Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
The 26th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday celebration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held at the New York Sheraton last night was a remarkable event in the midst of all the babble about discourse and civility. Of course it was civil; it would not be any other way, but considering the venom that has flowed in the past year with charges from racism during the health care debate to causing the Tucson shootings it struck a very different and positive tone.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Reagan
Our friends on the left scoff at such words as those above, but the longer they are in power and providing “help”, the more they get tied up in knots. Let me walk you through an example using Congressman Tim Bishop as the key player.
You knew it was coming. We heard it all through the election about the $700 billion cost of extending the current tax rates that are due to expire on January 1, 2011. The progressives call it a cost because they believe that everything you make belongs to the government except what the government allows you to keep. So if they allow you to keep more of what you earn, they have to find the money to pay for it. Pay for what?
Democrats think they have a winner. They want to lather on some more financial regulations because regulators dropped the ball on enforcing what already exists. So as conservatives point out that what they are proposing is unnecessary or won’t work, they can gleefully say, “Republicans are for the fat cats, while we’re for the little guy.”
Broken Regulations
Harry Markopolos recognized within “minutes” that Bernie Madoff was a fraud. He took his case to the SEC and was promptly ignored. He took it to Forbes magazine…not interested. Bernie Madoff himself was surprised how long it took to be found out.
So what does the SEC do now? It initiates a case against Goldman Sachs where professionals on both sides of a transaction knew what they were getting into. One side bet on housing prices continuing to rise, the other betting the bubble would burst. The decision on pursuing this was voted 3-2, with three Democrats voting in favor of pursuing the case, and two Republicans voting against. It must be the Democrats looking out for the little guys and the Republicans looking out for evil Wall Street, right?
John Paulson is the investor who allegedly played unfairly by being able to choose the securities that went into the investment that Goldman Sachs allegedly didn’t disclose to the other party. Mr. Paulson hasn’t been charged with anything. Mr. Paulson also contributed $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last June. If you recall Jon Corzine, former Democratic Senator and Governor of New Jersey, used to be the chairman of Goldman Sachs. The new head of the SEC enforcement division in the Obama Administration, Adam Storch, is a former Goldman Sachs Vice President. So who’s in bed with Wall Street?
Democrats Need a Diversion
With almost every measure of public opinion on government appointment sinking to all time lows, the Democrats need to ramp up the class warfare machine to find anything that will gain traction with the public. They know they can’t fight on the facts so they have to start the fog machine. Typical Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals stuff.
Conservatives must focus the debate on the issues and not shrink from the fight. It is far too easy to show that Big Government (Obama) and Big Business (GE, et al) are really partners in dividing up the spoils amongst themselves and telling the rest of us how to live our lives.
Remembering Reagan
Ronald Reagan famously said that the statists believe:
“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
There is currently no more telling example of this than Senator Chuck Schumer bloviating about Spirit Air Lines charging passengers for carry on baggage. He wants to introduce legislation prohibiting this. Hey, Chuck, if you don’t like Spirit charging you for your carryon bags, pick another airline! That’s how markets work. But the genius that is Washington is, NO we have to regulate that! So the idiots would pass a law prohibiting charging for carryon bags and the airlines will respond by raising ALL ticket prices to compensate. So instead of my having a choice of carrying a bag on board or saving the money, or choosing another airline altogether, the government will make everything equal and more expensive.
So, Chuck, how are you and your pals doing as far as growing the economy and getting the unemployment rate down? Maybe you should spend some time on that, no?
President Obama has just created a panel to figure out how to get our debt under control. Even when he makes a decision, such as this one, it is to pass the buck to someone else to do the heavy lifting. His attempt to overhaul health care turned into the Harry and Nancy Show. Obama campaigned and gave speeches while Pelosi and Reid shut out the Republicans and created the bill that could not be passed. Obama is now trying to put lipstick on that pig, by calling for a bipartisan meeting. But instead of starting over and getting ideas from everyone, they are basically going to pick over the stinking corpse of the bill that the Democrats could not get passed. It is obvious that the real objective is to either get some Republicans to sign on or to use the meeting as a club to beat the Republicans as the “party of No.”
