Congressman Tim Bishop held an online town hall meeting to hear questions from constituents and give his answers. Perhaps he thought this a safer forum than a live town hall meeting. Last year’s meeting in Setauket did not go well and was soon viral on You Tube.

I will comment on three of the topics from that meeting: the payroll tax cut, regulations, and manufacturing jobs.

Payroll Tax Cut

Congressman Bishop came out heavily pitching the extension of the payroll tax cut, from the normal level of 6.2% to the current level of 4.2% and even to go lower to 3.1%, for at least another year. He made the startling claim, quoting some experts that if the payroll tax cut wasn’t retained it would cost 400,000 jobs. It must be from the loss of all that spending power generated from a 2% cut in the payroll tax. I am sure pizza parlors will be devastated, as the weekly savings to a typical family will be about the cost of a pizza pie. The other statistic was that if the payroll tax was cut further to 3.1%, 750,000 new jobs would be created. Interesting. Raise the tax by 2% and 400,000 jobs would be lost, cut it by an additional 1.1% and nearly twice as many jobs would be created. Like prior predictions of how government intervention would affect jobs, we are supposed to believe that employers will start hiring if the cost of hiring a new employee  is reduced by 3.1% for just one year, before going back up. Only those people who never worked in private industry, like Bishop, Schumer, Obama, would believe that.

Bishop insisted that these cuts would have no impact to the Social Security Trust Fund. Considering that there is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund other than a bunch of IOUs from Uncle Sam’s other pocket, he may be correct on that front, but he said that the cut would be paid for cutting spending elsewhere. Not surprisingly, he didn’t say where exactly “elsewhere” was.

Throughout the call, Bishop’s press secretary was conducting a dopey poll. To paraphrase, “If you are in favor of the payroll tax cut that will put $1,500 in your pocket, press 1, if not, press 2.” Who wouldn’t press 1? What would the results be if he asked, “If you are in favor of borrowing $600 from China that your children and grandchildren will have to pay back, so that we can give you $1,500 today, press 1, if you think more borrowing and debt is a bad idea, press 2,” I think the poll would turn out quite differently.

Regulations

A caller who owned a small construction company asked about all the regulations and paperwork that businesses had to deal with. Bishop said that President Obama had things well under control forming a commission to “zero base” all regulations and hundreds and hundreds of regulations have been taken off the books. In the Wall Street Journal today there is an editorial titled, “Regulation for Dummies,” that paints a very different picture.

To answer the most basic question—has regulation increased?—we’ll focus on what the government defines as “economically significant” regulations. Those are rules that impose more than $100 million in annual costs on the economy, though there are hundreds if not thousands of new rules every year that fall well short of that.

According to an analysis of the Federal Register by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the Cabinet departments and agencies finalized 84 such regulations annually on average in President Obama’s first two years. The annual average under President Bush was 62 and under President Clinton 56

As the graph clearly shows the number of “economically significant” regulations under Obama has skyrocketed. This is what is causing the uncertainty that is hindering employment. How can this be curtailed? A bill just passed in the House of Representatives called the “Regulation from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS)”. This would require any of these economically significant regulations to be sent to Congress for approval before becoming being enacted. What the process is today is that Congress can vote against regulations, but that can be vetoed by the President. If the regulations are coming from the president, wouldn’t you expect him to veto it? This turns it around so that the Congress has to approve the regulations, if they don’t, there is nothing for the president to veto. The Democrats say this is a Congressional encroachment of the Executive.

“The REINS Act would undermine our ability to protect children from harmful toys, prevent asthma and lung ailments resulting from pollution, and ensure that our small businesses can compete fairly in the marketplace,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer added. “At the same time, it would force Congress to play a larger role in the regulatory process, leading to even more gridlock in Washington.”

Surely he forgot to mention killing bunnies in there somewhere. But let’s look at the process: Congress passes a law; departments in the Executive branch write regulations to carry out the law Congress passed. So why is it an outrage that Congress reviews economically significant regulations to see if the Executive is actually implementing what they passed? Tim Bishop voted against the REINS Act. This is another case of Democrats focusing on piddling regulations while saying “hands off” the really impactful ones.

Manufacturing Jobs

Another caller asked the Congressman about manufacturing jobs. He patted himself on the back for helping to bail out the auto industry. He said if he and others hadn’t done that that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. I addressed the implausibility of this in an earlier post. In that post I argued that if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and even if they didn’t come out of it leaner and meaner, people still needed transportation. They would buy Fords, Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, etc., that are currently built here in the U.S. Those car companies would need to increase their purchases from suppliers and those who formerly supplied GM and Chrysler would be well situated to supply the remaining car companies. The argument that we don’t manufacture here anymore is a myth. On a dollar volume basis, we still manufacture more than any country on earth. A few miles from where I am writing this, in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the largest Toyota factory outside of Japan. Due to a free trade agreement with South Korea that the Democrats blocked for years, that Toyota plant will begin exporting about 6,000 Camrys a year from Kentucky to South Korea.

