When 300,000-500,000 of your closest friends, depending on who is doing the estimating, show up for a rally on the Washington Mall you would think it was somewhat newsworthy, no?  Of course it is, that’s why the New York Times published the story on page fifteen.  If you were walking by a newsstand and glanced at the front page, you wouldn’t have know that a half million of your fellow citizens got together with Glenn Beck to restore honor in America.  The front page would entice you with:

• Graft-Fighting Prosecutor Fired in Afghanistan
• For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War
• Upstarts Chip Away at Power of Feudal Pakistani Landlords
• Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer’s Disease
• In Hard Times, One New Ban (Double-Wide)

I guess our friends at the times couldn’t find any fabricated stories of someone shouting the “N-word” at Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King, who was one of the featured speakers, to elevate the story to the front page.  Perhaps it would have been too embarrassing to mention on the front page that Al Sharpton’s counter-demonstration where “several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurance Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”  Yesterday, you would have thought both rallies were the same size with crowd estimates of several thousand for each.  Perhaps this shows the true value of racial politics today.  America is tired of the race baiting and the false charges.   President Obama was elected with hope and change to become the post-racial leader of the country.  It appears the country has moved on without his leadership.

In another piece in the Times two Progressive women pine for a “Palin of Our Own”, to win the hearts and minds of America.  The problem is America doesn’t want to listen to Janeane Garofalo or Joy Behar sneeringly spouting off about Sarah Palin.  As far as any women Progressive politicians, who is there other than Hillary Clinton and we’ve seen that act and passed on it.

In another piece titled “Party Down”, Marc Ambinder tells us about the anti-incumbent mood, “Unlike parties, which often recruit candidates who would appeal to the average voter in a general election, these activists care only about nominating the person who accurately represents their own views and frustrations.”  Appeal to the average voter?  The problem with the Republican Party in the past is that they have been listening to the main stream media reports about who the “average voter” is.  So they have elected so called “moderates” who get their clocks cleaned by real Progressives in the election.  The left snickered in their sleeves while growing the government into the bloated, ineffective, couch potato that it is.  It alarms those on the left that the Tea Party movement has changed all this and tone deaf incumbents are getting tossed left and right.  They have unmasked the average voter to be conservative and by measuring candidates against a conservative yardstick, they have struck a chord with the voters who have long felt ignored and disenfranchised.  Now those voters are energized and can’t wait to get to the polls.  Reason for panic on the left, indeed.

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.

Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking.  The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around.  It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million.  The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000.  This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show.  Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.”  An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.

The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful.  This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason?  Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost?  Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?

We have two very divergent views of the economy today.  One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings.  I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings.  It’s their money.  But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.

George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family.  His father was a banker and a Senator.  But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company.  He went into private business and put his own money at risk.  What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money.  Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream.  If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive.  Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum.  He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics.  By then he was a millionaire in his own right.

George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled.  He went to private school after the family moved to Houston.  He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard.  Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies.  He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance.  He later sold his stake for $15 million.  Then he went into politics.

The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics.  They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently. 

Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree.  He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas.  As governor he had a governor’s mansion.  He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House.  He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life.  The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him.  After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop.  His wife did pretty much the same.  They lived off the people and ended up very rich.  They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll. 

I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?”  Try this test.  If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs?  If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them.  If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls?  No.

What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do?  Let’s look at Al Gore.  Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government.  He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate.  Today he is very rich.  It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”.  If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same?  Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?

Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government.  He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man.  Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does.  After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way.  So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments.  Is he poor or middle class?  No, he is the political class.  He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters.  What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you?  Let them eat cake.

John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht.  Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government.  He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000.  So how does he buy a $7 million yacht?  I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector?  You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.

So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar.  They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds.  Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right.  Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash.  Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.

So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar.  He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count.  George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar.  What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.

Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.