Stop Me Before I Spend
This president can’t seem to control himself and he finds that he painted himself into a corner. If he tries to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 per year he will be breaking a major campaign promise. If he stops spending on his own, he will lose the left which is about the only support he has remaining. So he calls in Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a committee charged with making the president a tailor made fig leaf, to allow him to cut spending and raise taxes, while shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I can’t go against the excellent advice of this august commission.”
If he wants to cut spending, he can just cut spending. He doesn’t need a commission to do so. How about an across the board spending freeze, except for national defense, until the economy grows enough to balance the budget and not with gimmicks like increasing discretionary spending now 24% and then saying you will freeze that same spending for the next three years? How about freezing government hiring? How about returning $500 billion in unspent stimulus money and $400 billion in repaid TARP money, plus interest, to the Treasury? Don’t hold your breath. That would require someone with executive experience who knows how to make a decision, rather than deliberating, like a legislator. Sarah Palin comes to mind, as does George Bush (I & II), Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. These experienced executives knew how to put together a budget and make decisions. Chris Christie in New Jersey was just sworn in last month as governor and he immediately identified the problem as too much spending and got to work cutting it back. All that President Obama seems to know how to do is talk.
If we start advertising now, we may get enough resumes to review to find a replacement by 2012.
“The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.” – New York Times, January 2, 2010
“The Treasury Department publicly maintains that its program is on track. “The program is meeting its intended goal of providing immediate relief to homeowners across the country,” a department spokeswoman, Meg Reilly, wrote in an e-mail message.” — same article, NYT
Hot on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s performance at the Department of Homeland Security, that things worked just swell and then, er, no it was a catastrophic failure, we have another example of this administration’s ineptitude. Let’s not let the marketplace work by flushing out the bad loans, have banks face up to the reality of their bad lending decisions, allow housing prices to reach a market level, all in a reasonably short time, no, let’s get another massive, taxpayer funded program in place to gum up the works and drag this out for years.
A Habit of Ignoring History
In 1929 Hoover mishandled the economy in a similar way bringing in the leaders of major industries and jawboning them to keep up production even in the face of falling demand so that jobs would not be lost. The businesses went along until that policy hit their financial statements in the form of plunging profitability. Stock prices fell sharply and more disastrous policies followed, first by Hoover and more by Roosevelt.
In 1920-21 there was a very steep and serious recession. However, companies cut wages and government didn’t interfere.
“The annual unemployment rate peaked at 11.7 percent in 1921, but it had fallen to 6.7 percent by the following year, and was down to an incredible 2.4 percent by 1923,” Murphy writes. “That is how a market with flexible wages and prices quickly corrects itself after a Fed-induced inflationary boom.”
Roosevelt’s policies followed Hoovers’ with more and more government interference. Throughout the Great Depression the programs didn’t work, government grew tremendously leaving us saddled with that legacy. On the other hand Reagan in the 1980s pursued a policy of cutting taxes and shrinking government. Roosevelt needed World War II to end the Great Depression, Reagan ushered in 25 years of unprecedented economic growth. Which one does Obama choose to follow? That’s right, Roosevelt. Brilliant!
Inexperience on Full Display
President Obama rides into town with no executive experience, but with wondrous rhetorical skills and a hard left agenda. He jams through a stimulus package that doesn’t stimulate. His security policy is to undo everything that worked under Bush to keep us safe. One of the first things Janet Napolitano does is release a report saying that the real threat is from our returning military that might become right wing zealots, Meanwhile Islamic terrorists, correct that, isolated extremists, continue to plot to kill us. Now the New York Times points out that the Emperor’s mortgage program, Making Home Affordable, has no clothes.
