Lies, liars, and missed opportunities

Robert Knight identifies the reasons Romney lost the election to a vastly inferior candidate who conclusively demonstrated an inability to set priorities and, to use his own words, "get things done".  It's one thing for a candidate to run a campaign based on lies and distortions of an opponents' beliefs and record, it's an entirely different and inexcusable thing to let these lies and distortions stand as Romney did over and over much to the consternation of true conservatives.  Here is a partial list of both the lies and distortions and the missed opportunities by Romney.

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

Maybe not. Mired in the worst recovery since the Great Depression, with unemployment near 8 percent, companies laying off workers over Obamacare, a $16 trillion debt and gasoline at double the 2008 price, America still re-elected Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney ran a single-issue campaign: the economy, stupid.

The missed opportunities were endless. After CNN’s Candy Crowley silenced him in the second debate on the Benghazi attack, Mr. Romney declined to expose Mr. Obama’s shocking lies and transparent cover-up. He also declined to educate Americans about the administration’s brazen lawlessness, especially that of the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board.

What about Supreme Court appointments? The XL Keystone Pipeline? The numerous “czars” appointed without Senate approval? Obamacare? Obama’s flip-flop on marriage?

Meanwhile, 42 percent of voters in the Fox News exit pollsaid Mr. Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy was an important factor. Of those, more than 65% voted for Mr. Obama. Even if these voters were unduly impressed by the photo ops and Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s fulsome praise, it means that character still matters. Obama passed the last-minute leadership test, assisted by a media blackout of FEMA’s inadequate response and the scandalous non-coverage of the Benghazi coverup.

Many policy areas in which outright lies have been the coin of the realm could have been exposed if GOP consultants had not insisted on playing only Monopoly. Mr. Romney broke through the media fog in the first debate, showing the public a decent, more rounded candidate. He wasn’t the soulless, cancer-patient-killing corporate raider in the $100 million worth of smear ads that had run for months. But it wasn’t enough.

So, what do we have, aside from a nightmare scenario involving the pending makeup of the Supreme Court, half of the American people’s de facto embrace of socialism, the survival of Obamacare and the Harry Reid-led U.S. Senate, and the Republicans’ continued control of 30 governorships and the U.S. House?

Well, we have some important lessons.

* It’s not just “the economy, stupid.” If it were, Romney would have won in a walk.

* A moderate Republican from the Northeast who presided over the creation of “gay marriage” and pioneered Obamacare in his own state is not the best candidate to counter the Left’s relentless promotion of moral and fiscal insanity.

* Big Bird’s Food Stamp Army is for real. Millions turned out to ensure that the government will support them from other people’s earnings. As Obamacare hits harder and companies lay off more employees, it’s hard to see how this will decrease anytime soon.

* Featuring minority faces on primetime doesn’t help the GOP’s demographic problem. Republicans have got to get to know the communities and make the conservative case to them.

* It’s okay to cast your vote based entirely on race, as long as neither you or the candidate are white. Despite endorsing the anti-biblical notion of same-sex “marriage,” Mr. Obama still garnered 93 percent of the African-American vote, slightly less than in 2008. You could say it was “the economy, stupid,” except that the black community has been hardest hit under Mr. Obama’s policies.

* The media, who are unrepentant hack partisans, continue to worsen. They suppressed, Soviet-style, anything remotely unflattering to Mr. Obama, allowing him to continue the absurd fiction that his failures are George W. Bush’s fault.

I talked with a 20-something grad student in the Midwest (she’s afraid to say in print which school) who told me that her female classmates were for Obama because they believed that “if a Republican gets in, he’ll take away the rights of women.”

None mentioned the economy, the student said. One classmate did not know that the U.S. ambassador to Libya had been slain. All they knew is that Romney was out “to control their bodies,” the young woman said. “The Obama campaign and the media have been able to make people believe total lies.”

Indeed, the single-women and “youth vote” went for Obama again. It’s not surprising that after years of school indoctrination under left-wing teachers unions and a steady diet of music, TV and films that attack faith and promote sexual license, that a majority of young voters buy into government-subsidized sexual anarchy. They’ve come to regard church-going Christians as crazed scolds who might interfere with their limitless entitlements. Sandra Fluke is no fluke. The phony “war on women” found eager ears.

This was not inevitable. Nor were the “gay marriage” victories in four states. It happened because the party of traditional values hides under a green eyeshade. Being the Silent Majority worked once upon a time, but now GOP candidates must learn how to make the full conservative case. They cannot cede powerful cultural issues to the Left. They need to make a compelling defense of traditional morality, without which free enterprise will die. It’s not that hard – start by noting the consequences of moral decline. The same goes for the rule of law, without which diplomats die, constitutional liberties are lost, cities are ruined, and guns get shipped with murderous results to Mexico.

