Desperate Obama Begs Supreme Court to Rule on Obamacare

The recent decision by the Obama administration to ask the Supreme Court to rule on Obamacare is the kind of high-risk action that only a desperate political man would make.

The New York Times:

The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear a case concerning the 2010 health care overhaul law. The development, which came unexpectedly fast, makes it all but certain that the court will soon agree to hear one or more cases involving challenges to the law, with arguments by the spring and a decision by June, in time to land in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign.

The Justice Department said the justices should hear its appeal of a decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, that struck down the centerpiece of the law by a 2-to-1 vote....

...The three federal courts of appeal that have issued decisions on the law so far have all reached different conclusions, with one upholding it, a second — the 11th Circuit— striking it down in part, and a third saying that threshold legal issues barred an immediate ruling. A fourth challenge to the law was heard last week by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit....

....The petition from the 26 states and a second one, from the National Federation of Independent Business and two individuals, sought review on the issues they had lost in the 11th Circuit. The administration’s brief and those of the plaintiffs mostly addressed different questions and talked past one another. Each side now has a chance to respond and tell the court its views about whether the issues identified by its adversaries warrant review.

But almost all of the usual signs indicate that the court will agree to hear at least one challenge to the law: a federal appeals court has struck down a major piece of federal legislation, the lower courts are divided about its constitutionality, and all sides, including the federal government itself, agree that review is warranted....

If Obama had waited for the legal process to play out, it may well have been 2013 or 2014 before the Supreme Court weighed in on his signature piece of legislation, and in the meantime he could continue to claim that he passed a major law that addressed a key policy issue and tout all the benefits of the law (especially since all the benefits kick in immediately and all considerable and nation-crippling drawbacks kick in later and really start to destroy our nation the longer it is law). Oh, there would be Republicans and Tea Party people upset that he passed it into law- but they are going to be upset that he passed it into law, whether it stands or is overturned. The very confusion of it legality is the very sort of thing that a Saul Alinsky acolyte like Obama should be able to use to his advantage- he thrives on the sort of division, confusion, and double-speak that you can hear every day on left-wing talk show stations.

But Obama has decided that his Presidency is such trouble that the only way he can win re-election is if the Supreme Court swoops in and validates his signature law, and then he uses that to trumpet that he is right, because the man has no humility and loves nothing more than to trumpet himself (don't believe me- read his books).

Legal Insurrection has the following analysis, which I largely concur to:

From a purely political viewpoint, it is more important that the Supreme Court hear and decide the case prior to the 2012 election than it is which way the Court rules.

While of course throwing the mandate out is my strong (overwhelming) preference, politically for Republicans I don’t think it makes a huge difference which way the Court decides the case, as long as it decides the case prior to the 2012 election.

If the Supreme Court finds the mandate to be unconstitutional, it will deflate Obama’s presidency. In one fell swoop, the entirety of Obama’s agenda will come crashing down. It will be a political and personal humiliation.

If the Supreme Court upholds the mandate, Obama will be able to crow a little, but such a decision will leave the majority of people who hate the law with but one alternative: Throw Obama and Senate Democrats out in November 2012.

A pro-Obamacare ruling prior to the election will motivate the Republican base like nothing else, and will bring the independents along. If you thought the summer of 2009 was hot, just wait until the summer of 2012 if the only way for the nation to get out from under Obamacare is at the ballot box in November.

Legally, Republicans can lose in the Supreme Court on the Obamacare mandate. Policitally, Republicans cannot lose, so long as a decision is issued prior to the November 2012 election.

The only way that this doesn't become a winning play for the GOP is if they go with Romney, in which case the advantage may be negated whichever way the Court rules because Obama can successfully compare his plan to Romney's plan (although Romney's plan is legal and is the kind of experimentation that one expects from states, whereas Obama's plan has to be illegal and is the kind of overbearing tyranny one expects from dictators).

Regardless, the actions of Obama are to be applauded today- we'll now know sooner rather than later if the federal government has the right that I buy a shiny red ball, if it has the power to make me buy a GM car because it wants to support the union, we'll know if the government can stick a gun to my head and force me to buy solar panels or wind turbines, and we'll know if the government really has the power to take part of my salary that I work for and labor for to do whatever it tyrannically wants to do. Obama has made a gutsy call, because he is terrified that people are finally starting to see that the Emperor has no clothes, and actually our nation is better for him doing that.

Mitt Will be Hammered by Ghosts of Races Past

President Barack Obama is going to drop the most money ever in the history of campaign spending in this coming election- likely far in excess of a billion dollars. A small amount of that money will be spend on positive advertisements- ads which show Obama giving good speeches, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, making the call to take out bin Laden, etc- but the majority of the money will be dedicated to hit pieces against the GOP candidate. Most of the ads will be phony made up charges accusing/implying that the GOP candidate is racist, or obstructionist, or against the working man, or radical/extreme, or a tool for some sort of sinister plot. But the people who run Obama's campaigns are not fools, and will do some research on their opponent, and honestly they're not clever or creative, so they'll just recycle old arguments.

If Mitt Romney runs against Barack Obama, Obama will run the following advertisement (or some variation of it). It was originally produced by Ted Kennedy, who knew how to win office even though he murdered people. Kennedy beat Romney in a 1994 Senate race (17 years ago) by attacking Romney’s record at the consulting firm Bain and Company. See, Romney is a savvy and skilled businessman, and that's his biggest draw- but if voters can be convinced that he made his money by firing poor workers and leveraging government handouts so he could make millions, than his biggest asset for office can be considerably weakened.

Here is the video that Mitt is going to have to figure out how to counter if he runs for President against Obama:

Obama's Change to NCLB Policy: Violation of Nation's Principles?

In 2001, George W. Bush proposed a major change to education law called The No Child Left Behind Act. This piece of legislation was supported with extensive bipartisan support in Congress and leading up to its implementation and passage there was extensive debate regarding this bill- people were given an opportunity to discuss it, come to grips with it, and properly weight its merits and problems.

NCLB at its heart was a deal- education would be reformed by putting in place at the federal level higher standards and the establishment of measurable educational goals, and in return Congress would dramatically increase the amount of amount of federal funding for education, increasing it from $42.2 billion in 2001 to $54.4 billion in 2007. In return for states developing assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, the federal would expand funding for reading programs and Title I programs which benefit disadvantaged children, and would considerably expand funding for IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education) to support education. That was the bargain made, after considerable discussion and debate- money in exchange for accountability.

And now, with no debate and discussion, President Obama has decided without any support from either party in Congress to go ahead and change the deal, and we can only pray that he does not alter it further.

Via The Heritage Group:

“Congress hasn’t been able to do it, so I will.” With this bold statement, President Obama announced last Friday that he would unilaterally replace the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with conditions-based waivers. Obama’s waiver strategy is an alarming misuse of executive power that undermines the separation of powers.

In and of itself, the use of waivers is not unconstitutional. Congress has the authority to create laws with provisions that allow the President to grant exceptions in certain circumstances. NCLB does, for instance, authorize the Secretary of Education to grant waivers to applicants that meet certain criteria. However, waivers are not written as blank checks of authority for the President to bypass Congress and enact new policy.

In this case, the President is using waivers to rewrite the law. The Obama waivers go far beyond the measures allowed by NCLB. To receive a waiver, states must agree to implement a new set of goals and programs determined not by Congress, but by the White House.

For months, President Obama and Congressional Republicans have disagreed on how to reform NCLB. There are major problems with the law’s intrusive regulations. But the Obama administration decided that the “do-nothing Congress” could not be trusted to act and so the President is acting without them.

But co-opting the waiver power to craft a new laws designed in and implemented by the White House is a departure from the constitutional separation of powers. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to craft the nation’s laws and to reform those laws when they do not work as planned. The executive is authorized to carry out the laws passed by Congress. But this can be quite bothersome for a President if Congress doesn’t see things his way.

The President does have a proper constitutional role to play in the legislative process. The President has the power to veto or sign a bill. Furthermore, as permitted by the recommendation clause of Article 1, Section 3, the President may recommend legislation to Congress. This is does not mean that the President can unilaterally create law as if by royal edict. To become law, legislation (even when recommended by the President) must first pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the President. This process ensures that any law will be subject to deliberation by both the nationally elected President and the Congressmen who are more attuned to the particular interests and concerns of the local communities they represent.

