Unemployment Increases in Young People Under Obama: A New Lost Generation of Youth?

In my post America's Youth Will Rue the Day They Voted for Obama I wrote:

...(the national debt piled up under the recent budgets of President Obama) is going to destroy the life, liberty, and property of my children and grandchildren. They are going to grow up in a world less secure because our nation will owe money to nations ranging from Middle Eastern oil dictatorships to communist China, our children will have lesser fire and police and hospital and library services than we enjoy today, inflation will destroy savings and inheritances and businesses passed on, Social Security will be gone (or exist in a much diminished manner), Medicare will be gone (or exist in a much diminished manner), higher education will be too expensive except for the richest of the youth, and our society will be one which rewards those children whose parents have political connections and not those children who work hard and innovate. A Leviathan will rule over my children and grandchildren, controlling their actions and dictating to them in a poor society that is yet a shadow of what America used to be, all thanks to liberal and progressives and their failed policies which have destroyed the financial and moral foundations of nations, states, and cities already....

...our nation will fall father and farther behind in developing energy and be forced to transfer more and more wealth to tyrants overseas just because Obama and the Democrats are slaves to a failed Green God religion and its corrupting influence.

The very nature of Obamacare is to transfer wealth from young to old, by forcing healthy members of society who are choosing not to buy healthcare to buy healthcare and subsidize the old people in society who use it. The promise is there that someday they'll also get to join in the intergenerational theft, but when America's debt soars ever higher, that promise will not be followed through on, and besides, promises of intergenerational theft are still nothing more than theft.

America's youth will rue the day that they voted for Barack Obama on a naive promise of hope and change and togetherness. They will rue the day....

My prediction was that someday in the future, America's youth will look back on the election of 2008 and think to themselves that they should not have voted for him because in this distant future America's youth will be unemployed and facing crumbling foundations and massive debt. My prediction was wrong- it turns out, America's youth should be ruing the day right now that they voted for Obama, because now none of them have jobs:

Just 55.3 percent of Americans between 16 and 29 have jobs.

That means that almost half of all young people are not getting any job experience and are not gaining critical job skills, and in the decades to come, now will be a lost period during which the future did not set themselves up for a brighter future. Instead the young are draining the resources of other productive people in society by living at home and eating food paid for by their parents, who could have been using using that money to invest or save for retirement or give to charity.

Although I was not able to find any information to compare 55.3% to from the Department of Labor, I was able to find a paper which suggests a pre-Obama employment rate for 16 to 29 year olds of 65%. This suggests that the addition of variable "President Obama" to the American economic equation resulted in an increase in 1 in 10 young people not being able to find a job due to his job-killing policies.

The reason why these young people can not find jobs is not because 'Bush lied and soldiers died' in Iraq, it is not because Bush didn't stop global warming, it is not because the Republicans are 'obstructing' tax increases and increased government spending, and it is not because 'tea party people are racist.' The reason why young people can not find jobs is that legislation and policies passed by Obama and the Democrats make it more expensive to hire workers (such as increased healthcare costs associated with Obamacare), make it more risky to expand production (when government policies could change and turn on any sort of industry), when being productive makes you more of a target (the 'evil rich' are being attacked by class-warfare playing Obama), and that the government is encouraging young people to not get jobs by pushing more student loans on them and getting them covered on their parents insurance longer.

Young people, because they are up-and-coming and energetic and healthy and productive and strong, should vote conservative and Republican, so that government gets off their backs and lets them be all that they can be.

RIP General Motors Corporation and American Capitalism

One news story that slipped beneath the radar last year was the fact that General Motors Corporation died last year, after 103 years of building quality automobiles. For most of the last century, General Motors Corporation was the world's largest corporation, but at the end of its life, government authorities circumvented the usual bankruptcy process and broke off 'old GM' from 'new GM'.  'New GM', or General Motors Company, was taken over by the government and the unions and given $50 billion dollars, while 'old GM' was put into bankruptcy and the million plus investors who had given their hard earned money to the company lost everything. 'Old GM' spent its final years shutting down dealerships, divesting itself of properties, and attempting to salvage whatever it could from its assets, but with its final death this December it will leave many bills forever unpaid and many properties languishing in weeds and ruin.

The truth of the matter is that the auto bailout, which is celebrated by many in the United States as a success, was anything but- the bailout orchestrated by Congress and the President ruined investors, shook the faith in many more about the future of true capitalism, ruined all those who were still owed money by GM, ruined the communities that now have the abandoned factories and dealerships and buildings in them, and left a mass of wreckage behind. Many bondholders, who took their life savings and invested it in General Motors, lost everything, even though they should have been the first to receive payment in the event of a bankruptcy.

General Motors Company may have survived, and with it thousands of jobs and the ability to make cars in the United States, but the deal it made- accepting taxpayer money and union control and government support- was the kind of deal typical to tyrannies and corporatist states, not a nation built on individual responsibility, freedom to make mistakes, and property protection through long-established bankruptcy laws.

And so 2011 draws to a close, with the death of what used to be America's largest company, and the continued faltering of the American economy, and soon, if drastic changes are not made, America itself. One can only hope that in 2012 the politicians who did this to our country- President Obama, Democrats in Congress, and big-government RINO Republicans in Congress- will be held accountable and thrown out on the streets and will be ruined, to join those companies and individuals who they ruined through their bad policy decisions over the past several years.

RIP General Motors Corporation, and RIP American capitalism.

Dividing Up the Pie Differently or Grow the Pie: You Decide in 2012

The coming year will give voters a real choice of visions- divide up the wealth in our nation differently or grow the amount of wealth in our nation.

On one hand, there are liberals and progressives who argue that the economic wealth and property in our nation is not divided up properly. They talk on radio programs or write on their blogs about raising taxes on the rich, redistributing wealth, the 99% vs the 1%, the rich vs the poor, and everyone doing 'their fair share' to help out others. Their main concern, based on what they talk about and write about, is how much of everything everyone has right now. Their world is static and unchanging, and they want to figure out how to divvy up the economic pie of wealth in a manner that they think is fair. If these liberals and progressives are already wealthy and living off their investments or if they are 'not rich', what they think is fair is obvious- they don't have enough wealth or property and others do, and they want what other people have. Oh, I know there is justification and reasons and they dress up their arguments more than this, but the simple matter is that they want to take the static wealth pie and battle over how much of it everyone gets. Imagine in 1900 America deciding that we would put in place policies and have discussions and write posts and articles mainly focusing on who gets what of the wealth of 1900, and you'd see what liberals and progressives have in mind- a nation with the same wealth as in 1900 except divvied up differently.

On the other hand, there are conservatives and tea partiers who argue that the economic wealth and property in our nation is not growing. They talk on radio programs or write on their blogs about putting in place policies that increase the economic output of our nation, utilizing our natural resources like oil and coal to increase our wealth, lowering taxes to encourage more wealth creation, and everyone doing 'their fair share' to grow the economy and produce goods and services. Their main concern, based on what they talk about and write about, is how to grow everything that everyone has right now. Their world is dynamic and changing, and they want to figure out how to increase the economic pie of wealth in a manner that will benefit everyone. If these conservatives and tea partiers are already wealthy and and running small businesses or if they are 'not rich', what they think will benefit everyone is obvious- they want more wealth and property and want to put in place policies and laws that allow them to earn more wealth and property. Oh, I know there is justification and reasons and they dress up their arguments more than this, but the simple matter is that they want to take the static wealth pie of today and grow it so that everyone has more wealth. Imagine in 1900 America deciding that we would put in place policies and have discussion and write posts and articles mainly focusing on how to make America more wealthy and productive and produce more goods and services, and you'd see what conservatives and tea partiers have in mind- a nation with the same wealth as today focused on growing that wealth further.

Ask yourself- do the people that you listen to on talk radio talk mostly about how wealth is divided up or how to increase the amount of wealth in society?  Do the blogs or editorials or writers you read try to figure out what the 'fair' amount of wealth everyone should have is, or do they try to figure out how to make everyone more wealthy? Do your friends and family talk about how to battle over the loaf of bread on your counter, or do they talk about how to get a job or save some money to buy another loaf of bread so everyone has something to eat?

