ThoughtRogue:  Considering America’s now rampant economic illiteracy and widespread ignorance of history and philosophy, I wonder whether we’re now past the tipping point and the American Dream is doomed?  You’ll notice that every policy decision that our beloved, alleged President makes is to further impoverish Americans – to make them wonderfully dependent, EQUALLY impoverished.

Two excellent books that lay a rock-solid foundation in economics is Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson, and Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.  Both explain economics to the layperson, without the use of formulas, with expert precision, allowing the reader to easily dissect for themselves the plethora of economic fallacies they are bombarded with daily.  These should be required reading of all students – not to mention of all politicians especially.

Turning the American economy around is really simple:

• Reduce the taxation monstrosity
• Reduce government spending even more
• Reduce onerous regulations and restrictions
• Reduce bloated, unconstitutional programs and bureaucracies
• Reduce the shackles on individual work and innovation

But, what has the Usurper-in-Chief accomplished and/or supported at every turn?

• Increased Taxes – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Gigantic Bailouts – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Increasing Federal Spending and Debt – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Repeal of Bush Tax Cuts – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• More Money and Power to Unions, Lobbyists, and Government – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The ‘Cap and Trade’ Energy Bill Boondoggle – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• Support for an Ever-Increasing Minimum Wage – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The Mass Amnesty of Tens of Millions of Illegal Aliens – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The Takeover of the Medical and Insurance Industries – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.
• The National Socialization of Banking, GM, Mortgages, Education.. – net jobs killer and wealth destroyer.

Why Big Government Doesn’t Work

by DOCTOR ZERO, HotAir.com

A person living entirely on their own produces very little, beyond the bare minimum necessities of survival. He has no real “wealth” – no surplus production, to spend on discretionary endeavors. He has few real options in life, beyond daily survival. His moments of real choice come when he gets lucky. An exceptionally fortunate hunt might feed him for a few days, and give him some precious leisure time. Otherwise, he does what he must do, and rarely has time to think about what he could do. Some people enjoy living this way, but most do not.

The situation improves somewhat in a small, voluntary collective: a partnership with a trusted friend, or a small family living on its own. Their combined efforts produce more surplus food, and they can address the necessities of life with less individual effort. They may develop skills and talents that prove valuable to each other. Some people are content to live this way, with a small and isolated family that maintains very little contact with the rest of humanity – but, again, most are not.

When families begin cooperating with each other, production and wealth explode. Communities generate tremendous amounts of surplus production, and commerce allows people access to goods and services they could never produce themselves. The amount of time required to deal with personal survival dwindles away to virtually nothing. Doubtless the reader works hard at his or her job, but your job probably has very little to do with feeding or clothing yourself, or defending yourself from predators. Instead, you produce goods and services that would be unimaginable to a more primitive society – could you explain your job to someone from the tenth century A.D.? In exchange, you earn money, which you spend to purchase what you need – and, more importantly, what you want. Even the poorest member of an advanced society has options.

An advanced society requires a method for allocating its huge amount of surplus production, and meeting the basic needs of its members. There are two general mechanisms for doing this: commerce and government. Every society uses a mixture of these methods. Even the most totalitarian government has a black market, and even the most free-wheeling capitalist society will have a government. Attempts to artificially engineer a society without either commerce or government are doomed to failure, because they will form spontaneously, no matter how strictly they are forbidden.

Government and commerce don’t just co-exist in an uneasy truce. They need each other. Commerce, the free exchange of money for goods and services, produces wealth through choice. Remember the example of the man living alone: the poverty of his existence comes from his lack of choices. The value of money flows from the way it allows consumers to express their choices. For a simple illustration of this principle, compare a ten-dollar restaurant gift certificate to a ten-dollar bill. The ten dollar bill is more valuable than the gift certificate, because you have more choice in how to spend it. A government increases the wealth of its citizens by providing security – stable currency, secure borders, protection from criminals, respect for property rights, and legally enforceable contracts, to name a few of government’s duties. This has the effect of increasing the citizens’ wealth, by increasing the choices available to them. A ten-dollar bill has more value in a large, lawful city than on a tiny island where few goods are available, or a den of thieves where nothing can be bought with confidence.