“Whatever the merits of its plans, the administration has clearly failed to reverse the foreclosure crisis.” — NYT
When asked by a Congressional Oversight Panel what the administration was going to do in the face of this lasting not a year or two but for many years into the future, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said:
“What to do about it,” he said. “That’s a hard thing.” — NYT
Sounds like the seeds of another government program to fix the other government program. Just like FDR did all through the 1930s. Trying to stop the market with government programs is like trying to stop the tides. You may divert it and you may end up with water in places you didn’t want it, but you are not going to stop it.
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Who does not get a thrill of good fortune by finding money in the street, no matter how insignificant the amount? We may not believe in the Tooth Fairy, but many of us believe we have a rich benevolent uncle, Uncle Sam, who is willing to lavish upon us his wealth if only we would ask. The sad truth is that Uncle Sam is not rich, but penniless and is running a ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush.
Health Care for $20
One of the major reasons that health care costs are rising out of control is that no one is minding the store. While Washington twists itself in knots to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic of health care, we have little to no say in how our health care dollars are spent. Our health care “insurance” system is not really insurance. Insurance is meant to protect us from a financial catastrophe. Going to the doctor for a checkup is not a catastrophe. Paying a $20 co-pay for that checkup is like finding money on the street. There is no way anyone can get a physical exam, except by a hooker, for $20. It is a good idea to get a physical checkup every year? Yes, then pay the bill and ask what you are paying for and make sure you need it. You take your car in for service don’t you? Do you file an insurance claim when you do? Can you get it done for $20. Let’s get real. What we have is called third party payer and when someone else is picking up the tab, do we care what it costs? Really? But someone is picking up the tab. Look in your other pocket, because you are. If you are generally healthy and you get your annual checkup, your insurance premium (here in New York at least) will probably run around $10,000 per year. But, hey, you only paid $20 for that physical! What if you paid the full amount for the physical, say, $500. What if your insurance premium was cut to $5,000 because you would pay most routine medical costs out of your pocket and what if you could put the $4,500 left over ($10,000 original premium, minus $5,000 current premium, minus $500 cost of checkup), into a tax free account that can be used for future medical expenses or retirement if you don’t use it? If you are a young person and stay healthy into your mid-40s, you would have accumulated over $90,000 in your medical savings account and you still have catastrophic insurance coverage and the government stays out of the picture.
Retirement for Free
Like many well intentioned Government programs, Social Security, enacted during the Great Depression, seemed like a good idea at the time. When enacted there was about 15 workers paying in for each recipient drawing out. Today there are about a little over 3 workers paying in for each beneficiary. Bernie Madoff would blush at the audacity of it. On top of that the money that is paid into Social Security can only be “invested” in Treasury Securities so the return is lousy, but safe. People reacted to Social Security by saving less because the government safety net was there. Had people been encouraged to save for their own retirement, they would not be leaving their children this legacy of a ticking time bomb. So today, many young people feel the government’s hand in their pocket when they look at the FICA line on their pay stub, but don’t believe they will ever get a penny back. Nice concept.
Bring Home the Bacon!
What’s the measure of a good Congressman or Senator? Bringing home pork for the district, no? If you are like me, you get flyers every year or several times per year, touting how Congresswoman Jones obtained federal funding for that pier at the amusement park. With 435 Congressmen you can count on this, for each $1 that your Representative brings home $434 leaves the Treasury for each of the other Congressional districts and probably more, depending on the power and seniority of your Representative. Guess who’s paying for that Turtle Crossing in Florida? that bridge to nowhere in Alaska? that airport in Johnstown, PA that no one uses? That’s right, you are. What if we decided locally if we really needed a pier at the amusement park, and if we did, pay for it ourselves? Then we could let the people of Florida decide if they want to build a turtle crossing, the people of Alaska decide if they wanted a bridge to nowhere and the people of Pennsylvania decide if they wanted an airport that no one used. Then we could cut federal taxes by an equal amount to keep them out of mischief and help us pay for these projects if we really wanted them.