The Romney campaign has shown, decisively, that it’s a mistake to politely ignore lies and abuses of power. Maybe I don’t watch enough TV, but I didn’t see any political ads about the Fast and Furious scandal, Benghazi, Obamacare’s attack on religious freedom, Obama’s chilling “After my election, I have more flexibility” remark to the Russian president, or the outrageous order to Boeing not to build a plant in South Carolina. “You can’t build that” would have been a nice lead-in to an ad about government tyranny under Obama.

The GOP put all its marbles on the economy. It surrendered lots of marbles to people who long ago lost theirs.

ADDED:  Thomas Sowell is probably quoted more often than any other conservative pundit on this blog, and for good reason as he makes the conservative case clearly and without hesitation, as he does here supporting the case made above by Robert Knight:

The beginning of a new year is often a time to look forward and look back. The way the future looks, I prefer to look back — and depend on my advanced age to spare me from having to deal with too much of the future.

If there are any awards to be given to anyone for what they did in 2012, one of those rewards should be for prophecy, if only because prophecies that turn out to be right are so rare.

With that in mind, my choice for the prediction of the year award goes to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his column of January 24, 2012, titled: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.”

Despite reciting a litany of reasons why President Obama deserved to be booted out of the White House, Stephens said, “Let’s just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.”

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To me, the Republican establishment is the eighth wonder of the world. How they can keep repeating the same mistakes for decades on end is beyond my ability to explain.

Bret Stephens said, back at the beginning of 2012, that Mitt Romney was one of the “hollow men,” and that voters “usually prefer the man who stands for something.”

Yet this is not just about Mitt Romney. He is only the latest in a long series of presidential candidates backed by a Republican establishment that seems convinced that ad hoc “moderation” is where it’s at — no matter how many of their ad hoc moderates get beaten by even vulnerable, unknown, or discredited Democrats.

Back in 1948, when the Democratic party splintered into three parties, each one with its own competing presidential candidate, Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey was considered a shoo-in.

Best-selling author David Halberstam described what happened: “Dewey’s chief campaign tactic was to make no mistakes, to offend no one. His major speeches, wrote the Louisville Courier Journal, could be boiled down ‘to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. The future lies ahead . . . ’”

Does this sound like a more recent Republican presidential candidate?

Meanwhile, President Harry Truman was on the attack in 1948, with speeches that had many people saying, “Give ’em hell, Harry.” He won, even with the Democratic vote split three ways.

But, to this day, the Republican establishment still goes for pragmatic moderates who feed pablum to the public, instead of treating them like adults.

It is not just Republican presidential candidates who cannot be bothered to articulate a coherent argument, instead of ad hoc talking points. Have you yet heard House Speaker John Boehner take the time to spell out why Barack Obama’s argument for taxing “millionaires and billionaires” is wrong?

It is not a complicated argument. Moreover, it is an argument that has been articulated many times in plain English by conservative talk-show hosts and by others in print. It has nothing to do with being worried about the fate of millionaires or billionaires, who can undoubtedly take care of themselves.

What we all should be worried about are high tax rates driving American investments overseas, when there are millions of Americans who could use the jobs that those investments would create at home.

Yet Obama has been allowed to get away with the emotional argument that the rich can easily afford to pay more, as if that is the issue. But it will be the issue if no one says otherwise.

One of the recent sad reminders of the Republicans’ tendency to leave even lies and smears unanswered was a television replay of an old interview with the late Judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was destroyed by character assassination.

Judge Bork said that he was advised not to answer Ted Kennedy’s wild accusations because those false accusations would discredit themselves. That supposedly sophisticated advice cost the country one of the great legal minds of our time — and left us with a wavering Anthony Kennedy in his place on the Supreme Court.

Some people may take solace from the fact that there are some articulate Republicans like Marco Rubio who may come forward in 2016. But with Iran going nuclear and North Korea developing missiles that can hit California, it may be too late by then.

 

Tax the rich

Since Obama and his demagogue pals in the demagogue democrat party insist on demagoguing the tax the rich theme, this chart is offered in order to set the record straight.  Like it or not the rich carry the bulk of the tax burden and without them we are in even worse shape at least in terms of the debt/deficit issues.  Increasing the tax burden on the rich only makes matters worse....much worse.  Wait and see!  As regards the budget farce now going on in Washington, try these bullet points:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $38.50

Declining metropolises

Walter Williams writes the story below with the headline:"100% of Nothing".  He is referring to the takeover of the City of Detroit by black politicians in the '60s and the steady decline of the city since that time, a pattern that has repeated itself several times including cities like Philadelphia.  Democracy run amok?

JoAnn Watson, Detroit city council member, said, "Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president, and there ought to be a quid pro quo." In other words, President Obama should send the nearly bankrupted city of Detroit millions in taxpayer bailout money. But there's a painful lesson to be learned from decades of political hustling and counsel by intellectuals and urban experts.

