The BushTax Cut Myth

Brian Riedl: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth - WSJ.com

Good summary, the very important part is even shorter -- "It's the Spending, Stupid"

Putting this together, the budget deficit, historically 2.3% of GDP, is projected to leap to 8.3% of GDP by 2020 under current policies. This will result from Washington taxing at 0.2% of GDP above the historical average but spending 6.2% above its historical average.

Franken, The Felon's Choice

FOXNews.com - Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

There is absolutely no excuse for this clown being even CLOSE to having been elected -- but it is only fitting that illegal votes by felons may well have put him over the top. The shame we get to live with for six years and likely longer is proof that MN doesn't deserve to have a political voice!

Cracker Intimidation

RealClearPolitics - Team Obama Turns Blind Eye to Voter Intimidation

"Cracker, you are about to be ruled by a black man," one of the New Black Panthers told a white voter. They taunted others as "white devils." A black couple who served as Republican poll watchers said they felt endangered when the Panthers called them "race traitors."

Why would a Community Organizer prosecute a Black Panther intimidating voters with a 3 foot billy club at a polling station? He wouldn't ... thus showing that BO is much more a Community Organizer than a president. 

The Ryan Roadmap

Republicans should embrace Paul Ryan's Road Map | Washington Examiner

I need to look at this in a lot more detail, but I really like Ryan. Reagan ran on a lot more specifics in '80 than most politicians, won, did a lot of what he said, and the rest is history. in '94, "The Contract With America" gave the Republicans not just a victory, but a way to hit the ground running -- it was enough to get the runaway spending of the time under control, kick off a rally (that did turn out to just be a bubble), and give us a few quarters of surpluses -- not bad.

As the article points out, the political temptation is always to just run against unpopular opposition. Republicans MUST resist this temptation! Bush thought that "triangulation to the left", the inverse of which was masterfully executed by Slick Willie after his '94 spanking (uh, no, not a spanking administered by Slick to some young thing ... "the election, stupid!").

Triangulation was a DISASTER for Bush -- Republican voters don't like political games. They hated the Drug Benefit and other spending. The base lost faith. When Slick went along with a balanced budget in the late '90s however, plus NAFTA and Welfare Reform, moderates flocked to him, and a lot of the Republican base was less than excited to remove him for Dole -- the principles cut both ways with the same voters.

NOTE: Same thing for military -- you didn't see Republican protesters for Kosovo, or Clinton's ineffectual responses to terrorism or Saddam's activities, nor do you see them protesting Afghanistan or Iraq now. Democrats? Kosovo and Clinton's actions in the '90s were fine with them -- Democrat can even do some military stuff, makes them seem "butch". Ton's of war protest and angst over Gitmo when Bush was President -- BO elected, still in Gitmo, not hinting may not be able to get out? Not a problem. Iraq, Afghanistan? Nary a concern as long as their party is in the WH. POLITICS, not principle drive Democrats -- "consistency is not an issue".

If Republicans just run against the unpopular Democrats, they are just "the lesser of two evils" -- Democrats are FOR "hope and change" ... Republicans are "against -- so what. Here is a bit more of what a reasonable way to run a national race here might be:

As ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Ryan was able to get the Congressional Budget Office to run the numbers in his plan. CBO concluded the plan would "make the Social Security and Medicare programs permanently solvent [and] lift the growing debt burden on future generations, and hold federal taxes to no higher than 19 percent of GDP." Pretty impressive results, I'd say.

Mattress Economy

RealClearPolitics - Obama Economy Sends Americans to Their Mattresses

Short, direct, factual ... good article.

BO and the Democrats are very much on the way to achieving the kind of results that I and many others expected based on economic principles and history. Reality tends to be non-partisan. You reap what you sow -- Reagan changed the direction of the US 30 years ago, and we reaped over a quarter century of solid, world leading economic growth.

The Democrats took over congress in '06, and we began a left turn that became a hard left turn with BO's election in '08 -- and the reaping is already is already well under way.