If the news hasn’t reached you yet, we are all on an express train heading over a cliff due to public unions and the ridiculously generous pay and benefit packages they have gotten from the taxpayer, and we never even got to sit at the bargaining table.  A report in the New York Times  yesterday reports that there are 8,074 employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the entity that runs the commuter railroads and subways in and around New York City, that made more than $100,000 per year.  This includes a conductor who retired in April that made $239,148 which was $4,000 more than the Chief Financial Officer made.

By the way, did I mention, that the MTA had a budget deficit of $400 million?  Did I mention that they went through a series of service cutbacks to try to close the gap?  Perhaps, I can suggest another place to look?  But there’s more.

Two train car repairmen and twelve police officers who guard the bridges and tunnels under the MTA’s control were among 50 employees that pulled in more than $200,000.  Mr. Thomas J. Redmond, the aforementioned conductor had a base salary of $67,772, overtime of $67,000 and he took in almost $100,000 in unused sick days and vacation time. 

A locomotive engineer earned $75,000 in base salary, with overtime of $52,000, but wait there’s more.  He also received $94,600 in penalty payments.  What are those, you might ask?  Union rules say that because the engineer worked in a storage yard, he gets paid extra if he is assigned to move a locomotive outside of the storage yard, for example to a nearby maintenance facility.  I don’t understand your pique.  Don’t you have a similar arrangement with your employer?  You mean you don’t get a penalty payment when you have to go to a meeting on another floor in your building? I am shocked!

But don’t feel sorry for the senior management.  The new president of the Long Island Railroad, part of the MTA, now earns $350,000 plus a $3,500 monthly housing allowance.  I guess $350,000 is not enough to get by on so we have to pay the guy’s mortgage too.

This is what the politicians give to the unions when they negotiate contracts with them.  The unions in turn, make sure those politicians get re-elected, through the unions electioneering efforts.  Does that sound like collusion to you?  New York State is broke, just like California but we will have to pay for all these sweetheart contracts that make the federal budget deficit look like chump change.

In an article titled, “An Article of Faith,” Charles M. Blow of the New York Times explains about Obama and Health Care.  I am glad he took the time to set down the statist’s case.  It much easier to expose them when they step into the sunlight.

“The Apostles of Anger {that’s us} in their echo chamber of fallacies have branded him the enemy. This has now become an article of faith. Obama isn’t just the enemy of small government and national solvency. He’s the enemy of liberty.”

Enemy, noun, persons that are hostile to one another.

Sounds like Mr. Blow is onto something there.  Let’s see poll after poll has the American people opposed to ObamaCare by around 55% to 60%.  President Obama shows his hostility to the American people by saying he doesn’t care what they think, he, President Obama, knows what’s best for them and will ram this thing through by gimmicks such as reconciliation rather than the normal approval process.  Yes, I guess that makes him an enemy, but it was accomplished through his own actions, not by talk radio or Fox News.

Liberty, noun, freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.

Again, it looks like Mr. Blow nails it.  We have the government under ObamaCare telling us we have to buy insurance or pay a tax or go to jail for non-payment of taxes.  Sounds pretty arbitrary and despotic to me.  So President Obama has decided to act in a way that makes us his enemy.  I guess Mr. Blow is trying to say we are to be faulted for recognizing it?

“This underscores the current fight for the soul of this country. It’s not just a tug of war between left and right. It’s a struggle between the mind and the heart, between evidence and emotions, between reason and anger, between what we know and what we believe.”

Uh-oh, here it comes folks the statist is about to point out how stupid we are for not going along like sheep to slaughter.  Notice the word order first it’s left then right.  If you follow that order Mr. Blow is trying to say that the left stands for the mind, the evidence, reason and what we know, while the right stands for heart, emotions, anger, and beliefs.  I am sure Mr. Blow will now use his superior intellect to explain this all to us knuckle dragging troglodytes.

“This conflict was captured in a tit-for-tat between Obama and Rush Limbaugh. In an interview with CBS this week, Obama complained about the “vitriol” coming from the likes of Limbaugh: ‘I think the vast majority of Americans know that we’re trying hard, that I want what’s best for the country.’