Both congressional Republicans and president Obama acknowledge that NCLB is a flawed law. While it may be tempting to seek a quick fix to this sprawling and unpopular program that avoids a partisan battle, misusing waivers to enact new policy without the consent of the elected representatives in Congress is not the way to address the issue.

President Obama is once again demonstrating his unfitness for office by changing the deal, and this is a bad thing- education will continue to receive funding, but now will no longer have to meet the deal that Congress put in place- rather, they will have to meet the deal that Obama puts in place, conditions that he will establish without legislative authority or approval. This sort of action should be causing libertarians and liberals and conservatives to howl, because it is a slap in the face to democracy, elected government, separation of powers, and our Constitution. His time in office can not come to an end quickly enough.

Perry Isn't Done Yet- My Review of His Speech from Mackinac Island

Although the media is really playing up the fact that Mitt Romney won the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference straw poll over Rick Perry 51% to 17%, I was there, and the reality is that most of the people there voted prior to hearing either candidate speak and that after hearing both Perry and Romney speak, the race is a lot more even then the margin in the straw poll.

Romney is playing a defensive game, saying all the right things, hitting all the right spots, meeting with all the right people, and clearly is going to attempt to win the Presidency by not making any major mistakes. This might be the way to play it this election, but I doubt it- Obama sounds like he is getting into campaign mode, and although Obama couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag, he can get his hands on a lot of money and win himself office. So the better candidate for the Republican Party might just be Rick Perry.

In a marked contrast to the coached and artificial Romney, Perry is a lively person and is full of personality. He sounds a little bit like Own Wilson with his southern drawl and has a bounce in his step- I see him as a little more of a wild-card in the race, someone who will say some pretty good lines but will also make mistakes- for example, the stuff about not building a fence and providing in-state tuition for people who crossed the border illegally are important mistakes, although in reality these are peripheral to the job of being President.

He began his speech on Mackinac Island at the Grand Hotel by talking about how once America built things- like cars and bridges and beautiful hotels- and if we elect him, "our best days are still ahead of us." I like that idea- that is a marked contrast to Barack Obama, who appears to be trying to play a zero-sum game of class-warfare in America, where he wants to take the existing/shrinking pie and divvy it up to his supporters and allies rather than growing the pie so we all are happy. Perry is patriotic- he said something like 'the greatest nation on Earth is the United States of America'- and I love people who love America.

But what I really liked about Perry was his appeal to Reagan Democrats- although a lot of Republicans who are following the primary are all about picking the best candidate in the primary, in reality the most important consideration they should be thinking about is who stands the best chance of beating Obama. Romney is a good moderate who is business-like and a safe pick, and this gives him a solid edge, but Perry talked about willing over the Reagan Democrats, those people who are still in the Democratic Party even though every year the Democratic Party becomes more militant progressive and socialist. Yeah, the Tea Party might make this GOP not the GOP of your fathers- but the Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of a generation ago, and having a candidate like Perry in the running who tries to win these Reagan Democrats might be a great asset.

"We will take the boots of over-taxation and over-regulation off the necks of small businessmen and businesswomen" he stated, laying out his theme that it is centralized control and elites in a far away capital who are being a barrier to the progress of America. Restoring freedom and liberty, he feels, will lead us forward better than having government bureaucrats rule over us- the freedom and liberty to make choices and take responsibility from those choices and letting the collective wisdom of the marketplace guide decisions in society will lead to a more prosperous and happy nation. "We don't need the rhetoric of change, but rather a record of change" he declared.

To be honest, his approach is a gutsy approach- it takes courage to let go of power and trust the American people to create jobs and goods and wealth- rather than tell the people what to do with regulations and a controlling tax code, Perry is suggesting that people be free and make decisions freely and that that will result in greater production and wealth. It's a tougher argument to make, but the right one, and I really hope the American people listen more closely to what he is saying.

"There is nothing ailing our nation that freedom can't cure," he said, pointing to crushing debt, increasing regulations, and legislation like Obamacare as the reason why our economy has failed to recover from the 2008 recession. He outright rejected Keynesian economic theory, and it was great to hear a major candidate cite economic theories, because our current President doesn't rely on any sort of economic theories to underpin his policies, unless you consider the mutated and mangled version of Keynesian theory he is ignorantly applying a real policy.

"I will guide this nation with a deep deep rudder," he said- and that to me is perhaps why he moved ahead of Romney as my choice in the straw poll. Sometimes I am concerned that Romney will not steer the ship of state with a deep rudder, but rather a shallow one, and that's okay- with a GOP Congress dominated by the Tea Party, it's okay to go on that current and see where it goes, and after Romney is done America will be a much improved nation. But with Perry, he'll steer our nation in the direction he wants to take it, even if the current flows another direction, and if we do defeat Obama, that might benefit our nation more in the long run.

And as long as Rick Perry keeps rolling off lines like the one he left the lunch crown with, I think he'll be okay- he finished with- "Every day I will try to make Washington DC more inconsequential in your lives".

Former Michigan Governor: US Can Learn a Lot from Michigan

Jennifer Granholm, the Democratic former Governor of Michigan, is exactly right- the United States can learn a lot of lessons from Michigan's government- lessons on what not to do.

Before the Obama years, many looked back at the Bush years and talked about how bad 4% GDP growth and 6% unemployment were, but to be honest, those numbers were never that good in Michigan, which suffered under a single state recession for much of the 2000's and had low GDP growth rates, high unemployment, and bad numbers on everything else. For many years, the people of this great state were told that the reason why Michigan was doing so poorly was George W. Bush's fault- but from 2009 to 2011 Bush was gone and yet Michigan still led the nation in all of the wrong numbers. The reason why Michigan did poorly as a state from 2003 to 2011 was because during this time our state had a progressive Democrat as Governor who put in place the same policies at the state level that have failed so miserably at the national level as well.

Governor Granholm believed that the government should take money from those who are successful and then use that money to pick and choose winners and losers in the marketplace. Her administration decided that what made a company or an industry a 'winner' was not whether or not it was profitable, whether it provided a good that was valued by society highly (as determined by private investment), or whether it was a stable and sound investment. No, under Democratic officials and Granholm, the decision to use the power of government to anoint an industry a 'winner' was made based on political decisions of whether or not that industry or company donated to the Democratic Party, the decision was made based on whether or not the industry or business was deemed 'cool' and 'hip', and whether not the business or industry provided a good or service that the ruling powers liked, whether it was 'green products' or movies.

Using the power of the government to transfer wealth from savers and producers and successful people to those who are spenders and wasters and unsuccessful has a decided effect on an economy, whether at the state level or the national level- it leads to less economic success, more waste, more inefficiency, less jobs, less tax revenue, and a thoroughly lessened society on almost every level. When property is taken and corrupt decisions are made in the government, a state and a nation are not successful.

Michigan showed the entire nation what would happen if those same policies were enacted at the national level- it was a lesson of what not to do. And yet, in spite of this, much like our national leaders that continue to press on in the face of failure, those who inflicted this awful economy on us have no apologies and hold true to their course. President Barack Obama, much like Jennifer Granholm, will not change in any substantive manner and will not alter his policies if he wins a second term.

Jennifer Granholm is coming out with a new book, "A Governor's Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future," and in it she gives our great nation of how not to run a state or government or anything at all.

As is typical in a government which inserts itself into the marketplace and plays political games with citizens, the book talks about all of the political gamesmanship and behind-the-scenes deal-making and continual crisis that marked the Granholm years in Michigan. The book argues that government involvement — tax payer money given away in the name of green jobs and pork programs — is essential to economic growth, in spite of the track record that that philosophy has had whenever and wherever it has been tried. They attempt to argue that because another government has (the Obama administration) has awarded tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money borrowed on credit from China as loans to various industries in Michigan over the last couple of years, this is some sort of an indication of success for their method.

Granholm says "Smart and active government is really what's needed"- as if a small elite class of unconnected politicians working in a capital will be smarter than the thousands of decisions that free citizens make every day in a free market, and as if a more active government will not crowd out investment and decisions freely made by businessman and force them into making unwise and bad investments.

"If you place no bets, you will lose every time," she said, suggesting that the government should use its extreme lack of information about the market and rely on its lack of personal investment in the situation to gamble away taxpayer money at every political or 'cool' industry or company that comes along. Oh, a couple of those bets will win- even a Democrat finds his way out of a recession every now and then- but on the whole, taxpayers will take it on the chin many more times than not, and Granholm and her cronies will walk away with pensions, paychecks, a nice university position, and a new book.