One of the reasons we don’t build more here is our lousy tax code. Fix it. A reason there is not more manufacturing in Mr. Bishop’s district on Long Island is high electric rates. Factories run on power and power on Long Island is expensive. One of the reasons for that is that government approved the building of a $5 billion nuclear power plant on Long Island, and then when it was ready to throw the switch, they changed direction and said it couldn’t open. So Long Island rate payers had to find and buy electric from other sources and pay for the mothballed plant that produced nothing. Once again, the government helping us out.

But Tim Bishop has a solution. He wrote a bill to ban offshore call centers from federal contracts or loan guarantees for five-year. Nothing like micromanaging a corner of the economy while the rest of it burns. Why not look to the root cause? Tax structure, too much regulations, ObamaCare, out of control government spending. If Congress would fix those problems maybe companies wouldn’t look offshore to set up call centers.

The Budget

Tim Bishop also touched on the deficit and debt. He said we need to cut spending, but he never said what he would cut; he said we needed to control entitlement spending, but he didn’t say how he would do that; and he said we needed to add revenue, but he knew exactly how to do that, tax the rich. Here’s how I see it. The government got us into this mess by spending too much money, they should get us out of it by spending less money. Asking for any more tax revenue is just shirking their responsibility for which they are paid handsomely, and passing the problem on to us. Who couldn’t solve the problem with enough money?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

photo by Kevin Dooley

One of the main reasons the current economic problem is so hard to solve and the battle lines are so starkly drawn is that there is strong disagreement on what the problem is and likewise the solutions. The mantra from the left is that the problem is Bush’s fault, there was too much deregulation under Bush, although no one points to any particular regulation repealed under Bush that caused the crisis, and that we don’t tax enough. Those on the right have a different view.

Conservatives believe that President Obama is hell bent on changing America from a world leader to just one part, co-equal with many others in a world government. Think of the European Union with America added. In addition, we believe, that Obama wants to remake America as another socialist state on the European model instead of fertile ground for creative entrepreneurs to plant the seeds of their dreams and watch them grow. Instead he wants to redistribute the wealth by taking from those who produce to those who do not.

At first blush this may seem compassionate even fitting within the Judeo-Christian philosophy of helping the least of our brothers. However, I don’t recall learning anywhere in my Catholic upbringing those passages in the Bible or among the church scholars where we should all defer to the government and shirk our individual responsibilities. In other words if the story of the Good Samaritan was played out today, the Samaritan would see the man beaten and lying on the side of the road, dial 911, and then go about his business without soiling his hands to help the poor man himself. No worry, there must be plenty of government programs to help the poor guy and better yet, we can tax the rich to pay for it. He would not be so crazy as to put the man in his car, take him to a private hospital, leave some money for expenses and promise to pay any shortfall on his return. That would be viewed as nutty. However, when Obama’s philosophy is in place for a long enough time it changes from that of helping those truly in need, to one of entitlement. If you doubt this you need only look and listen to the recent rioting in Britain. They can rob and loot from business owners, because they say they’re the rich and they deserve to get taken down a couple of pegs. But who is paying for their handouts?

But aside from our view of the role of government what about what has worked in the past and what has not? What about the lies that pack political punch but do not stand up to scrutiny. Let’s take a look at the “we have to tax more” lie.

President Bush was not a fiscal conservative. For example, he added the prescription drug benefit to Medicare without providing funding for it. But in an article in the Wall Street Journal giving a primer on the debt situation, John Steele Gordon says this:

That decline {of debt relative to GDP] ended in 2001 following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and rising unemployment in the resulting recession. By 2003 the debt-to-GDP ratio had risen to 61.7%. Many blame the Bush tax cuts for adversely impacting federal revenues, causing the debt to spiral upwards. But that is just not true. Federal revenues declined by almost 12% in the early years of the decade, but when the tax cuts fully kicked in in 2003, the economy began to grow strongly again and federal revenues increased 44% in the next four years, while unemployment fell to 4.2% from 6.2%. Federal outlays in those four years increased by only 26.4%, and while the debt-to-GDP ratio increased to 64.8% by 2007, that was still well below what it had been in 1994.

First, the Democrats love to hark back to the Clinton years, the last time we had budget surpluses, as proof of the genius of Democratic leadership. But when Bush became president and was hit with a recession and the bursting of the dot com bubble, why was that not Clinton’s fault? Answer: President Bush had more class than to point fingers. He took the hand he was dealt and played it. Likewise, when he left office he made no comments about his successor, unlike the equally classless former Presidents Carter and Clinton who can’t bring themselves to get off the political stage.

Bush cut taxes and brought the unemployment rate down to 4.2% from 6.2%, while Obama jacked up spending and the unemployment climbed from 7.7% and is stuck at over 9%, two years after the recession officially ended.

Second, the argument from the left is that we have to repeal the Bush Tax cuts because we cannot afford them. As Mr. Gordon points out we had a revenue boom. In 2007 the Treasury took in more revenue than at anytime in history. This is plainly a spending problem and we have to unwind the reckless spending. The spending under President Bush was out of control and under President Obama he has kicked into overdrive.