There are two visions in 2012- one vision pushed by Democrats, whose party has been hijacked by liberals and progressives, that focuses on battling over the scraps of a fading America; or another vision pushed by Republicans, whose party is being hijacked by tea partiers and conservatives, that focuses on growing the size of America's economy so we can all be a little bit more wealthy. Which vision will become the reality for America?

UPDATE: I see via RealClearPolitics that Michael Barone has written the same article as me today (posted after mine). Here is Voters Want Growth, Not Income Redistribution:

...a recent Gallup poll showing that while 82 percent of Americans think it's extremely or very important to "grow and expand the economy" and 70 percent say it's similarly important to "increase equality of opportunity for people to get ahead," only 46 percent say it's important to "reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor" and 54 percent say this is only somewhat or not important...

...I believe that historians have taught the wrong lessons about the 1930s. And I believe there is a plausible and probably correct reason why economic distress has apparently moved Americans to be less rather than more supportive of big government....

...The New Deal historians attributed these gains to Roosevelt's economic redistribution measures -- high tax rates on high earners, the pro-union Wagner Act, Social Security. These laws, the so-called Second New Deal, were passed in 1935. They replaced the different, non-redistributionist policies of the First New Deal that stopped the deflationary downward spiral underway when Roosevelt took office....

...Lesson: If you want redistribution, you better first produce growth. Which the Obama Democrats' policies have failed to do.

Blast from the Past: Best Posts from 2010 Revisited

Before we visit the best posts of 2011, let's all take a moment to reflect back on some of my best posts from last year, 2010, and see how the analysis, predictions, and theories that I advanced in those posts have held up over the past year.

Obama: Didn't Waive the Jones Act, Made Gulf Spill Worse:
Occasionally I break a major story, like this one, which I was on well in advance of the MSM. Here was the story that I broke in 2010:

In reply to the emails from snarky liberals who ask 'just what do I expect Obama to do about the Gulf oil spill', the reply is 'get the hell out of the way'...Let loose the power of free markets and civil society and restrict government to limited and defined roles, and the world will be a better place. In this particular case, just 'what can Obama do'? Here is one of dozens of examples that are specific and have few drawbacks but Obama isn't doing- Obama can temporarily waive the Jones Act....

In retrospect, it is clear that Obama did have a reverse-Midas touch with the Gulf Oil spill- every move he made or didn't make during this disaster was the wrong one. From not temporarily waiving the Jones Act (which effectively forbid foreign nations from assisting the US by banning ships flagged, crewed, constructed, or owned by other nations from transporting cargo from one US port to another US port) to overstating the extent of the disaster (his talking about it caused a larger drop in tourism to the entire Gulf region than the actual disaster did), we can see in the Gulf oil spill just how aimless and unhelpful President Obama is when America faces an immediate crisis, and this post was yet more support to that argument.

Obama Nicknames
Every President has a nickname- Reagan was the Gipper, Bush was W, Clinton was Slick Willy, Thomas Jefferson was Long Tom, Chester Arthur was the Walrus, Calvin Coolidge was Cool Cal- so in this post I decided to pull together some of the top Obama nicknames that I have seen or heard. It's a good and solid list, and I've added to it over the past year (2011). My personal nickname for Obama: Waffles the Clown.

Oppose Race to the Top: Reasons Why Conservatives Should Oppose RTTT
This post was one of my 'thinking posts', where I was asked a question that I should have considered before but hadn't, and I went home and really thought through my views and beliefs and arrived at an answer. My instinct was always to oppose Race to the Top, which was President Obama's major education initiative, but I wanted to make sure that I was opposing it for the right reasons- not because the NEA was against it or because Obama came up with it, but because it violated conservative principles. Read the whole post, but here is a bit of it...

Recently, Michigan Senate Majority leader Mike Bishop asked me for my opinion on the President's Race to the Top program. I told him that I didn't support it, and he looked at me in a way that said "I thought you were a conservative" and "I thought you wanted to help education." At the time, I struggled to explain why I didn't like the program- I didn't really know all the details to it, but suspected that I was indeed correct in opposing it from what little I knew. He thought I was just a tool of the teachers unions, who also oppose RTTT, but I knew that for some reason I didn't like this initiative by Obama, and it wasn't just paranoid anti-Obama sentiment.... Today, via theblogprof, via Right Wing News, I came across the an article called "Ten Rules for Anti-Government Republican Radicals in D.C. ." As an anti-government conservative radical, the kind that our founding fathers were, the kind of people that built our nation and made our country a great success, I find these rules to be useful in helping me begin to articulate why I oppose Race to the Top....

Since I put together this post, I've gone on the radio multiple times in a variety of shows to talk about a true conservative approach to education, one that emphasizes decentralization of power, local control, less federal spending, regular and measured policies, structural changes, the humanity of the system, the lessening of federal laws, and the passage of good solid legislation. A good conservative believes 'first, do no harm' and 'less is more' and that the purpose of the state is to protect life, liberty, and property, and Race to the Top is not legislation that a conservative should support, even though it attacked the NEA and labor unions and put in place small good changes to the system. Read my whole post and you'll see yet another reason why thinking individuals should be opposing Obama in 2012.

Obama's New NASA Policy- Yet More Broken Promises and Lies
American Exceptionalism is being killed by Obama, in ways big and small. Once America was a great nation that put men on the moon- an exceptional nation capable of spaceflight and exploring new worlds. Now...:

Out of all of the broken promises of President Obama, this one is probably not the biggest to a lot of people. Out of all of the phony and lying rhetoric about hope and change, this latest policy announcement that kills hope and changes things for the worst is probably not the most backstabbing that he has uttered. But that does not mean that Obama's plans to destroy NASA's budget and redirect its mission away from exploration is not big or important to me....

Obama's attack on NASA didn't stop in 2010 as he continued to oppose its vision of boldly exploring new worlds and demonstrating America's amazing exceptionalism. I revisited this theme several times in 2011, notably in my posts Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? and Obama Killed My Child's Dream of Being an Astronaut.  Obama and the Democrats will not be happy until America is an average nation that has fallen back into the pack of tyranny and debt that is the history of the world, and their policies towards NASA are an example of this.

Recommended Read: Codevilla's 'America's Ruling Class'
This post was an attempt to get people to read one of the most important essay's of 2010- Codevilla's essay America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution that was published in the American Spectator.

...it lays out quite clearly the two classes that are evolving in our nation- what Codevilla calls the 'ruling class' and the 'country class.' Codevilla echo's what I tell my students every year- it is getting increasingly important to understand how the ruling class in our society works and how they use government to maintain their ruling status, because our society is increasingly about what the government does and less so about what you do...

Revisiting this essay today, you can clearly see the increasingly divide in America between those people who are benefiting from government connections and those who are not, increased by the policies pushed by the modern-day Democratic party and to a lesser although still significant extent the Republican Party. Solyndra is a great example of this- a company that found favor in the ruling class was able to secure loans and help while other companies not favored by the ruling class had money taken from them in the form of taxes and regulations and fees and permits. The massive expansion in food stamps or the massive expansion of taxpayer subsidized healthcare are also great examples of how the ruling class is increasingly looting all of us in order to give gifts and trinkets to the country class as our nation descends into tyranny.

Elect a 'Clerk' For President in 2012 and Restore Founding Father's Vision of Executive Branch?

The President of the United States should be clerk, and nothing more. Conservatives and Tea Party people should not be looking for the President to be a 'king' who commands us to go forth and do his bidding, they should not be looking for the President to be the source of ideas about how government should run, and they should not be looking for the President to be an outsider who will shake up Washington.

The office, as designed by our Founding Fathers and illustrated in Article II of the Constitution, is an office that empowers the President of the United States to execute the laws passed by Congress in the most efficient manner, act as Commander-in-Chief of our military, act as the dignified ceremonial chief of state, handle foreign policy with other nations, and discharge effectively the various other duties of the office. A true conservative or someone who wants our nation to return to its Founding Principles should be pushing for the person who is best able to act as a clerk, a manager, and a CEO for America Inc.