In 1960, Detroit's population was 1.6 million. Blacks were 29 percent, and whites were 70 percent. Today, Detroit's population has fallen precipitously to 707,000, of which blacks are 84 percent and whites 8 percent. Much of the city's decline began with the election of Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and mayor for five terms, who engaged in political favoritism to blacks and tax policies against higher income mostly white people. Young's successors, Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick, followed his Third World tyrant policies, but neither had his verbal vulgarity. Kilpatrick (2002-2008) went to jail and is on trial today on charges of corruption. Mayor David Bing is making an effort to revive Detroit. His problem is that he's not God.

Policies that ran whites and other more affluent people out of Detroit might have been Young's and his successors' strategy. After all, why not get rid of people who aren't going to vote for you anyway? The problem is that getting rid of these people left Detroit with a lower tax base, fewer jobs and fewer consumers. Fewer whites might be good for the careers of black politicians, but it's not in the best interests of ordinary blacks. Blacks have political control of Detroit, but the relevant question is whether some control of something is better than 100 percent control of nothing. By most measures, Detroit is one of the nation's most tragic cities, and it's mostly self-imposed.

Detroit topped Forbes magazine's 2010 list of America's Most Dangerous Cities. That year there were 345 homicides, but that's going to be topped with this year's 365 homicides so far. Most homicide victims in Detroit and elsewhere are black, and 95 percent of the time their murderers are black. But far more important to black leaders and white liberals than blacks murdering blacks are charges of police misconduct and racial profiling.

Detroit's predominantly black public schools are close to being the worst in the nation, perhaps with the exception of those of Washington, D.C. Only 4 percent of Detroit's eighth-graders scored proficient or above on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called "The Nation's Report Card." Thirty-six percent scored basic, and 57 percent below basic. "Below basic" is when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. "Basic" indicates only partial mastery.

Unbeknownst to most black parents is the fact that most black students who manage to graduate from high school cannot read and compute any better than whites four years younger and still in junior high school. Here's a question for you: If we put a group of 100 students of any race having an eighth-grade level of proficiency and another group of 100 students of any race with a 12th-grade level of proficiency in college, is it reasonable to expect the first group to perform as well as the second? On top of that, is it reasonable to expect a student of any race to be able to make up 12 years of fraudulent K-12 education in the space of four or five years of college?

Detroit's social pathology is seen in other cities with large black populations such as Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore and Chicago. These are cities where blacks have for years dominated the political machinery in the forms of mayors, police chiefs, superintendents of schools and city councilmen, plus they've been Democrats. It's safe to conclude that the focus on political power doesn't do much for ordinary blacks.

Why right-to-work states prevail

This spirited defense of right-to-work legislation by Richard Epstein pretty much sums up the problem with unions.  Clearly unions have served their purpose to allow workers some voice in reasonable working conditions, i.e. safety, but they have long since morphed into thuggish cabals of leaders more interested in feathering their own nests than the improvement of workers' wages and the like.  At this point in history they are anachronisms and serve only to destroy by a thousand cuts any industries and companies in which they operate.  In the future only right-to-work states will prosper and survive.  The rest will shrink and become even bigger drags on the rest of the economy.

The End of Unions?

by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force)

What Michigan Governor Rick Snyder gets right and wrong about labor policy.

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The age of big government is now upon us. The question is how to respond to this daunting reality. One possible approach is prudential acquiescence to the inevitable. Conservatives could work toward incremental reform within today’s political paradigm. The Hoover Institution’s own Peter Berkowitz offers this advice in his thoughtful column in the Wall Street Journal. Libertarians, in particular, must “absorb” the lesson that frontal assaults on New Deal-era policies are out. He writes:

[C]onservatives must redouble their efforts to reform sloppy and incompetent government and resist government's inherent expansionist tendencies and progressivism's reflexive leveling proclivities. But to undertake to dismantle or even substantially roll back the welfare and regulatory state reflects a distinctly unconservative refusal to ground political goals in political realities.
Conservatives can and should focus on restraining spending, reducing regulation, reforming the tax code, and generally reining in our sprawling federal government. But conservatives should retire misleading talk of small government. Instead, they should think and speak in terms of limited government.

I fear the downside of Berkowitz’s counsel of moderation. For starters, no one can police Berkowitz’s elusive line between “small” and “limited” government. At its core, Berkowitz’s wise counsel exposes the Achilles heel of all conservative thought, which can be found in the writings of such notables as David Brooks and the late Russell Kirk. Their desire to “conserve” the best of the status quo offers no normative explanation of which institutions and practices are worthy of intellectual respect and which are not. No one doubts that politics depends on the art of compromise. But compromise only works for politicians who know where they want to go and how to get there.