BO Picks Fear Over Hope

Mark McKinnon: Obama’s New Politics of Fear - The Daily Beast

I find the Breast to be slightly left of the standard MSM, not as far over as HuffPo. I must say that left folks that are willing to stand up and admit that the Democrat and BO tactics are at best only as bad as the worst of Republican tactics is something that deserves strong applause. The ONLY way we cut the current disaster shorter than DECADES is to figure out that BOTH political partys are ROTTEN with "progressive / statist vermin, and it is CRITICAL that we clean out BOTH partys and agree on some AMERICAN principles -- the Constitution as WRITTEN, Individual life, liberty and the PURSUIT (not the gaurantee) of Happiness ... one CITIZEN, one vote ...

Begala recognizes there ain't much water left in the "hope" well, so the plan is to poison what's left.  ‘Cause the numbers don’t look so good.

The Liberal Economic Mind

RealClearPolitics - David Brooks' Neo-Hooverite Plea

The study of the liberal mind is one of my guilty pleasures. They are avid writers, often extremely emotional and direct in their prose, somehow, apparently certain that no bumble headed conservative could be peeking in the open windows of their minds -- one almost feels voyeuristic.

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has sounded the alarm on this in several recent columns - just as he warned that the initial Obama stimulus, while historically high, was inadequate to fully reverse the downturn that was the legacy of the Bush administration. Then as now, Krugman was pointed, not polite, in his criticism. And while the administration probably couldn't have passed a larger stimulus in 2009, it is today hard to deny
that the Nobel laureate accurately diagnosed the situation.

"It is today hard to deny"?  If the medieval barber calls for 2 quarts of blood to be let, but a mere two pints is let and the patient does not recover, does it become "hard to deny" that the barber was correct? To the liberal mind, yes. The fact that jobs and economic growth can be generated by government spending is MUCH more an article of faith to the liberal than a biblical young earth to a fundamentalist (derided later in the article). The fundamentalist is willing to allow a power and a universe to have power and majesty beyond the fundamentalist, the liberal is not -- HIS views MUST be correct.

The fact that Krugman can be prickly and Brooks is congenial can't be confused with the question of who is correct on the economic merits. Krugman clearly has that honor. Yet the Brooks position is on the verge of carrying the day, both across the Atlantic and in the midterms-wary policy debates in Congress. Last year's G-20 conference, led by Obama and then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, settled on a strategy of higher spending to spur demand and growth, to be followed by a fiscal tightening once the recovery was secure. This year's G-20, with a new Tory prime minister from Britain and German Chancellor Angela Merkel preaching Teutonic fiscal stringency, reversed field with a call to roll back spending.

Remember when the Europeans were totally right, along with BO, Shrum, the MSM and left that Iraq was a "lost cause"? How intelligent they were then, yet how stupid they are now that they deign to disagree with the holy economic writ of BO, Krugman and Bob. The entire world has been stupid for ages, for all that was ever required for economic success is the massive injection of huge sums of borrowed or printed money -- hopefully in concert with massive taxes on the most productive. Liberals have known this obvious truth forever, only complete fools can fail to see it.

First, Brooks denigrates "Demand Siders" for having too much trust in their models, which could "risk national insolvency." Never mind that the markets - with historically low yields on U.S. bonds - are telling us that American debt remains the safest investment in the world.

So, do we believe in markets or don't we? The stock market was over $14K ... until it wasn't. Then it was at like $6,500 ... then $11K. Guess what? ALL of those were a RELATIVE assessment of current and future values AT THAT POINT. What "historically low yeilds" means is that AT THE MOMENT, there isn't a better choice -- then there is, the markets will take those yields to historic highs just as quick.

For the medium and the longer term, as The Washington Post's Ezra Klein points out, simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule - instead of renewing them, as the supposed fiscal hawks in the GOP demand - would reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years. But the same voices that oppose spending now to restore the economy will oppose asking for any sacrifice from those at the top, even in good times.