You see, in reality the presidency is essentially a glorified clerk in our system, and is not actually a game-changing all-powerful King. The power of the President stems from his ability to use his office to trade favors or the promise of favors to accomplish the goal of efficiently managing the affairs of the state; his power does not (nor should it) from his ability to order others to do his bidding and his ability to issue executive orders and put in place policies. The legislative branch is better and more powerfully designed for those purposes, and so all decisions about the laws and policies of our nation should be generated from that branch, and then the President implements them in an efficient and able manner.

The President is able to implement these policies in an able and efficient manner because he has lots of little pieces of power spread through out nation's political system- he is able to send troops abroad, deliver the state of the union address, control various executive departments, play a vital role in the budgeting process, issues pardons and grant reprieves, etc, and he can also use his informal power and influence to invite policy leaders to the White House, go on national TV, lobby for legislation, etc. His power- both real and perceived- gets others to re-appraise what is in their best interest, and they are then persuaded that it is better to get along with the President and what he wants to do rather than fight against his able and methodical and efficient powers.

Look, I know this isn't exciting to you guys- you all want a President who will blow your socks off, light up the system, ride in on a horse of hope and change and remake the world. You want a king to rule you and control other people who you disagree with. You wish that someone who will go into the White House and then start just shutting down executive departments, slashing spending on programs, and ignoring the Judicial and Legislative Branches to bring you closer to our Founding Fathers. The problem is, that isn't how our Founding Fathers designed the office of the President and it is not how our Founding Fathers would have wanted the system to work, and once you go down the path to making our President a King, he can be a liberal King too in a short 4 to 8 years.

As I wrote in Calvin Coolidge, One of the Best Presidents?:

The best Presidents are those who did very little, ran the executive office smoothly and without problems or corruption, and conformed to the Constitution as closely as possible. Jefferson was President for two terms, and other then the Louisiana Purchase, his administration happily has little to note other than peace and prosperity. James Madison had to respond to the War of 1812, yes- but other than that, peace and prosperity. Calvin Coolidge was like this too- nothing to note during his time in office other than nothing to note- peoples lives were protected, the nation was prosperous, and property was well protected.

The President is a powerful person in our political system- but he has grown too powerful, and I don't want him to become even more powerful and active and arbitrary, even if for a while he would be doing so in a conservative or libertarian manner. Rather, our President should be good at working with the Congress to effect significant changes to our laws and policies, he should be good at closing doors and coming out of them with policy-leaders minds changed, he should know our political system inside and out and understand how to move various levers to get stuff done, and he should be able to judiciously use his public prestige to pressure leaders to voluntarily arrive at policy decisions that he supports. He should be a competent manager and efficient steward of taxpayer resources. At the end of his Presidency, we should not say that he brought hope and change to the American system, but rather we should say that when he left after eight quiet years as President, peoples lives had been protected from domestic and international threats, that the nation had remained prosperous and free of debts, and that private property had been well protected and preserved.

The description of a 'great' President that I have outlined above is most definitely not a description of our current President. President Barack Obama went into the White House without the skills needed to be an effective or even good President, and he has shown no desire to put in the hard work, the humility, and the intelligence to acquire these skills. Yes, I know that during his first two years much legislation was passed (which he now claims makes him the fourth best President ever)- but that was during a time period when one element of society- liberal Democrats- controlled almost all the national levers of policy-making (House, Senate, President, and bureaucracy)- and since that time, more elements of society are represented in our political system, and he has demonstrated that in these more pluralistic and typical circumstances that he is completely ineffective. You see, the earlier 'success' he had in driving the policy-agenda was really because it was being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who pushed their legislation and priorities in spite of what Obama desired or wanted- those who have been part of this legislation have written several times that the White House was remarkably passive during that time period and just went along with whatever Congress wanted (which in itself is not a bad thing, but in the context of demonstrating leadership it is). But once Obama's party lost control of the House, we were able to see truly just how bad a President he is and how bad he as at filling this office.

President Obama is poor at working with Congress, bad at working with others of different opinions than his own, too quick to attack in public those who he disagrees with (probably because he is so awful at convincing them to change policies behind closed doors), he does not know how to use all the various levers in policy-making that he has, and overuses the prestige of his office such that it the prestige has been watered down (I'm imaging him promoting Monday Night Football right now). He is an incompetent manager and a poor steward of taxpayer resources (his family is spending millions in taxpayer money on a vacation to Hawaii as I write this). At the end of his Presidency (hopefully next year), we'll look back at the last four years as being some of the most chaotic and partisan and rough years, and look at his record as our President- a nation that is less prosperous, less free, burdened with debts, with horribly destroyed foundations (crumbling roads, bridges, schools, and Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that have been bankrupted and unreformed), and with private property under attack (Occupy Wall Street, Dodd-Frank, the bankruptcy of GM, etc). President Obama is a bad President.

Could any of the Republican candidates for President be a 'great' President? I don't know- I'll let you make your own decisions on that for now. But much of what I wrote here I pulled from an earlier post I wrote called Ron Paul- Drop Out of the Race where I considered Congressman Paul's candidacy in light of these ideas. But do Romney, Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann, or Santorum meet the qualifications I laid out above better than Obama? They likely do- for example, look at Romney's experience as Governor of at blue-state or saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, or Perry's able Governorship of successful Texas, or Gingrich's record of balancing the budget with a Democratic President, but I surely must  revisit this concept and evaluate the GOP candidates accordingly in a later post- be sure to check back often on my blog for this post.

Oh, and in reply to the liberals and progressives and fascists who are emailing me trying to personally attack me- I do have several degrees from good universities in public policy, I teach government for a living, and my argument is based in part on professor Richard Neustadt's book Presidential Power (purchase the book today- Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan). My arguments are sound and hopefully well-reasoned, and as always, I'd love to defend them in print or on the radio, and I would love it if you would email this post or link to it on your blog so that our Presidential election in 2012 is that much more informed.

China's Economic Model, Fueled by Coal, Leads to Death and Destruction?

Liberals, including those who have seized control of the modern-day Democratic Party, often talk fondly about China and its economic model. But what they fail to recognize about the economic model employed by China is  that it is inherently unsustainable because of its current methods of energy generation. Oh, I know many watermelons (people who pretend to care about the environment just to advance their statist communist desires) like to talk about China's wind power, nuclear power, solar power, or hydro-electric power, but in reality, the majority of China's energy production comes from coal.

Energy production from coal production does not have to be environmentally damaging or harmful to those who work in the industry. In nations like the United States, where there are clear property rights and freedom of labor, workers are treated better, the environment is better protected, and businesses are free to produce as much coal safely as possible in order to maximize profits. For example, there are only about 30 people killed per year in coal mining in the United States, and the United States has embraced clean coal technology which does a much better job of controlling emissions. The United States has made the difficult transition from energy generation to sustainable energy generation, and only needs to continue and expand its efforts in oil drilling, coal mining, and nuclear technology in order to become the cleanest and safest energy producer in the world.

Sadly, environmentalists in America have a different agenda. In their noble desire to make the world a better place, they are putting in place policies in America which force it and other nations to obtain energy from nations around the world that are producing energy in destructive, deadly ways. Rather than encouraging the expansion of safe, natural, and efficient methods of energy generation such as oil, coal, and nuclear, they are forcing America and nations that could be buying energy from America to turn to nations like China for energy generation and resources. And the end result of these environmentalists policies is a world that is less safe, less secure, and were more people die.

China currently generates around two thirds of its electricity from coal-fired power stations, and is the process of dramatically expanding its coal-fired capacity in recent years with the introduction of 562 new coal-fired plants- in fact, an average of two new plants were being opened every week. China uses this coal-production to satisfy its own energy needs and also export energy to other nations.