    
  Illustration by Barbara Kelley

The call for limited government doesn’t start with the radical proposition to disband the army, fire the police, or close public highways. Rather, it relies on the theory of public, or collective, goods. The sound theory of limited government uses the state to provide those essential public goods that ordinary individuals, acting either alone or in combination, cannot supply for themselves in voluntary markets. Individuals and firms can effectively purchase food, clothing, and shelter in competitive markets, which are the best way to match buyers with sellers, and employers with employees. The sellers who try to raise prices above the competitive levels will lose their customer base. The firms that try to reduce their wages below competitive levels will lose their employees. The result is, in general, the optimal social outcome.
Armed with this insight, the appropriate intellectual approach towards politics always involves this two-step inquiry: first, figure out the desirable social policy; second, figure out the low cost way to overcome obstacles to achieve this social outcome. The great danger of politics is that it waters down principled argument in order to secure a political compromise. But these compromises must be accepted as such: the willingness to take a middle position because the preferred position is not politically attainable. They should never be defended as though they represent the best intellectual solution. To do so is to concede too much to the progressive agenda, which causes the conservative or libertarian reformer to sound evasive and hypocritical, uninformed and foolish.
The Decline of New Deal-Style Unions
A perfect example of these intellectual risks is found in the current debate over the adoption of a right–to-work law in Michigan, an economic basket case and the cradle of American unionism . Right-to-work laws are understood on both sides as a real threat to union power because they allow workers to keep their jobs without having to join a union, or to pay union dues (at least for unit-related activities) if they choose not to join. The key question for conservatives and libertarians is how to defend a proposal that curbs union power.
In this connection, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican who signed the right-to-work law in his state this month, gets top marks for political courage and skill in dealing with the Michigan legislature, notwithstanding receiving threats of political retribution from the Democrats. State Representative Douglas Geiss, a Democrat, chose his words carefully when he said “there will be blood,” on the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives.
The effects of the legislation confirm the classical liberal defense of competitive federalism, which argues in favor of state, not national, control over local labor markets. As Snyder pointed out, Michigan has to compete for new jobs and industry with its next-door neighbor, the business-friendly Indiana. The data support him. As F. Vincent Vernuccio and Joseph G. Lehman of Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy report in their recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, since Indiana adopted its right-to-work legislation, the state has gained about 43,000 new jobs—chiefly from new businesses that have chosen to locate there. In contrast, Michigan, during that same period, lost about 7,000 jobs, and its key automotive business remains on life-support from the federal government.
The gains from right-to-work laws are not just confined to Indiana. As Venuccio and Lehman report, between 1980 and 2011, overall employment levels rose by 71 percent in right-to-work states. In non-right-to-work states, they only rose by 32 percent. That differential does not come at the expense of wages, which grew four times as fast in right-to-work states: 12 percent versus 3 percent elsewhere. The explanation is clear enough. The productivity gains from escaping union work rules are shared with employees as employers bid up wages. The short-term monopoly gains to unionized workers eventually are, over time, more than offset by productivity losses. The New Deal union model is an economic mistake of major proportions.
Governor Rick Snyder’s Mistake
When Governor Snyder went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Show last week, his opening remarks stressed these economic facts. His interrogators did not challenge him on that, but they had a field day with him when he tried to defend himself on theoretical grounds. The Governor maintained that his legislation was not anti-union but pro-worker. He argued that a worker should have a choice whether to join a union. Governor Snyder insisted that a worker should not be forced to join a union unless he thinks it is “a value proposition,” which immediately played into the standard progressive objection that rational workers will indeed free-ride on unions to expend their resources to get wage increases that the non-union holdouts will then enjoy for free.
At this point, the Governor—and, for the record, Venuccio and Lehman—claim that they are not against the collective bargaining arrangements that right-to-work laws subvert. But here the Governor sounded hypocritical, uninformed, and evasive in the face of organized labor’s most insistent argument, which led a delighted Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times to chortle at the naïveté of thinking that right-to-work laws did not hurt the unions that so fiercely opposed them. He’s right on the small point, but wrong on the big one: unions do not serve any useful purpose.
I am the last person who should be telling politicians what they should say in order to secure the passage of controversial legislation without committing political hari-kiri. Neither Berkowitz nor I are politicians. Our job is to cut out the platitudes and state the matter as it is. That said, here is how I would have responded to the Morning Joe panelists:

