Liberal Myth Number...Oh, Heck, I Lost Count...

Greetings from the Left Coast!

One of the many liberal talking points that just won't die is how our economic problems and ballooning deficit are due to all the spending on those "illegal" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I recently had the following comment exchange with one of my Liberal Facebook Friends ("LFF"):

ME: (...Facebook status update grumping about references to the "cost" of tax cuts, as though our tax money was something the government is entitled to, and it's some kind of sacrifice for them to take less of it...)

LFF: "I think they want the top 2% to start paying their part so we can get out of debt or something like that."

ME: "I think if you run the numbers, you'll find that you could tax the top 2% at a 100% tax rate and we still couldn't get out of debt at the current level of spending. But that's another issue - I was objecting to the use of the word 'cost' in the context of a tax cut."

LFF: "Good point.... Sadly. I hate to think how long it will take to pay off these wars and all the bailouts. None of which have done any good for the [people] of America."

ME: "According to the Congressional Research Service, the cumulative cost of the War On Terror, from 9/11 through the FY2010 defense appropriation, is approximately $1 Trillion. That includes all of the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. This year's budget deficit alone is more than that. So it ain't the wars that are causing all the budget problems. (See http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf)"

LFF: ...(recap of how government debt grew from 2000 - 2007...) "Increased spending was needed last year to boost the economy out of recession. There are plenty facts to support that this is working. To ensure the economy did not falter, spending has continued this year. So by 2011, deficit spending should be reduced. The most recent budget forecast from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) showed the budget deficit at $1.3 trillion in FY 2011, more than the $1.17 trillion deficit for FY 2010, but down from the $1.7 trillion deficit for FY 2009."

LFF: "By the way… Babyboomers paid extra into Social Security to ensure there would be enough funds to support our retirement. Well it’s all gone and do you know what it was spent on? Yep. the stupid, winless wars all about greed."(...more stuff on the Social Security mess...)

ME: "I think you're making my point for me. The single-year budget deficits in FY2009, FY2010, and projected deficit for 2011, are all greater than the total amount spent on Iraq and Afghanistan in the last nine years. The War On Terror represents only a small part of the spending problem."

LFF: (Silence)

Now you, gentle reader, have no doubt spotted a number of other points in LFF's comments that could have been challenged:

• Reference to the top 2% "paying their part." For the love of God, the top 1% of income earners already pay nearly 40% of all income taxes collected, and the top 5% pay over 50%, while 47% of households pay no income tax at all. How much do they have to pay before they're "paying their part?"
• The comment that none of the wars and bailouts have done any good. I'm tempted to agree on the bailouts, but the wars haven't done any good for the people of America? That comment alone is worth several blog posts.
• The comment that increased spending was needed last year to boost us out of recession. Really? Can I see a show of hands of all of you who feel boosted out of the recession?
• There are plenty of facts to support that this is working? Care to share any of them?
• By 2011, deficit spending should be reduced. Yes, I believe it will be, but only because so many Democrats are going to be kicked out of office in November.
• The "stupid winless wars" were all about greed. That's odd, because I thought they were all about terrorist attacks on American soil that killed thousands of our fellow citizens.

And that, gentle reader, illustrates one of the biggest challenges of talking to your liberal friends: it's difficult to stick to one subject, because so many fallacies get dumped on you so quickly that your first reaction is to just walk away shaking your head and wondering what universe they've been living in for the last several years. Be patient with them, and try to stick with whatever the original point was without getting sidetracked. If that doesn't work, you can always walk away shaking your head.

Thanks for listening.

And They Call Themselves Christians...

Greetings from the Left Coast!

I have several Facebook Friends who are, shall we say, quite a ways to the left side of the political spectrum. Wonderful people otherwise, but definitely part of the group for which the Left Coast is named. On several occasions, I've seen conservative political views criticized as lacking basic human compassion, and heard some variation of, "And they call themselves Christians? What must Jesus be thinking now?" This has always bothered me at a visceral level, but it took me a while to figure out exactly why:

Jesus taught that we should care for the needy personally. He never taught that we should turn that job over to government and let government do it for us. I believe there are two good reasons why personal involvement is better than government involvement.