Consider the example of the impoverished loner versus the citizen of a prosperous society again. The citizens’ money represents wealth, thanks to his many choices, but it represents something else of enormous value: extra time. The loner spends most of his waking hours staying alive, and seeing to his minimal needs. The wealthy citizen spends almost no time on these things – he uses it for economically productive work, self-improvement, and leisure. A ten-dollar bill will purchase you a shirt that you probably don’t know how to make yourself… and even if you had the knowledge, it would most likely take you longer to make the shirt than it takes you to earn ten dollars.

Government allocates wealth through top-down commands, imposed by force. There would be no need for massive tax and spending bills if everyone was freely choosing to spend their money the way the government wants them to. Capitalism has priorities, while government has imperatives. Capitalists fulfill their ambitions through competition, which increases the choices available to consumers. The ambitions of the working class lead them to work harder, and engage in increasingly valuable and productive labor, to earn a better living for themselves and their families. This system is not perfect – there will always be people who try hard but don’t get ahead, and people who don’t make a very productive contribution to society – but over the long run, and measured against a population of millions, free market commerce will tend to produce increased choices, improved technology, and greater value through competition.

Government fulfills its ambitions through compulsion, which reduces choice. Sometimes compulsion is necessary – you can’t fund national defense by passing around a collection plate. When government exceeds the minimal functions necessary to provide stability and security, and begins interfering in the economy for the benefit of certain constituencies, by definition it reduces the overall choices available to its citizens. It doesn’t matter if the government’s intentions are noble – every law it passes to redistribute wealth inevitably reduces wealth, because it reduces choice.

In an economy dominated by the government, the ruling class fulfills its ambitions by serving faithful constituencies at the expense of others. It tries to address its failures by increasing control, which reduces wealth even further, in a downward spiral. It’s not in the nature of government to abandon failed programs, because if government was intelligent and morally superior enough to assert control over a situation in the first place, it will not see the logic in surrendering that control to inferior free-willed citizens. Instead, it will redouble its efforts.

In this environment, the citizens can best fulfill their ambitions by joining favored constituencies if possible, and becoming adept at petitioning the government for greater benefits. This tends to be more successful than working hard, as there is little competition in a state-run economy for the most skilled and productive workers. There are always exceptions – people who give 100% effort out of compassion, personal drive, or a religious calling. There will be politicians who are truly selfless, and sincerely wish to act as wise stewards for the resources of society. Exceptional people cannot be relied upon to power a society of millions. In the long run, and projected over a vast population, the incentives of a government-dominated economy produce stagnation, and strife between warring groups of citizens, who can only gain more benefits at each others’ expense.

That is why Big Government never works. It can’t address conflicting priorities efficiently. The ambitions of its masters are best served by catering to the demands of small, energetic groups, or big corporations who wish to compromise its rightful duty to ensure free trade. Its citizens are not rewarded for exceptional effort, or taking great risks. Worst of all, every single action it takes destroys the very wealth needed to improve the lives of its citizens. Big Government pounds on every problem with a hammer that crumbles in its hands.

TR:  Now, if you thought that TARP I, Porkulus, and Cap’n'Trade were fun…  just wait!

TR:  “Please, Lord, Deliver us from Hopenchange!…  Soon?..”

Obama the Destroyer

By Quin Hillyer, The American Spectator

Slouching Toward Hopenchange.

If somebody were deliberately trying to undermine the very fabric of these United States, he would first vow not just to change its policies but to completely “change America,” and then would do just about everything Barack Obama already has begun to do as president.

To undermine this nation, he would attack the essential sanctity of contracts — exactly as Obama has done. Never mind the “contracts” clause of the Constitution — who needs to get hung up on the Constitution’s actual language when “empathy” is more important?

For that matter, he would denigrate the whole notion of equal justice under the law by criticizing the whole notion of a judge as a neutral umpire. And he would employ, as a senator, outrageous and unprecedented means — the filibusters of judicial nominees — to block judges who don’t agree with his own choices of who deserves more “justice” than whom.

To undermine this nation, he would selectively release only those portions of intelligence memos that make his nation look bad, but not those that provide context and reasonable motivations for the subject of the memos. And he would selectively edit memos from his own intelligence director to eliminate his statements in support of the effectiveness of the policies discussed in those other memos — and his statements supporting the motives of those who adopted those policies in protection of their fellow citizens. And he would leave open the possibility of prosecuting earlier administration’s lawyers merely for giving legal advice he disagrees with.