“Limbaugh shot back on Friday, “I and most Americans do not believe President Obama is trying to do what’s best for the country.”

That’s pretty weak.  So despite 55% to 60% of the American people, for months on end, saying or should I say screaming NO! this is not what we want, Mr. Obama is saying as if to a small child, “There, there now, take your medicine, I know what’s best for you.”  Where Mr. Limbaugh is humble  enough not to claim god-like omniscience that he knows what people think, just that based on his observations of the polls, what he believes they think.  It sounds like Mr. Blow is making a case for Mr. Obama being the most arrogant president in our history.  Please continue.

“And there it was. Obama’s language focused on what people “know,” or should know. He seems to find comfort in the empirical nature of knowledge. It’s logical. Limbaugh’s language focused on what he thinks people “believe.” Beliefs are a more complicated blend of facts, or lies, and faith. And, they can exist beyond the realm of the rational.”

Really?  Is Mr. Blow serious?  Does he believe this or does he know this?  Of what knowledge are you speaking Mr. Blow, in which President Obama takes warm comfort?  Is it the empirical knowledge that estimates of what Medicare would cost when it was passed turned out to be understated by 700%?  Is it the empirical knowledge that the model for ObamaCare up in Massachusetts has not stopped costs from increasing and health care is being rationed?  Of course, when Mr. Blow speaks of the right and their beliefs he has to work “lies” into the formula of the “complicated blend of facts, lies and faith.”

“According to another Quinnipiac poll released last week, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to say that they follow public affairs most of the time. But how? They listen to people like Limbaugh, and they’re more likely than others to watch Fox News.”

Let me call your Quinnipiac poll and raise you one.  In its daily poll on the president Rasmussen finds that while 53% of likely voters disapprove of the job President Obama is doing, 55% of the media write favorable articles about him and that is on a downward trend!  So if people want the truth, who should they turn to for their news, the New York Times perhaps?  I think your article just answered that question.

“But invectives are not information. For example, a poll released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that most Republicans say that they still don’t understand how the new health care reform will affect them and their family.”

Republicans still don’t understand???  Nobody understands it, Mr. Blow, because nobody read it before it passed Congress.  At over 2,500 pages, if you did nothing else but read the bill in the seventy two hours it was posted in the internet, it is not likely you could have read it.  No sleeping, no eating, no lavatory breaks, just three straight days of reading it and you would be hard pressed to get all the way through.  Since you are such a fan of empirical evidence, when major companies announced billions in write-offs because of the bill and the legal requirement to so report, Congressman Henry Waxman appeared shocked and called for hearings.  When Congressman Anthony Weiner said the IRS would not be checking on whether or not you had health insurance, he couldn’t explain why the law funds 16,000 more IRS agents.  This circus is only starting my friend.

And so, my fellow imbeciles, Mr. Blow has spoken with a scathingly inept defense of all things Obama, making the case for a strong turnout at the Tea Parties on April 15 at the very same time. If you want to know the news watch Fox, if you believe you want to house train your dog, get the New York Times.

A recent article in the New York Times, “Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find Acceptance,” talks about how Food Stamps are now, thankfully, accepted and people can get the help they deserve. 

I remember the first time I encountered food stamps.  I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman with a cart piled high and among its contents were soda, potato chips, and other tasty luxuries.  When the bill was tallied, she took out her book of food stamps and handed them to the cashier.  I related this story to a friend who told me that you can’t use food stamps on junk food so it must have been applied against the other items in the cart.  Even so, I thought back to when I grew up.  We weren’t poor but we were no where near rich.  Things like soda and potato chips were a rarity reserved only for those times when relatives were coming from a distance for a visit.  Otherwise it was home brewed ice tea and supermarket generic cookies.  But even those treats weren’t purchased through a subsidy of our food staples.