Your implicit assumption is that the free-rider is a dangerous institution, and that government action should forestall that practice. The condemnation of free-riders, however, is only half-true, for everything depends on the direction of the externalities—are they positive or negative?—in the event that people are allowed to hold out from some collective solution.
With the standard public good of national defense or public highways, those external effects are always negative. In other words, the country that has to rely on voluntary contributions to support its military operations will always spend too little on them. The imposition of taxation allows everyone in society to benefit from the provision of goods that all of them value more than the particular tax dollars that they have to pay for their acquisition. The situation is truly like a Prisoner’s Dilemma game because societyas a whole is worse off if individuals are allowed to defect from the cooperative solution on these select issues.
Those assumptions do not hold, however in dealing with free-riders in labor markets. In this instance, the appropriate analog is not the standard social public good. Rather, it is the industrial cartel, whose coordinated activities benefit its members at the expense of the public at large. The cartel always seeks to set its prices in ways that maximize the returns to its members, even at the cost of higher prices to its customers. Its mortal enemy is the free-rider who undercuts the listed prices. It is just that “cheater” who performs a useful social function. So, too, does the non-union worker.
It is, therefore, critical to note that industrial cartels pose a greater threat to social welfare than a single monopoly firm. The monopoly firm does not have to worry about how it allocates its gains among its members. It adopts optimal production methods, and then sells its goods at a monopoly price. Cartels have members that have different costs of production. But they cannot put together a system that allows for efficient production because they cannot make the transfer payments that are needed to keep weaker members in the cartel. Hence, like OPEC, they use quotas that, in effect, substitute the hard-to-refine Venezuelan crude for its light Arabian counterpart. Unions do the same thing through work rules that lead to silly restrictions, such as requiring Hostess cupcakes and Wonder Bread to be delivered to the same location in different delivery trucks.
Given these harsh economic inequalities, it is intellectually incorrect for people to say that they are in favor of the collective bargaining system that insulates labor unions from what are (and before 1914, were) per se violations of the anti-trust laws. It may well be that their clout has become so strong that unions cannot be undone by frontal political assaults. Indeed, the right-to-work compromise was adopted under the Taft-Hartley law of 1947 precisely because the Republicans lacked the political power to undo the 1935 Wagner Act in its entirety.
But we should not scorn half measures that move the system in ways that lead to higher levels of employment, higher wages, and lower consumer prices, without the threat of strikes and the huge public expense of running the National Labor Relations Act. Free-riders in labor markets perform an essential social function insofar as they promote competitive markets.
Right-to-work laws thus represent a strong movement in the right direction. They should be defended, not opposed, for their ability to knock organized labor off its privileged perch. Michigan owes a huge debt of thanks to Governor Snyder. The other non right-to-work states should join in the crusade to trim union power.

Political leaders can be expected to hold back their punches to get legislation through. But the job of independent intellectuals is to offer principled defenses of these legislative changes in order to maintain the long-term coherence of, in my case, libertarian thought, which is needed to make future labor market reforms possible.

Succinct explanation

This column offers a brief (and accurate) explanation of the '07 financial crises that exposed the corruption and debilitating drift of this country into the dead end world of collectivism.  It is standard fare for Misean free market advocates to blame economic woes on government policies.  Until someone comes along with a more persuasive explanation, it's hard not to agree with this analysis which Walter Williams has been talking about for several decades.  I first heard him talk at an NFIB conference in 1987, 25 years ago.  He's probably more of a follower of Milton Freidman's free market solutions than the Misean ones, nevertheless he's been consistently opposed to creeping socialism and the ever encroaching state.  A true believer in and advocate for freedom.

Walter E. Williams Column: Our Financial Crisis Is Government-Created

By Walter E. Williams | December 16, 2012 | 22:19  15  32 Reddit1  4

A  A

Suppose you saw a building on fire. Would you seek counsel from the arsonist who set it ablaze for advice on how to put it out? You say, "Williams, you'd have to be a lunatic to do that!" But that's precisely what we've done: turned to the people who created our fiscal crisis to fix it. I have never read a better account of our doing just that than in John A. Allison's new book, "The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure."

Allison is the former CEO of Branch Banking and Trust, the nation's 10th largest bank. He assembles evidence that shows that our financial crisis, followed by the Great Recession, was caused by Congress, the Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and was helped along by the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama White Houses.

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The Federal Reserve, under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, created the massive housing bubble by over-expanding the money supply. President Bush and members of Congress, through the Community Reinvestment Act, intimidated banks and other financial institutions into making home loans to people ineligible for loans under traditional lending criteria. They became subprime lenders. Lending institutions made these loans, now often demeaned as predator loans, because they knew they'd be sold to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Freddie and Fannie.

The GSEs had no problem taking this risky path, because they knew that Congress would force taxpayers to bail them out. Current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is following in the footsteps of his predecessor by massively expanding the money supply by purchasing Treasury debt. He is creating prime conditions for a calamity by the end of this decade.

Then there were the crony capitalists, among whom are Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Countrywide, Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors and Chrysler. These and many other companies, through the thousands of Washington lobbyists they hire, are able to get Congress to shortcut market forces. Free market capitalism is unforgiving. In order to earn a profit and stay in business, producers must please customers and wisely use resources to do so. If they fail to do this, they face losses or go bankrupt.

It's this market discipline of profits and losses that many businesses seek to avoid. That's why they descend upon Washington calling for government bailouts, subsidies and special privileges. Many businessmen wish not to be held strictly accountable to consumers and stockholders, who hold little sympathy for economic blunders and will give them the ax on a moment's notice. With a campaign contribution here and a gift there, they get Congress and the White House to act against the best interests of consumers and investors. Allison suggests that if our country had a separation of "business and state" as it does a separation of "church and state," crony capitalism or crony socialism could not exist.

Allison says that crony capitalism should not be our only concern. The foundation for economic collapse 20 to 25 years from now has already been set. Social Security and Medicare deficits, unfunded state and local pension liabilities, government operating deficits, baby boomer retirement and a failed K-12 education system have eaten out our substance.