United States, be prepared- Michigan has shown the nation the way, and don't ever forget- Granholm won a second term of office after her disastrous first term saw her destroy Michigan's economy and ruin many lives.

Detroit News provided quotes and source information.

Funny Video: Obama's Budget Plan

Apparently I'm not the only one who feels like a sap in the new Obama-economy for paying my bills, working hard, and saving money. Ray Stevens made a video where he 'wakes up' and realizes the reality of the change that Obama brought to America. It's funny. Enjoy!

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Dans ses écrits, un sàge Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien
-From Voltaire's poem La Bégueule

There is no real race for the Republican nomination for President- there are only two candidates who have a chance to defeat President Barack Obama, the Democrat nominee, and those two candidates are Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. They may not be the best choices- there may very well be a better candidate out there- but either would make a better President than Obama, and the only way to defeat Obama is to choose one of these two nominees.

There is also no real race for the Republican nomination for Senate here in Michigan- our only chance is by choosing Pete Hoekstra to be our nominee, and we should choose him, not because he would make a better Senator than Durant or Konetchy, but because Hoekstra is better than Stabenow, who will likely be elected if he isn't the nominee.

Oh, I know what my Tea Party readers are saying right now- they think I am a traitor to the cause, they feel that I am not being pure enough to the principles of the party, and they think that now is the time to nominate a Michelle Bachman or Peter Konetchy, who they have deemed as the pure and ideal candidate, mostly because these sorts of candidates haven't been in politics long (or at all) and have never been in any sort of leadership positions. These sort of idealists are the sort that nominate unelectable 'pure' candidates over solid conservative candidates, and then when their candidate is defeated by a progressive socialist they pat themselves on the back for staying true to themselves- meanwhile in the real world, the real effect of their actions was to help elect a progressive over a conservative.

Those people out there who argue that Romney or Perry or Hoekstra aren't sufficiently 'conservative' or 'tea party' enough for them can afford to be true to their morals, but I can't- I have children who need a future for our nation, so all I can afford to be is a true patriot who through my actions and votes helps replace progressive liberals with anything better. If a moderate knocks out a liberal, that's an improvement; likewise, a Romney or Perry is an improvement over an Obama, and a Hoekstra is an improvement over a Stabenow.

Many though argue that it isn't really like this- that now is the time that 'true' conservatives can defeat Stabenow and Obama, and that if we don't go big we'll miss our chance. This is a severe misreading of the last several elections, which showed (notably in Delaware and Colorado) that although conservative ideas and tea party ideals are popular, they center in American politics lies closer to where it has always lain, which is slightly right, and in politics, the closer a candidate is to the sweet spot, the more likely they are to be elected. As far left as Obama or Stabenow is, there biggest hope is that tea party and conservative activists like many of you help nominate someone who is farther to the right than what the American people want and by doing so help them win re-election.

The 'Golden Mean' of American politics, the Middle Way, the Doctrine of the Mean, all suggest that Tea Party activists and conservatives should be very careful with who they support and who they campaign for. Although some candidates may appeal to your more extreme views, the reality is that with a little bit of moderation, you can help elect a good candidate, even if they aren't a perfect candidate.

Abolish the Department of Education- What Does the Data Suggest?

The Cato Institute put together the graph you see on this post which shows the amount of federal spending on education relative to the reading, math, and science scores in our nation. As you can see, the amount of federal spending per pupil has increased quite a bit since the federal Department of Education was created, growing almost 190%, from a budget of $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1980 to $77.8 billion by 2011. And yet, in spite of the massive increase in federal spending, scores have remained flat. Two conclusions can be drawn from this.

The first conclusion, that many liberals and progressives may be a part of, is that without that massive investment in education that massively increased every year, that our test scores would have gone down and the educational achievement of our students would be quite a bit lower than it is today. Just like the arguments that these groups advance to support the stimulus spending of the federal government ("imagine how bad unemployment would have been if Obama hadn't mortgaged our children's future to China- why, it might have gone over 10%!"), this group would argue that the deluge in federal funds staved off the utter collapse of our educational system and demonstrated that if only we would have spent double or triple more, than our NEAP scores may have even gone up. And if increased spending does not result in higher test scores, that is only because they would have gone down if not for the higher spending, so the spending at the very least kept the scores constant because we all know George W. Bush hated teachers and education.

The second conclusion that one could reach when looking at the data, a conclusion that many conservatives and tea party people might agree to, is that the massive spending in education at the federal level was largely a waste of money and did nothing to improve our test scores. Much like the arguments that these groups advance to oppose the stimulus spending of the federal government today ("imagine if our nation would not have blown several trillion in dollars on nothing during the Obama administration- our children might actually have a future and the unemployment numbers would look basically the same!"), this group would argue that all of the spending done at the federal level is having little to no effect on test scores for students because the money is being gobbled up by bureaucrats in Washington who are far removed from the real educating of students at the local level. They would suggest spending less amounts on education at the federal level and seeing what might happen- perhaps test scores would remain flat as they have done for over 30 years, but if this happens than our nation could save that $77 billion dollars/year and use it in other areas where it might be needed or not use it at all and have our government run a balanced budget.

One of these conclusions is reasonable, measured, and supported by the data. The other conclusion is not. I'll let you be the judge of which is which.

H/T Doug Ross

Juan Williams: Government is One Big Charity?

Juan Williams was on Sean Hannity today discussing President Obama's economic and domestic policies, and when push came to shove and facts and figures and data and evidence was cited, he fell back on the same argument that liberals and progressives always fall back on when the results of their policies prove to be harmful to poor people, minorities, and the groups in society that need the most help- he fell back on the argument that for all of the government's faults, at least it was taking wealth from rich people and redistributing it as charity to poor people.

Liberals and progressives, who have seized the old Democratic Party and are now running it as a communist organization, believe that one of the primary roles of the new United States of America is to use the power of the state to distribute charity to those who need it. But their actions and beliefs are in fact resulting in less money and wealth going to the people who need it in society because the government is THE SINGLE WORST charitable organization in the world, having considerable overhead, being motivated by politics and not need, and full of corruption and graft.

CATO, in a report that, although dated, still gets to the heart of the matter, said:

Private charities have been more successful than government welfare for several reasons. First, private charities are able to individualize their approach to the circumstances of poor people in ways that governments can never do. Government regulations must be designed to treat all similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the difference between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights which cannot be fully abrogated . . . public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services without any attempt to differentiate between the needs of recipients.

Take, for example, the case of a poor person who has a job offer. But she can't get to the job because her car battery is dead. A government welfare program can do nothing but tell her to wait two weeks until her welfare check arrives. Of course, by that time the job will be gone. A private charity can simply go out and buy a car battery (or even jump-start the dead battery).

The sheer size of government programs works against individualization. As one welfare case worker lamented, "With 125 cases it's hard to remember that they're all human beings. Sometimes they're just a number." Bureaucracy is a major factor in government welfare programs. For example, a report on welfare in Illinois found procedures requiring "nine forms to process an address change, at least six forms to add or delete a member of a household, and a minimum of six forms to report a change in earnings or employment." All that for just one program.

In her excellent book Tyranny of Kindness, Theresa Funiciello, a former welfare mother, describes the dehumanizing world of the government welfare system--a system in which regulations and bureaucracy rule all else. It is a system in which illiterate homeless people with mental illnesses are handed 17-page forms to fill out, women nine months pregnant are told to verify their pregnancies, a woman who was raped is told she is ineligible for benefits because she can't list the baby's father on the required form. It is a world totally unable to adjust to the slightest deviation from the bureaucratic norm.

In addition to being better able to target individual needs, private charities are much better able to target assistance to those who really need help. Because eligibility requirements for government welfare programs are arbitrary and cannot be changed to fit individual circumstances, many people in genuine need do not receive assistance, while benefits often go to people who do not really need them. More than 40 percent of all families living below the poverty level receive no government assistance. Yet more than half of the families receiving means-tested benefits are not poor. Thus, a student may receive food stamps, while a homeless man with no mailing address goes without. Private charities are not bound by such bureaucratic restrictions.