The “solutions” being floated talk about it taking 10, 20, 30, 40 years to get things under control. It didn’t take that long to get into this mess, why should it take that long to get out? Granted, we are facing the Baby Boomers going from paying into Social Security and Medicare to drawing out and addressing that has to be front and center. The ponzi schemes that are Social Security and Medicare, like all ponzi schemes, have reached the point where we don’t have enough new people paying in to keep the con going. It is collapsing and we need our representatives to come up with a workable solution. We need to return to Constitutionally limited government, and let the states handle those things that are not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution as is clearly spelled out in the tenth amendment.

But first we need our representatives to act like grown ups and stop trying to score political points to get themselves reelected, and face up the what the problem really is, spending, and fix it. The golden goose is dead. It’s time to live within our means.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by reinvented

The stock market is bouncing up and down like Fatty Arbuckle on a bungee cord. The job numbers are just as dismal as they were last week. The CBO says we can expect unemployment to continue north of eight percent until 2016. Is it just me or is the honeymoon over?

The last few times I parked myself in front of the television to await the next important address from the president, I noticed an empty podium as I looked at my watch and wondered when the president would arrive. It felt a bit annoying. I don’t know why it should because I don’t remember how prompt President Reagan was, or President Clinton or either of the Presedents Bush, so why would it feel particularly annoying with this president? Maybe the main stream media is at fault. After all, wasn’t President Reagan an “amiable dunce”? He probably lost his notes. We all know President Bush, despite two Ivy League degrees was also an idiot. He probably got lost along the way. President Clinton, that sly devil, he was probably straightening his tie and making sure everything else was in place, if you know what I mean. But President Obama, we are told, is brilliant. He is also super cool There is also something about the super cool, they like to remind you that they are cool, so you wait for them. They get there when they feel like it. So with the press corps assembled, millions of television viewers listening to the pundits while the picture-in-picture at the top of the screen shows the vacant podium, the cool president is letting us cool our heels. He will saunter down the hallway toward the microphones when he is good and ready, because when you are cool, that’s how you do it.

When the work day is done it’s time for a little basketball or if it’s a weekend some golf. Vacations? We have to go the Vineyard, baby. People criticized Bush for his vacations and they may well have been longer than Obama’s, but Bush went home to Texas to do chores. Obama’s not going home to Chicago to paint the bathroom. Does the fact that America is hurting not bother him at all? If it does, he is too cool to show it.

President Obama said it was a hell of a mess he inherited and we needed to spend trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy or unemployment would rise to nine percent. When the program failed and all we had to look forward to was finding a way to pay the bill, President Obama laughed about “shovel ready” not being as shovel ready as we thought. Big joke, but the joke’s on us.

Do you remember a supposedly cool kid when you were growing up and how he bragged about either the things that he had or the places he had been or the championships he had won, where he used to live, only to find out it was all a crock? Do you also remember another kid who was suspicious of the new guy all along? Well, the first group that was enthralled with the new kid voted for Obama. The skeptical kids did not. The grumblings about this president are getting louder even from his supporters.

So what does Obama do? Well he tells us he has a super duper plan to create jobs that he will tell us about as soon as he gets back from vacation. It seems like he doesn’t want to come back. He’s just not that into us anymore. He has accumulated some gray hairs, and he would really rather be back on the campaign trail, with one reason being the re-runs of his old campaign criticisms of Bush are coming back to bite him. He enjoys the crowds, the adulation, winning the job, but when it comes to doing the job he neither has the skill, the experience, or the interest. He’s just not that into it anymore.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

PERFIDIOUS PORTRAYAL OF HITLER AND UNIONS
The labor union was the chief tool of the early twentieth century demagogue. Modeled after the success of arousing the discontent of the French peasants of the late 18th century, it was the natural place to amalgamate the passions and tensions of workers and lead them into revolt. The basic tenet of both the Russian and German revolutions was labor based social/political revolt (“Workers of the world unite!”). The differences were in style not substance.

Stalin preached the crisis of capitalism would raise the consciousness of the working class to revolt. The Communists in Germany however, competed poorly with Hitler’s Fascistic nationalism, which was rooted in the same discontent. His message to the wealthy however, was not to take everything they owned, but to threaten it. He told them to either work within his system or risk losing your estate. Some prescient individuals understood working with Hitler was better than allowing Hitler to take their property. His message to the worker was, “above all, the trade unions are necessary as foundation stones of the future economic parliament or chambers of estates” (Mein Kampf). He was so totally aligned with labor that he used terms like, “social justice” and “national community” to confirm their importance.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler goes into great detail about how National Socialism must realign all aspects of society to the goals of trade unions, to create an equality of outcome. And if those aspects of society are not willing, they will be taken over (co-opted). Hitler emphasized the Nazi union (German Labor Front) should be the only union, and one way to make it so, was to infiltrate the Marxist unions and slowly transform them (Mein Kampf Vol 2, Ch.12). This is a stunning admission of how similar Nazism was to Marxism, that its members could infiltrate it and transform its labor union. It was not about espionage or sabotage, but simply occupying the Marxist union and moving it the short distance from following Stalin to following Hitler. This is why when combined with his co-opting of the military and the wealthy, Hitler is associated with right wing fascism. If there even were such a thing, Hitler could not have been further from it.