First, Jesus never taught that anyone should be forced to care for the needy. There is no spiritual benefit in doing the right thing because you are forced to do it. That, in fact, is the essence of the doctrine of human "agency" - that we are free to choose to do what God asks of us, or not to do so. But when the government forcibly takes money from someone (which, after all, is what taxation fundamentally amounts to), even for the best of causes, that person's agency had nothing to do with it. Left to his or her own devices, that person might or might not have chosen to give to the cause in question...but it's a moot point. That person won't get the opportunity to make that moral judgment, for better or for worse.

Second, and this is possibly more subtle, by shifting the responsibility to the government, we don't have to take any responsibility ourselves. We don't have to personally face the poor, the orphan, the widow, the sick, the dying. We can, in fact, ignore them and go on with our lives, because, after all, there's a government program to take care of them.

So I submit that it is not at all a violation of Christian principles to want to place limits on government-imposed income redistribution and the creeping expansion of the "Nanny State." And I find it interesting that conservatives, who tend to want those limits, are, statistically, more charitable personally than liberals. Conservative families give more than liberal families, across the board, in every income bracket. Republicans, statistically, are more charitable than Democrats. "Red" states are more charitable than "blue" states. The residents there volunteer more, both for religious and secular causes. They're even more likely to donate blood.

Does that mean that we should remove all government safety nets? No, not at all. But if I had to judge which philosophy was more consistent with the teachings of Jesus - to say, "We need to raise taxes so we can fund another government program," or to say, "No, it's not the government's job to do this, it's my job, and I'll put my money where my mouth is!" - I would have to say it's the latter.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks, Newsweek, Now I KNOW I'm Gonna Love It!

Greetings from the Left Coast!

When I woke up this morning and first launched my browser, two things caught my eye on the msn.com home page: first, a big headline that said "GOP Pledges to Cut Taxes, Spending." Hmmmm. Republican leaders are circulating a draft of a new "Pledge to America." OK. A couple of lines below that? Another link that said, "Analysis: 'Pledge' Unlikely to Inspire Voters," that led to a Newsweek article that - surprise, surprise - didn't think much of the new Pledge.

Since I am somewhat familiar with the political slant of Newsweek, i.e., if you offered me a free copy, I wouldn't bother to walk across the street to get it, that suggested to me that I might, indeed, find this new pledge inspiring.

So I did what I would urge everyone to do - I read it for myself. It's only 21 pages long (less than 1% the size of, say, the ObamaCare bill), so it didn't take me all that long.

Over the coming days and weeks, lots and lots of people are going to try to tell you what it says and why it should, or shouldn't, matter. Ignore them all and read it for yourself, then draw your own conclusions.

My personal reaction to it? If I could have presented a document to Congress in a big red binder labeled, "PLEASE - just do these things for me, and I'll be content!" this is the document I would have written. Yes, I know it's only a draft at the moment. Yes, there's a little, cynical voice in the back of my mind that whispers, "Yeah, it sounds good, but will they really follow through?" But it's being drowned out by the louder voice that's saying, "My God, if they actually do these things, it will make such a difference!"

OK, OK, here are a couple of teasers:

In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent...

We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people...

The American people know that to boost the economy, spending must be slashed, tax increases must be prevented, and small businesses must have certainty that the rules won’t change every few months so they can get back on their feet. The constant threat of new taxes and new regulations prevents investors and entrepreneurs from putting capital at risk. These private sector employers must be given the certainty that if they take a risk to expand their company or hire a new employee, Washington won’t yank the rug from under their feet...

We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives. No more hiding legislative language from the minority party, opponents, and the public. Legislation should be understood by all interested parties before it is voted on...

We will require each bill moving through Congress to include a clause citing the specific constitutional authority upon which the bill is justified....

Got your interest yet? By the way, Newsweek really didn't like that last point, for the very convoluted reason that it somehow encroached on the power of the judiciary, which is supposed to determine whether or not legislation is constitutional. But, dang, if I didn't know better, I'd think they (the GOP, not Newsweek) had been reading this blog!