To sustain it economic growth and growing energy needs through coal power, China is paying a heavy price. Thousands of people die every year in coal pits, premature deaths due to indoor air pollution is at 420,000 per year, deaths due to outdoor air pollution is estimated at around 300,000 deaths per year, and rural populations in particular are suffering from a range of diseases related to coal production, including arsenic poisoning, skeletal fluorosis (over 10 million people afflicted in China), esophageal and lung cancers, and selenium poisoning. A report by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese government found that about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year from air pollution.

China's economic model, which people like the head of the SEIU say should be the future of the United States, is unsustainable and killing its own people. It's model emphasizes state control of people and businesses and the de-humanizing of both. It is a model which stands in marked contrast to the economic model of the historical United States, a model which emphasizes little state control, more liberty given to people to make free economic choices, and strong individual and business property rights, and is a model that embraces the humanity of life. We can see the difference in the two models when we look at China's coal mining industry and electric power generation, and see the difference in the contrasting visions.

Elections have consequences- in the coming elections for US President, Senator, Representative, or even at the local level, ask yourself whether the candidate you support has a vision of the future that pushes for more state control over people's lives or less state control. Those who push for more state control will boast of the economic growth in nations like China- while ignoring the enormous cost in terms of human life and damage to the environment. Those who push for less state control over people's lives will point to the United States, which in contrast to those with state control have much better records on life, liberty, and wealth creation- although not perfect, because man is not perfect.

And for readers of my blog around the world, this applies to you as well- although China's economy is growing, there is a real cost to humanity for their growth, and in the end its statist economy will collapse like the Soviet Union's did. Only economic models that give more power to people and more freedom to individuals and more rights to businesses and corporations and individuals are successful in creating wealth in a sustainable manner while protecting life and liberty. You have a real choice to make in your nation too- state control for short term unequally distributed wealth, or less state control for longer term more equal distribution of life, liberty, and property.

For those who are interested in reading more about China and its coal production methods and coal-powered economy, I suggest you check out an article called China’s Dark Power.

From England to Bush, the Solution is Government Should Do Less to Do More?

A couple weeks ago I read an interesting article in the Telegraph- in it, longtime journalist Janet Daley suggests that the best thing that the British government can do to improve the economy and make people more wealthy and happy and free is to work really hard and be very productive in DOING LESS. The truth of the matter is that politicians have to have real guts and strength to simply say 'no, I will not spend taxpayer money trying to control people and the market,' but that may be exactly the kind of strength and guts we need today- politicians who promise to do more of less. From her article A daring idea to fix the economy: try doing less:

...the myth of government activism – the idea that intervention by the state is the answer to every economic and social problem – had been definitively routed. Apparently not: Mr Osborne and, we must assume, his boss still seem to believe that any unacceptable national situation must require direct action from them.

Or maybe they don’t believe that at all. Perhaps they just lack the political courage to admit that, in our present crisis, the best thing that the Government can do is to get out of the business of running (or subsidising, or initiating, or incentivising) things altogether – not just in the interests of saving money, but because the effects of such interference are counter-productive. What the economy is suffering from is not an insufficiency of overweening, fussy, bureaucratic initiatives that inevitably unleash an avalanche of unintended consequences, but a lack of cash in the hands of people who might spend it in ways that would actually create wealth and stimulate (in the proper sense of the word) economic growth.

If ever there was a time for radical proposals by a governing party, this is it. Rather than the imitative, mealy-mouthed shuffling of dollops of money from one departmental scheme to another, in what will inevitably look like panic in the face of rising youth unemployment and disappointing growth figures, what we need is a display of real insight and nerve...

...There is an urgent need now to rethink the whole relationship between government and populace while there is still the possibility of discussion. In Britain, Europe and America, the questions are remarkably similar. Can a free-market economy support an infinitely growing state? We will have to choose, quite soon, between liberty and the “security” of a society in which government controls the levers of economic life. Washington politicians are getting a terrible drubbing for failing to resolve their implacable differences over the size of the state (to the extent that they are unable to agree a federal budget). The US national debate may seem rough and ready to European ears – but at least they are engaging in the real argument.

She is right- the argument has been joined, and today via memeorandum I read in the Wall Street Journal an article that echo's the very ideas of Ms. Daley. From former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's article Capitalism and the Right to Rise:

...Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand "Do something . . . anything."

As Florida's governor for eight years, I was asked to "do something" almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed. And I wasn't alone. Mayors, county chairs, governors and presidents never think their laws will harm the free market. But cumulatively, they do, and we have now imperiled the right to rise....

....We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

What Governor Bush is talking about is the same kind of thing that I personally observed during my time as a policy adviser in the state's capital. I remember distinctly one time when a young Republican 'conservative' staffer came in to work one day, upset that the car that she had recently bought turned out to have been a bad purchase. She set about writing a law that would force the state to regulate and control all sellers of automobiles in the state and then tried to convince legislators to sponsor this piece of legislation- she wanted the state to immediately do something, to step in and spend lots of money and time and effort controlling thousands of people's individual decisions just to protect several people from their own stupidity. She proposal was met with great hostility towards me, and I countered her proposal by suggesting that rather than the state doing something about used car dealers, it instead loosen regulations and fees and taxes on all car dealers, making the market more free, so that more fools like her could be separated from their money, as the hand of God in its infinite wisdom is wont to do. I wasn't joking though.

The real courage and intelligent thing to do to create a more vibrant, free market by cutting back government regulations and fees and enabling people to be people, in all their glorious faults and warts, because only by doing so can we also unleash the amazing potential for great and good things that humans contain in them. The safe, stately downward path of state control is not the path for me and is not the path that successful, free, and prosperous people- no, we choose the jagged and uneven and unpredictable path that is the path of less government regulation, taxes, fees, and supervision- that is the only true path for better protection and encouragement of life, liberty, and property.

USA Today Quiz to Help You Pick Next President

So, who would you choose to be President of the United States on just the issues? USA Today has put together this fast and neat quiz that could help you answer that question. It's not perfect- it is only 11 questions and so misses a lot of important issues- but in 10 minutes it'll give you a good indication of who you'd support. After you pick your answers, don't forget to slide the scales of importance.

In case anyone is curious, my first pick was Ron Paul, second was Rick Perry, and third was Mitt Romney. This wasn't a surprise to me- I've previously expressed my agreement with a lot of the positions of these candidates (see my post Rick Perry, The Next President: Analysis and Projections). For other reasons, I am not going to be supporting Ron Paul's bid (see my post Ron Paul- Drop Out of the Race), but Perry and Romney are both candidates that I have looked at for a while. Farther down my list were Bachmann and Santorum.

It was a surprise to me how low Newt was on my rankings (he was like 6th)- apparently, even though I am a Tea Party conservative and all the Tea Party conservatives like Newt. Oh, I am still going to strongly consider him- the poll was only 11 questions- but polls like this are interesting.

Also, it is notable how bad Romney's positions are on health care and global warming- on a lot of issues, I really liked Romney, but on those who important issues he has horrible positions. It is my hope that if he were to be elected President, a strongly right Congress would drive the debate on those two important issues and override Romney's positions.

Also, I really hope that Perry can figure out how to communicate better with the American people over the next month or two- I'm not sure if he is just getting bad advice or being managed poorly (as happened to Palin in 2008), but whatever it is, he needs to figure it out to be a legitimate candidate for me.

Take the quiz yourself, and I hope it helps you to better figure out who will support in the coming election.

UPDATE: Via Ace of Spades, I found another 'pick your candidate' game from ABC News. It also is only 11 questions, although I found the questions tougher and harder to answer. In this game, my first choice was Michelle Bachmann, followed by Rick Perry, and third was Ron Paul. I am not considering Bachmann because I think our President needs executive office experience, or at minimum leadership experience in the legislative branch, but I would like her to be a cabinet officer. Also, I really with that Perry would get his act together!