His extreme socialist impulse explains perfectly his hatred of Marxism, as a competitor for the constituency he so needed to take over the German government. The Communist Party, although failing to garner political majorities, by its numbers foiled Hitler’s objectives of doing the same and caused his utter hatred for Communism…not because he was right wing. Adolf Hitler was really an alloy of Socialism and Fascism, and not purely either one by itself. His relationship with private business and was a matter of a pragmatic approach to controlling the German government.

Hitler and Conservatives

He played up German nationalism as a way to appeal to the conservative elements of rural society, while playing down his economic plans, because he needed at least some conservative support to achieve his goal of winning the majority. During the Weimar hyperinflation the farmers did not fare as badly as those in the cities because they were dealing in commodities such as food that they could live off and barter with rather having to rely on the worthless currency to buy them. So he carefully crafted a messianic myth about the resurrection of the medieval German Empire, which emanated from the Holy Roman Empire, to create a new Third Empire, the German word for which is Reich. This “Third Reich” would restore the national pride missing since the humiliation suffered as a result of the terms of the armistice of WWI.

There was no question when he was appointed Chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg in 1933, that Hitler was a far left progressive (socialist) until history was rewritten by those trying to disentangle their own alignment with his legacy, lying that he morphed into a right wing despot. His alignment with conservatives was a transparent attempt by both the National Socialists and conservatives in parliament to stop the surging Communists, their common enemy. But there were no illusions on either side. And the evidence is pretty convincing: Once in office, Hitler’s depression era blend of socialism mixed with co-opted private enterprise was attractive to other countries. Roosevelt started his first term of presidency in 1933 about the same time Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Roosevelt’s approach in his first term was strangely reminiscent of Fascism and Roosevelt even complimented Hitler’s mode of “organizing society”, citing it was “necessary to check this liberty for the benefit of the freedom of the whole”. There was a common spirit of collectivism among them, Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt, a coalition of business, government and labor.

This gets lost in the fog of history rewritten. Nobody doubts Roosevelt was left of center. It’s no secret he is pretty far left of center, considering his big government impulse. But it is also a fact that he was an admirer of fascism. These relationships get lost in history because Hitler was an inconvenient megalomaniac. Had he not embarrassed those relationships, I doubt the fascistic impulse would be so stunted among progressives today. I believe it has remained an essential yet latent impulse, and I believe it was subsumed into modern progressivism if there every really was a divergence.

Hitler Transformed the Unions He Didn’t Eliminate Them

Instead of allowing the left to propagate the lie that Hitler did away with unions, the truth is, he created the German Labor Front, complete with a swastika flag as its symbol, because he could control it, and barred the formation of future unions (such as Marxist unions). This would control competing political forces from using unionization for the purpose of consolidation of power, as he did.

The progressives in America painfully extricate their historic relationship with Hitler by assigning Hitlerian characteristics to members of the right in American politics. It is a “thou doth protesteth too much” knee jerk reaction, and it is attended by great animation and even violence. Not that the American left actively advocates government overthrow. Oh wait! That is exactly what progressives have been doing since the sixties. In fact, Andy Stern who is very close to the Obama administrator and a frequent visitor to the White House said, “Workers of the World Unite is not just a slogan any more, it’s the way we are going to have to do our work.” 

Hitler was a leftist, a union supporter and wrote in his manifesto that unions were an integral part of the much needed social justice in Germany and the entire nation and its “chambers of estates and economic parliament” must be aligned with that ideal. His entire power structure was based on this power to the people code. Along with universal healthcare, expanded animal welfare laws, support of healthy, organic foods and vegetarianism, a minimum wage, progressive taxation, and tight gun control — policies all shared by progressives from Roosevelt to Clinton to Obama, it is impossible for the left to separate themselves from Hitler. So they try a little “I’m rubber you’re glue” on the right. But it just doesn’t stick when you take a closer look.

CORRECTION: In the initial release of this post it stated, “In fact, some in the Obama administration have recently been quoted saying “Workers of the World Unite is not just a slogan any more, it is a way of life”. It should have said, “In fact, Andy Stern who is very close to the Obama administrator and a frequent visitor to the White House said, “Workers of the World Unite is not just a slogan any more, it’s the way we are going to have to do our work.” We regret the error.

Please share your opinions below.

The Democrats were routed at the polls.  They lost the House of Representatives; they converted a near supermajority in the Senate to a mere majority and they lost enough state level races to give Republicans the kind of control they haven’t enjoyed since 1928.  But the message fell on deaf Democrat ears.

The country revolted against too much spending, too much government control from such things as ObamaCare, and too much spending.  But the Democrats who ignored the will of the public before the election,  ran away from their record and focused on the personal attacks of their opponents during the election, are now valiantly trying to hold on to the weapons they have come to depend on.

