kind of enthusiasm in African Americans as he did in 2008, he will have a hard time holding onto states he must carry to win. And these are is his most ardent supporters, what about all the other "special interest" groups and demographics that made up his winning 2008 coalition? Across the board, whether Hispanics or women or white Democrats, his approval is down compared to his electoral turn out. If this lack of enthusiasm simply results in lower turn out, Obama will loose, if it means switched votes it will be a landslide.
The simple fact is that Republican and Republican leaning Independents will show up in unprecedented numbers and there is nothing that Obama or the media can do to stop that, though they will try. Unless Obama can match that intensity with a greater turn out of his base than he did in 2008. game over.
Like everything else in life, in politics you only get one "first time".
>><<
Last paragraph nails it
Obama Will Not Win Re-election
By Monty Pelerin
It is time to call the 2012 election. President Obama cannot win. He will likely lose big, in a very lopsided election. Pundits will claim to be surprised when the outcome becomes apparent. They should not be, as the signs of such a result are everywhere, despite the mainstream media's attempts to suppress them.
There are numerous reasons why Obama will lose. Incompetence, likeability, and duplicity are a few. Obama has alienated too many in the electorate, including large numbers who supported him the first time. In 2012, many will vote against him or (even better) just stay home.
How Did Obama Get Elected the First Time?
Barack Hussein Obama is a self-created myth, polished further by David Axelrod and a compliant media. He is a chameleon who takes on whatever shape and form best suit his purposes and goals. There is little substance behind the façade other than an Elmer Gantry style of politics. He is completely malleable into whatever form and shape best serve his personal interests.
A few examples of this "flexibility" are the following:
He changed his name when he believed it served him to do so.
He is not a religious man, but he joined a Black Liberation Church to sell his bona fides to the black community in his early days in Chicago.
He said that preacher Jeremiah Wright was like his father yet threw him under the bus when it became convenient (necessary).
He claimed to have been born in Kenya in order to enhance book sales as a younger man.
He likely lied on his applications to college to gain foreign student status. At the time, that category provided more favorable admission and funding treatment than afforded domestic blacks.
He claimed to be a constitutional professor when he was neither a professor nor particularly well-versed in the Constitution.
Little was known about Obama when he entered the primary campaign. He became little more than a complex Rorschach blot with a sanitized past carefully scrubbed and scripted. His campaign avoided specifics; his speeches contained no substance. The imagination of observers defined him.
His greatest asset was his "unknownness." As a blank slate, voters imagined whatever they wanted in the next president. They were aided by a clever marketing campaign which emphasized his uniqueness:
As a political "newbie" and the first serious African-American candidate, he played well. He was an outsider who would clean up Washington. For many, he was the great healer who would bring unity to Republicans and Democrats, blacks and whites and America and its enemies. His Kumbayah campaign was hailed by the media, and a large, naive segment of the electorate believed it.
Why Obama Will Lose the Election
Why Obama will lose this next election is less difficult to understand than how he won the first time. Barack Obama was a fluke, an unlikely candidate with no demonstrated experience in anything other than reading a teleprompter and sounding good.
He was pushed to his party's nomination as a result of the media. His election was a quirk, rather than something earned. Any Democrat who gained the nomination was likely ensured the presidency. Bush fatigue and the hapless John McCain made that almost certain.
Obama will lose the next election because his greatest asset, his unknownness, exists no longer. Voter imagination can no longer be manipulated in the presence of facts. Quite simply, Obama will not be re-elected because too many people now know him. His biggest attribute has been taken away.
What people got was nothing like what they were promised or imagined. What was a blank slate upon which to imagine an Obama presidency now is a full-blown portrait filled with failure, warts, and scars.
Obama's track record is abysmal. Floyd and Mary Beth Brown discussed four of Obama's failures:
Obama's 825 billion dollar stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent as promised. Since President Obama's stimulus passed, America has lost 1.1 million jobs. If you count people who have become discouraged and are no longer seeking jobs, some economists believe that real unemployment rate is above twenty percent.
Obama called his health care package one of his major accomplishments. He told CBS' Steve Kroft he was "putting in place a system in which we're going to start lowering health care costs." Yet it has failed to make health insurance more affordable. According to the fact watchdog website FactCheck.org, ObamaCare is actually making health care "less affordable." Workers paid an average of $132 more for family coverage just this year.
Obama predicted his investments in green energy would create 5 million jobs, but the Wall Street Journal reports: "The green jobs subsidy story gets more embarrassing by the day. Three years ago President Obama promised that by the end of the decade, America would have five million green jobs, but so far, some $90 billion in government spending has delivered very few."
Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half, saying: "And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office." Even if every part of Obama's deficit reduction proposal was enacted, the deficit at the end of his first term would still be $1.33 trillion, more than twice what he promised.
In addition:
His Obamacare legislation, despite all the state propaganda supporting it, remains unpopular and is viewed by more than half the country as unconstitutional. Recent hearings in front of the Supreme Court were embarrassing to the administration. The legislation is wildly over-budget and threatens to accelerate the bankruptcy of the nation. Further, the more people begin to deal with its implementation, the more unworkable it is considered and the more it is considered a mistake. Obama's trophy piece of legislation is increasingly viewed as an unworkable, unmitigated disaster.
Relations between Republicans and Democrats and blacks and whites are worse than at any time in my lifetime. The former is on evidence every day. The latter has been emphasized with the circus surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.
The country's foreign policy is a growing embarrassment. America has alienated many of its allies. America and its enemies are not doing so well, either. We don't have a Cold War, although we don't need one with what is happening. Russia is not our ally. China is exerting its newly developed muscle. Iran openly mocks the president as it proceeds to nuclear weaponry. North Korea plays Lucy with the football, and Charlie Brown falls for the trick every time. The Mid-East is in shambles, with the Arab Spring being nothing more than the replacement of tyrants who were friendly to the U.S. with tyrants who are not. Israel looks like it will have to act alone against its existential threat.
The economy has not improved despite record stimulus. Economic statistics are routinely "massaged" to make outcomes look better. Suffocating regulations, increasing debt levels and regime uncertainty prevent recovery. Capital and talent increasingly flee the U.S.
Obama has mortgaged the country's future with his spending. By the time of the election, he will have added almost $6 trillion in new debt. There is no interest in cutting spending despite the doomsday warnings from multiple sources. Markets will eventually choose how and when the spending will cease. It will be at the convenience of markets when matters cease. Likely this timing will not be favorable to the country's preferences.
Gasoline prices are soaring. The so-called "green energy" initiative has been exposed as corrupt political payoffs that will not produce economic energy for decades, if ever. Coal is under attack, exploration for oil is unnecessarily restricted, pipelines are stymied, and power plants are closing. Politically correct politics moves us away from modernity toward the Stone Age.
Obama is no longer seen as The One -- just, instead, as another scheming Chicago politician.
He is increasingly viewed as arrogant, dishonest, and incompetent. These are not messianic attributes. He is just another politician, although more flawed than most.
A great mistake was made in 2008. That mistake is now blatantly apparent to most voters and most political analysts around the world. Nothing Obama promised has been accomplished. Furthermore, much of what he did added to the country's problems.
Even the fawning media and the Democrat establishment recognize his failings, although neither is willing to publicly discuss them. Democrats should have replaced this defective candidate long ago. Now is too late. Democrat sympathizers can only hope that this election does not destroy what remains of the party. Based on the debacle that was the 2010 election, that fear is not unfounded. If anything, the mistake that was Obama is better-known now than it was two years ago.
James Taranto pointed out the despair among Democrats and their PR arm, the national press. In an editorial, he cited several examples of disillusionment. Howard Portnoy was quoted in the piece stating:
What I believe is happening is that the left is reading the handwriting on the wall and resigning itself to the harsh reality [that] the man they trusted to "fundamentally transform America" is on the verge of being unelected.
Mr. Taranto added his own thoughts to those of the generally liberal pundits:
Not only does Obama's re-election look to be in serious jeopardy, but his presidency has been an almost unmitigated disaster for progressive liberalism, nearly every tenet of which has been revealed to be untenable either practically, politically or both.
This despair was expressed last October. Things have only worsened since then.
Obama Stumbles Out of the Gate
Several different recent weeks have been described by various pundits as "Obama's worst week yet." The rate of his decline steepens as the campaign season heats up.
Now the Obama political campaign is seen as being in disarray. Politico described the early stages of the Obama re-election campaign as follows:
That's the unmistakable reality for Democrats since Obama officially launched his reelection campaign three weeks ago. Obama, not Mitt Romney, is the one with the muddled message -- and the one who often comes across as baldly political. Obama, not Romney, is the one facing blowback from his own party on the central issue of the campaign so far -- Romney'shistory with Bain Capital. And most remarkably, Obama, not Romney, is the one falling behind in fundraising.
Obama's campaign was run so smoothly four years ago that it likely created a false impression on political observers. The campaign cannot be run the same way again for obvious reasons. Nor can it run smoothly this time. There is nothing on which Obama can run on regarding achievements other than the overhyped bin Laden killing.
He looks silly trying to blame Bush for the last four years, although he must make voters believe that he had nothing to do with the failures. Perhaps he should blame even earlier presidents for his woes. After all, Madison and Jefferson provided the Constitution, which he considers a roadblock in his attempts to remake America.
A Bigger Democrat Problem
There is a bigger problem for Democrats than one election and a failed candidate. The strategy adopted long ago and responsible for most of their success over the last eighty years has played itself out, and they are left with nothing.
Franklin Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, saw the value of buying votes by spreading benefits around. It was successful and a strategy refined by other Democrats over the years. It was based on identity politics that focused on certain segments of the population and won them over with "gifts."
It was a strategy of winning elections rather than a strategy of governance, and it was therefore very successful in winning elections, but not so in governing. The Democrat coalition is a motley collection of interest groups with nothing in common other than "we want more." That makes it impossible to have a coherent governing strategy.
Some are amazed that Democrats have not developed a budget for almost three years. It really is impossible to do so without offending their coalition. In a time of monetary constraint, they cannot afford to show who will benefit at the expense of others. That is just an example of how governance becomes impossible with an election strategy based on Santa Claus.
Now the country is near its Thatcher point, where there is no more money to buy votes and goodies will eventually be taken away rather than increased. This condition has serious implications for both political parties, but especially for the Democrats. The Democratic Party now exists and survives for one simple reason -- making dependency more attractive. It has become the party of plunder, taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive in an attempt to buy enough votes to remain relevant.
The party approaches this election as an ogre driving an ice cream truck with no ice cream in it. Democratas will lose this election and will lose many more unless they redefine themselves in terms of something other than Santa Claus. Sadly, for Democrats (and some Republicans), Santa is dead.
Qualification
My projection of Obama's defeat is based on some semblance of sanity among the electorate. H.L. Mencken might consider that a dangerous assumption, but I am still hopeful. However, if Obama wins, get the hell out of Dodge! Even if the election is close and he loses, leave if you are less than fifty years old and have any ambition and ability. If the election is even close, the country is lost!
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TODAY'S QUOTE
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Updated: 17:54 GMT le 30 mai 2012
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It's None of the Government's Business
It's None of the Government's Business
Phyllis Schlafly
What is it about bureaucrats and school personnel that they want to pry into the personal life and habits of American citizens of every age? There seems to be no end to the imperial demands by government and schools to require both grownups and kids to reveal personal information.
The use of nosy questionnaires by the public schools has been a bone of contention between schools and parents for years, but New Jersey recently came up with a question that has parents up in arms. Third-graders were asked on a standardized test to reveal a secret about their lives and explain why it is hard to keep.
This question was asked of 4,000 third-graders in an official test called the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge. This test is supposed to judge elementary school students on their proficiency in math and language arts and determine whether or not a student ends up in basic skills classes.
The school wasn't eager to answer parents' questions, such as: What if a kid answered, "My dad smokes marijuana," or, "My mom drank a beer while driving me home"? Would the school report that to the "child protective" agency?
This question about a secret should have been banned as a violation of the New Jersey law that requires prior parental consent before a student can be required to reveal personal information. That law was sponsored by then-state legislator (now Congressman) Scott Garrett.
