Democrats Confounded by Voter Frustration

Mere weeks ahead of the congressional midterms elections in November, many Americans are no longer able to "think clearly" because of the economic malaise they are suffering. According to President Barack Obama the burden is on Democrats "to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling."

"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said on Saturday during a fundraiser event, Politico reports.

The president and his party have been lambasting the opposition for supposedly tapping into that fear. "The biggest mistake we can make right now," said Obama, "is to go back to the very same policies that caused this mess in the first place." With the economic recovery stalling and Democratic candidates across the country distancing themselves from the administration's landmark legislative achievements---health care and financial reform---its new message of "hope" is apparently that Republicans will do even worse if elected.

There is certainly a lot of anger on the right. The huge electoral defeats of 2006 and 2008 left the Republican Party rather without direction, allowing loud and controversial opinion makers as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to fill an ideological void.

What restored coherence to conservative America was the interventionist economic agenda of the Obama Administration. Tea Party activists rallied against health care reform. Stalwart Republicans once again championed constitutional conservatism. Libertarian candidates and congressmen as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Paul Ryan of Wisconson won primary elections and crusaded for less government in the immediate aftermath of a crisis that Democrats blamed on the free market.

Presuming that unbridled greed and unregulated capitalism caused the downturn, it is difficult for Democrats to understand why millions continue to oppose their Big Government solutions. Even BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer wouldn't convince tea partiers. White House chief of staff at the time, Rahm Emanual alleged that Republicans saw BP as the aggrieved party under the circumstances, not local fishermen. "They think that the government's the problem," he exclaimed in disbelief.

The whole Tea Party phenomenon was not taken very seriously by Democrats initially. Since it became evident that the Tea Parties were a force to be reckoned with however, as they marched by the hundreds of thousands and helped elect populist candidates in GOP primary elections, the left has been quick to label them as radical and extremist.

Since the start of this year, different commentators and lawmakers have alleged or suggested that the Tea Parties are racist. A recent study by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which is an organization critical of fringe and racist movements, entitled Tea Party Nationalism, "found Tea Party ranks to be permeated with concerns about race and national identity and other so-called social issues," contrary to the movement's self proclaimed focus on government excess. "Tea Party organizations have given platforms to anti-Semites, racists, and bigots," according to the report. The MSNBC documentary Rise of the New Right further tied anti-government protests to militias and fanatics, conveying the notion that the whole of this "new" right is inclined to violence or at least willing to sanction it.

On the campaign trail in April 2008, Obama said that he understood how people could become embittered and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" in times of economic hardship. Since then, millions more Americans have lost their jobs while government stimulus measures have delivered little more than trillion dollar deficits.

Democrats meanwhile continue to blame Republican policies for the "mess" America is in and warn that their return to power will only herald greater inequity and despair. The White House is now theorizing that "secret foreign money" is paying for Republican campaign advertisements and the president himself doesn't even talk about health care anymore.

Less than two years after promising "hope and change," Obama and his party don't appear to have much of a message, let alone vision, for the upcoming elections anymore---which are a referendum on the presidency whatever the administration may like to pretend. Democrats' inability and unwillingness to defend their own policy record of the past two years is a dismal sign of weakness and failure, one Republicans eagerly exploit. Democrats don't seem to understand why people are so upset. The president said it best in April of this year when he talked about Tea Party protesters. "I think they should be saying thank you."

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, October 9, 2010.

ObamaCare Forces Insurer Off Market

Cato @ Liberty reports that financial services provider Principal Financial Group is exiting the health insurance business as the impact of the Democrats' health insurance overhaul becomes clearer.

By forcing the exit of Principal Financial Group---which ran a profitable, $1.6 billion health insurance business---ObamaCare has now left 840,000 Americans to find another source of coverage.

And Principal is not the only one. Many small health insurers are struggling to meet the new requirement to spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on actual health care.