Where would the Democrats be without class warfare?  If they can’t draw a distinction between rich and poor, black and white, (illegal) immigrants and citizens, labor and management, gay and straight, male and female, atheist and believers, Muslims and everyone else, how can they ever hope to win another election?  The Democrats win elections by pitting these various groups against each other and hope to cobble together a coalition to pull out a win.  They can’t promote the policies proven to win: low taxes and spending and limited government that has propelled this country to the top of the economic world.  Those policies are now owned by the Republican Party. 

The Democrats only solution is to take out their Saul Alinsky manual, find a group of disgruntled special interests, point to their successful opposites and demonize them.  Make their minions believe that it is a zero sum game.  Continue to tell them that their current state is not their fault, but the fault of their adversary.  There is no such thing as a rising tide lifting all boats, or a larger pie in which we can all share.  They have to take the pie from their oppressors.

At the present time we are facing a massive tax increase on January 1, 2011.  The class warfare battle lines have been drawn between the “middle class” and the “rich”.  The Democrats need to demonize the rich, but have run into the problem that many small businesses fall into the category of having incomes above the “rich” threshold of $250,000.  It is a well known fact that small businesses create 70%-80% of all jobs in America.  So what’s a Democrat to do?  Call Chuck Schumer to the rescue.  Chuck wants to move the dividing line between “rich” and “the rest of us” to $1 million from $250,000.  The thinking is that if they can maintain the line somewhere, they have a dividing line they can manipulate to win elections.

Aren’t we all Americans?  Didn’t we all succeed when JFK cut taxes, Reagan cut taxes, Clinton and Gingrich cut taxes, and Bush cut taxes?  Didn’t the economy worsen when Hoover raised taxes, and Roosevelt raised taxes?  Don’t we all benefit from a larger pie?  It’s time to recognize that class warfare benefits no one but Democrats reaching for more power and more control over our lives.  It’s time to start erasing the dividing lines.

It’s not about rich versus poor; it is about the opportunity for all of us to become rich.  We need a sensible tax policy that collects more dollars from those who make more, but not a larger share of their income.  If Progressives think government is being starved, let them feel free to write as big a check as their hearts desire and send it to the Treasury.  Let the rest of us decide if we want to invest in creating more jobs, donate to charities doing work we believe in, helping out a school, or spending it which will create jobs for those who produce what we consume.

The current tax rates should be extended permanently for all.  If for political expediency that cannot be done, then at a bare minimum, do not uncouple them and make one level of tax rates permanent and a higher level temporary.  The cynical Democrats will work tirelessly to find some point where they can draw the line and set one group of Americans against another. They only seem to find their way to power by dividing us rather than uniting us.

Remember, president Obama ran for office as the post partisan president.  He was to be the great uniter, the purveyor of hope and change.  It didn’t take long to see that as a sham when in early meetings with Republicans he smugly declared, “I won,” and scolded John McCain saying, “The election is over, John.”  Let us unite behind common goals, not common men.  Let us join together and work together to make this nation great again.

As we approach the mid-point of his term we, once again, hear President Obama with another scheme to create jobs.  This time he really, really means it.  For a mere $50 billion we can build roads, rails and runways and we can create an “infrastructure bank” to boot.  I guess the government wants to get into the banking business now that they have swallowed up two thirds of the domestic auto companies and passed a law to take over health care.  But, hey, who are you calling a socialist?

The infrastructure bank has supporters: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ed Rendell the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and Michal Bloomberg the Democratic, Republican, Independent mayor of New York, but they want it to support more projects such as water and clean energy projects.  But here’s the really good news, according to the New York Times “They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.” We get a brand new panel of experts to tell us morons what is good for us! 

How about this idea, get the Federal government out of the roads, rails and runways business.  Unless the road is part of the Interstate highway system, and that means interstate, the feds should stay away from it.  If a road within a city needs maintenance, that city and its citizens should pay for it, not taxpayers elsewhere in the country.  That’s how the whole process got screwed up.  You build my road, I’ll build your road and nobody will know who pays for what, until we find out we are $13 trillion in debt.

One of the good ideas Jimmy Carter had was to deregulate the airlines.  Airlines became competitive and prices came down.  The problem is that air travel consists of three components: the airlines, the airports and air traffic control.  Complete the process, deregulate the airports and air traffic control.  If you do that, airports can charge different prices for takeoff and landing slots.  No more will we see thirty-two flights all scheduled to take off at 7:30 AM from one airport.  Private investors would also have an incentive to build a state of the art air traffic control system. 

By the way, what happened to all those “shovel ready” projects from the first stimulus plan?  Did we actually finish building all the turtle crossings that this country needs?

On another front, Obama continues to tinker with the mortgage market rather than getting out of the way, letting housing prices find their bottom and then going from there.  George Mason economist Anthony B. Sanders said in the New York Times, ““Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels.  If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”  Even Democrats are piling on:

“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”

Who would have thought that a president and vice president with no executive experience prior to taking office would not know what to do once they got there?  After all everyone knew that Obama was a really nice guy with an even temperament, what went wrong?  Now we hear that Fannie Mae wants to back mortgages with nothing down.  But not to worry, this time they are actually going to require the lenders to check to make sure the borrower has income. I feel better already.