Let’s Get Organized
There was a time in our history where labor unions performed a valuable service. In those times when many industrial jobs were unskilled or semi-skilled, employers could dismiss someone on a whim and replace them within the hour. Unions gave those workers some counterbalancing power and fairer treatment. Today, we have a much more sophisticated economy and workers have more skills and mobility. Union membership has declined accordingly, in the private sector at least. Why is union membership still growing in the public sector? What is different about workers in the public sector that they still need unions? Are we suggesting that all government workers are unskilled? Why do teachers need a union? Are they not skilled such that they could sell their services to the highest bidder? Why do unions fight merit pay for teachers? Why are school principals, the de facto CEO of the school and who in New York easily make six figures, unionized? Do you get an idea why our K-12 public school system is trailing the world in performance?
In Michigan, privately owned small businesses that provided day-care services suddenly discovered that they were part of a union and union dues were being withheld from their government contractual payments.
Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is crazy—and it’s happening elsewhere in the country.
Ms. Berry, runs “The Berry Patch” a private day care center she operates from her home catering to low income clients. The money that was once paid to her, now goes to a union that does little for her. She is “self employed and wants nothing to do with the union.” Don’t you think we need more of these tactics in America? Card Check anyone?
Going Postal
And let’s not forget the Postal Service. As postal rates are again scheduled to increase on January 4, let’s look at this paragon of efficiency, that is actually authorized by the Constitution. In 2008, the Postal Service lost $3 billion, and the Postmaster General John Potter pulled down $800,000 in compensation including $135,000 in incentive bonuses. What do we have to pay this guy if he actually breaks even? Also, let us not forget this is also a very heavily unionized operation.
Don’t Worry, You Won’t Feel a Thing
During World War II, FDR needed to raise more revenue to pay for the war. Fearing a backlash, his team hit upon the idea of payroll withholding. Knowing the potential backlash that would result when taxpayers had to write that big check on April 15th, he rightly figured that if he took a little bit each week, he could take a lot more in total. Statists in Washington have never looked back. It’s like the tax that was imposed on telephone service to pay for the Spanish American War that is still in place today. Instead of picking our pockets every week, what do you think most Americans would say about the size of the federal government if they had to write one big check on April 15th? There would be no tax rebates, because there would be no tax withheld. Do you think Americans would force Congress to sharpen their pencils and scale back the size of government?
Help is On the Way
Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help!’” But perhaps the best example of how far from our founding principles our government has strayed comes from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut as she spoke during a House End of Year Wrap Up Session:
“This House–we understand, we’re there,” she said. “You can count on us because we believe that it’s our moral responsibility to make sure that you and your family need our help.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the House of Representatives making sure I need their help. I need as little interference as possible from them. Their meddlesome intrusions in our lives is killing what made this country great. It is a point we cannot make often enough.
Today Barack Obama received his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway for his accomplishments in the area of …..? Well, nothing actually. It was called anticipatory, in other words, he got the prize for what they hoped he would accomplish. There’s that hope thing again. I hope he stops burying this country in debt.
TR and Woodrow Wilson
In some puzzling way, President Obama’s acolytes like to make comparisons to two other presidents who won the Nobel Peace prize. But they actually accomplished something or introduced a concept that eventually prevailed. In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt successfully negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and that peace actually stuck. Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations which, although it failed survive, it was the forerunner of the United Nations. Gentlemen, take a bow. As for President Obama, I guess we’ll have to keep holding our breath and hoping.
Damaged Goods
However noble, the Nobel Peace Prize might have been, it has been reduced to a sad joke. Let’s look at some past recipients:
Notably Absent
So where are the Nobel Peace prizes for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, for ending the Cold War without firing a shot? That wasn’t just peaceful that was miraculous. But then again, they were conservatives and therefore they don’t qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize.
If you live in New York, you will regularly hear the admonition, “If you see something, say something.” The idea being that the more people who are on the lookout for solitary packages in a crowded railway station, people behaving erratically, and reporting it, the safer we will be. Makes sense. Just be careful not to malign any followers of Islam. What?
