Has the President brought us together?

A few days ago, we pondered all of the groups of people that the White House or its proxies have attacked in pursuing their expansion of social welfare and state control in the last three years. Here's our list, it may not be complete:

• The "1%"
• Oil Companies
• Doctors
• Hospitals
• Pharmacutical Companies
• Insurance Companies
• Bankers
• The Tea Party
• "Wall Street" and Venture Capitalists
• 2nd Amendment advocates
• The Supreme Court
• "Talk Radio"
• The Koch Brothers
• Fox News and the Wall St. Journal
• The Pro-Life Movement
• The Catholic Church
• "Fast Food" makers and distributors
• Tobacco companies
• The State of Arizona and other border-control advocates
• Voter ID advocates
• Multinational corporations
• The heirs of "large" estates

A remarkable list. Are we missing any?

Hiatus.

We have neglected this journal for several months, and our excuse is simple. We've had nothing much to say that wasn't expressed by others with greater felicity. Now, however, we dare to speak up.


Our country has serious troubles beyond debt and unemployment. The premise of our republic is not the "right" to a job, not a "right" to healthcare, nor education, nor housing, nor other materialist "rights", rather it is

...[we] are endowed by their [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

 It is now obvious that the current Administration intends to supplant this sacred declaration with that of the Menu of Materialist Entitlements. Furthermore, the Administration, in order to realize this goal, is attacking the social institutions and conventions that would impede the citizens' reduction to serfs beholden to an all-powerful federal government for direction in every significant aspect of their lives.

This Administration, with its Czars and Mandates, must be turned out in November. Otherwise, Lord help us, while the federal powers still permit an appeal to Heaven.

 

Two Paths Diverged.

With which of these statements do you agree?

• The prevalence of gun-related violent crime requires that we remove the possession of handguns and "assault weapons" from 2nd Amendment protections.
• There should be limits imposed by government on the amount of money that an individual can make per year.
• Freedom of speech should not include "hate speech", that is, speech that is considered offensive or hurtful to others.
• There should be no display or expression of religious belief allowed on public property or using public facilities whatsoever.
• The risk in allowing decisions about medical care and retirement to be made by individuals is too great to be left unsupervised by government authorities.
• The federal government should encourage the use of alternate and renewable fuels by high taxes on fossil fuels.
• Welfare or unemployment benefits should be provided to people for an unlimited period of time.
• Conditions of race, religion, sexual orientation, or economic circumstance should be considerations in prison sentencing guidelines.
• State governments cannot be trusted to provide for the welfare of their citizens.
• The use of tobacco products should be prohibited on all public property, both indoors and out-of-doors.
• Private property rights should restricted in order to prevent environmental degradation.
• Private property rights should be restricted to prevent the inordinate accumulation of wealth by an individual or group.
• Elections for public office should consider circumstances of "traditionally underrepresented" groups of people.
• I would give up my rights to private property for a guaranteed "living wage", housing, health care, and retirement pension.
• I would give up my right to vote for a guaranteed income, housing, health care, and retirement pension.

Lest We Forget.

The conflict in Iraq continues.

One Lousy Fly Fishing Year for the Huron River.

The chart says it all.

But We Meant So Well...

The Washington Post chronicles the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars in the Department of Housing and Urban Development on public housing projects that are either ficticious or going nowhere. This is a perfect example of the brain-dead spending that has been going on year in and year out by the Federal government, apparently with no accountability.

Essential Reading:

Victor Davis Hansen on how our view of entitlement is going to change...quickly.

The Wall Street Journal chronicles our slide to insolvency.

Mark Steyn considers the post-American planet.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Noonan: He is a Loser.

Now it becomes clear why experience is important: the President has gamed the debt ceiling crisis into a very serious risk of a downgrade of US debt instruments. The lofty speeches won't save us now.

Just Because It Is So Beautiful.

Politically-Induced Alcoholism.

Steven Ratnner has penned an excellent critique on the ethanol racket in the United States. He states clearly what many pols know but dare not speak: the US program to promote ethanol production for transporation fuels drives food prices up, is comparable in the energy to produce it than in what it displaces in petroleum, has led to a bizarre and contradictory arrangement of alcohol and petroleum imports and exports, and is a green pig-in-a-poke. But ethanolism does mean big federal subsidies to the agribusiness interests of the corn belt, including Iowa, an early presidential political milestone.

Postscript: a new AEI report on ethanolism can be found here.

What a "Three-to-One" Deficit Solution Means.

As the United States hurdles toward the Great Debt Extinction Asteroid, the predictable calls for "reasonableness" in a solution have manifested themselves in the "Three-to-One" Proposal: 3 parts spending cuts to 1 part tax increases. Exactly how reasonable is such a solution in what it would require for tax increases?