New York is now actively recruiting new food stamp recipients in all languages imaginable.  It seems that it is not enough to provide the service but you have to make sure that everyone who can get food stamps is taking advantage of them.  Let’s see, government employees paid by taxpayers going all out to make sure that a taxpayer funded program is using as much taxpayer money as possible including a program on Rikers Island (the city jail) to enroll inmates as the leave.  The article describes one woman who was actively recruited to join the program:

A big woman with a broad smile, Ms. Bostick-Thomas swept into the group’s office a few days later, talking up her daughters’ college degrees and bemoaning the cost of oxtail meat.

“I’m not saying I go hungry,” Ms. Bostick-Thomas said. “But I can’t always eat what I want.”

Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here.  By a “big woman” can we take that observation to mean she is not lacking in caloric intake?  She says she doesn’t go hungry.  She talks about her daughter’s college degrees.  So why are taxpayers tasked with helping her eat what she wants?  And what is that anyway?  Steak? Lobster?  Twinkies?  Ice cream?  Why aren’t the daughters with their college degrees helping their mother?  Maybe they could invite her over once a week and feed her the foods she favors?  And if they are not local, why not ship her a box of Omaha Steaks?  Why does some other taxpayer have to pick up the tab for her after they worked hard to feed their own family?

The Other Side of the Coin

On the other side of the coin, from the budget of the same Department of Agriculture, we pay farmers not to grow food in the form of farm subsidies.  Why?  Well, if we didn’t, the prices of farm products, aka food, would become too cheap for the farmers to make a decent living.  In my simple economic model of supply and demand that would seem to indicate that maybe we have more farmers than we need.  But you see farming is a way of life as much as it is an occupation, and taxpayers must be sensitive to preserving that way of life whether or not it is economically justified.  I am sure there are several million unemployed people in this country who would like to have their jobs subsidized.  Unemployment compensation is when the government gives you a check (actually its funded by your employer) when you lose your job.  Farm subsidies are when the government (no employer funding here) pays farmers to keep working at their job.

Add to that another government program to pay farmers to produce corn to make ethanol, another uneconomic subsidy.  Ethanol is pitched as a substitute for gasoline, but it takes a lot of energy to make it, it cannot be transported via pipeline like petroleum products, and when the corn is diverted to produce ethanol, the cost of almost all food goes up.  Corn is used for feed for cattle, as seed to produce corn, for corn syrup as a sweeter.  So on top of regular farm subsidies, we have ethanol subsidies to further drive up food prices.  In the case of corn syrup, sugar could be a substitute, but our government places a very high tariff on imported sugar, to protect our domestic sugar producers.

Coming Full Circle

So, on the one hand we have several government programs, funded by taxpayers, that drive up the price of food.  Then we have another program, taxpayer funded, to help people buy food because food is too expensive.  And then we have government workers and programs, taxpayer funded, that are actively marketing the food stamp program to overweight people, who never go hungry, have college educated children who could help them but don’t seem to, so that the recipient can eat the things she wants to.  But if you see a problem with this, don’t worry.  Michele Obama is about to use more taxpayer dollars to launch a program to fight childhood obesity.  Can we get off this Merry-Go-Round?

How about we shut down the Department of Agriculture?  It’s function is not in the Constitution and so it should not exist at the federal level.  End farm subsidies.  If that means we have a few less farmers, so be it.  The American people do not owe anyone other than themselves a way of life.  To the farmer who can make it, you have my complete admiration.  End ethanol subsidies.  If ethanol is a viable fuel, it should be able succeed on its own, not because Archer Daniels Midland spends millions on agricultural lobbyists. Negotiate free trade agreements so that our successful farmers, instead of being paid not to produce, produce and sell their goods around the world.  Likewise end high tariffs that protect our farm products.  These steps should lower the cost of food.

With lower food costs we shouldn’t need a food stamp program.  End it at the federal level along with the Department of Agriculture. If there continues to be a need it will probably be a much smaller one and let each state decide if it wants to start its own program.  Also, with everyone saving on food there is a greater likelihood for people to contribute to food banks to help the truly needy.  But to have one government program create a problem and another government program to try to solve it is lunacy.