What I take away from Allison's highly readable book is that our biggest problem lies in the Federal Reserve's ability to manipulate our monetary system to accommodate big government and use inflation to rob Americans. That's why politicians and government leaders everywhere hate a monetary system based on gold. They can manipulate the quantity of paper money, but they can't manipulate the quantity of gold.

Here's a tidbit of information about John Allison, now president of the Washington-based Cato Institute, that speaks to this man's morality as BB&T's CEO, which can't be praised highly enough. His company refused to lend money to developers who acquired land by having the government take it from private owners, euphemistically called eminent domain. That's putting his money where his mouth is, not sacrificing principle for the sake of earnings.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/walter-e-williams/2012/12/16/walter-e-williams-column-our-financial-crisis-government-created#ixzz2FKikePZe

Bakken oil fields

John Mauldin talks about Bakken and oil drilling  entrepreneurs here.  Couldn't agree with him more.

School choice

The following is the response of one commenter to an Article in American Thinker on line magazine by an author who carefully deconstructed the public school education system.  There were many more comments along the same lines as this one.  It is clear that there are many Americans who still think for themselves and who are fed up with the "education" now being offered by the government by unionized teachers and administrators.  One senses a groundswell of discontent that augers for long overdue change.  The key point made by this commenter, and many others, is the absence of competition for the product now offered by the government. It is always so. One of the basic tenets of capitalism is the role of competition which keeps producers on their toes by offering choice.  The only way one can find choice in the public school system is to opt out and go the very expensive private school route.

In most transactions involving goods and services we are free to spend our money elsewhere if the products and services are inferior. Except government, of course.

Your comment gnawed at me, Schmutzli, for which I thank you. I've wondered a time or two or three why government is always monopolistic, yet hadn't paused to ask myself aloud, "What if it weren't monopolistic?

With the exceptions of criminals on parole and professional politicians tied to public feeding troughs, anyone can move to another state. Within a state, anyone can move to another county, and within many counties, anyone can move to another school district.

Wait a minute. Why do we citizens have to do all the work of moving? Isn't government supposed to be our public servant? That's what it said in my high school civics text, anyway.

If I get tired of waiting in the all but static lines at Grocery A, do I have to drive to another county to try Grocery B? If Grocery B's meats are mediocre and high-priced, do I need to drive to yet another county to try Grocery C?

Once upon a time, people could sign up—and pay—for medical insurance plans as they saw fit: some policies more comprehensive and expensive than others, some less. I'm required by state law to carry minimum insurance on my car, and have the option to carry additional insurance at greater cost, as well as increase or decrease my deductible payment.

At the very least, why shouldn't we be able to sign up for varying levels of government service? Why shouldn't several brands of government compete with one another within a single geographic area?

Before you dismiss that idea out of hand, friends, let me mention trash collection, please. I live in El Paso County near, but not within the city of Colorado Springs.

Most utilities in the county are monopolies, but garbage collection isn't one of them. When I moved here, I signed on the dotted line with Waste Management, which soon proved both unreliable and more expensive than others. I switched to a local company. I'm sure if the county made itself the exclusive provider of trash removal service, I'd pay twice as much, and the reliability would make Waste Management's look positively good.

Maybe it wouldn't be efficient for geographic areas to offer competing law enforcement and fire fighting services, but why shouldn't we, the people be free to sign up for competing school plans, competing trash removal plans, other utility services that compete with one another?

At the very least, it seems to me, we ought to be able to remove some portion of the raw power of monopolism from local government and force markets open to competition, which normally results in improved quality and reduced prices. This old guy who's never had children, for example, would opt out of education altogether. I'd keep my local sheriff's and fire department protection, (both far superior to anything I had to pay for and hoped I'd never need to rely on during my years in California,) but wouldn't sign up for education, street sweeping, (strictly an annual event, anyway,) street lighting, (all but non-existent,) or monopolistic water, (excruciatingly expensive and micro-managed down to the last drop.)

"Aw, now, wait a minute, Standing Wolf!" someone's bound to object. "Educating children is a shared responsibility, and besides, if you opted out, people with kids would have to pay more to send them to school."

If children's education is a "shared responsibility," why do I have to accept sole responsibility for my yard work and house maintenance? Why should we call education a "shared responsibility" when highway maintenance is primarily paid for by taxes on gasoline? The more or fewer miles I drive, the more or fewer dollars I contribute to highway maintenance, which is to say: I pay for what I use rather than everyone but me uses.

If my parents and tax payers in Michigan paid for my elementary and high school education lo, those many years ago in Michigan, are we sure it somehow "averages out" for me to be required to pay for other people's kids' education in Colorado?

Ultimately, if people had to pay for their own children's education instead of sending them to "free" government schools, might they not take more interest in the entire affair? Might they not be more inclined to wonder how much they're paying and how much their kids are getting for it?