To undermine this nation, a president would go on a spending binge so incredibly wild that annual deficits and national debt would reach frightening proportions before most Americans could even absorb the arithmetic of it all. He would be utterly reckless with our grandchildren’s tax money, but would turn around and achieve savings — minor savings at that — only by cutting or even gutting defense forces.

He would stop paying for missile defenses. He would stop planning for forces strong enough to handle two regional wars at once, and would concentrate only on counterinsurgency needs while hollowing out our conventional forces. He would repeatedly insult our closest ally (Great Britain) while kowtowing to enemies such as Iran, Venezuela, and Nicaraguan communists. He would travel the world repeatedly apologizing for supposed American sins while failing to defend the USA from verbal assaults from tinpot dictators.

He would submit budgets that would eliminate funding for an already authorized border fence, and nominate as top lawyer of the State Department a man who openly mocks the legal underpinnings of American sovereignty. He would propose raising taxes on corporations, on soft drinks, on investors, on savers, on the grieving families of dead people, on small businesses, and on every family that uses public energy sources.

And worst of all, he would propose unprecedented and underhanded use of a parliamentary maneuver called “reconciliation” to ease the way to an irrevocable government takeover of an entire major sector of the economy — health care — without adequate debate and with firm knowledge that the takeover could lead to serious health care rationing and even government-determined decisions on life and death.

To undermine this nation, he would throw out more than two centuries of economic freedom in favor of a modern-day version of Mussolini’s economic fascism.

He would refuse to prosecute vote fraud or even guard against it, while repeatedly awarding financial grants to organizations such as ACORN that have been accused of vote fraud on multiple occasions in multiple states. He would stack his Justice Department with highly politicized left-wingers. He would fail, until put directly on the spot, to offer the slightest rebuke to his hand-picked, ethically compromised Attorney General when said AG calls his fellow citizens “a nation of cowards.”

In short, to undermine the United States, the president would, as fast as possible, create a massively debt-ridden, tax-ridden, regulation-ridden government whose prosecutors play political favorites but whose stances on the world stage are marked by weakness, self-criticism, and solicitousness towards one’s enemies.

Surely this president has other motives. But even if his intentions are good, we all know the substance of the pavement on the road to perdition.

ThoughtRogue:  Folks, if you haven’t read George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984, it is a must read.  From it, our society has gained many useful yet sinister terms such as:  Big Brother is Watching You (which has been modernized to “Big Daddy is Watching ‘over’ You”), Room 101, Crimethink (thought crimes such as “Hate” crimes”, or conservative ideology), Doublethink (self-contradictory spin or rhetoric as ‘fact’), and literally controlling the future by the constant revision (often erasure) of history by those in control with totalitarian powers…  It’s up to you and me to stop this before we are all engulfed by the armies of Obots and their totalitarian drones.

ThoughtRogue:  The following is a real letter written to my long lost hardcore Leftist – excuse me, Progressive friend.  It is certainly meant to spark discussion and debate with him, or any Leftist.  He seems to have developed a very hard time answering such questions without falling into huge traps of hypocrisy, ignorance, or prevarication.  Please, if you would act as his surrogate, and would like to take a stab at the many searing questions, go for it!!

ThoughtRogue:  What’s the deal these days with cops becoming increasingly unable to distinguish a real criminal – you know, like an Illegal Alien – and a Citizen freely exercising their God-given rights without Big Daddy’s power-tripping coercion and interference?!

BREAKING NEWS:  SENATE PASSED THIS NAZI BILL WITHOUT DEBATE:  74-14/11 DIDN’T VOTE!  

BREAKING NEWS:  THIS FORCED “VOLUNTEERISM” LEGISLATION PASSED THE HOUSE 321-105 AND Now Goes to Senate! CALL & FAX YOUR SENATORS TODAY! 

NC Reminds:  Americans have a right to associate with whomever they choose.  This law WILL BE struck down as unconstitutional as it forces one to a form of slavery! Big bubby will not tell my children or me where to serve if we choose not to serve a Marxist regime!  I choose where I will volunteer!  PERIOD!  

hat tip to Git-R-Done

“Arbeit macht frei” is a German phrase meaning “work brings freedom” or “work shall set you free/will free you”

NC reminds:  No!  The TRUTH shall set you free NOT working for some bloated gub’ment! 