Since this administration seems to like experts how about listening to these experts:

“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.

Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and seven other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”

It’s time for President Obama and his administration to get his boot off of the neck of the economy.  Ours is the strongest most resilient economy in the world, if you set it free.  All of the tinkering and the anti-business threats have pushed employers to the sidelines.  The uncertainty over the economy has led businesses to take a wait and see attitude.

The rhetoric the Democrats have been trying to muster to save their skins is that “eight years of failed policies,” yada, yada, yada.  The reality is that this recession started one year after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress.  This recession started in the last year of the Bush administration, not the first seven.  This recession has lasted nearly twice as long and counting under Obama than it did under Bush, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon.  A recent poll in Ohio by Public Policy Polling asked respondents who they would prefer to see in the White House right now and the results were George W. Bush 50%, Barack Obama 42%; what does that tell you?

So, Mr. Obama, keeps your hands were we can see them and slowly step away from the economy.

To say today’s “Restoring Honor” event in Washington will be historic is an understatement.  Gauging by the biased reporting on the news pages of the New York Times and the seething, sputtering outrage from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow on the Op-Ed pages should give you a pretty good indication of the focus this event will garner.

Kate Zernike opens her report, titled “Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle”, saying it is the ultimate “thumb in the eye” to stand on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in the place he stood and talk about restoring honor.  How dare he?  Isn’t that what racists said of Dr. King when he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial with these words?

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

Ms. Zernike reminds us of the case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired by the Obama administration when a videotape of her redemptive speech about how she first discriminated against a white farmer but later helped him was shown across the Internet.  She writes about video tape being heavily edited by failing to show how she mended her ways and helped that farmer.  But Ms. Zernike doesn’t finish the story where later in her speech Ms. Sherrod says that those who opposed Obama’s health care plan had racist motives because President Obama is black.  Ms. Sherrod’s redemption is far from complete.

She then says that the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights raises the specter of Jim Crow and George Wallace.  But it was the federal government that passed and enforced the Fugitive Slave laws and it was independent states of the north, exercising their states’ rights, who supported the Underground Railroad and refused to actively assist returning slaves to the South.  So states’ rights cut both ways.

She concludes that, “Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.”  It’s hard to quiet the argument because those on the left keep falsely making it.  They cannot prove racism so they feel that by repeating often enough, they can make it stick.

I was at a street fair manning a booth for a Tea Party organization this spring.  An African-American teacher approached us tentatively to ask what we were about.  I asked her if she wanted the rumors or the truth and she opted for the truth.  I told her that we were a policy based organization focusing on accountable government, fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and following the Constitution.  She said she didn’t know any of that, she got e-mails from Moveon.org all the time and before leaving she signed our e-mail list.  When the truth reaches the ears of people over the screeching of the New York Times and the main stream media, it is generally well received.  The racial of mix of the Tea Party rallies will change over time when we can speak to the folks one on one without the lies of the left.

The Opionators

Bob Herbert begins his Op-Ed piece in a very open minded fashion, “America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.”  Thank you for sharing that, Bob, but there’s no need to pull punches here.

“There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.”

So why to you and your fellow travelers throw down the race card every time someone disagrees with a policy, if they are not of the same race?  Object to ObamaCare, that’s racism.  Object to the stimulus, racism.  Wanting Obama to fail to turn America into a socialist states, racism straight up.  Yes there is hatred and bigotry in this country, but it is primarily coming from the left.

Not to be outdone in the outrage department, Charles Blow titled his Op-Ed piece, “I Had a Nightmare.”  Mr. Blow said the following, “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.”  This would be an excellent point, if he could point to 3,000 blacks that Glenn Beck has murdered in the name of restoring honor.  But Mr. Blow can make no such connection, so his analogy to the Ground Zero mosque falls flat.  Curious indeed.

After venting his spleen, Mr. Blow suggests we re-read Dr. King’s speech “and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.”  Let’s do that.

“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

How do the actions of the left, throwing down the race card at every turn, accusing everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama to have racism at the core of that disagreement comport with not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”?  It arrogantly assumes that it is impossible not to see the glorious benefit of the government running every last aspect of our lives, therefore the only reason to disagree has to be racism.  With regard to violence, where do we see the violent demonstrations on the left or the right?  Breaking windows, looting, SEIU members beating down street vendors for selling anti-Obama buttons, etc. are all on the left.  When the police show up at rallies organized by the left they show up in riot gear, at Tea Party rallies the mounted police have to decide whether to let people pet their horses or not.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Didn’t America elect an African American President of the United States with 53% of the vote?  More than voted for Clinton either time, or Jimmy Carter?  Barack Obama wasn’t elected by minority votes alone.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Who more closely shares that dream, Glenn Beck, or those on the left who insist that forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech that blacks can’t get into college or get a job without affirmative action; that black families have not been destroyed by government programs like welfare that drove fathers away; that government run schools that can’t graduate its students are far better for blacks than school vouchers that will let them escape those hellholes?  Dr. King’s speech says nothing about racial preferences.  Dr. King’s speech talks about color blindness.  Dr. King’s speech says give us an equal chance.  Glenn Beck believes that.  Those on the left do not.  It is those on the left who believe African Americans cannot compete without more government programs to help them.  Glenn Beck believe they can succeed if government gets out of their way and if the left stops the lies of dependency that hold them back.  It is the New York Times, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert who wrap themselves in racial division and then say, “Why can’t we come together?”  If you want us to come together, stop standing in the way.