Please. Just read it. Don't take anybody else's word for it - not even mine. Read it for yourself, then make up your mind.

Thanks for listening.

Why Political Parties Are Important

Greetings from the Left Coast!

All his life, my father was an independent voter. He never joined a political party, and took pride in voting "for the man, not the party." When I became old enough to vote, my first inclination was to do the same. But in the forty years since then, I've discovered why my father was wrong:

First, after politicians get into office, they generally vote the way their party tells them to vote. This has never been more obvious than in the last 18 months. Why? Well, there isn't much of a future for a freshman Senator or Congressman who opposes his party leadership. You don't get the choice committee assignments that way. In fact, you may find that you don't even get any help the next time you're up for re-election. So you may think that you're voting "for the man," but you're really voting for the party, whether you intended to or not.

Second, with the sole exception of the Senate Ethics Committee (a.k.a. the Oxymoron Committee), the membership of every committee in each house of Congress is determined by the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in that house. E.g., if the House of Representatives is 60% Democrat, then the Democrats will also have 60% of the seats on each and every House committee. Moreover, the majority party will also hold the chairmanship of each and every committee.

And that's where the work gets done. The committees determine what legislation gets drafted, and are largely responsible for drafting it. The committees determine whether a particular piece of legislation even gets brought to the floor of the chamber for a vote. When the Senate and House pass slightly different versions of a bill, a joint reconciliation committee tries to come up with an acceptable compromise.

In short, the committees are where the power resides. Yet there is little or no personal accountability for the members. Everybody knows who the President is - he's an easy target. But can you name even one member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce? This lack of personal accountability explains why, although the overall approval rating of Congress is lower than the proverbial snake's belly, individual incumbents keep getting re-elected over and over again.

The takeaway from all this is clear: if you want to change the direction of the country, you must change the party that controls Congress. It's just that simple.

Thanks for listening.

Flash: The Great Recession Is Over!

Greetings from the Left Coast!

Well, it's official: the Great Recession is over! In fact, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, it's been over for more than a year - the economy has been expanding since June, 2009! Don't you feel better now? You don't? Hmmmm. Maybe that's because, although we may have been expanding since June, 2009, it's been at a snail's pace. And when unemployment is still hovering around 10%, and you're upside down on your home mortgage, it sure doesn't feel like a recovery. Economists estimate that the economy needs to grow at twice the rate that's expected for this year in order to reduce the unemployment rate by a single percentage point.

But let's talk a little about this thing called an economic recession. If you've been in the work force for less than 10 years, this recession probably came as a real shock to you, because you had never seen anything but prosperity. In fact, throughout our nation's history, long periods of economic expansion have been the exception, not the rule. Until the early 1960s, it seemed like a recession came along every 2 to 4 years. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States for details.) The nearly 9 years of sustained economic growth from February, 1961, to December, 1969, was the longest uninterrupted period of growth ever up to that point in time.

And the last 30 years or so have really been remarkable. Between the recession that ended in November, 1982, and the one that started in December, 2007 - a span of just over 25 years, the economy was in recession a total of only 16 months. And had it not been for the September 11 terrorist attacks, we might have avoided the 2001 recession altogether (provided you weren't in the high-tech sector, which suffered the double-whammy of the dot-bomb bust and the inevitable dropoff in corporate technology spending that followed the Y2K spending spree).

The fact is that good times never last forever. Economic contractions happen. Honest men differ over what causes the contractions - whether they're caused by outside "shocks" to the economic system, or whether they're simply an inevitable part of economic growth and adjustment. But recessions happen. They happen when Republicans are in the White House. They happen when Democrats are in the White House. It's a safe bet that no one will ever completely eliminate them. And despite what you hear from politicians on either side, it's seldom the "fault" of the person in the Oval Office - he's just the most convenient target. Which is not to say that government policies can't make things worse. Obviously, they can, and we're living through that right now.