Private charity also has a better record of actually delivering aid to recipients. Surprisingly little of the money being spent on federal and state social welfare programs actually reaches recipients. In 1965, 70 cents of every dollar spent by the government to fight poverty went directly to poor people. Today, 70 cents of every dollar goes, not to poor people, but to government bureaucrats and others who serve the poor. Few private charities have the bureaucratic overhead and inefficiency of government programs.

Democratic policies are increasingly being defended on 'charitable' grounds, from healthcare policies to economic policies to environmental policies, but the truth of the matter is that government is a poor method of distributing charity. Instead of relying on government and its horrible charitable giving, all of these programs should be ended and the money spent on them should be returned to citizens. Even if a small percentage of this money was given in charity, then it would be more successful than government programs, and as long as there are a lot of conservative Republicans around, we can be sure that a good percentage of money will be donated and not a small percentage (according to studies, liberals don't donate to charity- they feel superior by taking money from you and giving that to charity).

Obama's Economic Policy is... State Socialism?

Listening to a recent speech by US President Barack Obama (Democrat) regarding the passage of the American Invents Act at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, I was bothered by way that he phrased things. Shortly into his speech, he said:

...But there are other steps that (the national government) can take. Today, for example, my (the national government) administration is announcing a new center that will help companies reduce the time and cost of developing lifesaving drugs. When scientists and researchers at the National Institutes of Health discover a new cure or breakthrough, (the national government's) going to make it easier for startup companies to sell those products to the people who need them. (The national government) got more than 100 universities and companies to agree that they’ll work together to bring more inventions to market as fast as possible. And (the national government's) also developing a strategy to create jobs in biotechnology, which has tremendous promise for health, clean energy and the environment....

....So (the national government's) going to have to make sure that (the national government's) continuing to invest in basic research so you can do the work that you’re capable of — and still pay the rent, which is important, you will find out. (ha ha, paying the bills is funny.)

(The national government's) need to continue to provide incentives and support to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root not in China or in Europe, but right here in the United States — because it’s not enough to invent things here; our workers should also be building the products that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.

And if (the national government) wants companies to hire our workers, (the national government) needs to make sure we give every American the skills and education that they need to compete. (The national government has) got to have more schools like Thomas Jefferson....

...That’s why (the national government's) boosting science and technology and engineering and math education all across the country. And that’s why (the national government's) also working with businesses to train more engineers, and revitalize our community colleges so they can provide our workers with new skills and training. And, finally, that’s why (the national government's) making sure that all of our children can afford to fulfill their dream of a college education — that they can afford to go to school and that Pell grants and student loan programs ensure that they don’t come out of college with mountains of debt.

This is the economy (the national government) needs to build — one where innovation is encouraged, education is a national mission, and new jobs and businesses take root right here in America.

So that’s the long-term project.

To be helpful, I replaced the word 'we' with 'the national government' so that I could better understand exactly what Obama sees as the long-term project of change for our nation.

You see, what bothers me is that the economic philosophy that I increasingly believe that Obama is increasingly pushing in our nation is State Socialism. Wikipedia describes it this way:

State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy.

Proponents of state socialism claim the state, through practical considerations of governing, must play at least a temporary part in building socialism. Many Socialists, such as Fredrick Engels and Saint-Simon, take the position that the state will change in nature and function in a socialist society; specifically, the nature of the state would change from one of political rule over people into a scientific administration of the processes of production; specifically the state would become a coordinating economic entity of inclusive associations rather than a mechanism of class and political control....

...Traditional social democrats and non-revolutionary democratic socialists argue for a gradual, peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. They wish to abolish capitalism, but through political reform rather than revolution. This method of gradualism implies utilization of the existing state apparatus and machinery of government to gradually move society toward socialism, and is sometimes derided by other socialists as a form of "socialism from above" or political "elitism" for relying on electoral means to achieve socialism....

....Trotskyists believe that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, operate without the input and participation of the millions of people who participate in the economy who understand/respond to local conditions and changes in the economy, and because of this criticize central state planning as being unable to effectively coordinate all economic activity....

Perhaps I'm wrong, and Obama isn't in favor of State Socialism, but I think I'm narrowing down exactly just exactly this guy is thinking for the future of America.

Scientists Filling Roles Priests Once Filled?

"Are scientists becoming the new priests?" asks Debra J. Saunders in a recent editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle, and the conclusion that she comes to is "Yes":

...university science departments are havens of harmony, with scientists as priest-like figures to whose greater wisdom the public should defer. With scientists on this pedestal, who needs religion?

Saunders is on the right track here- increasingly, scientists are filling a role in our society once reserved from priests- they tell fortunes based on reading omens in the weather, they tell the future (inaccurately) based on models they create, they punish unbelievers and reward those agree with them without questioning, they build themselves great temples on universities designed to add prestige to their profession, they advise people regarding the proper sacrifices to make in order to appease the angered science gods, they peddle myths and run secret societies, and they hold to a worldview that does not allow any other challengers.

It should be no surprise that scientists are filling this role- for thousands of years, humans have turned to priests, shamans, fortune-tellers, soothsayers, magicians, witch-doctors, and religious types of all sorts. These sorts prey on those who are looking for hope, looking for direction, looking for someone to tell them the right way to live their own lives, and these scientists fill that role- many have, after all, devoted their lives to killing the Christian God and subverting his people, and now they rush into that vacuum with their own creation myths, sacred beliefs, sacrifices, and class of keepers of the eternal flame of truth.

In my post Is Al Gore the Re-incarnation of the Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse? I touched on this idea:

Alarmingly, the prophet that Gore most resembles may turn out to be Nongqawuse, who led her people to ruin in the mid-19th century. Nongqawuse was a teenager and a member of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to fetch water. When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of three of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring them fresh, healthier cattle. (Some of the Xhosa cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle.)

Astonishingly, the Xhosa chieftain, Sarhili, agreed to do exactly as this young girl urged. Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed. Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual. It was not red. And the Xhosa ancestors did not show. But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood. In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000. Cannibalism was reported. Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Al Gore and scientists who peddle his myths in the hopes of winning lucrative government grants are damaging our nation, slowing down our economic growth, making us more dependent on foreign powers, destroying jobs and the tax money that those jobs could be generating for schools and roads and important projects, and holding humanity back from progressing to a bright future. One can only hope that our educated population here in America is more sophisticated and civilized than the Xhosa tribe and begins to fight back and resist the peddlers of these destructive green myths.

The 1936 GOP Platform Gives Clues on How to Battle a Depression-Extending Progressive

Although I am no expert in this, I have always felt that the 1930's were an interesting time period in our nation. The Victorian age had come to a bloody conclusion with World War One, and a whole generation of people were now being raised in a society that saw their parents as failures- their attempts to repress their sexual urges, their attempts to stick to the old ways, their attempts to put in place world peace, their attempts to build multinational nations- all had led to one of the most bloody and brutal and worthless wars of all time. Technology was changing fast- cars and telephones and radio and motion picture- and the children of the 1910's and 1920's thought that they had everything figured out- they thought that where other generations had failed due to their reliance on religion, traditional values, free markets, republicanism, and limited government, they would succeed by figuring out a third way of doing things, a practical way of doing things, a way of doing things that used the power of government to make society a better place to live. This new generation, horrified by WWI and mocking their parents lack of technology skills, had it all figured out, and ushered in an era of fascism and communism and World War Two.

In my post 1930's Are Root of All That is Wrong I cataloged all of the laws that were passed in the 1930's in America that are with us today- such as the Unemployment Compensation Tax (MI, 1936), Oil and Gas Severance Tax (MI, 1929), Social Security Act (USA, 1935), Fair Labor Standards Act (USA, 1938), Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (USA, 1930), Hoover Tax Hike (USA, 1932), National Labor Relations Act (USA, 1935), Private Schools, Act 302 of 1921 (MI, 1921), Roosevelt moves traditional Thanksgiving Day (1939), Regulating Firearms, Act 373 (MI, 1927), US moves off gold standard (1933), Reapportionment Act (USA, 1929), etc. Looking through that list and thinking of how much America was changed by one generation, by one President, by one party, by one decade (mostly), I was always stunned, and wondered how people had let that come to pass.