It's not just school kids who are the victims of nosy questionnaires. The U.S. government has zeroed in on 250,000 Americans and demanded that they answer nearly a hundred nosy questions about their living and work arrangements and habits.
This is called the American Community Survey questionnaire, and the cover letter states ominously, "You are required by U.S. law to respond to this survey." Here are some of the questions.
Does this house, apartment or mobile home have a flush toilet, a bathtub, a stove or range? Which fuel is used most for heating this house, apartment or mobile home?
Last month, what was the cost of electricity for this house, apartment or mobile home? What is the monthly rent for this house, apartment or mobile home?
Do you or any member of this household have a mortgage, deed of trust, contract to purchase or similar debt on this property? How much is the regular monthly mortgage payment on this property?
At any time in the last three months, has this person attended school or college? Is this person currently covered by any health insurance or health coverage plans?
Is this person deaf or does he/she have serious difficulty hearing? Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses? Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing?
In what year did this person last get married? At what location did this person work last week?
How many people, including this person, usually rode to work in the car, truck or van last week? What time did this person usually leave home to go to work last week?
What kind of work was this person doing? What was your income in the past 12 months?
When the recipient of this Community Survey fails to respond, the government uses a variety of intimidating tactics to compel obedience. The government tries repeated mailings and phone calls demanding a response, and sometimes the government employees walk up and down the street asking nosy questions about you from your neighbors.
In response to public demand, Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., introduced a bill to defund the American Community Survey, calling it a "breach of personal privacy, the picture of what's wrong in Washington, D.C." He obviously touched a nerve; it quickly passed the House 232 to 190.
Webster's bill was immediately denounced in editorials by The New York Times and even The Wall Street Journal. Indeed, big and intrusive government has its allies.
Webster's House victory was followed by the introduction of another bill that would make answering the nosy questions voluntary and decriminalize any refusal to participate in the survey. The sponsors are Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
This bill will not please the government busybodies who delight in building databases with personal information on Americans and vehemently resist state laws that require parental consent before making schoolchildren answer nosy questions. The bureaucrats protest that "if it's voluntary, then we'll just get bad data."
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TODAY'S QUOTE
The Noble Sacrifice We Remember
The Noble Sacrifice We Remember
By Frank Santarpia
There are 1,541 American men buried in Suresnes, France. In the cemetery at Meusse-Argonne, 14,246. At St. Mihiel, there are 4,153, and in Lorraine, 10,489 of our military dead.
There are others in France: in Somme, in the Rhone valley, in Aisne-Marne and in Brittany; hallowed ground where the mortal remains of fathers, sons and husbands, sent by their countrymen to defend freedom, lie under stark, white crosses, a silent testament to the goodness and greatness of the United States of America.
They died in Sicily - almost 8,000 are buried there, and in Florence over 4,400; men who fought to liberate Italy from the tyranny of fascism. And there are more than 5,000 American dead in Luxembourg.
At Henri-Chapelle lay the bodies of 7,992; in Ardennes, 5,329, and to end this incomplete list, 528 Americans are buried where they fell - in Flanders' fields, where poppies grow. These three cemeteries are in Belgium.
All are in Europe. I have not even touched upon the war in the Pacific. To do so would be almost incomprehensible; in total, American military deaths during World War II alone numbered over 400,000.
Let the numbers wash over you - don't permit yourself to be so overwhelmed that they become meaningless. Think hard, concentrate on the magnitude of the sacrifice, feel the pain of so many tens of thousands - hundreds of thousands -- of mothers who watched their little boys answer the call to defend freedom everywhere -- because that's what Americans do. And make no mistake, no matter what their age, to those mothers they were all just little boys.
Close your eyes for a few moments and think about these things, and you will find when you open them that Memorial Day will mean something just a little different than it did before.
There are almost no words to describe the debt we owe those men and women who gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of liberty, a debt that is owed by free men and women everywhere, because without the armed forces of the United States, there would be freedom nowhere.
Reflect on the magnitude of America's sacrifice to the world. We were not fighting for our own liberation - we were fighting for others bound to us by a single tie: a belief that freedom and liberty are the natural state of man, and that tyranny is to be fought and defeated no matter the cost.We can honor them in no greater manner than to dedicate ourselves to those principles. We can never forget them, we can never lose our way, and we can never permit anyone to tell us that we are the problem, not the solution.
We must condemn and reject those who suggest it, whether the calumny be uttered by the enemies of America or, sadly and inexplicably, a member of our own government.We must never, never apologize for America's role in the world, and above all else, we must vow to never allow freedom to slip through our fingers. If we do, we cheapen the lives of those we honor today, and condemn them to the pure hell of having died in vain.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
America Plods Forward, Much of the World Slows
America Plods Forward, Much of the World Slows
Irwin M. Stelzer
America is the best house in a run-down neighborhood: The famous BRICs are crumbling.
Start with B: Brazil’s manufacturing sector is contracting. The nation’s finance minister, Guido Montega, blames this and the country’s other ills on the crisis in Europe. Not to worry: President Dilma Rousseff assures us that Brazil “is 100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent” prepared to prevent the global economic downturn from spreading to Brazil. In response to the slower growth, Montega is flirting with protectionism to reduce the massive trade deficit, and Rousseff has announced $1 billion in temporary tax reductions that favor the auto industry, in return for an industry pledge to lower prices and maintain employment. Inflation is running at a rate in excess of 5 percent, but the central bank is lowering interest rates, hardly likely to drive inflation down. More important, no significant effort is being made to introduce supply-side reforms to bring down the “Brazil Cost,” described by Emerging Money (a website) as “a combination of bureaucracy, taxes, and infrastructure,” added to a “level of intervention and politicking … a little too reminiscent of other leftish leaders within the region.” The Wall Street Journal calls Brazil “one of the world’s most expensive places to do business.”
R: Russia, once again in Vladimir Putin’s safe pair of hands, is an oil-based economy and not much else. Putin is desperate to increase Russia’s oil output, especially now that crude prices are falling, but has appointed Igor Sechin, a long-time co-worker in the KGB, as head of Rosneft and de facto energy czar. Presumably Sechin will attract foreign capital and know-how from companies that have not heard of Yukos and are unaware of the hostility reflected in Putin’s warning that the government will prohibit “private companies holding licenses for offshore projects [in the Arctic] to resell them to ExxonMobil, Chevron or other foreign players.”
I: India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee reminded many here in America of Herbert Hoover’s 1932 reassurance that “prosperity is just around the corner” when he reassured investors, “I have full faith in the resilience of the Indian economy…”—which he is confident will overcome double-digit consumer inflation, a falling rupee, a rising trade deficit, a growth-stifling bureaucracy, and a host of other ills.
C: China’s growth is slowing. Activity in its manufacturing sector has declined for seven consecutive months; its banks are loaded down with dicey paper from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) while they cannot find healthy companies interested in borrowing (new bank loans fell 8 percent in April); the wealthy are setting up bolt-holes in the U.S.; bank deposits are being transferred to safer places; and political instability has the regime close to paralyzed in this year of transition to a new set of rulers.
Li Keqiang, due to take control of the country next year, says that “man-made” GDP figures that show growth of around 8 percent, are unreliable and that what counts are data on electricity output, rail cargo volumes, and bank loans—data this writer used over 50 years ago during his short-lived career as a forecaster of the U.S. economy in the days before econometric models provided the accurate forecasts to which we have become accustomed—all of which are dropping like stones. In an unmistakable reference to the political paralysis gripping the regime, Premier Wen Jiabao called for “timely” action “to prevent the economy from slowing down too rapidly.” That could mean another stimulus package, although the limited success of the last one might cause a re-think.
Which brings us to Europe. Its ills need little retelling. A majority of countries want to send more of Germany’s hard-earned wealth to periphery countries, and now, right away. Not surprisingly, Germans are less enthusiastic about that idea, as Chancellor Angela Merkel told François Hollande, France’s new socialist president, when they gathered last week for still another meet-greet-eat and disagree session. The eurozone economy is contracting at a rapid rate, unemployment is in double digits, German business confidence is at its lowest ebb in six months, and the Grexit fans are at loggerheads with the “more Europe” crowd that fears contagion and would have Germany pay any price necessary to keep Greece in the eurozone, including issuing eurobonds that transfer Germany’s fine credit rating to less worthy countries.
Meanwhile, in America consumer sentiment is at its highest level in more than four years. The recovery plods on, probably at something like a historically low 2.2 percent growth rate, which many economists are guessing will step up to close to 3 percent by year-end. Oil prices are coming down. Manufacturing output is rising, and the growth is “relatively broad-based, with healthy gains in both consumer goods and business equipment,” according to Goldman Sachs’ economists. In part this reflects an emerging trend for production and jobs to return to the U.S. due to a combination of leaner and meaner, lower-cost manufacturing operations here, and rising labor costs in China and India. A survey by Accenture consultants found that 40 percent of companies moving manufacturing operations in the past two years had moved them to the U.S., compared with 28 percent who had moved facilities to China which, however, still tops America as the preferred location for new factories.
The housing sector seems finally to be in remission. Sales of both new and existing homes rose last month by 3.3 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively, month-over-month. The supply of homes on the market is relatively low, and new home prices are up close to 5 percent compared with last year. This might be due to unaccounted for seasonal factors, but at worst it seems that new home prices have stabilized. Prices of existing homes also rose, but more modestly.
Housing starts are up, and the National Association of Home Builders reports that builders are cheerier than they have been since the housing recovery started. Beazer Homes USA, one of the largest home builders in America, reported a 50 percent jump in closings and a 29 percent rise in new orders in its recent quarter. And Toll Brothers, builders of luxury homes, moved from a loss of $20.8 million in the first quarter of last year to a profit of $16.9 million in its just-ended fiscal quarter. And so far in May its reservation deposits, which are non-binding, are up 39 percent compared with last year.
But two cheers only. Home builder sentiment remains well below pre-recession levels, there is a long road up from what seems to be the new floor, and foreclosures (repossessions) will continue to haunt the sector. Worse still, early reports for this month suggest some slowing in both the manufacturing and service sectors, and there are few signs that the jobs market is improving: The unemployment rate is down primarily because so many workers have dropped out of the work force.
On the other hand, contagion from Europe still seems unlikely to derail the recovery, barring a panic in equity markets. Exports to the eurozone account for only 1.2 percent of U.S. GDP; money funds have reduced their exposure to the eurozone and claim to have collateralized much of the remaining risk with U.S. treasuries; the gap left as European banks pull money home to shore up balance sheets is being filled by domestic lenders; and our banks are far stronger than those in Greece, Spain, Italy, and even France and Germany.
Still, Europe has something to teach us. Political stalemate and failure to devise a blend of austerity and growth-inducing tax and structural reform is costly. Borrow-and-tax-and-spend Democrats, and Tea Party Republicans are as far apart as Frau Merkel and Monsieur Hollande. And we can see from Europe’s experience where continuation of just such a rift might lead America.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Gone Cruising
It's Not the Same-Sex Marriage, Stupid
It's Not the Same-Sex Marriage, Stupid
David Limbaugh
People have asked what Obama could possibly have been thinking to announce the final step in his "evolution" in favor of same-sex marriage right after another state resoundingly rejected the notion and despite the fact that most Americans oppose it.
Whether or not Joe Biden forced Obama's hand on the issue, which I doubt, there is little question that Obama was going to make the announcement. The only question was when.
Many assume he decided to do it before the election to increase his fundraising among Hollywood liberals and other leftists. But all the funds in the world might not help if you are going to campaign on policies that are unpopular with the voters. So what gives?
The question isn't how popular same-sex marriage is; it's what percentage of people will pick their presidential candidate based on Obama's announced change in position.
Everyone paying attention knew already that Obama favors same-sex marriage, and his actions -- which should speak louder than his words -- have strongly supported it, as his Justice Department has been at war against states outlawing the practice. Only certain trusting and naive people believed Obama when he said he was evolving -- as opposed to pretending to oppose same-sex marriage for political reasons until he decided to make his announcement.
But his announcement did embolden and energize the LGBT community and its strong advocates. It looks as though it sparked an increase in his fundraising, at least for now, and it is likely that it will help intensify his turnout among social liberals and other strong leftists.