Administrations Threatening Private Health Insurers

Health care premiums are likely to go up as a result of the recent health care and insurance overhaul enacted by the Obama Administration. The Heritage Foundations' Kathryn Nix explains:

Starting this year, Obamacare prohibits plans from placing lifetime limits on coverage, severely limits rescissions, and requires all plans to cover children up to age 26. Plans also have to fully cover preventive services and are prohibited from denying children due to pre-existing conditions. The list goes on. Since extra benefits cost more, it makes sense that insurance premiums would climb as a result of the new law. Insurers cited increases between 1 and 9 percent.

The administration's response? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announces that "there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

What will "zero tolerance" means? Why is it "misinformation" on the part of private health insurers? Just what constitutes a "justified" price increase. And who decides that?

Well, Secretary Sebelius is clear on at least one of those issues. She decides what prices health insurers can set and if they don't fall in line, there'll be "zero tolerance" for them!

Obama Denies Vilifying Business

President Barack Obama denied vilifying businesses at a CNBC town hall event in Washington DC on Monday. He praised the free market system instead, claiming that he wants government to "get out of the way" of innovation and job creation.

The president has been criticized fiercely in recent months from both within the business community and the Republican opposition about his apparent war on capitalism. On health care and financial reform as well as BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, Obama used strong language to denounce private health insurers, banks and the embattled energy conglomerate. He alleged that medical insurance companies were driven by a "business mentality" that supposedly prevented them from caring about patients. He complained of "fat cat bankers" on Wall Street who awarded themselves "excessive" bonuses while knowingly perverting the financial system and leaving the country on the brink of economic collapse. And he publicly lambasted BP's Chief Executive Tony Hayward. Indeed, the president interpreted the Gulf oil spill as the result of "of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility---a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves." The lesson to be learned, he said, "is that we need better regulations, better safety standards, and better enforcement."

On Monday, the president reiterated this sentiment, noting that "basic rules of the road" have to be in place so that "consumers, workers, ordinary folks out there aren’t taken advantage of by sharp business practices." He added: "I don't think there's anything in there that's inherently anti-business."

The administration previously urged businesses to stop complaining. After passing a health care reform bill that puts insurers at a disadvantage and is expected to cost business dearly; after threatening the high tech sector with antitrust investigations in spite of it being nearly the only profitable and certainly the only free market left in America; after using BP's oil spill last April to impose an unlawful moratorium on deepwater drilling throughout the Gulf of Mexico and launch an attack on Big Oil altogether; and after hammering out a financial reform scheme that leaves the prime instigators of the recession, the semi-government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac untouched at the cost of multibillion dollar tax hikes and regulation on the part of private banks, the president and his administration are evidently trying to assure businesses by saying---it could have been a lot worse. "There's a big chunk of the country that thinks I've been too soft on Wall Street," said Obama.

Wall Street isn't convinced. Nearly half of financial workers polled recently by CNBC said that increased regulation under the Obama Administration is bad for the economy. Just 34 percent believes that the new regulations have had a positive effect.

The president knows though that "what sets America apart" is that it has "the most dynamic free market economy in the world. And that has to be preserved," he believes.

We benefit from entrepreneurs and innovators who are going out there and creating jobs, creating business. Government can't create the majority of jobs. And, in fact, we want to get out of the way of folks who've got a good idea and want to run with it and are going to be putting people to work.

That's not how things look for the average businessman however, no matter the president's championing of small business. Instead, a government knows best mentality appears to pervade in Obama's America and although the president can hardly be blamed for it entirely, his party is largely responsible for implementing superfluous regulations on every level of government. Companies of any size and character are confronted with an array of laws and taxes throughout the country so dazzling that no small businessowner can reasonably be expected to know which apply to his field of work and how.

The president may not be to blame entirely for this positively anti-business environment but it is the very notion that he professed last Monday---that some "rules of the road" are necessary to protect the common man from ferocious business practices---that inspires lawmakers in every state to enact laws that limit the entrepreneur's freedom and his ability to innovate and create jobs.