CATO: Quick Status Check on Bill of Rights

As a conservative who fights for liberty and freedom, I have been unhappy with the attacks of our civil liberties that have dramatically escalated in the recent years since President Obama and the liberal Democrats have gained more political power. These left-wing groups pretend to care about civil liberties- but unlike under Bush when the conversations were hypothetical (what if we waterboard more than one person, what if the Patriot Act is abused, etc), under Obama the attacks on civil liberties are real and dangerous. Since yesterday was the anniversary of the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution came into effect on December 15, 1789), via Cato let's get a quick update on how these amendments are being violated.

To see all of the links, check out the full article at Today Is Bill of Rights Day:

The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” Government officials, however, have insisted that they can gag recipients of “national security letters” and censor broadcast ads in the name of campaign finance reform.

The Second Amendment says the people have the right “to keep and bear arms.” Government officials, however, make it difficult to keep a gun in the home and make it a crime for a citizen to carry a gun for self-protection.

The Third Amendment says soldiers may not be quartered in our homes without the consent of the owners. This safeguard is one of the few that is in fine shape — so we can pause here for a laugh.

The Fourth Amendment says the people have the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Government officials, however, insist that they can conduct commando-style raids on our homes and treat airline travelers like prison inmates by conducting virtual strip searches.

The Fifth Amendment says that private property shall not be taken “for public use without just compensation.” Government officials, however, insist that they can use eminent domain to take away our property and give it to other private parties who covet it.

The Sixth Amendment says that in criminal prosecutions, the person accused is guaranteed a right to trial by jury. Government officials, however, insist that they can punish people who want to have a trial—“throwing the book” at those who refuse to plead guilty—which explains why 95 percent of the criminal cases never go to trial.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury trial in civil cases where the controversy “shall exceed twenty dollars.” Government officials, however, insist that they can impose draconian fines on people without jury trials.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. Government officials, however, insist that a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense is not cruel.

The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights should not be construed to deny or disparage others “retained by the people.” Government officials, however, insist that they will decide for themselves what rights, if any, will be retained by the people.

The Tenth Amendment says that the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, or to the people. Government officials, however, insist that they will decide for themselves what powers they possess, and have extended federal control over health care, crime, education, and other matters the Constitution reserves to the states and the people.

It’s a disturbing snapshot, to be sure, but not one the Framers of the Constitution would have found altogether surprising. They would sometimes refer to written constitutions as mere “parchment barriers,” or what we call “paper tigers.” They nevertheless concluded that having a written constitution was better than having nothing at all.

The key point is this: A free society does not just “happen.” It has to be deliberately created and deliberately maintained. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. To remind our fellow citizens of their responsibility in that regard, the Cato Institute has distributed more than five million copies of our pocket Constitution. At this time of year, it’ll make a great stocking stuffer. Let’s enjoy the holidays but let’s also resolve to be more vigilant about defending our Constitution.

RIP Fred Meijer: A Great Example of the Greatness of the 1%

Fred Meijer, the Chairmen and co-founder of Meijer, passed away last month, and although I am hesitant to politicize his death, I really think that in his life and death there are important lessons for voters and citizens of our great nation.

Dutch immigrants Hendrik Meijer and his son, Frederik Gerhard Hendrik Meijer (Fred Meijer), founded the grocery superstore Meijer's in Greenville, Michigan during the height of the Great Depression in 1934. After studying trends in the grocery industry, Meijer was among the first store to offer self-service shopping and shopping carts, giving customers more freedom to choose the products that they wanted to buy without waiting for a helping hand from a friendly grocer. Meijer also worked hard to find and offer staple items at bargain prices, saving his customer money.

In 1962, the modern format of Meijer was started, with a store at the corner of 28th Street and Kalamazoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that set the standard for hypermarkets today. Unlike other grocers of the day, this store was large (180,000 square feet) and combined grocery shopping and department store shopping into a single large store, pioneering one-stop shopping. When Hendrik died, Fred Meijer took over a company that had dozens of stand-alone grocery stores and several large stores and expanded the company over the next several decades until it had over 190 stores spread between several states in the Midwest, revenues approaching $15 billion, 72,000 employees, and was rated as one of the biggest retailers in America.

Fred Meijer became very wealthy, and because of this, many in our nation might feel that he should have been taxed more, that he should have done more to help out others, or that we needed a government to confiscate his ill-gotten wealth from him and redistribute it to people who were somehow more deserving. He was one of the so-called 1%, and lived in a very nice community when he died.

But Meijer worked hard for his wealth and did more with it to benefit our society than government ever could redistributing it to others. To earn his wealth, he worked hard and used his talents in ways that benefited people greatly. For example, Wal-mart initially failed because Sam Walton thought that you could just tack on a grocery store to a discount store- but Fred Meijer knew that quality was important too, and so his stores were successful because of the quality produce and meat in them. Wal-Mart figured this out, improved its quality, and has been a success since. The success that Meijer earned through his hard work benefited all of us in higher quality foods in hyperstores, sold at cheap prices so that even poor people can now eat quality meats, cheeses, and produce.

Fred Meijer also gave back to his community in ways that government employees seizing his wealth and giving it to others could never understand. Perhaps his most significant contribution has been the land and sculpture collection for the 132-acre Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, a botanic garden and sculpture park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But he also donated land for a Grand Valley State University campus in Holland, Michigan, donated a section of the Berlin Wall (which now stands in the Meijer Lobby of the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids) personally offered a donation of $25 million and property to fund a relocation and expansion of the historic John Ball Zoo (voters voted against the proposal), donated $1 million to Michigan's White Pine Trail State Park for improvements, helped renovate Grand Rapids' downtown Civic Theatre, and has done many more projects too. He even bought a big-screen TV for residents of his retirement community so they could watch the Super Bowl better.

And perhaps most important, for nearly 80 years Meijer has contributed to the tax base of the states and communities where it has a presence.

Mr. Meijer worked hard for his wealth and had a right to do with it as he pleased- unlike a national government which believes that it has a right to his wealth simply because it has the power to take it from him. His hard work, innovation, and lifetime achievements created this wealth and it is to him to determine how it should be spent- and we should be grateful that we have people like him around. This class-warfare and envy that is engulfing our nation needs to stop, and we must once again celebrate success, achievement, and greatness, and not let the government encourage us to fight over the scraps and carcass of a failing nation.

Professor Epstein: Obama is Incoherent and Frightening

Here is what Richard A. Epstein, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, had to say regarding the major speech that President Barack Obama (one-term Democrat) gave at Osawatomie, Kansas:

The painful ignorance that is revealed in these remarks augurs ill for the long-term recovery of America. With the president firmly determined to set himself against the tides of progress, innovation will be harder to come by. The levels of unemployment will continue to be high as the president works overtime to impose additional restrictions on the labor markets and more taxes at the top of the income distribution—both backhanded ways to reward innovation and growth.

The problem, therefore, with the president’s speech is not that it is demagogic in tone. The problem is that it is intellectually incoherent. As a matter of high principle, the president announces his fealty to markets. As a matter of practical politics, he denigrates and undermines them at every step. It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink. His chosen constituency, the middle class, should tremble at the prospect that his agenda might well set the course for the United States for the next four years.

In Professor Epstein's analysis of President Obama's speech, he echo's some of the comments that I have been making on liberal blogs like Balloon Juice and others- that in spite of his rhetoric and because of his economic incoherence and illiteracy, workers, school teachers, union employees, blue collar employees, the middle class, supporters of Occupy Wall Street, and related groups are going to suffer the most from President Obama's policies.

As Epstein wrote in his article Populist-in-Chief:

It is a good thing when plants can achieve the same output with less labor. Do we really want an America in which thousands of people work in dangerous occupations to turn molten lava into steel bars? Far better it is that fewer workers are doing those jobs. The jobs lost in that industry will be in part replaced by newer jobs created in the firms that build the equipment that make it possible to run steel mills at a lower cost and far lower risk of personal injury. The former workers can seek jobs in newer industries that will only expand by competing for labor.

And what about those ATM machines? Does the president really want people to have to queue up in banks to make deposits or withdraw cash in order to make a boom market for human tellers? Perhaps we should return to the days before automation, when phone calls were all connected by human operators. And why blast the Internet, which has created far more useful jobs than it has ever destroyed?