In the August 23, 2010, New York Times, Paul Krugman decries that if we don’t let the Bush Tax cuts expire and thus have a massive tax increase in the midst of a weak Obama recovery, it will be so unfair, so evil… 

First let’s look at how twisted the logic of the left has become.  Mr. Krugman says, “These same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.” Er, not really, Paul, unless the richest 120,000 people are stupid enough, with all their financial advisors, to have that much tax withheld from their incomes.  You see, Paul, the only reason the government would have to cut them checks is if they paid too much in taxes during the year, and since the current rates are already in place it is unlikely that they would change their behavior to suddenly have an extra $3 million sent to Washington.  Here’s the problem with your thinking, Paul.  It is not your money, it is not my money, it is not the government’s money to begin with.  It belongs to the people who have earned it.  It is the people to provide revenue to the government.  It is not the government who gives money to those who produce.  Got it?

Like most on the left Mr. Krugman always associates tax cuts with a loss of revenue and tax increases with a gain in revenue, and ignores how people change their behavior with regard to these changes.

As this chart shows, at the end of the Clinton administration and the dot.com bubble the economy fell into recession.  The Bush tax cuts were implemented in 2001 and they were across the board tax cuts, not just for the wealthy.  A second set of tax cuts came in 2003.  As you can see revenues started to fall before the tax cuts, but bounced back sharply after the cuts in 2001 and 2003.  But Mr. Krugman would have you believe that if you cut taxes, revenues fall and if you leave them along or increase them, revenues increase.  You can also see that Clinton’s tax increase in 1993, didn’t have much effect in changing the rate of revenue growth, but when the Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and instituted tax cuts in 1997 you can see the slope of the curve bend upwards and it is even steeper with the Bush tax cuts.  So in the absence of the 2001 recession, revenues collected increased with tax cuts, not tax increases.

Let’s look at who is paying what share of the taxes.  The follow chart shows what percentage of the tax burden was paid by what percentile of the income earners by Adjusted Gross Income.

So even as the Bush tax cuts reduced tax rates across the board, the “evil” rich still ended up carrying a larger share of the overall tax burden than they did before the cuts.  So just what is Mr. Krugman’s beef? 

I argue that were are nearing a dangerous threshold politically, where the majority of voters may soon find they pay no taxes and the minority pays all.  If that tipping point is reached, what is to prevent this majority from voting for massive tax increases that will only affect the minority?  All Americans should carry some share of the cost of government.  It should not be a free ride for some and a minority pays the tab. 

To further emphasize the fairness issue look at the following chart from the IRS in 2004.  The brown bars show the share of the income that the percentile on the vertical axis earns.  The blue bar shows the share of the total income tax bill they pay. 

The problem folks is spending.  As the first chart makes pretty clear, we have not been suffering from a revenue problem, we have been suffering from a spending problem.  This administration and their instigators, like Mr. Krugman, have been urging reckless spending upon reckless spending and even decrying that the administration has not spent nearly enough.  Krugman is sloppy in making his case and tries to convince his readers that we will be carrying buckets of money to the wealthy when the truth is that he wants to open the spigot wider from those who produce in this country to the profligate government who can then spend it on more turtle crossings in Florida, and to prop up the unions, and bankrupt states.  Stop spending, cut taxes, shrink the federal beast, and we will be in good shape in short order.

As many people have said, “I never got a job from a poor man.”  In looking back at my own career, I have worked for several companies that were started by entrepreneurs and who became wealthy. Do I care if they were wealthy?  No.  Do I wish they were taxed to the eyeballs?  No.   If they were, those are jobs I would probably wouldn’t have had.  Opportunity is what made America the country where people around the world fight to get into, not bashing the successful.  All who stive to come here want to become those wealthy successful people and give the same opportunity to their children.

The Democrats like to point to the Clinton presidency as proof of their fiscal responsibility.  It was a period of strong growth, balanced budgets, and prosperity.  They then point to the Bush presidency, all eight years of it, and deride it for deficits, and ultimately a very severe financial crisis.  But it is worth taking a moment to recall that the federal government is made up of three co-equal branches of government with built in checks and balances.  The Congress is not subordinate to the president and it does not work for him.  It is an equal branch of government that checks and balances the power of the presidency.  For the purpose of this discussion, I will leave out the third branch, the judiciary.