What about the downside? How many people did he alienate with this move? Well, some are saying that he threw the black community under the bus in favor of his gay constituency. But I'm betting Obama is banking on the fact that it will take a lot more than that to keep blacks from voting for him. So he took a calculated and probably minimal risk there.
How about nonblack Democrats who still consider themselves social conservatives? Obama's militant support of abortion didn't alienate too many of them, and neither will this.
There are two main voter blocs whose votes will be strongly influenced by social issues: those social conservatives and social liberals for whom social issues are the most important issues. Those numbers may be substantial when you include the abortion issue, which drives Christian conservatives on the right and feminists and other women, among others, on the left. But they shrink greatly when you just include those whose votes will be determined primarily by the same-sex marriage issue. Those who oppose same-sex marriage strongly enough to base their vote on Obama's stance on it are already entrenched for or against him, irrespective of his announcement. Ultimately, he probably lost very few votes but gained much in fundraising and voter intensity.
Most people, even most social conservatives, are going to vote primarily on economic, budgetary and debt issues. Here, Obama has no positive record to run on, so he will try to change the subject, obfuscate and use Alinsky tactics to turn his conventional class warfare into an all-out nuclear affair.
He'll portray Republicans as fat cat 1 percenters and their enablers and as people who don't care about the poor, the sick, or clean air or water. They have theirs, so they don't care about those who don't.
He'll continue to play the race card and to promote his manufactured GOP "war against women" to paint Republicans as sexists. Likewise, with the help of the old media, he'll depict Republicans as bigots and homophobes for their opposition to same-sex marriage.
He'll claim that the economy is steadily recovering because of his policies -- never mind that it's the slowest recovery in decades -- and he'll say that though much work remains to be done, that's only because the "mess" Bush bequeathed "him" was worse than he thought and because selfish, obstructionist Republicans have prevented him from doing more.
This self-styled uniter will do everything in his power to make Republicans appear to be against everything that's good, compassionate and reasonable -- health care, entitlements, the environment, gays, blacks, women and the downtrodden -- and for everything that's evil, such as insurance companies, corporations, banks, Wall Street, the privileged, private jet owners and torture.
Mitt Romney will be caricatured as Obama's poster boy for conservative privilege, elitism and heartlessness. We're already seeing it with Team Obama's Bain Capital attack ads, and it's only May.
The way I see it, Romney will be fine as long as he resists the temptation to go soft on Obama and provided he doesn't allow Obama to set the campaign narrative by making this an election over who cares the most -- as opposed to whose policies would be best for America and the American people.
This election should be about Obama's record and how Romney would radically alter the disastrous course on which Obama has set America.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Is There a Drone In Your Backyard?
Is There a Drone In Your Backyard?
Judge Andrew Napolitano
Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys.
If the drone operator sees you doing anything of interest (Is your fertilizer for the roses or to fuel a bomb? Is that Sudafed for your cold or your meth habit? Are you smoking in front of your kids?), the feds say they may take a picture of you and keep it. The feds predict that they will dispatch or authorize about 30,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles across America in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, more than 300 local and state police departments are awaiting federal permission to use the drones they already have purchased -- usually with federal stimulus funds.
The government is out of control.
If the police use a drone without a warrant to see who or what is in your backyard or your bedroom, or if while looking for a missing child the drone takes a picture of you in your backyard or bedroom and the government keeps the picture, its use is unnatural and unconstitutional.
I say "unnatural" because we all have a natural right to privacy; it is a fundamental right that is inherent in our humanity. All of us have times of the day and moments in our behavior when we expect that no one -- least of all the government -- will be watching. When the government watches us during those times, it violates our natural right to privacy. It also violates our constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court has held consistently that numerous clauses in the Bill of Rights keep the government at bay without a warrant.
Even when we don't have an expectation of privacy, we do have a right to be left alone. But merely watching us in public isn't enough for the police, as many street corner cameras are equipped with listening devices and tiny megaphones. We can expect that these devices will soon bark commands: "Put down that BlackBerry." "Look to your right before crossing." "Don't kiss her; a car is coming." Actually, Big Brother is coming, and he's not smiling.
Big Brother is watching from the skies, as well as the streets. This started when the Department of Defense decided to offer help to police -- and they are prepared to accept. Never mind that the military may not lawfully operate within our borders, except in the case of rebellion, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. Never mind that the military may not lawfully be used for law enforcement, except in the case of disaster, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. And never mind that this use of drones by the Air Force was not the result of legislation debated and enacted by Congress, but was done under the authority of the president alone.
Add to all this the use of drones to kill people. President Obama has argued that he can use drones to kill Americans overseas, whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any constitutional due process whatsoever. His attorney general has argued that the president's careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly drones are an adequate substitute for due process. Of course, no court has ever ruled that way. The president's national security adviser has argued that the use of drones is humane since they are "surgical" and only kill their targets. Of course, that's not true, but it misses the point. Without a declaration of war, the president can't lawfully kill anyone, no matter how humane his killing.
How long will it be before the Air Force and the police adopt the unconstitutional arguments of the president's wrongheaded advisers and use the drones not only to spy but also to kill Americans in America?
The whole reason we have a Bill of Rights is to assure that tyranny does not happen here, to guarantee that the government to which we have supposedly consented will leave us alone. Do you think the government accepts that? Would you feel safe with a drone in your backyard? Would you feel like you were in America?
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Liberals Ruin Everything
Liberals Ruin Everything
By Christopher Chantrill
When friends suggest that the election in November will be close, I half-agree, with a twinkle. Because I don't think it will be close.
That's because this lot, as the Brits say, don't have it sorted -- unlike Bill Clinton in the 1990s, who knew how to seduce the middle class. It's a point of pride among urban liberals around the president not to understand the ordinary American. It's been this way ever since John Kenneth Galbraith's bestsellers like The Affluent Society taught liberals how to sneer at the ordinary middle class rather than understand it.
Of course, you can be a governing elite and be wrong about everything and still not wreck everything. That's because, as Adam Smith said, there is always a great deal of ruin in a nation, even at the best of times. But when a political dynasty has been getting things wrong for the best part of a century, then the ruin can get to be pretty serious. And that is what is agitating the average white guys of the nation like Ray Guy: the specter of ruin, economic, moral, and personal.
Let us rehearse four big things that liberals have got wrong again and again and that are increasing the amount of ruin in the nation.
First of all, there is government money. For over a century, the money in the U.S. was metallic. Governments messed around with it, from the stupidities of the United States Bank wars to the inflationism of Free Silver. But it took liberals to create the Federal Reserve System, staff it with political hacks (and now economist hacks), and reduce the value of the dollar by 95 percent in a century.
Monetary stupidity seems to come up every generation under the Fed, with the 1929 Crash, the 1970s inflation, and the 2000s Fannie-Freddie credit bubble. Every time, the politicians blame the bankers for the mess. It's more accurate to say that every time, the politicians ruin the bankers. But they bail them out, because they need bankers to buy their debt.
Then there are government entitlements. We know now what happens with government entitlements. They run out of money, and the dependents start to tear the place up like a bunch of unpaid soldiers. This makes complete sense, because every government is an armed minority, a band of pirates with good PR. Every government must keep its supporters paid, or they will start to mutiny, just like they are mutinying in Europe right now.
But there is more. We've always known that entitlements ruin a nation's willingness to save. Now we learn that they ruin a nation's birth rate to the point of national extinction.
Let's not forget government education. Everyone agrees with the Jesuits that if you "give me the boy ... I will give you the man." But in the U.S., we are supposed to have a separation between church and state. That means a separation between the political power and the moral/cultural power. Liberals think this means that government money shouldn't be spent on church schools. I'd say that it means that the political elite should be banned from legislating about childhood education and that government should be forbidden from confining children in a government child custodial facility without a court order.
Whatever else may be wrong with it, the venal nature of government education particularly ruins the education of the children of the poor. In the third world, the government education is so bad that many among the poor pay for private education.
Finally, there is government morality. Governments have not always peddled morality. Homer's political leaders merely squabbled over women when they were done raping and pillaging, just like their gods. But by Plato's time, the idea of divine judgment had reared its head, and political leaders began to pose as the representatives of divine justice on earth. Eventually, our modern disestablished churches began the process of separating government and morality, and the old liberals helped with clichés about "legislating morality."
But now things are different. When it's a question of inequality, racism, hate speech, diversity, gay marriage, dietary fat, climate change, or fairness, today's liberal legislates morality with the ferocity of a Savonarola. Their legislation certainly hasn't done much to improve morality -- or government. More likely it has ruined both.
This rising tide of ruin may not may not combine into the Perfect Flood by this November, but it witnesses daily that the Dynasty of the Educated Elite has lost the mandate of heaven. It witnesses also to the truth that when the people have control of their money, their savings, and their children's education, and when they promote morality through their churches, we can call the result civil society. When they lose it, bit by bit, we call it the road to serfdom, a road that ends in totalitarianism.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Barack Obama in the Twelve-Step Program
Barack Obama in the Twelve-Step Program
By Christopher Paslay
If Barack Obama and the liberal left entered Alcoholics Anonymous because they had a drinking problem, they'd have zero chance of getting sober. They would progress through the early and middle stages of alcoholism, suffering from blackouts, personality disintegration, and withdrawal. After continued denial that their own behavior and decisions were affecting the quality and manageability of their lives, they would enter the late stages of the disease, develop full-blown medical complications, and drop dead.
The New York Times would write a front-page story blaming the Republicans for the tragedy, detailing how corporate greed removed the safety net that would have eventually gotten everyone sober. Warren Buffett would chime in about the super-rich not paying enough taxes and how this adversely affected the government-run social programs established to treat people with addictions.
True recovering alcoholics, of course, understand that money has little to do with recovery. Working the Twelve Steps of AA doesn't involve the government or taxpayer subsidies. In other words, you could spend $10 billion -- or $10 trillion, for that matter -- on getting someone sober, but if that person hasn't completed Step 1 and still denies that he has a problem, nothing will happen; he will drink himself to death without ever recovering.
After decades of social programs and trillions of dollars spent on entitlements, liberals still aren't even on Step 1. Neither is President Obama; the problems affecting society are always, without exception, somebody else's fault. His message of "Hope and Change" fundamentally misunderstands what hope and change truly are. In Obama's mind, hope and change are things that come from the outside, things that the government or a new social order can provide for people. The fact that the wealth gap in the United States continues to get bigger proves this reasoning is false.
When Obama speaks of change, he means systematic change, not personal change. He wants to rebuild America into a socialistic state -- where citizens rise only to the lowest common denominator, where wealth and success are demonized and complacency and government dependence are incentivized. Besides guaranteeing financial ruin and the country's economic collapse, this will do nothing to empower struggling Americans or improve their quality of life. Obama's promise of "change" in reality is the antithesis of transformation; it is about enabling those who make poor decisions to better maintain their lifestyle and as a result perpetuates a multitude of social ills.
Tragically, this is what a number of Americans want. Change is quite traumatic for many people, especially the poor. At an organic level, there is a process at work in human beings called homeostasis -- the tendency of an organism or cell to maintain balance and equilibrium by adjusting itself through a physiological process. Put another way, homeostasis is an innate, biological resistance to change. This may explain why the poor tend to resist change at all costs, fighting against the gentrification of their crumbling neighborhoods, protesting the reconstitution of their failing schools. Or why they rail against voter identification laws. Instead of working to acquire an ID card and get up to speed with 21 st-century society, the underprivileged protest that such a task is too daunting and violates a person's constitutional rights.
Interestingly, when David Axelrod coined Barack Obama's cleverly worded slogan "Hope and Change," it suggested genuine intrinsic transformation and empowerment. It promised a means of helping lifelong passengers subsisting on welfare entitlements finally become captains of their own ships. This sounded good to the gullible independent swing-voters interested in social justice. The problem is that by nature, the passive are terrified of becoming active. Those who have viewed themselves as being acted upon their entire lives have the darnedest time suddenly becoming the ones doing the acting.