In addition to that public service message you also hear other stories in the news. A Muslim cab driver refuses to pick up a fare because they are carrying a recent purchase from a liquor store. The cab driver’s religion is against drinking. At a public university in Minnesota a coffee cart is prohibited from playing Christmas carols, but public funds are used to construct foot baths so that Muslims can properly prepare for prayer. At an airport, security personnel cannot ask someone in line to step out for a closer search because they already pulled out two other Muslim young men and they didn’t want to be accused of racial profiling.
The Facts, Ma’am, Just the Facts
Joe Friday, where are you when we need you? The fictional detective was obsessive in sticking to the facts. Fact: not all Muslims are terrorists. Fact: almost all terrorists you see in the news are Muslims. So if you are on the lookout for terrorists, who should you look at? eighty year old Italian grandmothers or Middle Eastern men between the ages of 20-40?
Fort Hood
People around Major Nidal Malik Hasan, saw something and said something and were basically told…SHUT UP! Apparently diversity is more precious than human life. Taking extreme care not to offend, trumps taking steps to prevent a massacre. There appears to have been abundant evidence that Hasan was ticking time bomb and some spoke out about it, but our sensitivities to giving offence have turned reason inside out.
We have a sub-group of a religion who actively advocate killing all non-members, that is, infidels, and we are scared to death of offending them. Our liberal friends go out of their way to demand we all accommodate them. We can criticize all religions but theirs; we can have dress codes, but must make allowances for their dress; if their religion allows a parent to kill a child for converting to Christianity, we must not interfere, but if a non-Muslim parent neglects to buckle a child into a car seat for a quarter mile journey to the grocery store, bring them up on charges of child neglect.
Jumping to Conclusions
Our Commander-in-Chief cautions us not to rush to judgment by calling this an act of terrorism. Wasn’t this the same Commander-in-Chief who spoke from the White House calling a certain police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts stupid without a clue about what happened.
Political correctness, multiculturalism, an emasculated fourth estate, President Obama’s worldwide apology tour, strong arming a small Central American country, Honduras, because they followed their constitution and instead calling it a coup, all point to an embarrassing campaign by the left to drag down our country.
Please don’t try to make us like the rest of the world. We are greater than that. If you prefer the way the rest of the world behaves, move there. Don’t try to make the shining city on the hill, a city run amok.
It’s simple really. If the world really believed that America is such a terrible place, why do we have an immigration problem? Why do our universities teem with foreign students? Why, whenever there is a flare-up in the world, do all eyes turn to the good old USA to see what we are going to do about it? Where’s Ronald Reagan when you need him?
When Ronald Reagan left office it was more than “Morning in America.” The Cold War was on its death bed. The economy was booming, and there was optimism everywhere. Why? Because Ronald Reagan didn’t see the government as the solution but part of the problem.
There is a story from World War II where the Germans successfully attacked an airfield wiping out many American planes on the ground. When they came back to do a reconnaissance check, they saw that all the planes had been replaced. They knew at that point they could never win the war when the American economy, not just the military was lined up against them.
How did Reagan win the Cold War without firing a shot? Not by negotiating for more arms reductions, but by building up our military. He understood that the planned economy of the Soviets could not possibly keep up with the free market American economy. They were broke and an arms race was not possible to win.
Then and Now
Where are we today? President Obama and his administration are piling more debt on us than at any time in history. His is attacking the most productive in our society as the means to pay for all his plans. How long will they put up with it? He is trying to expand government to unprecedented size. Meanwhile the Chinese Communists are instituting free market reforms and buying up our debt. It is not hard to see at some future date the Chinese Communists doing to us what Reagan did to the Soviets. The Chinese economy is growing strongly, and the Obama Administration is crippling our ability to respond to a Chinese threat of an arms race, with overwhelming debt. His focus may look like it’s domestic, but it carries a dangerous national security component. National security is explicit in the Constitution. Everything that Obama is reaching for is under the cloudy authorization of “the General Welfare” under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. We need to get back to the explicit responsibilities of the federal government enumerated in the Constitution and leave everything else to the states and the people as the Tenth Amendment tells us.