You see, if President Obama had his way, we would return to the Great Depression, when people were dependent on government for goods and services because government was in the business of destroying productive business around the world. If President Obama had his way, he would increase taxes and regulations on businesses while giving out subsidies and tax breaks to favored businesses, favoring those who hire lobbyists and special interest groups who redirect wealth over those who create wealth and make products or sell goods and services. If President Barack Obama had his way- a Congress of Democrats that went along with his ideas and ideals- America would be dragged back to the early 1900's, when we had a low standards of living and shorter life spans, and Obama would happily fill up dangerous and inefficient steal mills with 'workers', he would sign praises to the joy of labor while factory workers worked for low wages (compared to today) in dangerous industries, and the working class would have few goods (like cheap cars coming in from the Far East, cheap electronics built in backward nations around the world, and labor-saving devices everywhere built everywhere) just so that he could burnish his protectionist credentials.

When government gets in the business of redirecting wealth and picking and choosing the winners and losers in society, the only people who win and get wealthy are government officials- this lesson has been demonstrated over and over around the world many times over. And yet, that is exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are proposing to do- increase the power of the government to control wealth, liberty, and property in our society, and that somehow through this 'workers' and the '99%' will get more wealthy and happier. The logic is not explained, the mechanisms by which wealth is created are not explained- rather, the logic is the same logic that is found in every despotic tyranny throughout history- people have earned things that others want, and the government will get those things by playing one side off the other. Obama's magic act of wealth creation is the same sort of tyranny that the world has seen many times over- and has fallen for many times over as well.

Our nation has not only learned nothing from the Great Depression, we have learned the wrong lessons as well (see my post Lessons from Economic Recessions- Introduction and Great Depression), and are going about repeating the same mistakes that turned a recession in 1930 into a Great Depression that lasted to the 1950's (and included in it the collapse of the world into a deadly World War!). We must not allow this guy to enact those same policies- I don't care who does what with the GOP, and it doesn't matter who they are, anyone is an upgrade over this incoherent ideologue whose mind is so filled with mush and mindless platitudes and liberal bumper slogans that he is now unable to effectively design any policies that have a slightly positive effect on anyone.

President Obama, any Democrat who supports him, and any Republican who agrees with his policies needs to join Herbert Hoover on the unemployment line (or better yet, get a job somewhere in the private economy building or making or doing something useful!).

Obama Said 'No' to Destruction of Iran-captured Sentinel?

The RQ-170 Sentinel, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) for the Central Intelligence Agency. While the USAF has released few details on the UAV's design or capabilities, defense analysts believe that it is a stealth aircraft fitted with reconnaissance equipment, equipped with some of the United States most advanced technology in optics, sensors, aerodynamics, and materials. It was first launched in 2007, and for every nation in the world getting their hands on it and studying it could result in considerable advances in these fields as they reverse-engineer US technology and replicate materials.

And the United States has delivered one of these to Iran, in perfect working order without a scratch on it, and now the Russians and Chinese and Iranians are busy figuring out how it works, how to counter them, and how to counter other stealth aircraft that the United States employees, including bombers, fighters, and submarines. The security of the United States of America is threatened by this thing being in enemy hands.

So why haven't we taken it out?

Via Belmont Club's post Who Said ‘No’ to Destroying the RQ-170?:

The Christian Science Monitor describes the choices facing US decision-makers after the RQ-170 drone was lost in Iran. “US officials considered launching an airstrike to destroy the advanced unmanned spy aircraft or sending in a special operations team to blow up or perhaps retrieve the super-secret RQ-170 Sentinel drone.”

“But in the end, trying to destroy or retrieve the RQ-170 inside Iran was ruled out. … No one warmed up to the option of recovering it or destroying it because of the potential it could become a larger incident,” a US official told The Wall Street Journal. An assault team entering the country “could be accused of an act of war” by the Iranian government, the official said.

An act of war is a terrible thing; like attacking another country’s embassy or dispatching personnel to kill uniformed military personnel in another country or plotting to kill foreign diplomats in the capital city of a Third Country. It is not a step that whoever was in the decision process would have made lightly.

But the question remains, who was the “no one” who warmed up to the option of recovering or destroying the RQ-170 because it would provoke Iran? The Wall Street Journal provides an indirect clue as to who it might be.

The officials considered various options for retrieving the wreckage of the RQ-170 drone. Under one plan, a team would be sent to retrieve the aircraft. U.S. officials considered both sending in a team of American commandos based in Afghanistan as well as using allied agents inside Iran to hunt down the downed aircraft.

Another option would have had a team sneak in to blow up the remaining pieces of the drone. A third option would have been to destroy the wreckage with an airstrike. However, the officials worried that any option for retrieving or destroying the drone would have risked discovery by Iran. “No one warmed up to the option of recovering it or destroying it because of the potential it could become a larger incident,” the U.S. official said. If an assault team entered the country to recover or destroy the drone, the official said, the U.S. “could be accused of an act of war” by the Iranian government.

Some officials argued in private meetings that because the drone crashed in a remote part of eastern Iran, it might never be discovered, and therefore, leaving the remains where they were could be the safest option.

We can guess at least this much: it is apparent that a considerable amount of time elapsed between the moment the drone was down to the moment it was discovered by the Iranians. Time enough for “private meetings”. Time enough for three action options to put plans to destroy or retrieve the RQ-170 together. Time, probably on the scale of at least several hours, perhaps even days for whoever the impersonal pronoun refers to, to make or not make a go or no-go decision.

The question is: to whom would these options be presented? The highest authority surely; for only the “the ultimate lawful source of military orders” could authorize — and therefore reject an incursion into another country.

The NCA consists only of the President and the Secretary of Defense or their duly deputized alternates or successors. The chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense and through the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Commanders of the Unified and Specified Commands.

Someone along that line someone said “no” to destroying the RQ-170. Someone who, had the decision been to retrieve it, and had it been successfully retrieved, might well be boasting of the success. But the attempt was not made and the rest is history. It may well have been the correct decision. It might just as well have been a monumental boo-boo. But it seems abundantly clearly that the buck stopped somewhere; now if only we knew where.

Update: Fox says it was President Obama. Hat tip: Jaybird

With early knowledge that the aircraft had likely remained intact, the senior U.S. official also told Fox News that President Obama was presented with three separate options for retrieving or destroying the drone. The president ultimately decided not to proceed with any of the plans because it could have been seen as an act of war, the official told Fox News.

This is exactly why President Barack Obama should not be re-elected to a second term of office. In our political system, we have a lot of different political actors who can create jobs, lower unemployment, and sponsor legislation- but we only have one primary actor in foreign and defense policy, and that is the President of the United States, and he is doing an increasingly poor job in these areas.

A Conservative Approach to Energy Development

One of the cornerstones of modern-day conservatism is the belief that America's energy resources can and should be responsibly exploited. This means that the United States should allow private companies to drill for oil, mine coal, build nuclear power plants, tap into natural gas reserves, get shale oil, and utilize whatever other energy resources that these companies wish to use, provided that they respect the property rights of others.

Oh, I know what liberals and left-wingers will say- the horror of pollution! But the faults of energy development do not lie with the companies themselves, but rather with the government for not establishing clear and defined property rights- for example, rather than having the government act as police to safeguard public water, the water rights should be more clearly defined and if companies destroy or harm the property (the water) of others, they should be forced to pay in a court, much as if they destroyed other private property. The faults with 'pollution' then lie not in the companies for breaking ever expanding government rules and regulations over ever expanding public lands, but for the government for not putting in place limited and clear rules regarding private property rights and then divesting itself of public lands by selling these lands off to private entities that can then do a better job of protecting. Like most problems in our society, the solution is less government, not more.