When government believes that it is morally empowered to regulate people's business activities, its willingness to do so will be limited by political expediency alone. In the wake of the recession, the Democrats in power have had the political capital to extend regulation in many, indeed major sectors of the US economy. A majority of American voters now appears to realize that government simply can't micromanage the nation's economy nor spend it into recovery. The president, for one, has already begun to adopt a more conciliatory tone.

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, September 21, 2010.

Fact Checking the President on Tax Policy

Elizabeth MacDonald of the Fox Business Network fact checks President Barack Obama on tax policy, disputing his claims that his tax cut will benefit the whole of the middle class whereas Republicans would favor tax relief for "millionaires and billionaires." Some excerpts:

Taxpayers making $250,000 or more are considered middle class in many urban areas with a high cost of living, and are not as the President said “millionaires and billionaires.”

[...]

Small businesses will be hurt by the tax hike on the upper bracket.

And from Ray Hennessey:

At the heart of why the administration does not want every American to be treated equally is an idea that spreading the wealth around – better known as wealth redistribution – helps make the economy better.

If you succeed, you should throw back some of that success to those who don’t, thus making them succeed, too. But there’s no basis in economic theory that supports that.

In fact, wealth redistribution is the destruction of wealth. If you work hard, succeed and make an income that hits some kind of arbitrary level, you are expected then to kick that back to the government so that the public sector can then make sure that those who perhaps have not worked hard or succeeded get an income, too.

So your wealth is capped. More importantly, that approach kills initiative, entrepreneurism and work ethic – all pillars on which this country is built. Why work hard to build your wealth when you will be forced to just give it to others?

The Pragmatist

With his approval ratings hovering around 50 percent and the opposition likely to win significantly in November's midterm elections for Congress, Barack Obama should begin to wonder what went wrong along the way. With a message of "hope and change" the president won almost ten million more voters than his opponent in the 2008 elections but has since become divisive and controversial.

The president's mistake is to be pragmatic when he shouldn't but stand on principle when he can't afford to.

The political left, including elements in his own party, have reason to complain about the president's aloofness to legislative achievements as health care and financial reform. Though praised as monumental and far reaching, Obama failed to effectively sell both overhauls to the public. His administration never managed to counter the Republican narrative of "government takeovers" and is now suffering the consequences in the polls.

A waning approval rating may have discouraged the administration from pursuing principle on issues that were more straightforward. When a federal judge, last month, dismissed California's ban on same sex marriage as arbitrary and unconstitutional, the White House remained silent, no matter its careful attempts at repealing the military's infamous policy of "don't ask, don't tell" toward gay servicemen and -women.

When the Governor of Arizona signed a controversial immigration bill into law last April, one that many allege not only legalizes but encourages racial profiling, the president merely voiced disapproval but didn't take advantage of the situation to make the case for freer immigration to America.

Most recently, with the planned construction of a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, New York inspiring a newfound resentment with Islam throughout the country, Obama at first appeared to defend religious freedom only to retreat the very next day, noting that the project---which opponents have successfully dubbed the "Ground Zero mosque"---really isn't any of his business as president.

This president is perfectly adamant about reforming the US economy, favoring a greater involvement for government in regulating and overseeing industry and trade in spite of a majority of Americans opposing his policies in this regard. But whenever he has a chance to assert leadership on values---including marriage, immigration and faith---Obama refrains from spearheading the national debate but lets his popularity suffer instead.

Obama's declining appeal with voters both right and center should not be blamed entirely on unpopular legislation. What has Americans worried and confused is that their president exhibits no clear principles but prides himself on being "pragmatic" and "willing to compromise." That's fine for any lawmaker but a president should lead on ideas, not just listen to them.

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, September 13, 2010.

Socializing Social Security Even Further

President Barack Obama may wish to preserve Social Security forever, he certainly doesn't intend to preserve it in its current form.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House-created commission studying the future of Social Security is considering:

[...] raising the retirement age, which is now set to reach age 67 in 2027, specific cuts under consideration include lowering benefits for wealthier retires and trimming annual cost-of-living increases, perhaps only for wealthier retirees.