This is up for a vote on Tuesday.

When “volunteerism” becomes required, then it is no longer volunteerism. It becomes slavery! Here is the link to the bill: 
H.R. 1388:

This is the equivalent of brown shirts and the “Arbeit macht frei” It has provisions for youth as well as seniors and everybody in between. This bastard (Hussein) has got to be stopped! It’s all in the Saul Alinsky book too.

Obama Requires YOU to SERVE, H.R.1388, “The Give Act” to reform the National Service HR 1388, will hit the House floor on Tuesday. It is called the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (The Give Act.) The House is scheduled to Rule this week. Sponsored by Democrat Representative Carolyn McCarthy (NY), Education and Labor Committee. The objective is to reauthorize and reform the national service laws.

Happy Fascist!

Democrat Rep. McCarthy is sponsoring the bill with 25 co-sponsors, ALL Democrats, including Charlie Rangel, need I say more? Latest Major Action: 3/11/2009 House committee/subcommittee actions. Status: Ordered to be Reported (Amended) by the Yeas: 34 and Nays: 3.

NC Reminds:  The gub’ment DOES NOT POSSESS a RIGHT to REQUIRE individuals to give three years of their time to some “service”.  Show me this right!  

The Government has the right to require individuals to give 3 years service under the guise of “volunteer” service. It talks about uniforms and “camps.” They revise the word “camps” and call it “campus.” There is also language about Seniors and Community organizations.

¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ 

Some language in the Bill is particularly disturbing like:           

	“leverage Federal investments to increase State, local, business, and philanthropic resources to address national and local challenges;
	encourage national service efforts to address pressing national challenges, such as improving education for low-income students, increasing energy conservation, and improving the health, well-being, and economic opportunities of the neediest individuals in the Nation;
	expand and strengthen service-learning programs through year-round opportunities, including during the summer months, to improve the education of children and youth and to maximize the benefits of national and community service, in order to renew the ethic of civic responsibility and the spirit of community to children and youth throughout the United States;
	increase service opportunities for our Nation’s retiring professionals
	encourage members of the Baby Boom generation to partake in service opportunities
	Civilian Community Corps shall be called the “National Civilian Community Corps”
	the Director determines appropriate “Uniforms”
	Take note of the Miscellaneous Section (Title VI) of the Bill. Very Strange!!!
	Sec. 601. Amtrak waste disposal. -Sec. 602. Exchange program with countries in transition from totalitarianism to Democracy.Here is the Obama spin on it:  This is an article from the Department of Education and Labor.  I am concerned about “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This Bill doesn’t sound like FREEDOM to me no matter how you dress it up.         ‘SEC. 115. PARTICIPATION OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS FROM PRIVATE SCHOOLS.’ (a) In General- To the extent consistent with the number of students in the State, territory, or Indian tribe or in the school district of the local educational agency involved who are enrolled in private nonprofit elementary and secondary schools, such State, Territory, Indian tribe, or agency shall (after consultation with appropriate private school representatives) make provision– (1) for the inclusion of services and arrangements for the benefit of such students so as to allow for the equitable participation of such students in the programs implemented to carry out the objectives and provide the benefits described in this part; and (2) for the training of the teachers of such students so as to allow for the equitable participation of such teachers in the programs implemented to carry out the objectives and provide the benefits described in this part. (a), or if the Corporation determines that a State, Territory, Indian tribe, or local educational agency substantially fails or is unwilling to provide for such participation on an equitable basis, the Chief Executive Officer shall waive such requirements and shall arrange for the provision of services to such students and teachers. Such waivers shall be subject to the requirements of sections 9503 and 9504 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 7883 and 7884). (b) Waiver- If a State, Territory, Indian tribe, or local educational agency is prohibited by law from providing for the participation of students or teachers from private nonprofit schools as required by subsection Please contact your Elected Officials and demand that they oppose HR 1388. Senate House

By Stephen Moore, WSJ

Author of Masterpiece 'Atlas Shrugged'

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated “Atlas” as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion — in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of “Atlas Shrugged”: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That’s the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies — while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to “calm the markets,” another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated — always in the public interest — into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to “Atlas,” a Wall Street Journal headline blared: “Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices.”