Obama, a community organizer by trade, understands this. His idea of change is clearly extrinsic -- the radical redistribution of wealth and power within the system. But on an individual level, passengers will still remain passengers, and drivers will still be drivers. The only kind of "change" a passenger gets under Obama is a change in quantity -- or, simply stated, more stuff. More free rides for longer durations, bigger buses with more government regulations placed on drivers. Once the money runs out, however, the jig is up. Once America's number of passengers overwhelms the drivers, the system will collapse. The buses will break down, and drivers will riot, and then the Unites States will be reduced to the status of Greece and Italy.
This is the kind of "change" an antiestablishment, anti-American liberal secretly hopes for: to bring our longtime successful nation, powered by personal responsibility, to its knees so it can be blown up once and for all. And from the ashes will rise a new, progressive, pluralistic utopia, where perpetual motion machines, manufactured by green government agencies, are possible. Where automobiles run on algae and everything is free for the taking. Or so goes the socialist's Grand Delusion. The only problem, of course, is that the drivers will still be drivers, and the passengers will still be passengers; the active will still do the acting, and the passive will still be acted upon.
Being "active," for the record, doesn't mean activism. Active change involves a person directly changing the unwanted situation or circumstance. For example, if you want a job, you update your resume and, while you're waiting for an interview, pay the bills by working any available position to make ends meet. If you want to get rid of your student loans, you consolidate your finances and work out a personal budget. If you want to empower the poor and bring about social justice, you volunteer your time working with the less fortunate, teaching them how to navigate the paperwork involved in filling out job or school applications, or showing them the steps involved in acquiring a government ID.
Getting "active" under the principles of movements such as Occupy work more like this: if you want a job, you stop traffic and protest against banks and the richest one percent. If you want to get rid of your student loans, you circulate a petition to have the government give you amnesty. If you want to help the poor and bring social justice, you go on a march and call anyone who opposes your philosophy a racist and an out-of-touch opportunist.
Someday, if America continues down this destructive path, our country may very well experience a financial and economic collapse. The Bill Ayerses of the world will rejoice, as will the disciples of Paulo Freire. But America won't be down for long. From the ashes will rise not a Marxist state, but a new nation, one led by individuals motivated by intrinsic transformation -- society's drivers -- those who embrace Step 1 on the path to recovery and live by the motto that true hope and change start from within.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
Obama's Media-Contrived Courage
Many people(myself included) have felt for some time that one of the greatest threats to America is the total corruption of the media. I really do believe for multiple of reasons its stranglehold on people's opinions is being broken. One of the main reasons is that its obvious bias is now so over the top that it is hard for even left leaning partisans to ignore. Eventually all but the most ideologically motivated persons want to know the truth and those who don't eventually reveal themselves as totally shallow and not worth listening to. More and more people are realizing that this shallowness of truth is what they have been fed for some time by the media itself and are abandoning it for other sources.
Obama's Media-Contrived Courage
By Jed Babbin
We know who's side the media are on -- but does Mitt Romney?
If you want to gauge how the presidential campaign is going, all you need to do is strap sphygmomanometers to the arms of a few New York Times editorial writers, Washington Post reporters, and MSNBC hosts. The higher their average blood pressure, the lower Obama has sunk in the polls.
Yes, they're at it again. Or I should say, "still." The Obama media -- the Gatekeeper Media who try to control what people know based on what fits their narrative -- are proving almost daily that they're not in the news business. They are in the business of political activism, aimed solely at getting their guy another four years in the White House.
Obama's admission of the obvious fact he'd previously denied -- his support for same-sex marriage -- is now being ballyhooed as proof of his great political courage. Really? As Brit Hume pointed out yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," Obama's position on gay marriage didn't evolve: it revolved. In 1996, Obama said he was for it. In the 2008 campaign, he said he opposed it but also opposed the California referendum banning it. In office, his Department of Justice has refused to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage -- as Obama did in 2008 -- as a union of a man and a woman. Now he says he supports gay marriage.
Instantly, that became the biggest media story of the week, second only to the story about Mitt Romney bullying a presumed homosexual who attended the same exclusive prep school Romney did in the 1960s. The two stories are entirely instructive, as is the media's timing.
In fact, Obama had no choice in announcing his position. Good Ol' Joe Biden, who has never had an unexpressed thought, said on "Meet the Press" eight days ago that he was "comfortable" with gay marriage. Cornered, and under intense pressure by the homosexual lobby to motivate the (insignificant) homosexual voting block that was already with him, Obama endorsed same-sex marriage five days later. To the media, that's proof of his political heroism.
Jay Leno got it right. Obama said his position on same-sex marriage had "evolved." What a coincidence, said Leno, that he had completed his evolution just in time for a multi-million dollar fundraiser in Hollywood. That, to the media, is heroism. We eagerly await the announcements from endangered Senate Democrats such as Missouri's Claire McCaskill supporting their president's position. That would be akin to the heroism of Japanese samurai who committed ritual seppuku.
The media would have us believe that it was another coincidence that in the five-day gap between the Biden and Obama statements, the Washington Post published a story about Romney cutting the hair of a possibly homosexual fellow high school student while others held him down. The incident occurred in 1965 and, we are to believe, is proof of Romney's homophobia and a demonstration of his mean-spirited character.
Romney apologized. "I don't remember that incident," he said. "And I'll tell you I certainly don't believe that I ... thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case."
Romney's nervously delivered apology could have been a moment of political courage eclipsing Obama's. He could have said that he supports both the Defense of Marriage Act and, more importantly, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. He could have said that his position was much like Obama's 2008 position, and that he was sticking to it. But he didn't. His lack of confidence will goad the media to attack his weakness when, in truth, he isn't weak (at least on that issue).
Two weeks ago, there was a one-day story about what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said was Obama's "compression" of people in his first campaign autobiography, "Dreams from My Father." The New York girlfriend Obama wrote about in that book didn't exist. As Obama wrote in the introduction, "For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology." In short, the book is a work of fiction that intentionally conceals Obama's actions, choice of friends, and beliefs.
The Romney high school incident happened 47 years ago. Like everything a presidential candidate has done, whenever he did it, it's fair game for reporters. But where are the stories of Obama's high school and college years? Where are the media investigating Obama's statements in his books?
The people who voted for Obama in 2008 knew virtually nothing about him, and know little more now. Where are his college transcripts, his friends and girlfriends, and whatever he wrote for the Harvard Law Review? No one has seen the transcripts or the writing, no one has sought out and interviewed his high school and college friends and girlfriends. We know almost nothing about Obama's early years except what Obama himself has written. Even his later years -- sitting in Jeremiah Wright's church, listening to the anti-American racist nutcase -- remain uninvestigated and unreported. What did Obama think, listening to Wright for two decades? Why didn't he leave that church for another if he strongly disagreed with Wright?
In the minds of the Gatekeeper Media, we aren't entitled to know about Obama's character, what he said or believed, or what he did before he began his 2008 campaign. The Gatekeepers -- ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other newspapers -- don't want to investigate for fear of what they might find. They're intent on re-electing Obama and will, as they have in the past, simply decline to report on those stories.
When Newt Gingrich railed against the Gatekeeper Media in two primary debates, he struck a deep chord with Americans. According to a Rasmussen Poll released on June 15, 2010, "Sixty-six percent (66%) of U.S. voters describe themselves as at least somewhat angry at the media, including 33% who are Very Angry." Romney needs to reach deep down and find the courage to take on the Gatekeeper Media. They're going to do everything in their power to defeat him, so there's no reason to play their game.
Romney should begin at the long-promised event in which Gingrich will enthusiastically endorse him. Gingrich will say nothing new, but Romney should take the opportunity to praise Gingrich's courage in taking on the media. Romney should say that the media's bias is a matter of culture, not conspiracy.
He should quote the statement about five years ago by Washington Post editor Marie Arana who said, "The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness.... If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings at the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democratic candidates." And he should challenge them to report the stories they now bury, especially about Obama's past.
It's an opportunity for Romney to make the media a campaign issue. If he did, he could significantly boost his chances, and those of other Republicans, in November. It would take a courage that no Republican other than Gingrich has had. The anger at the press measured by that old Rasmussen poll hasn't diminished; it's grown and will continue to grow in the coming months as the Gatekeeper Media splash every real or imagined Romney misstep across the airwaves and front pages, ignoring whatever could hurt their candidate.
Make no mistake, Gov. Romney: Obama is their guy and you are their enemy. They will act accordingly. Will you?
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Updated: 01:18 GMT le 15 mai 2012
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Change—and Some Hope
Change—and Some Hope
By Victor Davis Hanson
Rays of Sun Amid the Storm
The Rasmussen Tracking Poll recently had Romney up 50 to 42 over Obama. At this early juncture, such polls mean nothing—except as diagnostic indices of why perhaps both candidates go up and down in popularity.
So why has Barack Obama plunged in the polls these last few days?
The Republican slugfest is over. The media cannot headline any longer the daily conservative suicide. Barack Obama’s job report came out at 8.1% unemployment—but, more importantly, with information that a smaller percentage of adult Americans are working than ever before, and fewer in absolute numbers than nearly four years ago when Obama took office.
So someone must be asking, “What then was the lost $5 trillion for?” Note, in this regard, the 5.4% unemployment rate that won George Bush the slur of a “jobless recovery” in 2004.
There was some pushback to Obama’s spiking the football on the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.
And have you noticed how Team Obama keeps losing the doggy wars? Seamus begat a photoshopped Dachshund sandwich; Romney’s supposedly terrible polygamist great-great grandfather in Mexico begat Obama’s polygamist father in Kenya; Rush Limbaugh’s “war on women” begat Bill Maher’s misogyny; Romney the high-school hair cutter begat tapes of Obama as the chronic drug user and recollections of Biden, the neighborhood teen bully. I know why the Obama people wish to distract from the economy, but at some point they must accept that they are losing these trivia tit-for-tats, and it now is beginning to show in the polls. (Hint: you may think it neat to ridicule a Mormon, but for purposes of fielding a clean candidate, Romney is a political operative’s dream in this age of adultery, sin, drug, and drink—which is why the Washington Post is back to a supposedly insensitive 18-year-old Mitt Romney this last week).
The flip-flop on gay marriage, of course, did not win Obama a single vote, just plenty of one-percenters’ money. More injurious to his cause was his idiotic refrain about his “evolving” views. No one believed that yarn: fifteen years ago he was for gay marriage when it was smart politically for him to be so, and then he revolved to “no” when it was not. All that happened this week was that clueless Joe Biden jumped the gun. Obama with a wink and nod had privately assured rich gays, as he had Putin, that after his reelection he would give them what was wanted, but could not quite yet, given his need to hoodwink the clingers to get reelected. I think most voters understood that con as emblematic of this presidency.
Then there are the lack of press conferences, the non-stop shakedowns of rich people whom he caricatures, and the somnolent speeches (“make no mistake about it,” “I/me/mine,” “in truth,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I inherited a mess,” “pay your fair share,” and blah, blah, blah).
Add all that up, and one loses 6-8 points. Keep doing it and he will lose even more. At this rate, Obama will be October surprising Iran.
Despite, not Because of, Obama
But there is more good news. Surveys of federal oil and gas reserves keep soaring. At some point, some president is going to realize that by tapping such bounty all at once he can create new jobs, earn budget-deficit-reducing cash, stimulate the economy, cut down on the trade deficit, and marginalize the Middle East as a security issue. If Obama wishes to pass on that godsend, so be it: he can bequeath to his successor even greater riches that will only increase in value.
Rather than Obama destroying the economy, there is a sense emerging that he is merely restraining it. Should Obama lose in November, there will be the greatest collective sigh of relief since 1980 and a yell that all hell will break lose, in the good sense of business activity, commerce, investment, hiring, and resource utilization being unleashed.
Look at it this way: for four years Obama has poked and jabbed at the corralled stallion, and when the gate goes up he will roar out as never before. Or if you are a Greek, try this: for 30 years we have been lectured to death about global warming, the brilliant Ivy League technocrats, the genius of Keynesian borrowing, the need for multiculturalism in the White House, if only we had open borders, why lawyers and academics need to be in charge—all on the “what if” presumption that no one in his right mind would let any of the above become gospel. And so we had the constant liberal whine, “if only.…” Now we have it in the flesh, and in cathartic fashion Obama is going to purge us of that unhinged temptation for another generation....