Raising the retirement age is sound policy considering that living expectations have risen sharply since Social Security was originally enacted.

Lowering benefits for "wealthier" retirees is outright unfair though considering that everyone's been paying equally into the fund. But wait, the administration might chance that as well:

On the tax side, the leading idea is to increase the share of earned income that is subject to Social Security taxes, officials said. Under current law, income beyond $106,000 is exempt.

So if you make a little more money, you're hit from both sides when it comes to your retirement: first, you have to pay more into the scheme while you're still working only to receive less when you retire.

These sort of shenanigans are inevitable when dealing with a government entitlement program that's financially unsustainable in the long run. How matter how much more money the government intends to take from the "wealthy", in the end, Social Security will bankrupt itself.

The only rational solution is to phase out the system over the years ahead and eventually abolish it. People should be responsible for their own pension.

Obama: Don't Lose Hope

The president's message to voters: keep on hoping.

Obama, Not So Sure About Ground Zero Mosque Anymore

Just when you thought Obama was making a stand for liberty, defending the construction of a "mosque" near Ground Zero, New York on Saturday, he's back to trying to please everyone today, assuring people: "I was not commenting on and will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there."

Obama: Preserve Social Security "Forever"

President Barack Obama used the anniversary of Social Security to accuse the opposition of wanting to destroy it. In his weekly address to the nation, Obama said that he had an "obligation" to keep Franklin D. Roosevelt's monumental pension legislation intact---"today, tomorrow and forever."

According to the president, Republicans are "pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall." In reality, few Republican candidates even dare touch Social Security out of fear of losing senior voters. Even most Tea Partiers, renowned for their newfound libertarianism, typically believe that existing entitlement programs such as Social Security should not be changed.

Privatization, according to the president, is "an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market."

As it is, America spends about as much on Social Security as it does on defense each year, amounting both to approximately 19 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicare (12 percent) and Medicaid (7 percent), the country spends twice as much on entitlements as it does on defense, and it's doing so on borrowed money. With a budget that's skyrocketing, this administration is leaving America greatly in debt.

Privatizing what is nearly the single largest expenditure of the Federal Government would do anything but add "trillions" to the deficit, no matter what the president believes. To the contrary. By gradually phasing out the program and letting people take care of their own retirement, government could save trillions, cut taxes, and let people spend, and save, their own money. Moreover, they wouldn't need to be subject to the "whims" of Wall Street if the government allowed them to save for their retirement, tax free.

I don't suppose Democrats, the president included, like the sound of that though.

Obama Defends Construction of Ground Zero Mosque

Credit when credit is due: President Barack Obama defended the construction of an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of where once stood the towers of the World Trade Center, saying the country's founding principles demanded no less.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," the president said at an annual dinner in the White House State Dining Room celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he continued. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

Bailouts as Evidence of "Faith" in American People?

From The New York Times:

Against a backdrop of American-made cars, President Obama cast his Republican critics on Thursday as having lost faith in the American people [...]

"I wish they could see the pride you take in building these great cars, American-made cars. And my message to them is: Don't bet against the American worker; don't lose faith in the American people; don't lose faith in American industry. We are coming back."

That's wonderful but the opposition isn't losing faith in American industry of course, nor in the American people. It is losing faith in government's ability to "help" them both recover from economic hardship.

The president sadly confuses the very premise of government interference in private sector industry. That isn't a sign of "faith" in people's ability to control their own lives. To the contrary, it displays a blatant lack of faith in people's right to make their own choices. After all, if people always made the "right" choices in the eyes of policy makers, surely there'd be no need for bailouts and regulation in the first place?

Obama's Disastrous Energy Plans Delayed

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has decided not to advance the Democrats' energy bill before the August recess. The bill will be reconsidered when the Senate returns about Labor Day.