With the main liberal concern out of the way, our nation would be free to exploit and use its vast resources- enough oil for 30 years, enough natural gas for 575 years, enough coal for 500 years, etc. With oil, gas, and coal be utilized to its fullest extent, our nation will have cheap and plentiful energy, enabling it to develop some of the most amazingly energy intensive industries there are- 'renewable resources'. The horse needs to go before the cart here- we  need to have cheap and plentiful energy in order to build the energy intensive operations and industries like building solar panels, developing batteries, building geothermal plants, etc. A wealthy, productive society thriving on cheap energy can afford to become environmentally friendly, as opposed to a cheap, declining society that the liberals and Democrats appear to be pushing us towards with their anti-energy policies.

In a free market, one in which the government is not subsidizing any of the industries (and this includes cutting subsidies for oil and gas and coal), the most efficient energy resources will be developed in an environment that encourages private property ownership and protection. American can be great again, if it moves away from the liberal model of public ownership of lands and public protection of the environment with restrictive regulations and rules and taxes on energy production combined with subsidies for 'favored' industries and campaign donors. It can be great again if it moves towards a more conservative model of private ownership of lands and private protection through impartial courts of the environment, with few restrictions and regulations and subsidies on energy production, encouraging the most efficient producers and users of energy in a free market.

Via Powerlineblog's post AMERICA’S VAST ENERGY RESOURCES I read this quote from the Institute for Energy Research. IER describes the problem (and the opportunity) bluntly:

Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.

As it turns out, many of the problems of energy scarcity and rising costs in the United States have been caused by the government itself. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that outlined many of the policy and regulatory constraints that impact domestic energy production. While the report focused on natural gas specifically, many of the laws and procedures also represent roadblocks to any form of safe and responsible energy production. The list of energy barriers included the following policies, all of which can limit access to U.S. resources, increase delays related to exploration and production, and/or increase costs of development:

(John from Powerlineblog)The list of statutes and other legal impediments that follows is three pages long. Only liberal politicians stand between the American people and development of our vast energy resources.

Graph: US Employment to Population Ratio, Color-Coded by Party in Power, with Analysis

My love of graphs is legendary on my blog, and recently I came across an interesting graph on The Atlantic in an article called 8.6% Unemployment: The Good, the Bad, and the Mysterious in the Jobs Report. In it, there is a graph showing the current ratio between population and employment- that is, the relationship between the number of people in America who are around and the number of them who are gainfully employed. I believe it is a better and truer employment number than the phony 'unemployment' stat that is tossed around.

In order to get a better picture of what is going on, I colored coded the graph based on which political party controlled the various policy making institutions at the national level- yellow shading indicates that the GOP controlled the Presidency and Democrats the Congress, orange that control was GOP President/GOP Senate/Democrat House, red for GOP President/GOD Congress, dark blue for Democrat President/Democrat Congress, light blue for Democrat President/Democrat Senate/GOP House, and green for Democrat President/GOP Congress.

As you can see from the graph, the percentage of the population of citizens in our nation with a job has fluctuated in recent years from 56% to 65%. When more people have jobs, more goods and services are produced, more people have a sense of self-worth, and tax money to the government is higher, and these are all good things, so our goal is a higher percentage.

Based on this graph, there were previously considerable gains during earlier Democrat Presidents with Democrat Congresses- as bad as the Carter years were, 1976 to 1979 saw a sharp rise and so did 1993 to 1995. This sort of pattern should have predicted similar results from 2009 to 2011, but instead that time period saw the continued plunging of the line.

The worst drops came when Republicans controlled the White House and Democrats controlled Congress, such as from 2007 to 2009 or 1991 to 1993 or 1975 to 1977. This would suggest divided government is bad, especially when the Democrats control Congress, although I would point out that during a period of Democrat President and GOP Congress seems to be the longest and steadiest rise in the number, but this is only one data point, so I would take it with caution.

What about period when a Republican controlled the White House and Congress? The time period to look at for this would be 2001-2007, and on a lesser scale 1981-1987, and in spite of the recessions during these periods, we can see that the number does go up and down a bit but ends up roughly in the same place.

How does this data help up in 2012? Again, the data is not terribly helpful because it is rather inconclusive, but we can draw some conclusions from it. First, President Obama is utterly and flatly wrong to suggest that Republican policies always fail- the data here does not demonstrate that at all. Second, Republicans who suggest that Democratic policies always fail are also wrong- the data does not seem to suggest that either.

The data best suggests the conclusion that Republicans should control Congress- both the House and the Senate- because it is during those time periods, regardless of who the President was, that the American people seemed to be best off. Even the recent introduction of a little bit of GOP control of Congress- the House from 2011 to today- seems to have steadied the rate. This analysis though is heavily influenced by how bad Democrat control of Congress was from 2007 to 2011 and the steep drop in the population employment ratio during that time.

The data is less clear on the suggestion of which party should be in control of the White House. Carter and Clinton both rate well, but Obama rates poorly. Reagan rates well, Nixon and HW Bush and the first 6 years of W Bush were static, but those last two years of W Bush were poor. Therefore, the data suggest that Democrats may be better in the White House, but not Obama, he just sucks as President.

As much as it pains me to say this, this data suggests that the best possible scenario for the American people is for Obama to drop out of the race, Hillary Clinton to win the White House, and the GOP to win large governing majorities in the House and Senate. Since this scenario is unlikely, the next best thing is for the Republicans to win the White House and Congress. Worse than that is for Obama to be re-elected and the GOP to win Congress. The worse possible situation, admittedly based on those really bad results form 2009-2011, would be for Obama to win re-election and the Democrats to win Congress.

How does this analysis fit with other analysis that I have done? Pretty well, I think.

In Graph: Non-Defense Spending Relative to GDP, Color-Coded by Party in Power, or the Obama Hockey Stick, I noted this:

The conclusion that I draw is that Republicans keep federal defense spending as a share of GDP near the historical average when they are in power, but Democrats are more inconsistent- there was Clinton on one side of the ledger, and Carter and Obama on the other. In particular, Democrat Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the United States when it comes to this measure.

The lesson here is more clear- under Democrats (control of Congress), non-defense spending increased at a greater percentage than GDP increased, and that giving Democrats total control of government (President and Congress) resulting in irresponsible explosions in non-defense spending and/or the collapse of the GDP. Putting Republicans in charge seems like the best bet- they keep this measure steady or decrease it, either by cutting spending or by increasing the GDP.

In Graph: U.S. Foreclosure Rates, Colored-Coded by Party in Power, I noted this:

My read of the graph is that the introduction of the variable of 'Democrat' in 2006 caused the situation to worsen, the bad situation was made worse by the election of Democratic President Obama, and it is still too soon to tell what sort of effect the GOP taking back 1/2 of Congress has had on the situation.

In Graph: Public Debt Over Time, Color-Coded by Party in Power, I wrote:

The conclusion that I have reached is that the party that controls Congress matters a lot more than the party that controls the Presidency in determining the amount of debt that our nation owes to the public. Under Republican Presidents, the debt went up and down by small amounts. Under Democrat Presidents, the debt decreased by a large amount and exploded by a large amount. But when you look at the party in control of Congress you see the largest changes in the amount of debt. Democrat control of Congress has been responsible for the most increases in the debt, while Republican control of Congress was responsible for the largest decreases and stability.

Based on this data, I suggest that next election you pay more attention to who you are voting for in Congress- we need to make sure that Republicans are in control of both the House and Senate by strong and sizable majorities. It is of lesser importance who controls the White House, although I would venture to guess that a Clinton Democrat is different enough than a radical Obama Democrat that in this upcoming election it does matter who is President, and it needs to be anyone other than Obama (a moderate Democrat or a Republican).

These analysis of recent data hopefully can better inform your choices in the coming election, and most importantly as is suggested in all four, President Barack Obama must not win re-election.

UPDATE: Loyal reader and subscriber Darryl emailed me and suggested that the reason for the increase in the population/employment ratio into the 1980's was the number of women entering the workforce during this time. He wrote about it further in his post Jobs, Prosperity, and Psychological Profiles. Check it out.