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Crucified by Government
Crucified by Government
Washington plays by TSA rules.
Geoffrey Norman
Government, and the party of government, have been through something of a rough patch lately. First, there was the GSA’s Las Vegas blowout. Then, the Secret Service debaucheries. And, two weeks ago, the video of an Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrat preening about his enforcement strategy of “crucifying” five random oil drillers pour encourager les autres.
Then, to provide theme for the pudding, there was a Pew survey revealing that “just one in three [Americans] has a favorable view of the federal government—the lowest level in 15 years.”
Proving, perhaps, that 33 percent of Americans have not flown commercial for some time.
A measure of dissatisfaction with the government, these days, is to be expected. The country is, after all, in the economic doldrums with another summer of recovery on the verge of being postponed until next summer. Unemployment is high and so is the price of gas. GDP growth is low and so are wages. People blame government, and that might be unfair, except that those in charge of government promised something else and do not seem to be able to deliver or, worse, to admit that they can’t.
Which is the larger problem, as well, with the various scandals. While some people at the GSA and the Secret Service have been fired, the overall response of those in charge has been to insist that these were the actions of a few rogue operators, that the enterprise as a whole is first rate, staffed by people who are loyal, conscientious, dedicated, honest, etc. And to make the argument somewhat indignantly.
In the case of that EPA tough guy, he resigned after issuing one of those apologies that evoke Chesterton’s comment about how the “stiff apology is a second insult.”
The EPA followed up the resignation with a statement exonerating itself of everything and anything, saying it was “deeply unfortunate” that the crucifixion talk by “an EPA official inaccurately suggests we are seeking to ‘make examples’ out of certain companies in the oil and gas industry.”
The very idea!
Instead of being allowed to resign, that regional administrator for random persecutions and crucifixions should have been sent out into the oil patch and made to wear steel-toed boots, Carhartt overalls, and a hardhat while he did a month as a roughneck on a drilling rig, just to get a feel for the industry. Now he is gone, and nothing much will change, except the EPA might issue a directive to its administrators advising them that the crucifixion of oil drillers is strictly against agency policy and anyone violating this rule should expect to be sternly disciplined.
To the various agencies of the government, any embarrassing event is an “isolated example that in no way . . . ” The Transportation Security Administration is hit with one of those just about every day and its spokespeople routinely issue a pro-forma denial or apology, along with a statement defending the agency’s policies and procedures. It is their way of reminding the public that if they don’t like it, then they can take the bus to Cleveland, or wherever it is they want to go.
We won’t be hearing about a housecleaning at the GSA or the Secret Service, the TSA or the EPA. There is no need for one according to . . . the GSA, the Secret Service, the TSA, and the EPA. If the people are unhappy with the government, then the attitude of the government seems to be that it is the fault of the people. And since the people don’t seem angry enough to get themselves a new government, there is nothing much to worry about and no need to take action.
For more and more people, their direct experience with government would incline them to believe that the examples of profligacy and arrogance we’ve seen lately are more rule than exception. One day, perhaps, a president will be elected who remembers being crucified by some bureaucrat who wanted to make an example of him. Then he can appoint a cabinet of people who will go out into the bowels of Leviathan and randomly fire five people in their respective agencies just to get the attention of the other bureaucrats who have become accustomed to a life of routine arrogance and perpetual immunity.
Until then, the game will continue to be played by TSA rules
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Heal Your Societies or Go Over the Cliff
Western Civilization Faces the Big Test: Citizens! Heal Your Societies or Go Over the Cliff
Posted By Barry Rubin
The current political crisis in Europe, and in America as well, is not at all hard to understand. Think of it like this: society is not infinitely malleable. If you pull a rubber band far enough it is either going to snap back or it will break.
Western democracies have worked very well for 60 years now. They have been remarkably prosperous and remarkably peaceful. They defeated the Communist challenge. In a sense they — and I include the United States here — are victims of this very success.
Out of rational self-interest, the realities of electoral politics, and a strong sense of justice — misguided or otherwise — the welfare state and the payment of entitlements have been expanding.
You can — as my grandmother used to say — throw around money like a drunken sailor until you run out of money.
The self-imposed burdens have reached, and exceeded, the limit of what these societies could finance. This problem has been highlighted, of course, by an economic recession but it is not the product of that business contraction.
Things have been made worse by the fact that most governments in power have tried to apply the very old policies that were making the societies ill in the first place. The situation is akin to the medical practice of centuries ago in which an already sickly patient was bled further by the application of leeches. Death often followed.
Those governments buried in the equivalent of “old-think” in the USSR have just three alternatives:
–Deny any of this is happening. Every penny spent is absolutely necessary to stop old people from starving, women from keeling over in their 30s, the globe from heating up like a tea kettle, and, in short, the mass extinction of the human race.
–Self-defense. Say that anyone who wants to recognize reality is a violent Nazi hater of women and a racist flat-earther.
–Use a scapegoat. If only taxes were raised on rich, greedy people then the party could go on uninterrupted.
Obviously, I’m being facetious, but when all the verbal foliage is cleared away that list is pretty accurate.
But what about those governments, or oppositions, that wanted to be responsible by limiting spending, reorganizing or reducing entitlements, and cutting their own payroll to a level that could be sustained?
Well, that’s an uphill battle as we’ve just seen in Greece. People don’t want to be told to sacrifice, especially because they suspect that the elite isn’t doing so and that this same elite is responsible for the mess. So they can be — easily? — manipulated into voting for those who tell them to eat, drink, and be merry, with a minimal tax on billionaires and millionaires paying off the caterer.
If you can buy or import voting blocks to ensure your victory, that also helps. Is any government in France from this moment on going to limit immigration, fight Islamism, cut back on vacations, and raise retirement ages and the length of the work week? That’s doubtful.
Now this is the very moment that democracy comes into play. It is in the hands of the voters to decide whether to face the music or default on paying the fiddler. Can they be made to understand in the face of a clueless mass media and a fantasy-intoxicated intellectual class what is at stake and what needs to be done? Ask again in November.
Something very important should also be made clear here: political stances and solutions are not historically permanent. I would argue that liberalism (and a dose of the social democrats) was the best solution for the West’s problems in 1900. But it is no longer 1900. Huge social reforms have been made; out-groups have been brought into equal rights. The balance has shifted and that reality must now be the starting point in facing the current reality.
Could it possibly be that a government that has grown steadily for so many decades might have become too big? Is it conceivable that regulations imposed by the thousands have become too onerous? Is it within the realm of the real world that the burden of salaries and retirements for those who draw government pay checks have become too heavy? Might it be true that if you keep dividing society into warring groups they will eventually go to war against each other?
Or is this all a fantasy of a reactionary, evil, woman-hating racist mindset that should be dismissed by any civilized being?
Democracy is based on the idea that the average citizen is wise enough to understand what his society and country must do to survive and to do better, or at least minimally well. We are now going to find out whether that proposition is accurate.
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Barack Obama: President of Replicants
Barack Obama: President of Replicants
Posted By Janine Turner
President Barack Obama lives in a pretend world. He sees things through the eye of a kaleidoscope, and all of the pretty pieces of glass are his “composites.” He peers through his illusionary tool at his “composite people” and plays with the frailties of life. As the shattered flecks, or figures, morph into his fantasies, he envisions his life, the lives of others, and the governing of the America people as shapes and variations that mirror his own private, pervasive, and persistent ideals — regardless of reality or reason.
It is Obama’s world.
He is bothered when conflicts interfere with his “compositeland,” like Congress, Supreme Court rulings, or old girlfriends. He is bothered with details that hinder him, such as budgets, constitutional principles, and realities that people are unique and savvy and that one size does not fit all.
Obama’s “composite women” are in the news: His girlfriend mentioned in his biography was actually a mix of several women, as is his campaign’s “Juila.”
According to Obama, in his book Dreams from My Father he writes about his New York girlfriend in a disclosed “composite” fashion. She is a compilation of all of his girlfriends to represent a certain time period in his life. This yields the question: How do we know a man if he only reveals his life in vague and composite forms?
Who is the real Barack Obama?
Not only is Barack Obama a mystery, but so is the basis of his governing. Currently, he is proposing to the American women, whose votes he desperately needs to win, that he will govern them on the basis of his composite woman “Julia.” Life will be like the glasses of his kaleidoscope, beautiful and transfixed. Vote for Obama and your life will be like Julia’s.
Perfection works in the realm of make-believe. If you are a Replicant, as in the movie Blade Runner, or an imaginary “Julia,” you can be blessed by Obama’s world. Replicants and Julias are blank sheets of paper on which Obama can write his manifesto.
In reality, however, women have feelings, spirits, complexities, and inborn American yearnings for self-determination. Turning women into cookie cutter images doesn’t work any better now than it did in the days when Communism in the USSR attempted the homogenization of the human soul and mind. Communism leads to tragedy and demise, cruelty, and bitterness, recently reflected in the cries from Chinese rights activist Chen Guangcheng for asylum in America.
Yet Obama paints an ideal world where the “wealth is spread around,” the taxpayers foot Julia’s bill, and the end goal for women is to volunteer in the community garden. The “Julia” manifesto presents picture perfect scenarios. There is no mention that Julia spends her life dependent on the government.
Under President Obama: Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.
There is no mention that some tenured teachers are contributing to the demise of the American education system. There is no mention that Obama will never stand up to the unions.
Under President Obama: For the past four years, Julia has worked full-time as a web designer. Thanks to Obamacare, her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health.
There is no mention that birth control is about $10.00 a month. There is no mention that it is not the responsibility of the taxpayers to pay for Julia’s birth control.
Under President Obama: As she prepares for her first semester of college, Julia and her family qualify for President Obama’s American Opportunity Tax Credit—worth up to $10,000 over four years. Julia is also one of millions of students who receive a Pell Grant to help put a college education within reach.
There is no mention of the national debt because Obama wants us to believe that there is a pot of gold at the end of his Obamabow. There is no mention that the debt clock runs up so quickly you can’t even write it down fast enough. The number as of this writing is almost 16 trillion: $15,705,864,699,709.00
Under President Obama: Julia enrolls in Medicare, helping her to afford preventive care and the prescription drugs she needs.
There is no mention that Medicare is essentially bankrupt. There is no mention of an Obama reconstruction plan to save Medicare. There is no mention that the U.S. total debt is $57,451,655,210,000.00
Under President Obama: Julia retires. After years of contributing to Social Security, she receives monthly benefits that help her retire comfortably, without worrying that she’ll run out of savings. This allows her to volunteer at a community garden.
There is no mention that keeping Social Security solvent is impossible with the current method of operation. There is no mention of an Obama plan to reconstruct Social Security. There is no mention that the Social Security liability is $15,658,907,238,902.00
In Obama’s world, women blissfully volunteer in a community garden at the end of their life. Note that the garden is not their own garden.
Women are smarter than this. Women know that they are not a “Julia” Barbie Doll. Just like the composite girlfriend Genevieve Cook, who revealed herself in the flesh and discusses Obama’s “sexual warmth,” women will step forward and present themselves as living, breathing human beings who have minds and quests for independence.
The real Obama may not reveal himself, but the real women’s voice will. Women will balk at being forced into an Obama mold. As if all women aspire to culminating their life and legacy in the community garden. First it was the kitchen, now it is the garden.
The Democrat Party is the women’s party? Think again. It was the Republican majority that presented and ratified in the 19th Amendment. It is the Republican Party that will recognize, propel, and propagate women’s independence.
Obama wants women who are reliant Replicants. Republicans want self- sufficient women who reason.
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"It should not be forgotten that scientific history is littered with discredited theories that were once universally accepted as truth."
Patrick J. Michaels
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Updated: 21:20 GMT le 09 mai 2012
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Obama Wants Power, Not Jobs
Obama Wants Power, Not Jobs
By Jeffrey Folks
Natural gas is a feedstock for the production of fertilizer, plastics, and many chemical products. Fortunately, America possesses vast reserves of recoverable natural gas. The low price of this gas is one factor spurring companies like Dow Chemical to expand production in the United States rather than send jobs overseas.