This may delay Obama's disastrous energy policies but it certainly doesn't mean the end of them.

Predictably, Democrats are using BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to justify expanding government's interference in the energy sector. "It's a sad day," said Reid, "when you can't find a handful of Republicans to support a bill ... that would hold BP accountable for the worst oil spill in history."

Actually the bill wouldn't do that. The core of the legislation entails caps to be put on carbon emissions; something which would undermine supply-and-demand and drive up energy prices because the earth-saving but costly "green" energies, as wind and solar, are wholly unprofitable and inefficient.

Meanwhile, there are vast reserves of oil and natural gas waiting to be exploited underneath the Atlantic coastline, beneath the northern coast of Alaska, and on land, in Colorado and Wyoming. Combined, these regions hold over two hundred billion barrels of oil and two thousand trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are recoverable with today's technology. That's more than most OPEC nations. If fully developed, it would be enough to free America from the import of foreign oil for almost fifty years.

Yet the president believes that "drilling alone cannot come close to meeting our long term energy needs." Instead, his administration is set to subsidize currently unprofitable renewable energies, stifling necessary progress in these sectors at the expense of millions of Americans who will either lose their jobs, see their energy bills go up, or both. No wonder Senator Reid couldn't even find "a handful of Republicans" to go along with that.

Obama Going to Call Republicans' "Bluff"

In an interview that was taped with CBS on Friday and will air on the network's Sunday Morning and The Early Show, President Barack Obama had a warning for Republicans who fret about the deficit but have no proposals to cut it. "I'm going to call them on their bluff," he announced.

The president said the same thing last month after the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada.

Asked at the time how he can boost confidence in his administration's ability to cut the deficit in half within three years, considering that Democrats haven't even managed to introduce a proper budget this year, Obama cited a three year discretionary spending freeze, "a whole host of measures to cut programs that aren't working," and PAYGO, which has existed since 1990 and was modified last year in order to allow multibillion dollar stimulus spending.

Last Friday, Obama again promised "a bunch of ideas" for deficit reduction. Wonderful. Again, though, he didn't volunteer any specifics.

Here's some ideas: repeal ObamaCare and while you're at it, abolish Medicare and Medicaid to privatize health care altogether; abolish the Department of Education and get government out of schools; abolish Social Security for anyone, say, everyone under 50 years old and free them from the unchosen responsibility of caring for the elderly; abolish the Department of Energy and the EPA and all the preposterous red tape and regulation that comes with them. And restore sanity to public spending but putting in place a deficit cap at, why, 3 percent perhaps, and save not only the nation from bankruptcy but future generations from financial hardship.

There's a "bunch of ideas" I doubt this or any future administration for that matter will ever contemplate.

Obama Insists On Performance Standards For Teachers

From The Atlantic:

Today, President Obama wades in to a controversy that threatens to split one of the Democratic Party's most generous source of donations and activists, the teacher unions, from the whole. [...] Obama wants more accountability for teachers.

This is good stuff. As it is, it's almost impossible to fire teachers no matter what they do. It's one of the reasons American education is failing. Predictably, unions beg to differ.

The teachers unions contend that there is no universal metric that can reliably assess teacher performance, particularly in poor neighborhoods where students experience intense social dislocation. Part of the problem is that nothing seems to work: not charter schools, not tying teachers to student performance, not throwing money at schools, not even curricula reform.

It's unlikely that the president will push for any major, significant reform which would entail the complete privatization of education. That would solve its problems entirely.

Allow fair and full competition between schools and that test scores will go up. Parents, after all, will send their children to the best school available to them. But without choice, anything goes, and those trapped in the public system will never have the same chances in life as those who enjoyed the good fortunate of being educated in a private school.

Accountability is a good and necessary step toward improving education but it won't do as long as the system remains unchanged and the premise that every child has a "right" to schooling remains unchallenged.

Obama a Marxist? Really, Congressman?

Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo had quite the op-ed in The Washington Times last Thursday. President Barack Obama, wrote Tancredo, is "an enemy of our Constitution" and should be impeached.

Just what makes the president such a menace? For one thing, "Obama is determined to see things done his way regardless of obstacles. To Mr Obama, the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be ignored, overcome or 'transcended' through international agreements or 'norms'."

The administration's flat out rejection of two federal court decisions ruling its moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico unconstitution are a case in point but other than that, one would be hard pressed to maintain that the president has truly ignored existing law. The Democrats' health care agenda and financial reform schemes may well be argued to contradict the limited government philosophy inherent in the Constitution (I, for one, do) but there's a way to overdo it, Mr Tancredo:

Mr Obama's paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to "fundamentally transform America." He has not proposed improving America---he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist---a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.

If that hasn't your pants on fire yet, consider this: "Mr Obama is a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda." Why? Because Obama "can accomplish with the stroke of his pen what bin Laden cannot accomplish with bombs and insurgents." Is the president conspiring to kill thousands of Americans as well? Tancredo doesn't say. Rather he compares the President of the United States with the world's deadliest terrorist and won't volunteer any evidence in support of this preposterous assertion.

Mr Tancredo, you're not helping. There are many good arguments to be made against the interventionist, Big Government policies of this administration. America is well underway to becoming a welfare state. Indeed, in many ways, it already is. But Communism hardly lurks around the corner. The president is not a murderer. He is not attempting to destroy the essence of America, even though, to the likes of us, it may seem so on occasion. Pretending otherwise is outright nonsense and it does the people who try to oppose the Obama Administration rationally a great disservice.

It's All the Republicans' Fault

The president who campaigned on a promise to change Washington and end partisan strife once and for all launched what was quite probably his most vicious attacks on Republicans yet in Saturday's weekly address. The opposition, he alleged, was making a stand "on the backs of the unemployed."

"Too often," said Obama, "the Republican leadership in the United States Senate chooses to filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress." Although the Democrats hold solid majorities in both houses of Congress, which has allowed them to pass monumental health care legislation and enact financial reform, it is the Republicans, evidently, who are to blame for the lack of economic recovery.

Senate Republicans have thrice blocked initiatives from the governing party to extend unemployment benefits because they fear such expenditure will add significantly to an already mounting national debt. "Some Republican leaders actually treat this unemployment insurance as if it's a form of welfare," the president complained---though it is. "They say it discourages folks from looking for work," which it does, although the president has yet to meet an American "who would rather have an unemployment check than a meaningful job that lets you provide for your family." If only all Americans lived up to that, there'd be no need for welfare in the first place.

Unemployment benefits are a welfare provision and they do discourage people from finding work. Although they are a permanent facet of America's welfare state, Obama insists that they amount to an "emergency expenditure." He is angered by Republicans who "suddenly" want to change that.

They say we shouldn't provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they've finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They've got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don't need them and didn't even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help.

It's rather depressing to have the President of the United States express so many falsehoods in a single paragraph. For one thing, Republicans, unfortunately, don't oppose unemployment benefits on principle. As Obama said, they have championed them for years. Some Republicans legislators are worried though that extending such insurances now is fiscally irresponsible and they're right. Democrats have failed to introduce a budget this year and are financing government programs on emergency provisions, or "redeeming resolutions." Meanwhile, the deficit is expected to reaching $1 trillion by the end of this year while the total debts amount to more than $13 trillion.

Obama's predecessor was left with a handsome surplus only to plunge in the red fairly rapidly. Yet the simple assertion that Republicans "turned a record surplus into a massive deficit" fails to consider two rather important events: the bursting of the dot-come bubble in early 2000 and the attacks of 9/11. Both cost the American economy dearly while the subsequent war in Afghanistan---which Obama has always defended as righteous---added significantly to President Bush's deficit.

The Bush tax cuts the president refers to may continue to frustrate Democrats but if so, they fail to consider that the rich already bear the grunt of government's costs.