As it turns out, the Republican Party of 1936 had put together a platform to oppose a lot of these fascist ideas, but people loved their hope and change and returned FDR to the White House instead, and so the Great Depression dragged on for another decade. Via Conservative Hideout, let's take a walk back in history and see just exactly what the GOP was offering as an alternative back then to the high taxes, high regulation, crony capitalism, fascist third way system that FDR was pushing our nation into. Here is a good chunk of the 1936 Republican Party Platform:

1936 Republican Party PlatformAmerica is in peril. The welfare of American men and women and the future of our youth are at stake. We dedicate ourselves to the preservation of their political liberty, their individual opportunity and their character as free citizens, which today for the first time are threatened by Government itself.

For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions and flagrantly betrayed the pledges upon which the Democratic Party sought and received public support. The powers of Congress have been usurped by the President... the rights and liberties of American citizens have been violated... regulated monopoly has displaced free enterprise.... it has intimidated witnesses and interfered with the right of petition... it has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, using public funds for partisan political purposes... it has promoted investigations to harass and intimidate American citizens, at the same time denying investigations into its own improper expenditures... it has created a vast multitude of new offices, filled them with its favorites, set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people.... it has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression.... appeals to passion and class prejudice have replaced reason and tolerance.

To a free people, these actions are insufferable. This campaign cannot be waged on the traditional differences between the Republican and Democratic parties. The responsibility of this election transcends all previous political divisions. We invite all Americans, irrespective of party, to join us in defense of American institutions. We pledge ourselves:

...To preserve the American system of free enterprise, private competition, and equality of opportunity, and to seek its constant betterment in the interests of all.

The only permanent solution of the unemployment problem is the absorption of the unemployed by industry and agriculture. To that end, we advocate: Removal of restrictions on production. Abandonment of all New Deal policies that raise production costs, increase the cost of living, and thereby restrict buying, reduce volume and prevent reemployment. Encouragement instead of hindrance to legitimate business. Withdrawal of government from competition with private payrolls. Elimination of unnecessary and hampering regulations. Adoption of such other policies as will furnish a chance for individual enterprise, industrial expansion, and the restoration of jobs.

Society has an obligation to promote the security of the people, by affording some measure of protection against involuntary unemployment and dependency in old age. The New Deal policies, while purporting to provide social security, have, in fact, endangered it. We propose a system of old age security, based upon the following principles: 1. We approve a pay-as-you-go policy, which requires of each generation the support of the aged and the determination of what is just and adequate, 2. Every American citizen over sixty-five should receive the supplementary payment necessary to provide a minimum income sufficient to protect him or her from want. 3. Each state and territory, upon complying with simple and general minimum standards, should receive from the federal government a graduated contribution in proportion to its own, up to a fixed maximum....

...Nearly sixty percent of all imports into the United States are now free of duty. The other forty percent of imports compete directly with the product of our industry. We would keep on the free list all products not grown or produced in the United States in commercial quantities. As to all commodities that commercially compete with our farms, our forests, our mines, our fisheries, our oil wells, our labor and our industries, sufficient protection should be maintained at all times to defend the American farmer and the American wage earner from the destructive competition emanating from the subsidies of foreign governments and the imports from low-wage and depreciated-currency countries....

...We recognize the existence of a field within which governmental regulation is desirable and salutary. The authority to regulate should be vested in an independent tribunal acting under clear and specific laws establishing definite standards. Their determinations on law and facts should be subject to review by the Courts. We favor Federal regulation, within the Constitution, of the marketing of securities to protect investors. We favor also Federal regulation of the interstate activities of public utilities...

...We pledge ourselves to the merit system, virtually destroyed by New Deal spoilsmen. It should be restored, improved and extended. We will provide such conditions as offer an attractive permanent career in government service to young men and women of ability, irrespective of party affiliations.

The New Deal Administration has been characterized by shameful waste, and general financial irresponsibility. It has piled deficit upon deficit. It threatens national bankruptcy and the destruction through inflation of insurance policies and savings bank deposits. We pledge ourselves to: Stop the folly of uncontrolled spending. Balance the budget—not by increasing taxes but by cutting expenditures, drastically and immediately. Revise the federal tax system and coordinate it with state and local tax systems. Use the taxing power for raising revenue and not for punitive or political purposes.

We advocate a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards. The first requisite to a sound and stable currency is a balanced budget. We oppose further devaluation of the dollar. We will restore to the Congress the authority lodged with it by the Constitution to coin money and regulate the value thereof by repealing all the laws delegating this authority to the Executive....

...We assume the obligations and duties imposed upon Government by modern conditions. We affirm our unalterable conviction that, in the future as in the past, the fate of the nation will depend, not so much on the wisdom and power of government, as on the character and virtue, self-reliance, industry and thrift of the people and on their willingness to meet the responsibilities essential to the preservation of a free society.

How I Helped Mary Beth Hicks Write her Book 'Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid'

Many of you know that I have been interviewed by newspapers (Detroit News) and by major radio shows (Larry Eldar Show) and some of you have even tuned in to hear me occasionally co-host a radio program (Total Education Hour), but it may surprise you all to know that I have also been a part of a major best-selling book- Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom by Mary Beth Hicks.

About two years ago best-selling author Mary Beth Hicks approached me and asked if I would answer some interview questions for her. At first, I think that her idea for the book was that there was some sort of liberal plot going on in our society and in our schools- some class that we all had to take, something that the union made us all do, or some sort of liberal secret society that was spreading its views throughout the educational system- and she wanted me to expose that plot, conspiracy, or class that all of us teachers must be taking that was making our school system so filled with liberal indoctrination.

But I told her that this wasn't really the case- that in reality, the situation was much worse than that, that liberals were systematically driving their agenda home in little ways every day, creating entire generations of kids who 'drink the kool-aid' of liberalism. I detailed for her dozens of examples of little ways that liberal views are pushed on children and how subtle the liberal indoctrination of our children is, and I think my point hit home. She took the stories that I had related to her and did some real research and interviewed many more people and teachers, and in the end she put together a fantastic book that I hope you all read.

Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid is the result of Mary Beth Hicks research in which she reveals some frightening facts- like the large percentage of kids who think that socialism is better than the free market, or that Christianity is mean, or that America is the bad guy in world history, or that family does not mean marriage, or that government is the solution to all of our problems- and after revealing this research (which was drawn from studies, facts, polls, and interviews), she attempts to figure out why our children are becoming liberal drones. It is shocking and revealing, and my only regret with the book is that I didn't make it into the credits (she said that was done more to protect my identity rather than a slight at me).

Here is a passage from the introduction that I bookmarked, just to give you a taste of what the book is about:

...Every family in our nation stands at the intersection between politics and parenting, facing a crisis in which the fate of our nation will be decided. Buy you don't have to be a parent to be concerned. In fact, the result of this campaign to indoctrinate our nation's youth will affect every one of us, regardless of your family status. The reason is simple: our Founders created a nation whose very existence depends upon the virtuous exercise of civic participation by a people who are informed about and committed to the constitutional republic that they conceived. In short, we can't maintain the kind of system our Founders built for use without the kind of people who built it....

Order your copy and read it today!

Repeal Minimum Wage to Grow Jobs

People need to have a job- they need to do something good for society and feeling good about themselves and paying taxes and being a productive member of society and not just be a recipient of the forced generosity of those who do work in society. And one policy change that the federal government and state governments that they could implement that would lead to more people having a job is to lower or repeal minimum wages.

Dr. Gary L. Wolfram, a Professor in Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College, wrote in an editorial that was in the Detroit News called Grow jobs, repeal the minimum wage:

...If we could make the poor better off by simply increasing the minimum wage, why not a minimum wage of $1000 per hour?

The U.S. unemployment rate among16-19 year olds is a staggering 25 percent. In Michigan, 28 percent. That's a recipe for frustrated youths. Often they end up in the underground economy, selling drugs.

It has been estimated that nearly half of Detroit's adult population is functionally illiterate. Michigan's minimum wage keeps these unskilled workers from gaining employment and is partly to blame for the city's high unemployment.

If there were no minimum wage, however, then producers could hire the unskilled and train them. Those of us old enough to remember gas station attendants who washed car windows also remember that many a young person got their first job pumping gas. They learned important job skills that improved their productivity and let them move on to higher-paying occupations.

The minimum wage increases of the last 50 years have eliminated these and other entry level jobs and kept large number of the unskilled dependent upon government for subsistence.

Aside from the harsh unintended consequences, there is also a principle of individual liberty at stake. If you are willing to pay me for my labor at the rate we agree upon, then why should the government tell me that I cannot sell you my labor? Why should a state or local government be able to tell me that I cannot work because I can't produce $7.25 or $7.40 an hour worth of goods and services? Individual freedom depends on the right to one's own labor.