How many jobs? According to one reliable estimate, low gas prices resulting from hydraulic fracturing will result in the creation of one million new jobs in the U.S. in the next decade and a half. That is in addition to another half million jobs created by the fracking process itself and the countless other spin-off jobs necessary to support those expanding chemical, fertilizer, plastics, and energy industries. (Canadian oil sands development alone would create 343,000 new jobs in the U.S. That is the same development that Obama is trying to shut down with his veto of the Keystone XL pipeline.)
It all adds up to a renaissance for American industry, with all the benefits of job creation, economic growth, and wealth creation that go with it. As a result of the new natural gas boom and the industrial recovery, American industries will be expanding their workforces. The stagnant industrial wages of the last 30 years should begin to see meaningful expansion. Once again, American industrial workers can look forward to job security and higher wages.
It all sounds like an economic miracle, and it is. So why is Obama trying to kill it? That is what he is doing with his recently appointed "oversight group" headed by a long-time environmental activist to regulate fracking, his veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, his repeated proposals of $40 billion in new taxes on the oil and gas industry, and the continuing effort on the part of his EPA to link fracking to water and air pollution.
For two very good reasons, the regulation of the oil and gas business has always been entrusted to the state and not at the federal government (except for federal lands).
First, there is no constitutional basis for federal regulation of energy production within state borders. State regulation of natural resources falls within the limited powers clause of the Constitution. Federal regulators have no basis for attempting to regulate energy producers operating within state borders.
Second, even if there were a constitutional basis, state regulators are far more knowledgeable as to the local geological conditions and business climate, and they are responsive to the local public in ways that federal regulators will never be. As the Framers of our Constitution understood, the needs and preferences of citizens vary from state to state. The citizens of New York may prefer to ban new drilling techniques in part or all of that state, no matter how costly that ban may be. Meanwhile, the people of North Dakota may decide to enrich themselves by developing their natural resources. The federal government has no right to impose "oversight" of energy production on either state.
The Obama administration is well aware of this long-standing rule, but it is attempting to take control from the states on the pretext of environmental regulation. This attempt to further concentrate power in Washington is fraught with enormous dangers for the American people. In the first place, unnecessary regulations have the effect of reducing energy exploration in the U.S. and driving exploration overseas. Any one of the oil and gas majors can just as well explore in Canada, Brazil, Angola, Russia, Australia, or dozens of other countries around the globe. If they are burdened with new regulations and taxes, they will leave the U.S. and take those millions of new jobs with them.
None of this matters to a President for whom power is more important than job creation and economic growth. Even if it costs ten million Americans their jobs (which is what it has done so far with the subpar recovery to date), Obama is obsessed with the goal of concentrating power in Washington, and specifically in his own hands. For this President, who admits to having once been a regular drug user, power is the real narcotic. It all comes down to the fact that Obama is driven by an implacable and fanatical desire to control every aspect of American life.
The oil and gas industry comprises 7.5% of the American economy, and it is one part of the economy that is still largely regulated at the state level. No wonder Obama is making such efforts to regulate the energy sector. Once an industry has been brought under federal regulatory control, it becomes a treasure trove of contributions and support for the administration in office. This is the corporatist system that Bismarck pioneered in Germany and that Hitler perfected. But even Hitler allowed Krupp a measure of autonomy as long as it aligned itself with his goals. Obama is attempting to carry corporatism to an unprecedented level so as to control the entire economy. This is why he is dictating fracking rules, CAFE standards, consumer protection standards, financial reforms, and, of course, sweeping takeover of the entire healthcare industry.
The effects of Obama's power grab are becoming increasingly apparent. Power is more important to this President than jobs, vastly more important. That is why, without any hesitation, he killed the 120,000 high-paying jobs that would have resulted from the Keystone XL pipeline. By his calculation, donations from the environmental lobby outweigh the suffering of 120,000 Americans who desperately need work. The same can be said for his reversal of promises to allow exploration of Atlantic oil and gas leases. That exploration has already been delayed for five years by his Interior Secretary. Now it is being delayed for another five years. Even where state regulators have allowed fracking, Obama is desperate to constrain if not kill it off. He would gladly sacrifice the livelihood of every American-all 9.2 million of them-supported by the oil and gas sector in return for a small increment of power. That is how cold and unfeeling this leader is.
Nothing can stop Obama from gaining the power he seeks except defeat in November. Even if his party loses control of the Senate, Obama has sworn that he will continue his takeover of America by deploying his czars and regulators to bring American businesses under heel. That move comes right out of the Nazi playbook. Failing to gain a majority in the two Reichstag elections of 1932, Hitler gained dictatorial powers without ever winning a majority of democratically elected representatives. Once he became Chancellor, Hitler concentrated power in himself by eliminating the traditional autonomy of the German states, dominating the press and media, curtailing religious freedom, and shipping his opponents off to concentration camps. Does this sound vaguely familiar?
The concentration of power in one man is, by definition, fascist in nature. As Obama views America, the healthcare, financial, industrial, and energy sectors constitute bastions of economic liberty that he feels compelled to bring within his personal control. With ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank financial regulation, he has already achieved much of what he desires. Energy is the one major sector that Obama has so far failed to bring under complete regulatory control. It is not surprising that he has deployed the EPA and created a fracking oversight committee. Nothing will stop him in his crazed drive for power except defeat in November.
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In Search of Americanism
In Search of Americanism
By Ned Ryun
Republicanism has proved insufficient as a guidepost for American values.
Time and again the progressive Left succeeds in forcing people to play by its rules. We see it in the halls of Congress, in statehouses, and even in school boards, as principled politicians run and hide to escape being labeled with one of the Left’s “ists” or “isms.” By balkanizing the electorate with labels that obscure the basic unifying principles of our Republic, progressives seek to divide and conquer. And they’re winning.
There’s communism, socialism, fascism, authoritarianism, and collectivism, all of which are kissing cousins that originate from a basic belief in the centrality of the state to people’s lives. Under these “isms,” man exists for the state; all of them are therefore antithetical to a country founded on the fundamental belief that government exists for the people. The Left uses other “isms” to drive its agenda through intimidation (like false charges of racism) or misinformation (environmentalism). And then, of course, there’s relativism, secularism, multiculturalism, liberalism, and, yes, Progressivism.
In all the “ism” talk, we lose the most important one, and arguably the only one that really matters: Americanism. For years, academics, philosophers, and political scientists on both ends of the spectrum have argued about how to define Americanism. Progressives believe that Americanism—very loosely understood—is everything we are as a nation. Others on the Left argue that establishing a concrete definition of Americanism is to be jingoistic or insensitive to the larger world.
Further, Americanism has been polluted by other “isms,” and by ideas brought from European nations that don’t seek to empower individuals, as we do. Everything from the welfare state to secular relativism has infiltrated America with help from progressives who stopped believing in the supremacy of Americanism. We feel the sting of their faithlessness every day as we watch our economy weaken, our government expand, our businesses struggle, our taxes shoot higher, and our cultural values become unrecognizable.
The American dream has long been seen in the pillars of our communities, like service organizations, business associations, and religious groups, which today are crumbling along with our bridges, dams, and tunnels. At many local Rotary Club luncheons, for instance, a large percentage of active members have long ago retired or closed their businesses. Younger generations either don’t see the value in such institutions or can no longer afford to take time to participate in their good work. This provides openings for progressives and pro-government forces to tighten their grip on our nation’s communities. Apathy spells the end of the America we love, and, quite frankly, crushes the essence of the American spirit.
IT'S TIME TO FIGHT for the survival of Americanism, and to do that we must understand its tenets. Americanism isn’t all things to all people, nor is it jingoistic. You don’t have to live in America to believe in Americanism; anyone on any corner of the earth can believe in the values that have made us the greatest nation the world has ever seen.
Americanism is freedom founded on the power of the individual, and his ability to achieve without undue government interference. It’s the idea that the state exists to serve man, to protect God-given rights, and to allow the greatest amount of political freedom within the bounds of ordered liberty. It’s the idea that people truly own their property and are not merely renting it, and that they are free to use their talents, initiative, and “can do” spirit to make the lives they dream for themselves a reality.
It is indisputable that the Left has long had better grassroots organization and has pursued its damaging statist agenda relentlessly. After all, if you believe government should be all things to all people, then you’re going to encourage its expansion for your own benefit. Americans need to realize that we are up against a group of agitators that have very well-funded—and consequently very large—platforms for driving political debate: the media, Hollywood, public employee unions, and progressive groups backed by Leftist billionaires.
Meanwhile, the decline of the Republican establishment from coast to coast has been a long-coming inevitability, as officials give lip service to supporters, then vote for more spending, more debt, more borrowing, and higher taxes. Discouraged, aging, and dwindling committee members often lack the energy to run vibrant grassroots campaigns at the local level. When Americans who share our conservative values are content to work hard for an election cycle, then pat themselves on the back and leave the fight to the Washington think tanks, GOP establishment, and television talking heads, they have in effect surrendered to the advancing Left. The Left plays smash-mouth football, while the perceived conservative movement plays tiddlywinks on the sidelines, more concerned with form and appearance than substance.
WHAT'S REQUIRED IS a cultural shift among conservatives. Republicanism has proved insufficient as a guidepost for American values, as is patently obvious from the lack of political courage exhibited by supposedly conservative politicians. Many to this day participate in the expansion of government at a level that threatens our future. We must view Republicanism as little more than an institutional or legal vehicle through which to participate in the political process. Our real platform must be Americanism.
All who appreciate Americanism have to celebrate and defend it in their daily lives. America needs everyday citizens to engage continuously on local, state, and national issues. It can be as simple as talking to your children, colleagues, friends, and neighbors around your dining room table about America, its greatness and its challenges, or as easy as joining existing political or civic organizations and being unafraid to let people know where you stand on protecting America.
Then Americans must reengage in the political process by getting involved in their local committees and campaigns. That’s when real people take back control from the establishment forces and the Ruling Class that have blurred the lines between the parties and brought Americanism to the brink of the abyss.
The magnificent story of America is only over if we choose to let it be. If we’re willing to put our hands to the plow and relentlessly pursue Americanism—and truly fight for it—this nation can be renewed and climb to even greater heights of freedom and prosperity in the 21st century.
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CONSTITUTION 101
History in Pictures
###
TODAY'S QUOTE
(On Progressives)
"The paradox these confused dictators often run up against is that if man if flawed and incapable of functioning under his own judgment, then what gives a select few, just as flawed, individuals the ability the run a society?"
John E Miller
The Party of Julia
The sad fact is that if a majority of American women see government's role and their role in life this way, the nation is sunk already.
The Party of Julia
By ROSS DOUTHAT
A WEEK ago the Obama re-election campaign unveiled a slogan for the fall campaign — its answer to Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” Bill Clinton’s “bridge to the 21st century,” and other successful re-election pitches. There were reports that the slogan-writing process had been a struggle for the White House, and the final product bore those rumors out. “Forward,” the Obama campaign will be declaiming to Americans, which feels like a none-too-subtle admission that a look backward at the Obama economic record might be bad news for the president’s re-election prospects
But maybe the White House doesn’t need a slogan. After all, it has a person instead: a composite character who’s been the talk of Washington these last few days, and whose imaginary life story casts the stakes in this presidential campaign into unusually sharp relief.
Her name is Julia, and she has the lead role in an Obama 2012 slide show that follows what’s supposed to be an American everywoman from childhood into retirement, tracking everything the Obama White House’s policies would do for her and everything the “Romney/Ryan” Republicans would not. The list of Obama-bestowed benefits includes Head Start when Julia’s a tyke, tax credits and Pell grants to carry her through college and low-interest loan repayment afterward, guaranteed birth control when she’s a 20-something and government-sponsored loans when she wants to start a business, all of it culminating in a stress-free retirement underwritten by Medicare and Social Security.
All propaganda invites snark and parody, and the story of Julia is ripe for it. She’s an everywoman only by the standards of the liberal upper middle class: She works as a Web designer, has her first child in her early 30s (the average first-time American mother is in her mid-20s), and spends her golden years as a “volunteer at a community garden.” (It will not surprise you to learn that the cartoon Julia looks Caucasian.)