Oh, by the way, why should this individual who's never had children be required to pay state taxes in support of blatantly "progressive" state institutions of supposedly "higher" learning? Given Colorado has both public and private colleges, why should the former enjoy the advantage of funding by mandatory tax collection? Who pays? Who benefits? Who—other than boundlessly self-serving government itself—makes these decisions? I believe we're both suffering from and required to pick up the tab for altogether too much government monopolism.

It seems to me both the kind and degree of monopolism authorized at every level of government ought to be a topic for serious civic consideration and debate when the time arrives to restore our constitutional republic.

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Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/ending_progressive_public_education_comments.html#disqus_thread#ixzz2F31ZqVu8

Social and redistributive justice

This is as good of an explanation of "social justice", "redistributive society" and all the collectivists' dreamworld concepts that motivate and drive the current day socialists as I have ever seen.  This world view or model may very well have worked thousands and thousands of years ago when man began living is small groups of 12-15 or so largely for protection from other marauding groups of a similar size.  But, since man began to travel and trade over extensive lands, and since he developed the concept of the division of labor and learned the benefits of both, the model has no connection to reality.  Were the world to be so structured now, we would return to massive poverty and chaos.  This is the anti capitalist society and experiments in creating this perfect world order have failed repeatedly over the years.  And yet, somehow the appeal of redistributive justice and all the other trappings of this failed philosophy persists.  Weird.  Since this is a pdf file the address below is necessary to access it.

http://library.mises.org//books/Anne%20Wortham/Sociological%20view%20of%20Obamas%20World%20of%20Social%20Justice.pdf

Lakers

The Lakers have the biggest (most inflated) team payroll in the NBA and their record to date is 9 wins and 13 losses after last night's loss to the lowly, 4 wins and 18 losses, Cleveland team.  Supposedly the Lakers have the best center (Howard) and best overall player (Bryant) and one of the best forwards (Gasol) in the NBA.  Yet their record is worse than mediocre, it's god awful horrible.  Watching them play Cleveland last night it's obvious they are not a playing together team and what's more they don't even play hard.  Howard looks to be highly overrated.  Maybe he's not fully recovered from his back surgery.  He has not been a defensive force and his overall offense is limited to dunking lob passes and put backs.  It doesn't appear he even has very good basketball instincts.  When he gets the ball near the basket on a pass or rebound rather than keep the ball above his head and go right to the basket with no wasted motion, he takes the ball down below the waist level while he gathers himself for a big jump and dunk usually with both hands.  Of course by the time he has taken to make these unnecessary moves the defense has collapsed on him and either slaps the ball away or fouls him.  He makes less than 50% of his free throws so fouling has become a weapon for the opposition, especially late in the game.  Furthermore he does not appear to even be very active around the basket either on defense or offense.  Fortunately the Lakers have not committed a long term contract to Howard and they can and may be  done with him at the end of the year unless he shows something between now and then.  Bryant provides the bulk of the Lakers offense, taking a third of the team's shots nearly every game.  This is less than optimal since he has bad games, and at 34 is no spring chicken, and the lack of scoring balance means even more trouble as the season wears on.  In fairness to Bryant, none of the other players seems to have a scoring mentality or touch.  Team defense is another glaring weakness as is the lack of foot speed across the board.  Overall this is a team with very big deficiencies.

Oliver Stone and his socialist agenda

For an entertaining discussion of the Oliver Stone revisionist history book and video, the following video produced by PJ Media tells the ugly story behind the leftwing loon and his accomplice.

Coase on the case

The ignorance of the American public about the practice of capitalism works to raise the living standard of everyone, is reflected in the outcome of the last election.  Over 50% of the voters decided a man who does not believe in capitalism, or if he does it is some form of "social justice" capitalism that does not exist in the real world.  It appears Obama believes in something called "redistributive" socialism, or something the other, that bears no relationship to the magical wealth creation that is at the heart of capitalism.  In this brief post by PL's Steven Hayward, a 102 year old real economist identifies the problem with the current "crop" of so-called economists and by extension, the illiteracy of the American public on this critical subject.  Until the socialists and collectivists realize that their beliefs are counter productive, we will likely continue to hire economic illiterates like Obama to redistribute wealth all the while wealth is shrinking.  Sad but true.

COASE ON THE CASE AT 102

Ronald Coase

Ronald Coase, the University of Chicago economist, Nobel Prize winner, and originator of the widely used and misused “Coase Theorem” (about the dynamics of property rights) is still going at the ripe young age of 102.  I believe his famous essay, “The Problem of Social Cost,” remains the most-cited law review article in history, and it spawned the influential law and economics movement inside the legal academy.

Writing recently in the Harvard Business Review in an article provocatively titled “Saving Economics from the Economists,” Coase argued that much of the economics discipline today has become distant from the real world, if not in fact damaging:

Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. The degree to which economics is isolated from the ordinary business of life is extraordinary and unfortunate. . .

This separation of economics from the working economy has severely damaged both the business community and the academic discipline. Since economics offers little in the way of practical insight, managers and entrepreneurs depend on their own business acumen, personal judgment, and rules of thumb in making decisions. In times of crisis, when business leaders lose their self-confidence, they often look to political power to fill the void. Government is increasingly seen as the ultimate solution to tough economic problems, from innovation to employment.