It's time that we restored one of our fundamental freedoms by ending the minimum wage.

These are the very points that I made several months ago in my own editorial, a blog post called Higher Minimum Wage Laws Have Resulted in Higher Unemployment Rates? In that post I wrote:

But let's say some do-gooder government bureaucrat making 100K/year comes along and thinks that it isn't fair that you are only getting paid the amount that you and your employer both voluntarily agreed upon. This person decides that everyone should now be paid $10/hour, and then pats themselves on the back for making the lives of all of these low-skilled laborers better. The store owner now has a choice- increase the amount of money that they budget for 'sales staff' or hire less people. If they just let their store slip a little in looks, have less staff available for help, automate some of the things that people did better, and not have friendly greeters, business will suffer- but so will the competitors too, so the only real loser will be all of society. If they instead just keep their 'sales staff' budget at $50 and simply cut back the number of employees who work, those employees will have to work harder and there will be more demands on their skill level, but that's okay- there are plenty of people willing to work for $10 hour. Our good businessman now fires all 10 people, re-hires 5 new people with more skills (probably older people with degrees in useless subjects), and moves forward with a store that is lesser than before.

The end result of raising minimum wage in this theoretical exercise will result in higher unemployment, especially in those groups with lower skill levels, and stores that are less appealing.

I don't have any hard data on whether stores are less appealing today than they were back in the old days- myself, I think that it is, with more 'self-checkout' operations, less helpful staff, less personal service, and stores that are less straight and clean. I do have hard data on unemployment rates...

Oh, I know that many out there feel that any job that doesn't pay someone enough to live a life of luxury is a job not worth having- many liberals and progressives are sure to comment that 'you can't feed your family on a sub-minimum wage'. Maybe you can't, but you can feed them a lot better on a sub-minimum wage than you can on no-wage, and while you are doing that you will be doing something productive for our society, earning important job skills, and even giving a little back to society in taxes. Perhaps you need some assistance after that, but that's not the point here- the point is that minimum wage laws act as a barrier for good things happening for those who don't have jobs.

And those people who earn minimum wage right now are usually not earning that wage for a long time- they use their increased skills to secure wage increases and better opportunities and go forward from there, or if they don't, they likely are lucky that they are protected from competition by these laws that artificially force employers to pay them rates higher than they honestly deserve.

Let's be honest- in the name of making themselves feel better because they are guilty for being successful when they really don't deserve it, many liberals and progressives put in place policies that harm those in our society who need the most help; they put in place minimum wage laws that prohibit people from freely making contracts regarding their labor and wages, they put in place controls on businesses and individuals which hurts their attempts to increase their property and wealth, and they make the lives of those who they force to suck down forced charity a little bit less.

Graph: Unemployment Rates Projected with and without the Passage of Stimulus Bill II

Stimulus I not only didn't work, it probably made the unemployment rate go higher by transferring available funds from private investment and savings to spending by government, making the marketplace more uncertain, preventing the free markets from self-correcting on bad investments, and discouraging savings and efficiency gains.

Democrats promised that if this one-time only trillion dollars in spending was enacted, it would prevent unemployment from going above 9% and would shorten the length of time of recovery. But the spending was permanent and unemployment went above 10%, sharply increasing shortly after the passage of Stimulus Bill 1, and has now settled into a new post-stimulus normal unemployment rate of 9%.

So, in light of this epic failure and waste of money, what President Barack Obama, the nominee in 2012 for the Democratic Party, suggest, supported and applauded by Democrats in Congress? More of the same! So, taking the lessons that we learned as a nation from stimulus bill I, I have projected the likely courses for unemployment if we don't pass the stimulus bill II and if we do pass stimulus bill II. Feel free to share:

Lack of Investment Laid at the Doorstep of Democratic Policies?

Over and over liberals and progressives argue that the recovery of the US economy is being held back by the lack of investment by those in society with money- and they are right. There is a lot of money being sat on in our nation right now- record amounts which are just being held rather than invested, and this is a large reason why the US economy has not recovered.

Liberals and progressives believe that the reason why businesses and individuals are sitting on massive amounts of money range from racism to a desire for Obama to fail to greed to selfishness to a desire to just swim in their loot and not use it. When they talk about these rich people and profitable businesses sitting on their money they are angry, because they want to use the power and force of the government to make them invest the money. They don't understand what motivates these people and businesses, and it frustrates them, so they attribute their behaviors to irrational or evil motives.

But the truth of the matter is that the reason why individuals and businesses are sitting on cash rather than investing it is because of the policies, positions, rhetoric, beliefs, and desires of liberals and progressives. Progressives and liberals have created an environment of fear and uncertainty, and few are willing to invest in an environment such as that.

Under Obama and the modern-day Democratic Party, regulations and rules and barriers to profitability are being forced on businesses, costs of engaging in business is increasing with new mandates such as Obamacare, taxes are continually talked about increasing (even if they haven't really yet in reality) and every speech by every major politician in the Democratic Party promises to go after the very people who have money, profits are attacked and those who make profits are increasingly viewed as people to exploit and whose wealth the government should take, free trade is hurt by lack of free trade agreements and union kickbacks and increased tariffs and an overall hostile environment to free trade, and individuals are reluctant to engage in investing when the government is picking and choosing the leaders and has demonstrated contempt for well-established bankruptcy laws designed to protect investors (GM bailout).

It will not be until President Obama and the liberals and progressives who have achieved influence and positions of power in his administration are gone that the US economy will recover and businesses will begin to invest again. Even if the moderates and liberals who once were in control of the Democratic Party were in office, perhaps under a President Clinton, then our nation would be growing again and people would have jobs- but there is no moderate or Clinton on the ballot for the Democrats, only a progressive Obama at the top of the ticket who intends to double-down on his policies, especially when he will be a lame duck if he wins re-election and no longer have to worry about putting in place policies that get America back to work.

Do not forget either that Democrats in Congress supported President Obama's policies and put them into legislation and passed them, usually with no bipartisan support and a great many of which were strongly opposed by large numbers of Americans. They had an option to oppose the President, to moderate his policies, and to attempt to reach out for bipartisan consensus to create an environment more friendly to businesses and more encouraging to investors. But they didn't- in many cases, radicals like Pelosi and Reid led the charge to create more fear and uncertainty in doing business and investing in America, and for that they need to go.

Republicans should be the ones to benefit from the suicidal march of the Democratic Party in recent years, not because they necessarily are putting for brilliant ideas and are the best party in the world, but because under a Perry or Romney with a GOP House and Senate at least businesses will not be afraid any more, will feel like they can once again invest and make profits and provide jobs, and not be considered evil or wrong because of this success.

For more information, check out the post on Carpe Diem called We've Got a Sub-Par Recovery Because of Weak Investment Spending, Consumption Has Recovered.

9/11/11

Analysis of Obama's Speech: Straw Men and False Choices

Micheal Barone, writing for the Washington Examiner, from his article The Unhappy Warrior, best sums up President Barack Obama's much touted speech on jobs yesterday:

Barack Obama looked and sounded angry in his speech to the joint session of Congress. He bitterly assailed one straw man after another and made reference to a grab bag of proposals which would cost something on the order of $450 billion—assuring us on the one hand that they all had been supported by Republicans as well as Democrats in the past and suggesting that somehow they are going to turn the economy around. He called for further cuts in the payroll tax (which if continued indefinitely would undermine the case of Social Security as something people have earned rather than a form of welfare) and for a further extension of unemployment insurance (perhaps justifiable on humanitarian grounds, but sure to at least marginally raise the unemployment rate over what it would otherwise be). He called for a tax credit for hiring the long-term unemployed (unfortunately, these things can be gamed). He gave a veiled plug for his pet project of high-speed rail (a real dud) and for infrastructure spending generally (but didn’t he learn that there aren’t really any shovel-ready projects?). He called for a school modernization program (will it result in more jobs than the Seattle weatherization program that cost $22 million and produced 14 jobs?) and for funding more teacher jobs (a political payoff to the teacher unions which together with other unions gave Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle). “We’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it would do for the country.” Yeah, sure. Like the screening process that produced that $535,000,000 loan guarantee to now-bankrupt Solyndra. And Congress should pass the free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Except that Congress can’t, because Obama hasn’t sent them up there yet in his 961 days as president.

