Phil Gramm weighs in --at last!

Phi Gramm, an influential senator from Texas during the Reagan years, and a trained economist, once famously said "Before I vote on any legislation around here I always try to think about how it would impact Dickie _____, because if it would adversely affect him I know it would be bad policy".  Dickie ______, owned a print shop somewhere in Texas that employed 10 or so people.  What Gramm was saying was: As small business goes, so goes the US economy.  I always thought there was great wisdom in this observation because at least 50% of Americans work for or own small businesses and obviously if they are doing well and expanding, there are jobs aplenty and the economy overall is likely doing well.  Most of these small businesses the senator talks about are not incorporated and therefore declare their income and pay taxes based upon their individual tax rates.  In a good year when Dickie has income after expenses of say $300.000, Obama wants to raise the tax rate on that additional 50k above $250k.  Of course common sense tell anyone other than a liberal/progressive that such a move will limit Dickie's ability to expand his business by getting more accounts and hiring additional employees to service this added business volume.  So since well over 50% of those with net incomes exceeding $250k are small business people like Dickie, how can this Obama tax policy possibly help the US economy grow its way out of this recession?  Obviously it cannot and most Americans understand this.  Oh, says Obama, we've got to find $700 billion somewhere to reduce the deficit, where do we find this except from the wealthiest 2% of the population with incomes over $250k!  Now a practical person might say, how about cutting some expenses and bring your outlays down to the level of your income, which is how most American families operate?  What's wrong with that idea?  Well, the short answer is that there is nothing wrong with that idea, and in fact that is the only logical way to proceed.  Unfortunately this path does not conform to the democrats play book of demonizing filthy profit seekers and successful producers, and pandering to those who believe the world is unfair because someone out there has more than they.  Welcome to socialism, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and the ghosts of the Soviet Union and the rest of the failed collectivist experiments.  Welcome to Obamacare and all the rest of the mess fobbed off on Americans by Pelosi, Reid, and their enablers in the media.  Gramm's column in the WSJ is here.

Margaret Thatcher by Claire Berlinski

In this video interview with the Hoover Institute, Claire Berlinski, author of There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, talks about Thatcher's leadership qualities and how she brought England back from the abyss when she came to power and remained so for 11 years from 1979 until 1990.  Since she also lives in Istanbul, and has for 5 years, she also talks about what is going on in Turkey today from an obviously informed point of view.  Although the two topics discussed here are not necessarily connected the interview is interesting because she brings expertise to both subjects.  Based on Berlinski's observations Turkey is at a crossroad in terms of its development as a democracy, and could go either way.  She didn't discuss Erdogan, the current Prime Minister, directly, however he is a fundamentalist who appears to want to take Turkey more in the direction of Iran than the West.