The burning question of the moment is what, if anything, government should do when a recession hits, to mitigate the effects as much as possible and encourage a return to growth. Again, honest men differ. The current administration obviously adheres to the Keynesian theory that the right thing to do is to spend massive amounts of money to get things moving again. Unfortunately for President Obama and his fellow Democrats, it doesn't seem to be working any better this time than it's worked in the past.

Obama sees himself as a modern-day Franklin Roosevelt. Unfortunately, he's taking all the wrong pages from FDR's playbook. FDR was a brilliant public speaker who lifted everyone's expectations with his promises of how great the New Deal was going to be. He blamed his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for being the "greatest spender in history." He promised to reduce the federal budget by 25%, and work toward a balanced budget. Yet, by the time his first term ended, federal spending had doubled. In May, 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau told a congressional committee: "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work... We have never made good on our promises...I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...and an enormous debt to boot."

Does any of this sound familiar? (For more on the parallels between Obama and FDR, I'd recommend an excellent article on thenewamerican.com written by William P. Hoar back in February, 2009, when Obama had barely taken office.)

An objective look at history will tell you two things:

1. First, when people are allowed to keep more of their own money, consumer spending will generally increase. And when wealthy people are allowed to keep more of their own money, they will tend to invest it in ways that create jobs. Yes, that means that we need to stop playing this stupid class-warfare game that crys about "tax cuts for the wealthy." As we've written here before, the wealthy already pay a disproportionate share of all income taxes. It would therefore be impossible to craft a meaningful tax cut that wouldn't disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
2. The one thing business hates more than anything else is uncertainty. Whether it's the small business down on the corner trying to decide whether they can afford to add one employee, or a large business trying to decide whether to invest in a new factory, new equipment, or a branch office, not having a predictable business climate will delay or kill those plans. And right now nothing is certain. The current administration's behavior can only be interpreted in one of two ways - either they're totally clueless about how the private sector operates, or they're hostile toward it. Business people don't know whether they're going to be the next group demonized by the Obama administration. They don't know what kind of tax is going to hit them next. They don't know what's going to happen to their energy costs. They don't know what their health care costs are going to be. And until that changes, you're not going to see substantial growth in the private sector.

In the recession of 2001, the Bush Administration and Congress acted quickly to cut taxes, and reassure businesses. Despite the threat of terrorism, and the fear of where the terrorists might strike next, the recession lasted only 8 months, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) contracted by only 0.3%, and unemployment topped out at 6.3%.

In early 2008, hampered by a hostile Democrat-controlled Congress that cared more about winning back the White House than anything else, there were limits to what the Bush Administration could do. Still, if we are to believe the National Bureau of Economic Research, the decline in GDP bottomed out in June of 2009 - far too soon for any of Obama's actions to have had any material effect on it - but jobs continued to be lost at an alarming rate even while the economy was, technically, beginning its anemic growth. In July, 2010 (a year after the recession supposedly ended), the unemployment rate of people who were seeking full-time employment stood at 10.2%. The "U6" rate - which also counts "discouraged workers" who have given up looking for work, "marginally attached" workers who "would like" to work but have not looked for work recently, and the underemployed who are working part time but would like to work full time if they only could - was at 16.7% last month (August).

The inescapable truth is that just about every economic move the Obama Administration has made has made things worse, not better, yet their only response is to want to do more of it. We need to, first, take Congress away from the Democrats so there will at least be some check on Obama's blind ambition. Then, in 2012, we need to turn him into former President Obama. If he still wants to push hope and change, maybe he can team up with former President Carter and help build houses for some of the people who have lost theirs to foreclosure while historians argue over which of them was the worst President since World War II.

Thanks for listening.

The Summer of Recovery Draws To a Close

Greetings from the Left Coast!

As the "Summer of Recovery" draws to a close, we have the chance to reflect on what an amazing summer it was. The Democrat juggernaught that looked unstoppable only a few months ago is coming apart at the seams, as the American public begins to realize that, in a brief spasm of credulity, they have managed to put the fox in charge of the chicken-house. President Obama's approval ratings have fallen through the floor: as of today, according to Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, 44% of the nation's voters "strongly disapprove" of his performance, with only 27% strongly approving - an "approval index" of -17. In fact, President Obama has more people in the "Strongly Disapprove" column than George W. Bush did in his last full month in office - President Bush was only at 43%!