With our economy hurtling toward a cliff with out of control spending, we don’t need to be on both sides of a problem.

“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.

I am sure you all recall the video played ad nauseum starring the Reverend Wright railing against America defending itself.  It now seems to accurately describe the results of the new hope and change administration.  After his worldwide apology tour, and banning the term “War on Terror,” replacing it with the limp “Overseas Contingency Operation,” so that, like his presidential campaign, no one would know what he actually meant or stood for, his own chickens are coming home to roost.

Actions Have Consequences

The left used to attack the Bush administration’s approach because being tough on terrorists only served to aid them in their recruiting.  Maybe so, but I am less concerned about lines of recruits in Afghanistan than crazed terrorists in New York.  Obama’s apology tour shows his weakness and as the terrorist mindset abhors weakness, it encourages attacks.  So what would you prefer, attacks on American soil, or an uptick in recruiting on the other side of the world?

War vs. Law and Order

Bush recognized the War on Terror for what it was, a direct attack on the United States and our way of life.  In a war, you go after the enemy, you don’t wait for him to come to you.  You take prisoners and hold them, until the conflict is over.  You dismantle their ability to wage war.  It is aggressive and proactive.  It is the way America has prevailed in wartime.

The Obama approach is Law an Order.  Each act is seen as separate an isolated and as a crime to be investigated and prosecuted after the fact.  First responders are more important than the first wave of Marines.  To quote today’s Wall Street Journal:

Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don’t seem to like Americans any better because we’re closing down Guantanamo.

But the Obama Administration is currently considering releasing prisoners held in Guantanamo to Yemen.  How long do you think it will be before they are back on the front lines trying to kill us?

Add to the mix the Obama administration’s, or should I say Eric Holder’s, decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a civilian court.  Holder’s testimony before Congress justifying his decision was painful to watch how he had no credible justification.  Don’t forget to give  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights and get him a good lawyer. Let’s pretend his claims to be associated with al Qaeda is just tough talk and braggadocio.

The reality is that whenever America fought a war and politicians pulled punches (e.g., Viet Nam) we lost.

Things are Working Swell

Janet Napolitano, Obama’s head of Homeland Security had this to say, according to the New York Times

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

How chilling is that?  What exactly does she mean by the system worked?  She refers to the number of organizations that were alerted after the fact.  How about notifications before the fact?  How about listening to the terrorist’s own father who reported him to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.  How about denying him a visa?  Or is Napolitano too busy adding funeral homes to her list of organizations to notify after the fact?

Where’s Obama?

If there’s a chance Chicago might get the Olympics, don’t worry, Obama’s on a plane to give it the old presidential push!  If there’s a Nobel Prize to pick up, Obama is your man!  If there is a terrorist attack on our country, hey, don’t bother me I’m on vacation in Hawaii.

Some pundits on the news pointed out that President Bush didn’t speak out against the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, for several days, so cut Obama some slack.  The problem is that no one doubted for a minute that Bush was engaged in the War on Terror, some even saying he was obsessed.  Well that obsession kept us safe for seven years.  In less than one year we have had Fort Hood and now this airline bombing.

Furthermore, why is Eric Holder making such a monumental decision regarding trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York?  Why isn’t this Obama’s decision?  Just like so much in this administration, Obama campaigns and gives speeches, and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Eric Holder make policy decisions on their own.

Here’s to the Heroes

The heroes in this case were a Dutch citizen and the flight attendants, who subdued the terrorist and extinguished the fire.  To quote again from the Wall Street Journal:

The lesson here is the same as Flight 93 on 9/11 and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, which is that civilians willing to act in their own self-defense are a crucial part of “homeland security.”

May I suggest that the statists drop their efforts to weaken the 2ndAmendment?  As part of  “homeland security” we may need to bear arms like at no time since the Civil War.