Economics thus becomes a convenient instrument the state uses to manage the economy, rather than a tool the public turns to for enlightenment about how the economy operates. But because it is no longer firmly grounded in systematic empirical investigation of the working of the economy, it is hardly up to the task. . .

That’s not his only recent contribution.  He’s just co-authored a new book, How China Became Capitalist.  My pal Nick Schulz interviewed Coase and his co-author Ning Wang recently.  One highlight:

Nick Schulz: You are critical of much modern economics, saying it has been transformed “from a moral science of man creating wealth to a cold logic of choice and resource allocation.” How did this happen? Where did economics go wrong?

RC & NW: Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics, took economics as a study of “the nature and causes of the wealth of nations.” As late as 1920, Alfred Marshall in the eighth edition of Principles of Economics kept economics as “both a study of wealth and a branch of the study of man.” Barely a dozen years later, Lionel Robbins in his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) reoriented economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” Unfortunately, the viewpoint of Robbins has won the day.The fundamental shift from Smith and Marshall to Robbins is to rid economics of its substance — the working of the social institutions that bind together the economic system. Afterward, economics has turned into a discipline without a subject matter, advocating itself as a study of human choices. This shift has been assisted by what Hayek (1952) criticized as the growing trend of scientism in the study of society, which took mathematical formalism as the only secure route to truth in the pursuit of knowledge. As economists become more and more interested in formalism and related technical sophistication, it becomes secondary whether the substantive questions that they choose to perfect their methods or to illustrate their theoretical models bear any resemblance to the real world economy. By and large, most of our colleagues are not bothered by the fact that what they profess is mainly “blackboard economics.”

j

Maybe the only solution

From a political and economics point of view, this post by a commenter to an article about the debt crises by Victor Davis Hanson, sums up the thinking of many conservatives.  The dilemma in which we now find ourselves has gone beyond the tipping point to the crises point and only a major overhaul of the system can save the day.

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  glennd1 • 8 hours ago

  
  

  I'm coming to believe that the best thing the advocates of liberty and responsible govt can do is to drive the current fed govt into insolvency, so just like a corporation, we can re-organize. We should take Rahm Emanuel's admonition to "never let a crisis go to waste" to heart. We will only have the opportunity to really change the govt entitlement state, the labor laws that provide privilege to unions and to stop funding the states, localities and NGOs that are the feeder system of Progresssive careers in a crisis.

  What would that look like? Well first, the Republicans need to be much more serious in their commentary. Hanson's article is more like the tone that Boehner et al should be taking. They should make clear that we are NOW at the point of no return. They should cite studies of countries that have 100% debt to gdp ratios. The should use OECD data to show how progressive our tax system is already. They should cite the millionaire exoduse from the U.K. in which their higher tax rates have resulted much lower revenues from millionaires, or how the same phenomena is taking place in France.

  They should have a serious conversation with the American people about our unfunded liabilities. If the U.S. was a corporation, the proper reserves required would demand a total of 8 trillion in federal revenue this year. They should start and maintain a conversation on the costs and impact of the welfare state, citing the fact that half of poverty program spending goes to folks who aren't below the poverty line.

  But they don't. They just throw around soundbites and act like kids who are stuck in an "unfair" game, bemoaning Obama but never getting on offense. An example of what I'm thinking would be say a weekly YouTube video series on the absurdities of federal welfare. I wonder how many people know that 1/3 of all federal welfare spending goes to California, and much of that to illegal immigrants.

  I don't think the Republicans are up to the challenge. I don't believe the "new crop" is either. Rubio and Ryan leave me feeling like I'm talking to man-children, sorry, they have no grit. You can tell they've lived their entire lives in politics and govt, and are consummate "insiders" already. Ted Cruz may be a little better but then you also have the challenges of distancing the Republicans from the religious right a bit, as we'll never have more credibility if we keep letting the yahoos who still think Sarah Palin is a great candidate or spokesperson for anything drive this bus.

  None of the above will happen. We'll still be treated to Boehner's sonorous, measured tones. Something much more alarmist is what's called for. I'd love to see him ask, "Mr. President, do you want to run the country insolvent?" Last point, we ain't seen nothin' yet from Obama. His "offer" was his first salvo in a term that promises to offer Progressive programs in droves that will cost a mint. There is no compromise available with someone so disconnected from fiscal and economic reality.

  
  

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    BA1991  glennd1 • an hour ago

    
    

    Well put, Glenn. I, too, am of the exact mindset, and have been saying that about my state, the economic disaster that is RI. I do believe insolvency is the only cure left. Those that live by the government at all levels will soon be learning about the hard facts that Dr. Hanson outlined so well, and that includes the so-called Republican party.

    
    

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  CopperheadCSA • 5 hours ago

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  “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a
  dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been
  200 years.”― Alexis de Tocqueville