What’s more, she seems to have no meaningful relationships apart from her bond with the Obama White House: no friends or siblings or extended family, no husband (“Julia decides to have a child,” is all the slide show says), a son who disappears once school starts and parents who only matter because Obamacare grants her the privilege of staying on their health care plan until she’s 26. This lends the whole production a curiously patriarchal quality, with Obama as a beneficent Daddy Warbucks and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan co-starring as the wicked uncles threatening to steal Julia’s inheritance.
But if the slide show is easy to mock (and conservatives quickly obliged, tweeting Julia jokes across the Internet), there’s also a fascinating ideological purity to its attitudes and arguments. Indeed, both in its policy vision and its philosophical premises, the slide show represents a monument to certain trends in contemporary liberalism.
On the one hand, its public policy agenda is essentially a defense of existing arrangements no matter their effectiveness or sustainability, apparently premised on the assumption that American women can’t make cost-benefit calculations or indeed do basic math. In addition to ignoring the taxes that will be required of its businesswoman heroine across her working life, “The Life of Julia” hails a program (Head Start) that may not work at all, touts education spending that hasn’t done much for high school test scores or cut college costs, and never mentions that on the Obama administration’s own budget trajectory, neither Medicare nor Social Security will be able to make good on its promises once today’s 20-something Julias retire.
At the same time, the slide show’s vision of the individual’s relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
The condescension inherent in this vision is apparent in every step of Julia’s pilgrimage toward a community-gardening retirement. But in an increasingly atomized society, where communities and families are weaker than ever before, such a vision may have more appeal — to both genders — than many of the conservatives mocking the slide show might like to believe.
Apparently someone in the White House thinks so, which makes the life of Julia the most interesting general-election foray by either campaign to date. Interesting, and clarifying: in a race that’s likely to be dominated by purely negative campaigning on both sides, her story is the clearest statement we’re likely to get of what Obama-era liberalism would take us “forward” toward.
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CONSTITUTION 101
History in Pictures
###
TODAY'S QUOTE
(On Progressives)
"The paradox these confused dictators often run up against is that if man if flawed and incapable of functioning under his own judgment, then what gives a select few, just as flawed, individuals the ability the run a society?"
John E Miller
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Updated: 19:44 GMT le 06 mai 2012
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The End of Obama Liberalism as an Intellectual Movement
The End of Obama Liberalism as an Intellectual Movement
By Carl Paulus
Over the past six months the public has watched the current liberal intellectual movement crumble as its leaders have failed to provide a tenable solution to the serious problems facing our nation. President Obama is desperately searching for a way to convince the public he should be reelected. But his liberal ideology is no longer capable of providing effective answers to the questions of the 21st century. Today's liberalism has been reduced to an opposition movement, rather than a coherent ideological alternative to conservatism. The Democratic Party all but confirmed this notion with their latest slogan for the 2012 campaign: "Not A Republican."
When President Obama and the Democrats used the largest majority in over three decades to pass Obamacare -- despite the objections of the country -- they did so because they believed that it offered a significant solution to a problem. Though it remains unpopular with a majority of citizens, at least Obamacare was introduced as a bill, debated publicly, and signed into law. However, after being rejected by the people in 2010, modern liberalism has ceased to be a serious intellectual movement, trading gimmicks and demagoguery for substantial policy initiatives. Starting with the introduction of the Ryan budget in 2011, Democrats -- led by the president -- have disengaged from discussing ideas and negotiating legislation. Instead, emotional rhetoric has been used to mask the evidence that liberal programs offer very little substance to move the nation forward in the modern world.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner exhibited the lack of ideas coming from the Democrats when he told House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan that the administration "doesn't have a definitive solution" to the impending debt crisis, but that they do know that they "just don't like" the House Republican plan. In other words, liberals have admitted that they only have the intellectual disposition to oppose Ryan rather than providing a different way forward. Democrats have become the armchair quarterbacks of public policy. They offer criticism without a workable alternative.
Liberals have abandoned policy issues as a way to intellectually combat those who disagree with them. It was not a coincidence that the Obama administration announced a plan to force Catholic institutions to go against their consciences and pay for contraception and abortifacients just three days after the White House outlined its budget for 2013. Instead of debating budgetary reforms the country desperately needs, liberals sparked a faux debate over contraception, claiming that arguments based in both the history of the Enlightenment and the founding of the nation regarding religious freedom were actually about access to contraception in general. Liberals maintain that women who work for and attend Catholic institutions are not exercising a choice to do so. In effect, they undercut the feminist movement that for decades argued that women have the capability to make their own decisions and provide for their own lifestyles, undermining an intellectual foundation they helped to create. The entire topic of contraception was brought up without any Republican, especially the presumptive nominee, talking about birth control during the campaign.
The White House sparked a month-long, superficial debate over the Republican "War on Women" in order to distract Americans from the stunning realization that President Obama is the first president in American history to have two budgets rejected unanimously by his own party in Congress. Furthermore, Democrats have controlled the Senate for nearly six years. Yet, under Harry Reid's leadership, they have proposed a budget only once since the inauguration of President Obama and no longer even attempt to seriously negotiate a budget with Republicans. The entire discussion about the "War on Women" substantiates that modern liberalism offers no intellectual foundation for governing the United States.
The rhetoric and actions stemming from the fight over contraception might be construed as an isolated instance -- a desperate president hoping to change the narrative in a cynical attempt to be reelected. Unfortunately, it was not. When Mitt Romney appeared to secure the Republican nomination, the president, with the full support of his party, reignited the discussion of the Occupy-Wall-Street inspired tax on millionaires he named the Buffett Rule. Democrats hoped to sell it to the people as significant piece of legislation. President Obama first suggested it was needed to help reduce the deficit. When that was disproven, he then said it should be enacted in the interest of "fairness." When that fell flat the president finally maintained that the Buffett Rule was based on "an argument about how do we grow the economy in a 21st century environment."
President Obama's reasoning for the Buffett Rule changed for clear reasons. His attempt to add a special tax on the wealthy had little substance and was nothing more than an emotional ploy meant to appeal to the "Not Republican" liberal base. Rather than providing an intellectual foundation to tackle the numerous challenges the country faces, liberalism has deteriorated into a purely reactionary doctrine that hopes to win an election by demagoguing the wealthy. Liberals want to say that Mitt Romney's success makes him unelectable just eight year after nominating the billionaire John Kerry for the presidency because that's all they really have left to argue.
Over the next six months the president and his supporters are going to talk a lot about "fairness." However, do not expect them to offer a definition of the term. Vague rhetoric about their plans, just as in 2008, will be used to conceal the lack of appreciable ideas coming from the Democratic Party. When a liberal such as Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, gets precise, the electorate is rather unkind. The reason for this is clear: emotional rhetoric about the rich not paying enough in taxes only works on the envious or guilt-ridden. Ordinary Americans are neither of those things. This is why when pollsters ask the public what the wealthy should pay in taxes they choose a lower rate than the current tax code.
Liberalism used to be a movement capable of producing ideas that could be debated both publicly and in the intellectual marketplace. Though conservatives disagreed with them, liberal ideas had to be contended with through thoughtful rebuttals produced by those, in the words of the historian Gary Nash, who "engaged in study, reflection, and speculation; purveyors of ideas." Conservatives had to explain why our path was a better way forward than the left's. However, today's liberal movement offers no direction, just resistance. Modern liberals have become defined by this picture: empty chairs in a budget committee meeting that they control. Admittedly, their focus is solely on policy aimed at stirring controversy and allowing them to act as demagogues. President Obama and the current Democratic leadership have ushered in the end of liberalism as an intellectual movement because the ideas they offer are based more empty rhetoric than smart policy.
Conservatives must be wary and refuse to be pulled down into their realm of liberal inanity, even if it can be fairly funny to mock them. After all, the true unemployment rate is still in double digits and in the five minutes that it took to read this article the United States of America added 15 million dollars to the debt as we race towards a crisis. Our current problems require thoughtful solutions.
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CONSTITUTION 101
History in Pictures
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TODAY'S QUOTE
"A constitution is not an act of government, but of the people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right."
Thomas Paine
GENERALISSIMO OBAMA
GENERALISSIMO OBAMA
COLUMN: PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC SHOWS THE ANTIDEMOCRATIC STRAIN IN PROGRESSIVISM
BY: Matthew Continetti
One of President Obama’s most annoying habits is his tendency to mistake the 300 million people of the United States for soldiers in an army charged with national reconstruction. He, of course, is the general.
The tic is often barely perceptible, revealed subtly in those moments when Obama decries partisan politics for interfering with his plans; when he speaks of coming together for the common purpose of redistributing private income to—sorry, “investing” taxpayer dollars in—Democratic client groups; and during the rare occasions when he feels it necessary to address the nation on matters of national security and war.
Here is the president in August 2010, announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq: “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”
The way to “honor” American heroes who serve overseas, Obama said, is “by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for—the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.”
What does “coming together” mean? Why, silly, it means passing Obama’s domestic agenda: more money for education and job training and to “jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil,” and just happen to be owned by donors to the president’s campaigns. Missing from the 2010 speech was a line saying the path to heroism is through support for the Buffett Rule, probably because David Axelrod hadn’t yet come up with that particular gimmick.
The nation-as-army metaphor reemerged, dramatically, as the 2012 campaign began. Jonah Goldberg was justifiably disgusted at the message of this year’s State of the Union Address, in which the president suggested that Americans as a whole might take their cues from uniformed soldiers who are “not consumed with personal ambition,” “don’t obsess over their differences,” “focus on the mission at hand,” and “work together.”
Obama finds inspiration in the most hierarchical and selfless elements of military life. “Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example,” he said. We imagine all of us would have to buy health insurance. Taxes and spending would be high. A new Volt would sit in every driveway.
The commander-in-chief issued additional orders in recent days. When he unveiled his latest campaign slogan Monday, he told his supporters, and presumably the rest of the country, that it is time to march “Forward,” lemming-like, off a cliff.
And on Tuesday, in the televised address at the close of his targeted Afghan night raid, Obama challenged his audience to “summon that same sense of common purpose” one finds in “our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and civilians in Afghanistan,” and “redouble our efforts to build a nation worthy of their sacrifice.”
Obama’s social militarism inverts civil-military relations in a democratic republic. Traditionally—and one suspects that this is still the case for practically all servicemen—men and women join the Armed Forces because they believe America is worthy of their duty and protection. But Obama seems to suggest that, sorry, we are not quite there yet. The America that actually is “worthy of their sacrifice” has not come into existence. It exists “forward,” somewhere in the future. We must bring it into being by emulating the self-sacrificing troops, by suppressing our ambition and disagreement and differences, by “focusing on the mission” of building our country on a New Foundation.
The problems with this mindset are obvious. Obama has it totally backwards. The greatness of our troops derives from the fact that they sacrifice so the American people can enjoy their constitutionally protected liberty to pursue happiness in manifold ways. What the soldiers are protecting—and what the president swears to uphold and defend—does not exist in the future but was ratified more than 200 years in the past: The Constitution of the United States, whose separation of powers, federalism, and checks and balances protect the liberties defined as self-evident in the Declaration of Independence. These documents may be old and sometimes “confusing,” but they have served our country admirably and are the reason America is exceptional in a way that England and Greece are not.
Nor is a continent-spanning economy something that you command like an army, especially if it is a more-free-market-than-not economy with established property rights and the rule of law. Free economies fuel prosperity by relying on the inspiration, innovation, investment, consumption, labor, and trial and error of hundreds of millions of individuals making independent decisions, not all of which conform with what liberals in the press and politics currently view as “rational.”
A nation, a free nation, is not an army. The citizens of a free nation do not always share consumer preferences or a sense of common purpose. Like a good jobs czar, GE’s Jeff Immelt may want all American to “root” for his company and do what they can to help it succeed, but Americans still have every right to take their business elsewhere. There is something undemocratic in thinking that one should stop squabbling, strap on their boots, and get to work for Obama. One would do that only if the questions surrounding public life and public policy are settled. But they are not settled—not at all. Obama acknowledges as much when he laments he is not president of China or when he says that bypassing Congress and changing the laws “on my own is very tempting.”