Only if you assume (as CBO does) that tax policy has no effect on the economy. That would mean that the people that pay the most in taxes are least affected by monetary incentives. Unsurprisingly, that turns out to not be the case which is why the CBO always vastly overestimates the "take" on a tax increase as well as the "cost" of a tax decrease.

The only answer that's coherent and convincing is to stimulate demand long enough and vigorously enough to restore business and consumer confidence, and move the nation back to full employment. But that won't work, Brooks opines, citing a New York Times-CBS poll showing that only 6 percent of Americans believe that the stimulus succeeded in actually creating jobs. He grudgingly allows that "maybe" this is wrong. Maybe? According to the Congressional Budget Office, as of the first quarter of this year, there were 2.8 million people at work because of the stimulus, economic growth was 4.5 percent higher than it otherwise would have been, and unemployment was 1.5 percent lower. Without that package, the country would have faced a longer, deeper recession - and perhaps a depression.

"The only answer that's coherent and convincing"? Usually, the "only answer" ... isn't. BO clearly stated that WITHOUT the stimulus, unemployment would go over 8% ... it went over 10% WITH it. When Bush made predictions that didn't come true, he wasn't just wrong, he was LYING -- but one thing was sure, the MSM would NEVER let us forget that his predictions were wrong. Actually, GOOD! They need to be exactly the same with BO. REMEMBER -- he was WRONG with his predictions about $800 Billion. Perhaps it would be wiser to question his pronouncements than to claim they are the ONLY answer that is "coherent and convincing". To you maybe, but then you are a closed minded liberal, more entrenched in your ideology than any young earth creationist.

What Smells Bad About BO

The Selective Modesty of Barack Obama - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

I think Charles hits precisely what reeks about BO each and every time I listen to him. I really don't mind arrogance -- surgeons, fighter pilots, generals, CEOs, sports heroes ... pretty much anyone that has to make quick or large decisions, especially with the lives of others is going to have to have a large ego at least bordering on arrogant.

The odd thing is that nearly always, that ego "boils over" -- "their" family, country, profession, business, etc. is held in a place of super esteem at least nearly as high as their own. It is only fitting after all that a "great man" would be the leader of a "great country", or the head of "the worlds best company/hospital/surgery department, etc". One might almost think that one is impossible without the other. Egos that large have no choice but to be associated with "the best" (as seen of course from the heights of their great egos).

One might have thought it impossible for a country to elect a leader so out of touch with the very nation that he leads. Even Hitler at least had a very high opinion of the German Nation and People. I look at BO and continue to have the nasty feeling that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot have been comfortably demonized for too long. Humanity has a nasty way of somehow being able to eclipse our past "worsts".

Some thing that bad could never happen here  -- yet I see the ACORNs, the voter intimidation, the machinations to control the election funds of others while he continues a constant campaign of his own and with the MSM's help, the blatant rewards and punishments of political allegiance with dollar figures never before breached, the blatant abuse of why we even have a Senate to take over our health care after the Brown election,  and most of all that self-superior, pedantic, tele-prompter read cadence, coldly manipulating mindless millions to some end that only BO, or some mystery behind the prompter really knows.

What would be the "final solution" of "hope and change"? A state where neither were needed? A state where neither were possible? A state where it was mandatory to "believe" ... in "hope and change"?

Short article, worth a read ... the last paragraph captures it for me.

Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama’s modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. But it is odd to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence — yet not of his own country’s.

Santa and Frank

Townhall - Santa and Frank

PJ O'Rourke does a much funnier version of the Democrats being Santa and the Republicans being god, but the effect is about the same. People in general, and especially post "New Deal" Americans love to get stuff under the assumption that "someone else will pay for it". Prior to Reagan, the Republicans always played the particularly bumbling Charlie Brown foil, and their unwillingness to constantly 100% fall on their butts to clean up the Democrats latest drunken spending orgy has brought the nation to what I believe to be beyond recovery -- in an time frame those of us 50 and older are likely to see.