We have had several bubbles before, but if the Obama administration has their way, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”  Currently the budget for the federal government is $4 trillion dollars.  That’s right, your federal government will spend approximately (which means probably more) $4 trillion in one year.  Of that amount $202 billion is interest on the national debt.  In an article in the New York Times today by 2019, a mere ten years from now, the portion of the budget directed to interest payments will be over $700 billion, or three and a half times what it is today.  Many people have trouble grasping how much a trillion dollars are, and within ten years we will be paying three-quarters of a trillion dollars just to cover the interest without paying off any of the principle.

Family Budget Analogy

We all understand the dramatic effects of too much debt, as the point has been driven home every day throughout this financial crisis.  Bankruptcy filings, home foreclosures, bailouts, all resulting from more debt than we can pay the interest on, let alone pay back the principle.  You see commercials on television every day for companies that will help you renegotiate your credit card debt, your mortgage, intervene on your behalf with the IRS.  None of those programs are available to the federal government as a debtor. 

Obama’s Out of Control Spending

The Obama administration seems oblivious to the problem.  As bad as it is they just keep on spending or want to spend more:

• Stimulus package — $787 billion.  Despite evidence that it is not working and widespread opposition from the American people, the Obama administration is simply declaring that it is working and we need to do it again with a second stimulus
• Cap and Trade — this is a program that will drive energy costs through the roof for no real benefit.  After all if, as is becoming more and more apparent, global warming is not man made then it cannot be stopped by man either.  Higher costs will lead to businesses closing down, laying off people, and generating less tax revenue from both the businesses and the individuals it laid off.  Result — an increase in the deficit.
• Health Care — another $1 trillion of IOUs piled on our children’s back and if Medicare’s history is any guide, these numbers are well below what will really happen.

The Truth About Government

The truth is that government doesn’t create anything.  They don’t generate income.  Everything that government has to spend comes from you and me.  The government takes it from us (or throws us in jail for tax evasion) and then spends it.  If they can’t get enough from us, they borrow the difference.  But somewhere down the line, that money has to get paid back.  A news report today said we have the opportunity to just write a check to the Treasury if we are concerned about the deficit and want to help pay it down!  Let’s see how many of Obama’s wealthy supporters sign up for that program.

Runaway Train

Our federal government is a runaway train and if we don’t stop it very soon and pare it back to the functions enumerated in the Constitution, we will get hit with a bubble so big, that there is no Hollywood screenwriter that could even begin to conceive of how to portray it.  $700 billion folks, that’s $2,059 in INTEREST for every man, woman and child in America.  Ask yourself this, if you are a family of four are you prepared to write a check for $8,235 to the federal government for interest alone?  You don’t get anything for your money, it just keeps your government from defaulting on what they already borrowed. This will be on top of your regular tax bill. And the next year you will have to pay it again and probably more.  It’s time to stop the madness.  It’s time to stop the spending.  It’s time to stop the expansion of government and start shutting down departments.  It’s what you would do at home in a financial crisis, it’s what a small business would do in a crisis.  This is a crisis that we can still get under control, but if the debt continues to grow to the point where we can no longer afford to pay even the interest, America will be a footnote in history.

Do I have your attention now?

The New York Times had some, what was to me, shocking news today.  The article said that there was now consensus that the Obama stimulus plan was working.  Is this the same kind of consensus that man-made global warming was settled science, despite the glaring evidence that carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow while the globe stopped warming ten years ago?  This is also close on the heels of breaking stories of extraordinary misinformation if not outright deceit on how the $787 billion is being spent.

Smoke and Mirrors

Early on in the article we have this gem:

“The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.”

There is no mechanism that exists to measure a job saved. None.  So how do they do it?  It goes something like this:

“Here, Mr. Stimulus Funds applicant, I have this check for you for $642,000.  No can you tell me, if I give this to you, how many jobs would you create or save?”

“Create? Er, none.”