Obama assured us that this would all be paid for. But as far as I could gather, he punted that part of it to the supercommittee of 12 members set up under the debt ceiling bill. He now blithely charges it with coming up with more than its current goal of $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Oh, and he’s going to announce “a more ambitious deficit plan” that will “stabilize our debt in the long run”--11 days from now.

In the meantime, he called for higher taxes on “a few of the most affluent citizens”—as if this could pay for all the spending he’s been backing...

...Straw men took a terrible beating from the president. He assailed “tax loopholes” for oil companies, the chief one of which is that they are treated like other companies classified as manufacturers. The administration proposal is that the five largest oil companies shouldn’t be, because—well, because we want to get our hands on more of their money. Today’s Republicans, he gave us to understand, want to “eliminate most government regulations” and “wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades.” And, he suggested, they would never have created public health schools or the G.I. Bill or research universities.

When Barack Obama says, “This isn’t political grandstanding,” you have a pretty good clue that that is exactly what it is. Lest anyone doubt that, consider this from the third-to-last paragraph. “You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of the country.”

In other words, this was a campaign speech...

When I asked my students what they thought of Obama's speech, they said it sounded good but that they wanted to see the details and felt that the price tag for this sort of 'jobs bill' was going to be way too high for our nation to afford. The students also thought that this sort of stuff has already been tried and did nothing to help and only added more debt to our nation- you see, young people frequently are concerned with the amount of debt that older people are dumping on them to live their wonderful lifestyles of leisure and retirement. Hearing comments like these give me hope for our future; on the other hand, my students are being trained to think and reason and look at things critically and are less apt to fall for the straw man and false choice rhetoric that has come to characterize the President's speeches.

BREAKING: Details on Obama's Job Plan

Everyone wants them, but I have them- the top secret details on Obama's job plan, with specifics, funding, and proposed legislative language. Here it is:












Ha ha, got you- Obama is all talk and no action. There is no detailed plan to create jobs, just like there was no detailed plan to bring down the debt and just like Pelosi and Reid wrote Obamacare. The only detailed thing he produced in recent memory was a budget that was rejected by everyone, and lots and lots of regulations!

UPDATE: I was wrong- he is going to come out with a detailed plan, that spends money while cutting money from programs that he wants more money spent on; he is going to cut regulations while increasing regulations; he is going to cut loopholes and tax breaks while giving them to other people; basically he is a snake in the grass who speaks out of both sides of his mouth while attacking straw men. Someone throw an egg at him or something.

My 9/11 Lesson Plan

This is a reprint from last year, but I want to make sure everyone reads it again, especially conservative teachers in the classroom... I'm going to post it today, so that you teachers can read it over and run it on Friday (9/09) or Monday (9/12)...

One of my readers emailed me to ask me what I do as a teacher on 9/11 or Patriot Day, and I responded to him, but I should have let you all know what I do on 9/11. I know that there are some teachers who read my blog, and might be interested in my lesson for that day. Here is what I do as a teacher, every year on September 11.

First, as a teacher you will need to lay out why it is important for students to remember what happened in 9/11/01. It is a teachable moment, so does have educational value, especially for social studies classes. Our nation changed on that day- there is a pre-9/11 mentality and a post-9/11 mentality, and post-9/11 our nation is proactive about our security by passing legislation, engaging in wars, and having more aggressive interrogation techniques. Our nation changed that day because we lost so many people- people who might have cured cancer or invented the flying car- and because the terrorists hit us so hard in our homeland it destroyed our innocence and naive beliefs that they couldn't do that to us.

Next, review what happened for those students who are not fully aware of all the details. Make sure that your review is short - who did it, what they did, the number of deaths, the impact of those deaths, the impact on the US, and the lasting impact on the US. Also address at this time the heroes of 9/11- the leadership of Mayor Giuliani, the firemen and police, and the average people who were also heroes. Only spend a couple minutes on this.

Also at this time, address conspiracy theories and 'truthers,' and dispel those myths in no uncertain terms. Don't go into the myths with any detail and do not leave any doubt in students minds that these conspiracy myths and 'truthers' are wrong- they dishonor the deaths of those who died, they dishonor those who worked hard to stop something like this for happening again, and they dishonor you by insulting your intelligence. Students need to in the future confront 'truthers' the same way that they would confront a Holocaust denier. This introduction portion should take no more than 5 minutes.

9/11 is not part of history- it is a part of these students' present. It affects their lives, their world, and their government. These students are becoming adults and joining the world as educated people, and in order to join it fully, they need to experience what 9/11 was in order to fully understand it. It is important for students, especially those who were too young to remember, to feel that day. They need to feel what our nation felt on that day- they need to face the emotions and see the sights that we all saw, so that they can fully be a part of this world we live in today. This event has to be personal to them, an emotion that they feel, just like we all did. It can't just be worksheets and videos'- the teacher needs to have them discuss their feelings before and after the event.

For the next 5-10 minutes, discuss with students what they remember from that day and get them thinking about where they were, what they were doing, and how it impacted them. Try to encourage them to remember not just the events of the day but the emotions and feelings that they felt. For older students, they might still remember a bit of this, but the younger students might only remember vague impressions. That's okay- after today's lesson, they will remember it better. All you are doing here is simply activating the students, making them more receptive to the emotions that they will be feeling shortly.

Before showing the video, make sure that you ask students if they had any family members who worked in New York City during these events or lost anyone on 9/11. These students can leave if they become too emotional or if they feel they can't handle the lesson. Tell all the students that it okay to be moved by this video, and that if they feel moved to tears, they can step out of the room. All they have to do is say they have to use the restroom or something- if they really have to use the restroom, they can say that too- and the class won't know if they are leaving because they have to use the restroom or because they have to cry. Students need to feel safe and that it is okay to express emotions- many people openly weeped on 9/11 and there is nothing at all wrong with that.

Next, show the video. The video that I show is In Memoriam - New York City, 9/11/01 (2002). I choose this video because it does not have political commentary, it does not sugarcoat the events, it does not try to soften the events, and it is not edited for language or violence. It is the best video I found that simply shows the attacks on New York City, over and over again, from different angles, with pictures and video both mixed in. There are several interviews that are heart-breaking, but not too many of these to overwhelm the pictures from the attacks themselves. This video is disturbing- as was 9/11 itself. The video is bursting with tenacious and inspiring humanity- as was 9/11 itself. And the video provides an appropriate balance too, as it is narrated by the wisdom of New York City's then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani. This video in particular makes it virtually impossible to forget the 3,047 lives lost to terrorist brutality. This is not a journalistic endeavor, but a potent visual reminder that 9/11 was a day of unity, transcending the horrors witnessed here.

For a 60 minute class, only show about 30 minutes, or up to the part where they begin to look for survivors, and then down the volume and tell the students that they only found 11 people in rubble. For a 90 minute class, show the whole video, and afterwards just let the room remain silent for a minute or two before you begin the next portion of this lesson.

For the last part of this 9/11 lesson, you as a teacher will need to spend about 10 minutes asking students how they feel. First ask them if this was how they remembered it- if their memories or what they have seen since matches with the feelings that they have right now. Most students will be shocked and stunned by what they just saw- you will need to gently ask students or call on a couple that look like they are not too shaken and can get out an answer.

Then ask the students to try to describe some of the feelings that they have now. Explore these feelings and ask students to try to verbalize what they are feeling. Do they feel shock? Are they sad? A lot of students may feel angry, or be scared, or full of pride about the heroes, or determined, or confused, or feel like they want to help, like they want to lash out, like they want to do something to stop it from happening again. All of these feelings are okay- validate these students and let them know that it okay to feel these ways, since this was how we felt as a nation.

After each feeling is talked about and explored, follow up with the students and ask them what possible policy responses there might be to those emotions- ask them how they can translate their feelings into action and rise above the situation without losing sight of it. This part of the lesson is a great time to teach- spend a minute after each feeling talking about how America felt that same way and what we as a nation did and are doing about that emotion. This will help the students to understand why our nation responded the way we did to this event.