We started scratching the surface of this grave with TR, took some big scoops out with Wilson, dug deep and wide with FDR, started lowering the casket with LBJ, shut the lid, folded the flag with Bush (love that bi-partisanship), and now BO is furiously pouring dirt in on the grave of the USA.

Sowell does a good job with the Lucy / Charlie Brown analogy though ... worth a read.

Foreign Praise for BO Leadership

With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932 - Telegraph

Well, actually, he isn't mentioned -- but why should he be? He figured all that had to be done was to borrow and spend a bunch of money and prosperity would be just around the corner. What's left now? Tax increases?

Here is the kind of an honest view you aren't likely to see from the American MSM:

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

Remember '08? The "depression" word was regularly used by the MSM, as in "Bush Depression" -- once BO got in, we had to have a big stimulus to keep unemployment from rising about 8%. Much like the MSM created "Katrina Bush debacle", this was going to be GREAT -- BO would walk in to what they figured wasn't nearly as bad as what they had been saying, take charge, spend some money, and the "liberal success" that they had been waiting for ever since before Jimmy Carter would finally be theirs! Hope was high for their boy from Hope, Slick Willie, but he flamed out in less than two years and had to be rescued by a Republican congress -- earning his greatest fame in "Presidential Emissions".

The real world is just a bit more dangerous than MSM dreaming -- most likely we are very due for the big terrorist event that will precipitate the next massive drop of the economy and the emotions of Americans. Elect a clueless community organizer and kill your countrymen -- experience is the best, but often the most expensive teacher.

Dow 1K?

Strategies - Robert Prechter’s Market Forecast Says ‘Take Cover’ - NYTimes.com

This would pretty much insure BO being more remembered than Carter.

WSJ On Pessimissm

Op-Ed Columnist - The Pessimism Bubble and the Economy - NYTimes.com

Good to see that the WSJ connection with reality is solid enough for them to understand that things haven't been going so swimmingly since we began the "era of change" with the Democratic congressional takeover in '06, followed by the BOslide of '08. Their explanation? It's a "bubble" ... a "pessimism bubble".

How grim? Well, after the United States limped through five months of anemic “recovery,” last Friday brought news that our economy actually shed jobs in June, thanks to the expiration of more than 200,000 Census positions. It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.

That is the potential "good news" ... the public seems to erroneously think it is worse than that.

Pessimism bubbles formed during America’s last two economic crises — the stagflation era in the late 1970s and the post-cold war recession that ushered Bill Clinton into the White House. Go back and read Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise speech,” which liberals have lately been rehabilitating. With its warnings about retrenchment, rationing and a permanent energy crisis, it feels like a contemporary document. But it isn’t, and Carter’s prophecies were wrong: the grimmest speech any modern president has given was delivered just a few years before America kicked off a long era of impressive economic growth.

The tiny little post gulf-war recession was like the late '70s? The only real disaster parallel there is that folks were so spoiled that just that small little recession ushered in Slick Willie, but fortunately, we sobered up quick, and got Newt and company to right the ship two short years later. Let us pray that sobriety is as swift in 2010!

Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell

I stand in awe of Sowell as an author. This is a 551 page economics book that is close to as concise as possible given the breadth of the subject, extremely readable, and I think "life-changing" in it's conveyance of what seem like, and really are, very simple facts of life that we actually understand when we see them, but are far too easy for humans to forget. I hope and believe that Sowell as found a way to imprint them indelibly in my tiny brain.

A mass of a few more quotes than I would usually do ....

"Different kinds of economies are essentially different ways of making decisions about the allocation of scarce resources."

"It is not money, but the volume of goods and services which determines whether a country is poverty stricken or prosperous".

"Economics is not simply a topic on which to express opinions or vent emotions. It is a systematic study of what happens when you do specific things in specific ways."

"But life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options. Economics is one of the ways of trying to make the most of those options."