In 2007, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 40.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.8 percent of adjusted gross income. Both of those figures were up compared to 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes. In spite of President Bush's tax cuts, wealthy Americans today shoulder more of the income tax burden than they did before them.

Lastly, the notion that the "need" of some---in this case, the unemployed---justifies the taking from others---"the rich"---is flawed and dangerous. Flawed, because it is not a proper function of government to extend charity to those in need. Dangerous, because such help can only come at the expense of others who are effectively denied possession of their income. "Spreading the wealth around," no matter how the president may feel about it, is something Republicans will always oppose---and with them, a majority of Americans.

But "think about what these stalling tactics mean for the millions of Americans who've lost their jobs since the recession began," Obama pleas. "Over the past several weeks, more than two million of them have seen their unemployment insurance expire." Don't they deserve help?

Why, everyone is free to help whomever they like. But no one has a right to do so with other people's money.

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, July 17, 2010.

The Mysterious World of Obamanomics

Lately the White House has been boasting that its so-called stimulus measures have "created or saved" somewhere between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs. Yet some 2.3 million jobs have been lost since Barack Obama took office. What's the magic?

Daniel Mitchell, a tax reform expert with the Cato Institute, explains that the administration is justifying the job losses by asserting that the US economy "actually would have lost about 5 million jobs without the new government spending."

"I've decided to adopt this clever strategy to spice up my social life," writes Mitchell.

Next time I see my buddies, I'm going to claim that I enjoyed a week of debauchery with the Victoria's Secret models. And if any of them are rude enough to point out that I'm lying, I'll simply explain that I started with an assumption of spending -7 nights with the supermodels. And since I actually spent zero nights with them, that means a net of +7. Some of you may be wondering whether it makes sense to begin with an assumption of "-7 nights," but I figure that's okay since Keynesians begin with the assumption that you can increase your prosperity by transferring money from your left pocket to your right pocket.

Mitchell, of course, is a gentleman, so rather than sharing the intimate details of his nightly escapades, he quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial which similarly lambastes the White House's economic fantasies:

White House economists [...] said the unemployment rate would peak at 9% without the stimulus [...] and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8% or below. In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than [Christina] Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all. If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like?

All of these White House jobs estimates are based on the increasingly discredited Keynesian spending "multiplier," which according to White House economist Larry Summers means that every $1 of government spending will yield roughly $1.50 in higher GDP. Ms Romer thus plugs her spending data into the Keynesian computer models and, presto, out come 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs, even if the real economy has lost jobs. To adapt Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, the White House computer models, or your own eyes?

Obama's Disastrous Energy Policy

USA Today may think that "President Obama's attempt to use the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to help propel comprehensive energy legislation has failed," but Conn Carroll of the Heritage Foundation doesn't believe it for a second.

After Federal Courts twice invalidated the president's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, describing it as "arbitrary and capricious," his administration reissued a similar, if not more restrictive ban last Monday. Majority Leader Harry Reid is meanwhile expected to introduce a bill in the Senate soon that will cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. "Taken together," writes Carroll, "the president's Cap and Ban approach to energy policy will accomplish exactly what he set out to do from the very first day he was sworn into office: decrease the amount of carbon the US economy emits by drastically increasing the cost of energy."

Senator Reid's scheme would reduce the carbon American power plants emit by forcing them to produce more and more renewable energy with each passing year. "This is essentially cap and trade but without the trade," notes Carroll.

"If these new renewable energy sources were actually cost effective," he writes, "there would be no need to mandate them." After all, companies, looking after their own interest, seeking to bring down costs and maximize profits, would readily exploit renewable energies if they could make money from it. But they can't. Wind and solar power are far more expensive than traditional fuels. Mandating energy companies to increasingly make use of such methods nonetheless will inevitably drive prices up. "The ultimate victim of these higher energy prices will be you the consumer and the American economy," according to Carroll.