Why? Because the American people have discovered that nearly everything he claimed to be, he is not:

• He was supposed to be the post-racial candidate, yet he and his supporters are the ones who pull out the "race card" regularly and predictably. Apparently it is not possible for anyone to be opposed to President Obama's policies, any opposition to his agenda must be racism.
• He was supposed to be the great uniter - the one who would reach across the aisle and bring us all back together. Put an end to the partisan bickering. But his actual approach to bipartisanship, once his party actually controlled both houses of Congress, amounted to, "I won, you lost. So either fall in line, or sit down and shut up."
• His adminstration was to have been a paragon of openness. Yet we have seen multi-thousand-page bills crafted entirely by Democrats behind closed doors, and rammed through with not only no opportunity for Republicans to participate in the process, but without even the opportunity for the rest of the country to know what the bills actually said.
• His health care bill is now being exposed as the debacle that it is. Health insurance premiums are going up substantially across the board as insurance companies are being forced to comply with all of the new requirements. And that's just the beginning - there's not enough room in this post to do justice to the subject.

And, in the minds of many voters, it has become obvious that his administration has absolutely no clue how to actually make the economy better. All they've done is to spend money like proverbial drunken sailors, and distort every market they touch:

• State and local governments across the country have been spending beyond their means for years. Obama's stimulus package allowed them to dodge taking responsibility for their irresponsibility by pouring billions of tax dollars into preserving public sector jobs...for a while. Now the money is spent, and those state and local government budgets are still upside down, because it's the private sector economy that has to pay for those public sector jobs, and the private sector is still on its lips.
• The "Cash for Clunkers" program did indeed boost new automobile purchases...until the money ran out. Then automobile sales dropped through the floor again. Moreover, the used car market was hurt, and the auto repair business was hurt, because of regulations that required that cars traded in had to be junked. And the engines had to be deliberately ruined by replacing its engine oil with a sodium silicate solution and running it for a while - which meant that engine blocks and parts like pistons couldn't be sold by automobile recyclers. (The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.)
• Subsidies for new home purchases boosted home sales for a while...until the program ended. New home sales in May dropped off 32.7% compared to April, and were 18.3% below the May 2009 figure.

In fact, the main effects of the automobile and home purchase experiments were to prove - if it needed proving - that if you offered free money, a lot of people would take it (gee, who would have guessed that?), and to distort the markets by artificially boosting demand for a short period of time, followed by a drop off in demand to a lower level than it was in the beginning.

The one thing that apparently has never occurred to them is that letting people actually keep more of the money they earned might be a good thing. If they got to keep more of it, they just might spend more of it. And if the people who had money to invest - you know, those evil "rich people" - got to keep more of their money, they might invest more of it in ways that created private sector jobs. But, as John Kerry famously said last year, there's no guarantee that, left to our own devices, we would invest in the right things - which is why government has to do it for us.

And that's proven to be the last straw. The American people are just plain tired of having things rammed down their throats by the federal government that they don't want, and being told in the process that it's for their own good and they're just too stupid to realize it. We're tired of being called names like "racist," "hater," "islamophobe," or all of the above, ever time we disagree with something.

This whole American experiment in self government got started nearly 250 years ago over the issue of taxation without representation. And the Democrats are about to discover that there is no better way to feel the wrath of the American voter than to ignore the fact that they work for the people, not the other way around. Many of them are already trying to run from the tsunami of voter disapproval that's coming. In the next couple of months, you're going to hear more and more Democrats start sounding like Republicans. They're going to continue to try to distance themselves from Obama's policies. They're going to start talking about how unwise it would be to raise taxes on anybody while we're still mired in recession. Don't you believe it. If they somehow manage to hold onto power, they'll be right back to their old ways in a heartbeat.

If you want to change the direction the country is headed in, you must change who is in control of Congress this November. It's just that simple.

Thanks for listening.