The "long term" solution proposes a $4T cut in debt over a decade. Assuming unprecedented fiscal discipline by the government, the 3:1 Solution would require $100B in new taxes in the coming year. Well, clearly, the Uber-Rich can accommodate such a paltry sum! No, not really. The top 5% of income earners contributed about $600B in taxes in 2008, so $100B would constitute a 17% increase in taxes for this group, if the entire $100B were extracted from their incomes. The effective tax rate for the top 5% would be raised from 21% of AGI to over 24%, or an average increased federal income tax burden of over $14K per return in this income bracket*.

And now, recall, gentle reader, that this top 5% of earners includes all households above $160K in AGI - so much for the protecting those earners under $250K.

We should not kid ourselves: the 3:1 Solution would hit hard even if Congers demonstrates remarkable restraint over the next decade, and will be much more painful if they behave as normal.

*Yes, the "average increased tax burden" is a silly statistic, for a low-ranking member of the 5% Club will not pay as much as an elite. But it's likely that a threshold member will pay a few thousand dollars more, which means a lot to these earners.

Ultra Premium Irony.

Yesterday the United States Government announced the release of 30M barrels of oil from the SPR to help ameliorate the effects of rising oil prices on economic recovery. We note, however, the effect of the Gulf drilling moratorium and glacial rate of new drilling permitting imposed by the Administration has been to reduce domestic oil production by 240K barrels per day, or nearly 90M barrels over the last year. And then there is the knock-on effect of lost jobs in the Gulf region. The White House can't be as clownish on this as they appear...can they?

The Closing of the Krugman Mind.

PK recently commented on his reading tastes in politics and economics. He finds nothing on the web from a conservative point-of-view that is worth reading regularly. Nothing. One can only hope that he no longer teaches students.

We Have to Destroy Jobs to Save Them.

Boeing has invested $750M in the construction of a new assembly plant to produce the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina. It is expected that over 3000-4000 high value-added, high-paying jobs will be created by Boeing in South Carolina, not including the knock-on effect of additional job creation by others to support this effort. Boeing's effort is the largest business development project in the history of South Carolina.

However, the National Labor Relations Board has decided to sue Boeing to stop them from locating Dreamliner production in South Carolina, claiming that Boeing's decision was in retaliation for a 2008 employee strike, and is circumventing labor law. Indeed, public comments by Boeing management referred to the disruption of production during the strike as one factor in consideration in the South Carolina decision.

However, some facts contradict the NLRB claim: Boeing employees in South Carolina recently voted to leave the IAMAW, the aerospace workers union, and only after that event was a complaint lodged with the NLRB. Boeing's is expanding plane production, adding 2000 jobs to the Seattle area, and no jobs are being transferred to right-to-work South Carolina.

With the addition of Craig Becker to the NLRB, former counsel to the SEIU, and a vocal advocate for radical government intervention in support of organized labor, can we expect further initiatives in job creation strangled in the crib by the union's hunger for additional membership and power?

Greenspan on Squawk.

A very sober discussion with the former Fed chairman on the debt, and our future fiscal priorities. Seniors may not like what they hear.

Do Senators Understand Markets?

Maria Cantwell, D-OR, one of the Senatorial Interrogators during Big Oil's recent appearance on the Hill, demanded to know what the price of the next marginal produced barrel of oil "should be". Exxon's CEO Rex Tillerson replied between $60-$70. Ms. Cantwell deduced that given the price of oil is around $100 per barrel, this disparity demonstrated the immoral gouging by "speculators". We presume that the good senator can determine who is a "legitmate" bidder for that barrel of oil and who is not.

Perhaps one day Ms. Cantwell can ask Steve Jobs what price the next marginal produced 16 GB IPad "should be". It could be as low as $260, but it actually retails at $499. This is nearly a 100% markup.

Mark Perry has made a similar arguement, summarized at his excellent blog Carpe Diem.

Socialism with a Democrat Face.

Here's a snippet of the Kudlow interview with Nancy Pelosi on CNBC today. They're discussing the Dem's desire to revoke Big Oil's tax deductions:

Kudlow: They’re deductions are the same as all the manufacturing companies.

Rep. Pelosi: So why do they need — yeah, they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t be.

Kudlow: Why not?

Rep. Pelosi: Because manufacturing, you’re making something in America. They are — this was, shall we say, a special case for the oil companies to say we are actually not manufacturing companies, we wanted to be treated like that and that’s one to have things we want to reverse.

We are not big fans of corporate tax breaks that skew business decisions. But clearly Pelosi believes the tax code should be used as a shock collar on American industries. Expect the Dems to release their Five Year Plan soon.

Krugman: The New Deal and Great Society Worth Blowing It All Up.

In a panel discussion on ABC's "This Week", Paul Krugman suggested that the Left go to the wall to defend the Welfare State by risking default on Government debt. Retiring FDIC chair Shelia Bair was alarmed at this proposal. Silly Shelia, he's a Nobel Prize Winning Economist! Krugman knows best!

For Dad.

A Thought About Spending.

Government spending is now so large that a year's budget equals 43% of the adjusted gross income of its citizens.