In his likening of the nation to an army, Obama once again reduces the conflict between conservatism and liberalism to its core. The goal of modern liberalism, wrote Leo Strauss, “may be said to be the universal and classless society or, to use the correction proposed by Kojève, the universal and homogenous state of which every adult human being is a full member.” That sounds very much like membership in a battalion.
Against this, modern conservatives propose the goal of a constitutional federal republic, where the equal protection of natural rights necessarily will result in inequalities of property or achievement simply because men have different skills and talents. “Conservatives look with greater sympathy than liberals on the particular or particularist and the heterogeneous,” Strauss wrote. We are more likely to wish to preserve our differences, in the knowledge that the liberal project of uniformity is undesirable and unfeasible. We are the conscientious objectors to Obama’s forward march. And we are not alone.
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CONSTITUTION 101
History in Pictures
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TODAY'S QUOTE
"A constitution is not an act of government, but of the people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right."
Thomas Paine
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Updated: 11:52 GMT le 04 mai 2012
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Keynesianism and the Collectivist Dream
Keynesianism and the Collectivist Dream
By William Sullivan
It's campaign season, and as usual, Democrats are employing their class struggle rhetoric to position a redistributive government agenda as the only way Americans can be saved from themselves and the greedy capitalists who prey upon them.
Accustomed though we may be, this might seem an odd campaign strategy in light of recent polls showing widespread distrust of, and even contempt for, the federal government. But they have no choice but to keep their talking points emotional rather than substantive, you see. The core economic model of the American left is Keynesianism, which is less a viable economic path than it is an unrealistic pipe dream that stirs the collectivist's blood, much like the notions of world peace and Utopia.
Keynesianism is a model based upon how collectivists think the economy should operate, rather than how it actually operates. As Ron Ross puts it, "Keynesianism is definitely not an evidence-based model of how the economy works. So far as I know, Keynes did no empirical studies." He sets Keynes' research, or lack thereof, against that of Reagan economic adviser Milton Friedman, a staunch advocate of free markets and limited government intervention. "Friedman," Ross says, "was a far more diligent researcher than Keynes. Friedman fit the theory to the data, rather than vice versa."
In short, a pleasant hypothesis -- that a central government can stimulate demand and shorten economic downturns for stabilized prosperity -- supports the Keynesian model. Not facts. That is why you don't hear Democrats touting the Obama administration's past successes. The facts surrounding his economic policy are simply not useful for anything but arguing the same policy's ineffectiveness. Take the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, for example. The legislation appropriated $787 billion to various initiatives, meant to stimulate the economy and job growth. But the results are painfully dismal. Unemployment has held above 8% since February of 2009, marking the highest sustained length of such unemployment since the Great Depression. In fact, the "recovery" that ensued, despite this inordinately large taxpayer "investment," has yielded the slowest recovery from any recession since World War II. And an unprecedented number of Americans now rely on government food stamps and other welfare programs for subsistence.
The list of this administration's economic failures could go on and on, including the astronomical and poorly projected liability of the Affordable Care Act. But suffice it to say that the poor economy has taken a toll upon the engine of American prosperity: workers. James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation reports that millions of Americans have "stopped trying to find jobs," and that "only 63.7% of adult Americans are active in the labor force, meaning that they are either employed or looking for a job. That's the lowest level since 1983." Incidentally, that's the year in which the bulk of the tax cuts from Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act were implemented, signaling a recovery from the miserable economy he inherited from Carter's administration -- which relied heavily on (you guessed it!) Keynesian economics.
That contrast should immediately stand out, and it should illustrate beautifully why Keynesianism fails, and why it will always fail when employed wholesale as an economic strategy.
Obama's stimulus was based on this Keynesian economic model, and it allocated expected future taxpayer money to achieve short-term stimulus. Why wait for these dollars to be earned, the Obama administration posited, when the government can put that future revenue in play right now to stimulate consumerism and get employment back to where it should be? "The implication," Ron Ross explains, "is that you can hit the economy a few times with a cattle prod and get society back to full employment."
But clearly, that hasn't happened. What has happened, however, is that the federal government share of GDP increased from 19% in 2008 to 24% by 2011, and this administration will have grown the federal budget by 16.5% by the time its first term ends, barring any new stimulus. This significantly increases taxpayer liability, which all but ensures the need for higher taxes. And higher taxes lead to depressed consumer demand, which does not stimulate the growth of capital in a free market -- it thwarts it.
This may seem obvious to a reasonable American who has the economic sense to balance his household budget. Increased essential spending on household repairs, for example, will leave less money for discretionary spending, which will in turn influence how you spend money. You may spend less, and you may save more, but spending patterns will be affected. But that's all alien to politicians -- particularly leftist ones. They generally embrace a "zero elasticity view of the world." They believe that "people will behave after taxes just as they behaved before taxes and the only effect of taxes is more revenue." In other words, they think we are cogs in a government-run economic machine operated by bureaucratic tinkers working for a greater good, rather than individuals who operate within individual circumstances. And that is why collectivists love Keynesianism and hate supply-side economics.
The beauty of supply-side economics is that it achieves what politicians rarely do: it recognizes and accounts for the economic realities of individuals. In fact, it relies heavily upon those realities. Reagan's economic advisers knew that cutting taxes would leave individual Americans with more discretionary income, giving a boost to demand. They knew that if they incentivized individual producers and businesses, those same people and enterprises would be eager to invest to meet that increased demand, yielding economic growth and prosperity. They knew that individuals are the drivers of economic success, not the government.
But Keynesian economics, like socialism, Marxism, and fascism, can work only in the absence of individualism. And this is simply not a realistic expectation unless individualism is forcefully repressed. Rather, human nature dictates that individualism will be expressed in a free society, and along with it will come varying levels of ambition and ability -- and, ultimately, success. This is reality, and it cannot be ignored simply because it is an inconvenient consideration. Yet that is precisely what Keynesian economists do. And that is precisely why many of us recognize that Keynesian economists fail.
Collectivists looking to suppress liberty and destroy America's capitalist form, however, might say that this is precisely why Keynesianism succeeds.
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CONSTITUTION 101
History in Pictures
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TODAY'S QUOTE
"A constitution is not an act of government, but of the people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right."
Thomas Paine
America's Two-Faced Liberals
America's Two-Faced Liberals
Walter E. Williams
President Barack Obama and Wall Street occupiers, along with their allies in the mainstream media and on college campuses, have maintained an ongoing attack on high-income earners, people they call 1 percenters. Listening to their deceitful demagoguery, you would naturally think of them as 99 percenters, but you'd be dead-wrong.
Last week, MSN Money posted a report titled "The richest counties in America." According to the report, residents of those 15 wealthiest counties "have median household incomes that are double the national average." Three of those counties have a median income of more than $100,000. The report goes on to say, "While many Americans struggle to find jobs, balance their budgets and get by with less, some folks are living high on the hog." Let's look at some of those counties.
Loudoun County, Va., has a median household income of $119,540, making it the nation's richest county. Virginia's Fairfax County is next, with a median household income of $103,010; the median price of a house is $507,800. Third is Howard County, Md., where the median household income is $101,771. These three richest counties have seven nearby high-income neighbors, which include Arlington and Montgomery counties. The nation's richest counties are close to Washington, D.C., where people come to do good and wind up doing well for themselves.
These 1 percenters are not wealthy right-wing Republicans; they are Obama's liberals. How can one tell? It turns out that seven of the 10 wealthiest counties in the Washington area voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. These liberals portray themselves as 99 percenters when they are really 1 percenters. They're simply running a deceitful rope-a-dope, aided by the mainstream media, on the American people.
During last year's Occupy movement, truly seedy-looking characters camped out on the streets and in the parks of several of our cities, causing millions of dollars of property damage. They committed robberies, thefts and sex crimes. Some of their lowlife acts, such as defecating and urinating in public and on police vehicles, were filmed. These people also portrayed themselves as 99 percenters. It turns out that they weren't that at all.
Will Rahn, deputy editor for The Daily Caller, wrote an article titled "NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury" (Nov. 2, 2011). Nearly 1,000 protesters were arrested in New York between Sept. 18 and Oct. 15. Police collected information on each arrestee's name, age, sex, criminal charge, home address and -- in most cases -- race. The median value of the homes of the arrestees was $305,000 -- a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied homes of the rest of us. Ninety-five of the arrestees lived in homes valued at more than $500,000. Those who rented paid a median rent of $1,850 per month. Of the 984 protesters arrested, at least 797 are white. One Occupy Wall Street protester arrested -- presumably, if you listen to the mainstream media, penniless and from a blue-collar family -- lived in an $850,000 home in the nation's capital.
Recall that while on the campaign trail, Obama promised, "We will stand up in this election to bring about the change that won't just win an election but will transform America." Along with progressives, who formerly called themselves liberals, Obama wants to transform America into a European-like socialist nation. The Occupy protesters and their useful idiots in the media and on college campuses proudly display signs and banners revealing their preferences and affiliations, such as "Communist Party USA," "Democratic Socialists of America" and "Fight for Socialism." The American Nazi Party has issued an official endorsement of Occupy. The movement is also supported by White House leftist allies such as the Working Families Party, the Service Employees International Union -- as well as most other labor unions -- ACORN, the New Party and the Democratic National Committee.
During the forthcoming elections, we can be assured that these people will do all they can, including violent protests, to help Obama have an additional four years to continue his transformation of our nation.
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Obama Pushes False GM Success Story
Obama Pushes False GM Success Story
Politics: The Obama camp can't stop clucking about how he saved GM and the car industry. But if the GM bailout is such a success story, why can't it pay back its debt to taxpayers?
The president's new campaign video narrated by actor Tom Hanks claims GM has "repaid" its loans. But in a revelation by the special inspector general monitoring the TARP bailout program, GM and GMAC together still owe the biggest share of the remaining $119 billion TARP debt.
Of the top bailout recipients, GM is the biggest laggard, the TARP watchdog says in his latest quarterly report to Congress. Bank of America, Citigroup, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial all have paid off their debt and left the TARP program. Even AIG has paid back more than 75% of what it owes taxpayers.
GM, on the other hand, still owes more than half the $50 billion in federal funds it received when the combination of the recession and its costly union contracts drove it into bankruptcy. And its lending arm, GMAC (now Ally Financial), still owes $14.5 billion.
What's worse, it's not clear that GM actually repaid what it's gotten credit for repaying. Check out this note buried in the inspector's report: "As part of a credit agreement with Treasury, $16.4 billion in TARP funds were placed in an escrow account that GM could access only with Treasury's permission."
As it turns out, GM got Treasury's OK to "repay" more than $6.7 billion "using a portion of the escrow account that had been funded with TARP funds." So GM is merely paying the government back with government money, not money GM is earning selling cars, as the administration has claimed.
Worse, GM in effect is still borrowing money. Consider this item from the report: "What remained in escrow was released to GM." Bottom line: Taxpayers have not been paid back and are still on the hook as GM continues to require government help. Yet Obama has hailed the GM bailout as the signature achievement of his big government programs.
"On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen," the president said. "Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's No. 1 automaker.
Even that's a stretch. GM edged tsunami-crippled Toyota by counting sales at its joint ventures in China, which aren't wholly owned subsidiaries. And the government is directly subsidizing new GM auto lines like the star-crossed Chevy Volt.
Ford, which didn't take TARP funds, grabbed market share from GM and is now more profitable. Ironically, Ford for the first time in years has outsold GM in the number of cars bought by the federal government — although Washington still owns a huge stake in GM. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
In North America, Ford just recorded its highest quarterly profit since 2000. GM missed profit estimates in the fourth quarter. And analysts are not sanguine about its first-quarter results due Thursday.
The GM story is hardly what we're looking for in terms of a recovery. That Obama is touting it as a top economic achievement speaks volumes about his policies.
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As usual Obama is on other side of issues from the American public, though this is a far closer call. I suspect if media accurately reported all the shenanigans and actual results involved in auto bailouts these numbers would be higher. Of course like a lot of the Obama socialist agenda Bush set Obama up for it on a tee.
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TODAY'S QUOTE