"Knowledge is one of the most scarce of all resources and a pricing system economizes on it's use by forcing those with the most knowledge of their own particular situation to make bids for goods and resources based on that knowledge, rather than on their ability to influence other people in planning commissions, legislatures or royal palaces."

"What is at the heart of the fallacy of composition is that it ignores interactions among individuals, which can prevent what is true for one of them from being true for them all."

"The interaction that is ignored by those [advocating supposed "job saving policies"] is that everything the government spends is taken from somebody else. The 10,000 jobs saved in the widget industry may be at the cost of 15,000 jobs lost elsewhere in the economy by the governments taxing away the resources needed to keep those other jobs. The fallacy is not in believing that jobs can be saved in given industries or given sectors of the economy. The fallacy is in believing that these are net savings of jobs for the economy as a whole."

"Speculation is often misunderstood as being the same as gambling, when in fact it is the opposite of gambling. What gambling involves, whether it is in games of chance or in actions like playing Russian roulette, is creating a risk that would otherwise not exist, in order to profit or exhibit ones skill or lack of fear. What economic speculation involves is coping with an inherent risk in a way as to minimize it and leave it to be borne by whoever is best equipped to bear it."

"While capitalism has a visible cost--profit--that does not exist under socialism, socialism has an invisible cost--inefficiency--that gets weeded out by losses and bankruptcy under capitalism. The fact that most goods are more widely affordable in a capitalist economy implies that profit is less costly than inefficiency. Put differently, profit is a price paid for efficiency."

I could go on, and on, and on ... it is a long but pithy book. The bottom line is that Sowell describes the principles of economics that exist, like gravity, no matter what we "want". What we "want" is in many ways irrelevant, and when we try to use faulty levers as a nation to gain it, we nearly always create perverse incentives that create different results. We may want the economic machine to produce more ice cream and less broccoli, or vice versa, but by our institutionalized slap-dash hammering at the controls, we are likely to get less of both, and a lot of something completely different -- likely neither fun or healthy.

Often, as in the first quote above, the point is "x is going to be done in any case", it is just a matter of "who / how". Decisions WILL be made on how to allocate the scarce resources -- either by someone that is hungry buying a product, by someone investing their money in hopes of return, by an executive looking to turn a profit, or by a lifetime employed government bureaucrat waiting for the clock to turn to 5.  The decision gets made, at best, we get to decide how.

Same thing with scarcity -- he makes the point that a government decree that everyone had a "right" to a beach front palace would do absolutely nothing for the availability of such. "And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life?" What statists fail to realize is that this is often every bit as true for nations as it is for people.

Allocation of scarce resources and incentives -- it pretty much all comes down to that, but  it takes a mind like Sowell's to make that easy and understandable in a mere 551 pages. Don't settle for my poor words ... read it!

Sacrosanct

Townhall - What a Sack of Sacrosanct

It's Ann, but she isn't very snarky here, and she is onto one of what I believe to be the core modern American problems -- liberals don't know any real Americans and know nothing about what America even is.

As Kagan herself described it, on the Upper West Side of New York where she grew up, "Nobody ever admitted to voting Republican." So, I guess you could say being a Democrat was "sacrosanct."

American liberalism has more in common with the Amish or radical Islam than it does with being an American. They hold THEIR "truths" to be so self-evident that they believe it impossible for any one with an ounce of brain matter to hold any other opinion.

Words Mean What I Say They Mean

Townhall - How to Spot a Legal Progressive

Super article, short, just read it. It covers the obvious -- progressives find that rights the constitution says nothing about (abortion) apply to all ... federal, state, city, but rights that the constitution directly enumerates (guns), are questionable at all levels.

How can you spot a legal progressive? A legal progressive is someone who believes rights that are not stated in the Constitution, but inferred or extrapolated, should be given more weight than rights plainly enumerated.

A legal progressive is someone who knows there is a fundamental constitutional right to gay marriage, for example, even though the Constitution says nothing directly about marriage, but that a law-abiding individual has no right to own a gun, even though the Constitution clearly states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."