America was angry and wanted to punish those who attacked our nation- and not only those people directly involved, but those people who cheered when we were hurt so bad, those nations who supported terrorism or encouraged it, those peoples who helped those who attacked us. That's why we started the War on Terror, that is why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and after seeing the video, students will understand better these things. America was scared, and is still scared, and that is why the Patriot Act was passed and security procedures were stepped up, and we should still be scared as a nation and vigilant about our security. America felt like it wanted to do something, anything to help, and that is why this day to many becomes a day of service, and students can help out even today by giving blood or donating items to our troops. America felt like it had to do something to prevent this from happening again, and part of that is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if students want to help this effort, they can join the military or the CIA or the FBI. America was confused, and that is why we are making more of an effort to understand what may have motivated these people to do this to us, and students need to learn about other cultures and try to understand them better. America was sad, and are still sad today, and students can attend local vigils and remembrances around the area and express their sadness.

Validate the students emotions and then connect them to what we did as a nation and what the students can do now. When students are out of emotions and you have made all your teaching points, walk away from the students and just let them talk among themselves for the last couple minutes of class. Students will recover from their shock and gather themselves again before going back out into the world. Many will remember this lesson for a long time to come.

This is the lesson plan that I have for 9/11. Feel free to use it in your classrooms.

The Science is Settled: The Sun is Responsible for Climate Change

Last month I wrote an important post called Global Climate Change is Caused by the Sun. That post has received a lot of comments and generated a lot of emails, most of them critical of the post because they didn't feel that I provided enough information to support my points or that I was not a reputable outlet to challenge their faith in climate change. But I want to hammer away at these people and continue to challenge their faith and make people feel more comfortable about the arguments that I made in that post, so I am going to all direct you to an article.

The article is published by the Financial Post and is called Science Getting Settled: New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans:

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.

In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.

The hypothesis that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.” He then set about discrediting the theory, any journalist that gave the theory credence, and most of all the Danes presenting the theory — they soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials.

The mobilization to rally the press against the Danes worked brilliantly, with one notable exception. Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.”

But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.

“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.

The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.

Yet this spectacular success will be largely unrecognized by the general public for years — this column will be the first that most readers have heard of it — because CERN remains too afraid of offending its government masters to admit its success. Weeks ago, CERN formerly decided to muzzle Mr. Kirby and other members of his team to avoid “the highly political arena of the climate change debate,” telling them “to present the results clearly but not interpret them” and to downplay the results by “mak[ing] clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” The CERN study and press release is written in bureaucratese and the version of Mr. Kirkby’s study that appears in the print edition of Nature censored the most eye-popping graph — only those who know where to look in an online supplement will see the striking potency of cosmic rays in creating the conditions for seeding clouds.

CERN, and the Danes, have in all likelihood found the path to the Holy Grail of climate science. But the religion of climate science won’t yet permit a celebration of the find.

Hopefully this article has made you feel more comfortable about accepting the fact that I am right- global climate change is driven largely by the sun, not humans, and thus almost every attempt by the government to control our behaviors and energy and production in the name of 'climate change' is misguided and dangerous and wrong.

UPDATE:  Come on people- now I'm getting emails that 'the Financial Post' isn't reputable enough for you- well how about the Wall Street Journal, because it also came out with an article today talking about the role that cosmic rays play in affecting the climate. Read the article The Other Climate Theory for more.

Executives as Investors-in-Chiefs: A Bad Idea?

The President of the United States fills a lot of important roles in our political system- Commander-in-Chief, Chief Executive, Chief Legislator, Chief Jurist, Chief of State, Chief Diplomat, Head of Political Party, Popular Leader, etc- and to the list of these roles we now apparently must add 'Investor-in-Chief.'

Head of executive branches, whether at the state level as Governors or at the national level with our President, increasingly believe that it is part of their job description to take the money that taxpayers send to them to perform important government functions and instead gamble that money away on risky investments- the more risky and uncertain the investment, the more it seems that these executives are likely to dump precious taxpayer money into them.

Here in Michigan, we had a Governor that won a second term of office believing that she was a good Governor because she dumped taxpayer money into 'green energy' and 'cool cities' and the movie industry; upon further review and looked at with a true eye for costs and investment gains, these investments all turned out to range from bad to poor to horrible. Taxpayer money was distributed in a corrupt manner based more on political favors and little to no lasting gains came from these investments, certainly not enough to justify calling these schemes 'investment' in the private marketplace.

At the national level, Barack Obama believes that one of his major roles as President is to direct investments for the future, in spite of his lack of experience, training, or record of success in investing. No one would ever hire him to direct their personal investments, and yet as President he is doing just this with our public money at a time when public money is in short supply and needed ever more vitally. And the process that these investments are awarded are corrupt, filled with political considerations and backroom deals that would put any private businessman in prison for their actions.

The Washington Post writes about this role of the President in its article Barack Obama, investor-in-chief. From the article:

Would you buy a used car from Barack Obama? Or would you want him managing your 401(k) investment retirement plan at work? The president, of course, isn’t in that business specifically, but in a larger sense he’s been investing our money, picking the businesses he thinks will fuel economic expansion, new jobs and the technology of the future, and rebuild the nation’s fraying infrastructure.

All it takes is money - ours - he says, and he’s been spending it as fast as he can in a failed attempt to get the economy growing again. The economic policy term for this is “central planning,” wherein the government tries to pick the winners and losers and dumps hundreds of billions of dollars into various business sectors in the belief that it will pay off in the long run.

The government isn’t very good at this business, as we’ve seen in the disastrously ineffective $825 billion spending stimulus plan that President Obama and the Democrats shoved through Congress in 2009. Much of that money went into the budgets of countless federal departments, agencies and other programs that spent it. Still more went to states, counties, cities and towns for infrastructure programs or to keep public workers employed. A lot of the money was given to businesses that Mr. Obama thinks will be good for the environment, though his investment decisions didn’t always work out the way he hoped.

Consider the White House-backed solar energy firm Solyndra Inc., which declared bankruptcy this week after pocketing a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. Critics called the deal a “stimulus black hole.”

When Mr. Obama visited the Solyndra factory in May 2010, he called the company a success story that was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

He was quite proud of his investment, boasting at the time, “Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot,” but now here was this shiny, new factory that “is the result of those loans” backed by his administration.
It was later learned that the White House fast-tracked Solyndra’s loan application, rushing Mr. Obama’s pet project through without a lot of serious checking. Federal investigators said that the administration had bypassed procedures to safeguard the taxpayers’ investment.

Mr. Obama is big on the solar-panel industry and under his policies, the government has dumped a lot of our money into it in the past three years. But it turns out that the U.S. industry has not turned out to be the bonanza that he sold to the country. Prices for solar panels have fallen because of strong competition from China, making the fledgling industry precarious at best without heavy federal subsidies.

Evergreen Solar Inc. filed for bankruptcy last month after being forced to close its plant in Massachusetts that was built with state and local government subsidies.

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Democrat, says the loan guarantee program “has not worked as well as we had hoped.” Sounds like a Wall Street investment banker defending a fat bundle of subprime real estate securities that went bad.

The solar-panel industry is not the only “investment” Mr. Obama has sunk a lot of our money into. While the plants build with his loans make for great campaign photo ops, the costly reality is that government is trying to pick the winners and losers in our economy instead of the private sector.

But Mr. Obama thinks he’s good at this investment business and now he is trying to convince us to buy into to a new federal “infrastructure bank” that will make off-budget grants and loans to rebuild “roads, bridges and ports and broadband lines and smart grids” with $30 billion of our money.

The bank would put “all those [unemployed] construction workers” back to work, he said. And it would provide Mr. Obama with lots of photo ops at jobsites, saying “look what I’ve done for you.”

If this sounds familiar, it was sold to us in the guise of the 2009 job stimulus bill that was supposed to put the construction industry back to work. Some short-term jobs were created but when the building projects were completed, the jobs ended. The construction industry today is in a recession.

Making Mr. Obama the investor-in-chief, deciding how and where the nation’s capital resources should be spent, hasn’t worked and isn’t going to work. Ask Japan, which has gone on a public-works spending binge though its economy has been in a slump for two decades.

Better to shift federal public-works spending decisions to the states, along with the gas tax money for highways, and let them - not remote federal bureaucrats - set their own priorities. Broaden the tax base by eliminating dozens of loopholes, then cut business and individual tax rates, and slash the capital gains tax to unlock needed, job-creating investment capital.

Let the marketplace make the investment decisions that have made America the largest and most successful economy in the world. Mr. Obama has got better things to do with his time, like trying to figure out why his job approval polls have fallen to 39 percent.