In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal — stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in “the public good.” The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.

The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in “the public interest.”

Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.

One memorable moment in “Atlas” occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: “You want me to be Economic Dictator?”

Mr. Thompson: “Yes!”

“And you’ll obey any order I give?”

“Implicitly!”

“Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”

“Oh no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. “We couldn’t do that . . . How would we pay government employees?”

“Fire your government employees.”

“Oh, no!”

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax “for purposes of fairness” as Barack Obama puts it.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand’s ideas, explains that “the older the book gets, the more timely its message.” He tells me that there are plans to make “Atlas Shrugged” into a major motion picture — it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. “We don’t need to make a movie out of the book,” Mr. Kelley jokes. “We are living it right now.”

By -Mark Steyn

Where Nations Go to Die

Speaker of The House, Ms. 'Stretch' Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”

“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er, there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”
Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off-but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.

The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing “syphilis” every time she says “stimulus.” In late September, America was showing the first signs of “primary stimulus”-a few billion lesions popping up on the rarely glimpsed naughty bits of the economy: the subprime mortgage racket, the leverage kings. Now, the condition has metastasized in a mere four months into the advanced stages of “tertiary stimulus,” with trillions of hideous, ever more inflamed pustules sprouting in every nook and cranny as the central nervous system of the body politic crumbles into total insanity-until it seems entirely normal for the second-in-line of presidential succession to be on TV gibbering away about how vital the federalization of condom distribution is to economic recovery.

The rules in this new “post-partisan” era are pretty simple: If the Democratic party wants it, it’s “stimulus.” If the Republican party opposes it, it’s “politics”-as in headlines like this: “Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.” These are serious times: As the president says, it’s the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive “voter registration” group ACORN for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”

“Neighborhood stabilization activities.” That sounds like a line item from the Baath-party budget when Saddam sends the lads in to gas the Kurds. What does it mean in a non-totalitarian sense? Do you need a federally subsidized condom to do it? If so, will a pathetic $4.19 billion be enough?

Is That a Cattle Prod, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

“Stimulus” comes from the verb stimulare, which is Latin for “transfer massive sums of money from what remains of the dynamic sector of the economy to the special interests of the Democratic party.” No, hang on, my mistake. Stimulare means “to goad.” And, on that front, the Democrats are doing an excellent job. They’ve managed to goad 58 percent of the American people into opposing the “stimulus” package. They’ve managed to goad all 177 Republicans in the House into unpacking their mothballed cojones and voting against the bill. And they’ve managed to goad the rest of the world into ending the Obama honeymoon in nothing flat. Headline from the London Daily Telegraph: “US-EU Trade War Looms As Barack Obama Bill Urges ‘Buy American.’ ”

That would be the provision in the Senate bill prohibiting any foreign-made goods from being used in “stimulus” projects. So, if you own a rubber plantation in Malaysia and you’re hoping for a piece of Nancy Pelosi’s condom action, forget it. The EU trade commissioner is outraged at the swaggering cowboy Obama shooting from the hip and unilaterally banning European goods from American soil. But so are American companies such as General Electric. Bill Lane, an executive honcho with Caterpillar (the tenth biggest U.S. investor in the United Kingdom), says, “We are students of history. A major reason a very deep recession turned into the Great Depression was the fact that countries turned inward.” Ah, yes. The Buy American Act of 1933. How’d that work out?

Read the rest of this entry »

Keynesian Economics

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”  -George W. Bush, [his political epitaph] Dec. 16th, 2008

As GWB is swept up in the Keynesian economics revival, and hones his quest to outshine Jimmy Carter’s abysmal legacy, the Cato Institute issued this excellent video debunking this fascination with Robbin’ Hood Economics, and how it consumes wealth while redistributing it around the economy (taking your money and giving it to someone else – for your own good!).

Why don’t these government ass-clowns ever simply ”stimulate the economy” by reducing or eliminating a plethora of taxes, Big Daddy interference, onerous regulations and litigation, over-spending and over-borrowing?  How about following the U.S. Constitution instead of trying to circumvent the natural laws of economics?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxDyC7y7PM]