Fear and Doubt are the Enemies of Success and Advancement: A Defense of Capitalism and Free Markets

A a recent article that Charles Moore wrote, I think he put his finger on exactly what is going on today- the success and advance of the twin threats of fear and doubt. Moore, who is a British journalist and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, in an article about Margaret Thatcher, wrote that after the long boom and success of capitalism and free market economics that "the worm of doubt entered the system":

You borrowed all the money needed for the price of a house. This made you, in your mind, though not in full fact, an owner. Because the value of the house was rising, it also made you, again in your mind, richer. The bank, which actually owned the house, found clever ways of mixing and selling on the loans it had granted so that it, too, felt richer. Governments, happy at rising revenues, thought it was their business to make sure that when the symptoms of high risk began to present themselves, they were suppressed.... (then) the roof fell in... (and now) when people now hear words like globalization or capitalism... they feel slightly sick.

Free market economics and capitalism did not lead our nation to failure- rather, during its wild success at making millions around the world more prosperous over the past centuries, communism and socialism and fascism latched on to it, sucking from its prosperity to feed its sick aims like parasites, and over time, many smart people began to become confused and unable to see the parasites from the concepts that they latched on.

Where free markets and capitalism created wealth and encouraged personal responsibility, governments and elites put in place rules and regulations which weakened the foundations of the system, subsidized risky behavior such as sub-prime mortgages and leveraging investments, and gave out handouts to favored industries and distorted the market by doing so. When banks, businesses, and corporations operated in a free market of capitalism, they could succeed or fail based on their own efforts and innovation; but in the new markets, which were no longer capitalistic or free, government subsidies and spending and lobbying and regulation and rules determined whether or not a business, corporation, or bank was successful or failed. And although this was no longer capitalism or free markets, but rather markets once free now twisted to the aims of elites and socialists and communists and fascists, many smart people became critical of the markets or capitalism because of the failures of the government bureaucrats who were twisting and corrupting the system.

And then the parasites of leftism began to weaken and kill the free market and capitalism, and the people cried out 'capitalism and free markets are failing us'- when it wasn't the free markets and capitalism that failed, but rather the people who failed the system.

They were led to this failure by fear and doubt- they did not believe in the hand of the God and the freedom of individuals and life, liberty, and the protection of private property.

The people (or The People, as leftists call them) feared that although they were becoming prosperous and their lives were rapidly improving, they were somehow falling behind others who were advancing more rapidly. Rather than looking at why they were successful in the free market capitalism- because of their hard work, innovation, and yes, luck- they instead demanded government policies to hold back others and help out themselves, corrupting the very system that had brought them so far. They doubted that if people were free and made free decisions, they would make 'the right decisions'- that is, the decisions that they would make if they controlled the other people and had power over them (their definition of 'right decisions').

Rather than just letting go and trusting that the unseen hand of God, trusting to the thousands and millions of individual decisions, and working to ensure that private property rights are strengthened and respected, they doubted that this giant experiment of capitalism and a free market would work, and feared that they would somehow fall behind others in material wealth if they didn't vote for and support people who promised to corrupt the system and abuse the system and circumvent the system. Many people trusted and believed in the power of men to control other men and redistribute property to other men, and in so doing rejected free markets and capitalism.

Fear and doubt came to the people's mind every time there was a recession, or even during periods when great wealth was created but wasn't immediately distributed evenly. The people reacted to the Great Depression by doubting that the free market would correct (as it had done in the 1920's and dozens of times before in the 1800's) and feared that he return to prosperity wouldn't come fast enough- and so they worked to destroy the system, corrupt the system, and make the market less free- and the results were a slight recession during into a decade long destruction of wealth.

And today, government policies and regulations and taxes and laws which corrupted the free market and corroded private property rights have let the worm of doubt creep once more into the people's minds, and in their fear that maybe they won't get to loot the dying Republic of its wealth they vote for Democrats who promise to manage the downfall and distribute the ever-decreasing wealth in the system to their supporters and voters and friends.

To return to success and advance again as a nation in wealth and happiness, we must reject doubt of the free market system and capitalism and trust the people- we need to trust and believe again that the thousands of decisions of free people will create more wealth and make more people happy, and reject those who suggest that having a smaller number of elites make those decisions for us is better. We need to let go of our fear that if we don't control the market and the system that you'll lose out, and instead work hard, innovate, save your money, and invest wisely.

UPDATE 12/7/11: President Obama delivered a major speech today on the economy, in which he expressed his doubt that the capitalist system could continue to provide wealth and prosperity for many and work to make society more equal, and from this place of fear he instead wants to trust himself and his fellow men to run a better system that will somehow do a better job of creating wealth and distributing it than having free people make free decisions.

Via memeorandum, in his Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas, we read the following fear and doubt from US President Barack Obama, one-term Democrat. These are selections from the speech- (you can read the whole thing yourself here if you want):

My grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton’s Army; she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.

And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known. It was here in America that the most productive workers, the most innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth. And you know what? Every American shared in that pride and in that success -- from those in the executive suites to those in middle management to those on the factory floor.

In this passage, Obama communicates to us that his parents believed in capitalism and free markets and personal responsibility and liberty and protection of property. And furthermore, Obama knows that this system worked. But yet, he has this nagging doubt and fear...

But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments -- wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He doesn't BELIEVE in capitalism. He has no faith in people, freedom, liberty, and rights. It's clear he doesn't have any hope that people will make the 'right decisions' (the decisions he would make) and he wants to therefore control other people. He continues:

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. And today, they still can’t.

We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.

And it is around here that we get to the heart of the matter- in the last quarter of his speech, after ripping on capitalism and freedom for 3/4's of the speech, that we finally here what he wants to do...

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who’s best at busting unions, who’s best at letting companies pollute as much as they want.

We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission. (Applause.) Government and businesses, parents and citizens. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools. Of course, those productive investments cost money. They’re not free. And so we’ve also paid for these investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices.

So, in summary, here is Obama's alternative to free markets and capitalism- give him more power. Give him the power and authority to tell employers what to pay their employees, give him the power and authority to combine big government with big business and big labor (ie, fascism), give him and his cronies the power to give money to favored constituent groups to fund pet projects of vanity (palaces, statues, etc), and the power to demand that all of these decisions are paid for by someone else who does not want to pay for it- to use the power of guns to the head to make people give up cash to Obama and his people to feed their wrong ideas about the power of men to control others for their benefit.

Obama is wrong. He needs to be defeated- not just politically, but his ideas and beliefs need to be rejected by all good people and good citizens and patriots and he and his policies need to be forever rejected in decent society. We must instead look to capitalism and freedom and liberty and property protection to our future, and not look backward to the sort of tyranny that Obama is proposing.

Obama's Egypt Policy Was a Failure?

Although domestic policy results are a mix of Congress and the President, the results of foreign policy is almost inevitably the result of purely the President. So trying to blame Bush or the Republicans for the results of any major new policy decisions is useless- these results and actions can be laid directly at the feet of the President of the United States and Democratic nominee for 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

Via Legal Insurrection's post We know who lost Egypt:

Obama’s foolish policy of forcing Mubarak out of office precipitously without giving non-Islamist parties time to organize has resulted in Islamists achieving a sweeping victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. Strength by the Muslim Brotherhood was expected, but the extremely hard line Salafists had a very strong showing.

As reported by The NY Times:

Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

The Times article points out that this first round of elections was in the most liberal areas of Egypt. As voting moves to more conservative rural areas, the Islamists likely will gain an even more overwhelming majority.

This all was very predictable. In fact, I predicted it while Obama was insisting that Mubarak leave ”yesterday,” NY Times columnists were writing delusional columns about the Arab Street and the Arab Spring, and venomous anti-Israeli pundits at Media Matters and elsewhere complained that the “Israel Lobby” was trying to stifle freedom.

On Feburary 20 I wrote The Yuppie Revolution In Egypt Is Over, The Islamist Revolution Has Begun. I wish I had been wrong.

The liberated women of Egypt will be the first to suffer. The Times notes:

The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

Obama lost Egypt, and he had plenty of help.

This post echo's my own thoughts on this issue- see my posts The Rising Threat of Fascism: Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Other States or Evidence is Pretty One Sided Against Obama's Foriegn Policy, Don't You Think?.