Despite the famous 1992 Clinton campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the recession had already ended in March 1991.  When Clinton took office he had a Democratic Congress and he pushed through a massive tax increase in 1993 without a single Republican vote.  We know what happened to Congress in 1994, the Republicans took over for the first time in 40 years.  Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which was included in the Republicans’ Contract with America.  It passed in the House but failed by one vote in the Senate.  After losing this round, Gingrich met with the Republican leadership and put forth  the idea of acting as if the amendment had passed and just start submitting balanced budgets.  They succeeded in the last three years of the Clinton presidency to produce budget surpluses and decrease the national debt.  This included a tax cut by the Republican Congress in 1997, and the economy grew much stronger after the Republican takeover of Congress than under an all Democratic government.

In the 1996 election, the Democrats regained control of the Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Up until that point the economy had grown steadily under President Bush despite two wars.  With Bush in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress we had tax cuts and seven years of economic growth.  In December of 2007  the economy went into recession, almost one year after the Democrats regained control.  Now with a Democrat in the White House, and the Democrats in control of Congress we are looking at massive growth in government, a whopping tax increase bearing down on us that will hit on January 1, 2011, and a growing debt that may eventually bankrupt us.

So what is all this talk about eight years of failed Republican policy?  Under Clinton and a Democrat Congress it was two years of a tax increase and modest growth.  Under Clinton and a Republican Congress it was six years of tax cuts, budget surpluses and strong economic growth.  Hmmm….same president, different parties controlling Congress.  Under Bush we had seven years of growth and tax cuts with a Republican Congress.  Under Bush and a Democratic Congress, recession, fiscal crisis.  Hmmm…same president, different parties controlling Congress.

But don’t expect honesty on the campaign trail from the Democrats.  It’s just not the Chicago way.

I do not like to throw around a charge of mendacity without good reason particularly after listening to the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere accuse Bush of this all day long.  But the more I listen to what comes out of this administration and the actions they take it is getting harder to hold my fire.

Take for example the brouhaha over the immigration law that hasn’t even gone into effect yet in Arizona.  From the start the administration has falsely portrayed the law as racial profiling, but when asked if they had actually read the ten page law, both Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano said they had not.  How do people in such senior positions in any administration make such a bold claim without reading what they are opposing?  It begs the question, do they know they are talking about?

The federal government has gone forward and is suing Arizona over the law claiming that it preempts federal law.  But here are some interesting questions:

• If the Arizona law preempts federal law and that is a bad thing, why does the federal government not sue San Francisco and other cities who have openly professed that they are Sanctuary Cities and immigration law will not be enforced therein?
• A recent news report is that there is a law on the books in Rhode Island that is virtually identical to the law in Arizona and it has withstood judicial challenge?  Why isn’t the federal government suing Rhode Island?
• The thrust of the federal government’s pique with the Arizona law is their claim that it is discriminatory.  But this same administration has just ordered that a case be dropped against a radical hate group, the Black Panthers, for putting armed thugs outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.  According to six career Civil Rights attorneys in the Justice Department, the case was a slam dunk and they had already gotten a default judgment from the court, but this administration chose to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Justice Department’s claim is that the facts did not fit the law.  Anyone who has seen the video of the incident knows that is a bald faced lie.  Is this administration for discrimination or against it?

The latest move by this administration against the rest of us is the recess appointment of Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare.  The lie in this case, is that the Republicans were stalling the appointment for “political purposes.”  Now other presidents have used recess appointments.  Both Clinton and Bush used them many times, however it was typically when they could not get the Senate to act on their nominee.  In this case, Max Baucus (D – MT), had not even scheduled hearings and eleven weeks after the nomination, the administration had not yet completed the nominating paperwork.  So was this action taken because of inaction on the part of the Senate or was the administration lying because they really didn’t want a public debate on Dr. Berwick?

Dr. Berwick has said he is, “Romantic about the National Health Service,” of Britain.  For all the false claims by the Obama Administration that if you are happy with your current health insurance you will be able to keep it, they stealthily appoint a socialized medicine disciple.  Dr. Berwick has also famously said:

 “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Let’s see, the Obama Administration appoints Dr. Berwick head of Medicare.  Medicare is the health care program for the elderly.  Dr. Berwick is plain about health care rationing and suggests the way to do it is with our eyes open.  While the term “death panel” may have been used by Sarah Palin partially for its shock value to drive home her point, changing the name to a “rationing” panel would make it different in what way?

Here is the key distinction.  In the hands of the individual and their family, they can decide what kind of care they want to provide their loved ones.  They can decide when enough is enough or whether to press on.  In a free market, insurance policies would be true insurance not medical payment plans.  But regardless you would have the liberty to decide.  In this administration’s world, some bureaucrat makes the decision and after they have driven all the alternatives out of business, other than those available to the wealthy, you will have no choice but to succumb to the will of Big Brother.

We are currently surrounded by news of massive government failures in regulation in the areas of finance and the oil industry and we are to believe that they will be superb in running one-sixth of the economy.  Do you believe the lies?