Taking the full cost of renewable energies into account, the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis found that such a policy would:

1) raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry; 2) cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; 3) cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four; 4) reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and 5) add more than $10,000 to a family of four's share of the national debt by 2035.

"And that is just the 'cap' half of President Obama's Cap and Ban approach," notes Carroll. The drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico is already causing enormous damage to the local enemy. More than 200,000 jobs are dependent on offshore drilling in the region while 35,000 workers are directly involved each day when the rigs are in use. The American Petroleum Institute forecasts that if the drilling ban remains in place, more than 120,000 jobs may be lost in the Gulf area as companies move out. The people whose lives haven't been wrecked yet by the spill have their livelihoods threatened because of this irrational, arbitrary policy, unlawfully enacted by the White House.

Heritage analyst David Kreutzer has crunched the numbers and found that a full Obama Administration ban on all offshore drilling would be absolutely devastating to the US economy. Between now and 2035, an offshore drilling ban would: 1) reduce GDP by $5.5 trillion; 2) reduce job growth by more than 1 million jobs by 2015 and more than 1.5 million jobs by 2030; and 3) increase the total expenditures for imported oil by nearly $737 billion.

Meanwhile, there are vast reserves of oil and natural gas waiting to be exploited underneath the Atlantic coastline, beneath the northern coast of Alaska, and on land, in Colorado and Wyoming. Combined, these regions hold over two hundred billion barrels of oil and two thousand trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are recoverable with today's technology. That's more than most OPEC nations. If fully developed, it would be enough to free America from the import of foreign oil for almost fifty years.

Yet, according to the president, "drilling alone cannot come close to meeting our long term energy needs." Instead, his administration is set to subsidize currently unprofitable renewable energies, stifling necessary progress in these sectors at the expense of millions of Americans who will either lose their jobs, see their energy bills go up, or both.

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, July 14, 2010.

White House Wants Business to Stop Complaining

Politico reports that the Obama Administration is set to launch a coordinated campaign aimed at pushing back the perception taking hold in corporate America and on Wall Street that the president may be promoting an anti-business agenda.

After passing a health care reform bill that puts insurers at a disadvantage and is expected to cost business dearly; after threatening the high tech sector with antitrust investigations in spite of it being nearly the only profitable and certainly the only free market left in America; after using BP's oil spill last April to impose an unlawful moratorium on deepwater drilling throughout the Gulf of Mexico and launch an attack on Big Oil altogether; and after hammering out a financial reform scheme that leaves the prime instigators of the recession, the semi-government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac untouched at the cost of multibillion dollar tax hikes and regulation on the part of private banks, the White House is trying to assure businesses by saying---it could have been a lot worse.

Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel urged business leaders on Thursday not to recoil against the president but be grateful for his support on at least half a dozen counts: his advocacy of international free trade for instance. (That is, of course, disregarding the protectionist nationalization of automakers.) Billions in his stimulus package benefit business owners moreover, according to Emanuel, while financial reform will provide greater stability.

Just last month, Obama's top advisor struck a rather different tone on ABC's This Week where he blamed the opposition for continuing to promote lower taxes and deregulation. "They think that the government's the problem," he complained about the Republicans then as though it were a preposterous assertion.

The administration is similarly disappointed with businessmen who just don't seem to realize how good government's been to them. Politico notes that, "in the White House view, some business leaders listen only to Obama speeches being tough on BP or on the excesses of Wall Street and assume Obama is hostile to business across the board." West Wing aides complain of them wining, as though the "sensible and comparatively modest ideas" the administration is pushing are something of an "intolerable burden." They're still making billions in profits after all, so what's the problem?

The White House may like to pretend that Obama's rhetoric is somehow divorced from reality but it was the president himself who, speaking to reporters at the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada two weeks ago, reminded listeners that he was simply doing what he said he'd do. Indeed, he urged people to "learn that lesson" about him for next year, he will "start presenting some very difficult choices to the country." Rest assured though, businesses have nothing to fear!

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, July 20, 2010.