“Hmmm,” the bureaucrat mutters, staring down at the check in his hand, “what about jobs you would save?  You know, if I don’t give you this nice, rather large check, how many of your people would you be forced to lay off?”

“Oh, I get it,” the potential recipient says with a wink and a smile, “probably all of them!”

The bureaucrat scribbles down a number, and hands over the check, walking away shaking his head.

That’s about how it’s done.  The government surveys the people getting the money and asks them what would have happened if they didn’t get the stimulus.  And what would you expect them to say?  Keep the check?

Revenue Starved States

What a concept, “Revenue Starved States.”  The article complains that not enough money was provided to “Revenue Starved States.” Does he mean states like California and New York?  I believe the correct term is states where spending is out of control.  It means states where taxes are so high that people are moving out in droves, and among them the “wealthy” people they love to tax to the eyeballs, meaning a dramatically shrinking revenue base.  After all, if one of the wealthiest people in the state, who is part of the group that pays 70% of the taxes, moves out of the state or (out of the country when it gets bad enough), that means a lot of people are going to see their taxes raised to make up for it.  So the statists seem to think a stimulus package that keeps these bloated bureaucracies fat, dumb and happy is the way to go, until when exactly?

The Multiplier Fallacy

The other great fraud being foisted on us is the multiplier effect, where for each dollar of stimulus money spent more than a dollar of economic activity results:

That sort of impact is what makes federal aid to state governments rank high in economists’ reckoning of the stimulus value of various proposals. Every dollar of additional infrastructure spending means $1.57 in economic activity, according to Moody’s, and general aid to states carries a $1.41 “bang” for each federal buck.

Even more effective are increases for food stamps ($1.74) and unemployment checks ($1.61), because recipients quickly spend their benefits on goods and services.

Okay, then how is this for a solution.  Let’s spend $10 trillion on infrastructure, food stamps and unemployment checks, since they will result in $15 trillion or so in economic activity, because of the multiplier, right?  For that matter, let’s have the government spend $100 trillion and we’ll really be rocking.

Where’s the So Called Consensus

From what I read in the article, there was only one economist that could be called a conservative, Martin Feldstein, that they were willing or able to quote, and this was his take on the stimulus.

While some conservatives remain as skeptical as ever that big increases in government spending give the economy a jolt that is worth the cost, Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist who served in the Reagan administration, said the problem with the package was that some of its tax cuts and spending programs were of a variety that did little to spur the economy.

“There should have been more direct federal spending that would have added to aggregate demand,” he said. “Temporary tax cuts and one-time transfers to seniors were largely saved and didn’t stimulate spending.”

That’s it?  That’s the consensus?  It seems to me that he is pointing out what was wrong with the package rather than what was right.  He was in the Reagan administration and he knows what works: permanent cuts in marginal tax rates. Those dreaded tax cuts for the “rich.”  The thing is that when the people above the subsistence level get to keep more of what they earn, yes it does belong to them and not to the government, they tend to invest it, which means the provide capital to businesses that grow and create jobs.  Yes, capitalism.  What the stimulus does is take money away from these people, or borrows it and steals it from future generations, and gives that money, as in the example above, to highway projects, food stamps and unemployment checks.  The first of these may create jobs until the road project is completed, but the latter two only increase the dependency of those recipients on the government.  So how exactly does the stimulus plan that puts money into a highway project and unemployment benefits, help a banker who got laid off?  How does it help the unemployed executive from United Technologies?  It doesn’t.  It’s like a drug fix.  You may feel good for a while, but then it wears off and you need another fix.

The Genius of Government

You would think that with all the examples of government planning lying on the waste heap of history, the statists will finally catch on that they can’t successfully pick the winners and losers in an economy.  Government has to get out of the way and let the market work.

Government must be drastically cut down to size.  Think of the popular TV show “The Biggest Loser.” Picture the governments of the United States, California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan, Nevada, for starters, as contestants.  Let’s see who can lose the most weight.  Ready? Go.