In The Capitalist Welfare State, Lund University economist Andreas Bergh explains how Sweden has managed to increase economic productivity despite its large public sector.

Bergh says that despite popular mythology, Sweden is not a socialist success story but instead owes its economic growth to the lowered tax rates and deregulation of the early 1990s, which allowed innovation and investment to flourish. Bergh also discusses how Sweden’s national voucher program revitalized the country’s educational system and warns that Americans who are hoping to emulate Swedish success by growing the public sector are learning the wrong lessons from Sweden.

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Given the strong prospects for GOP resurgence in the upcoming elections, and the intimate connection which said resurgence is sure to have with the fortunes of the Tea Party Movement, it is no surprise that advice is presently being offered to that movement from all sides. The most recent instance of that advice comes from Cato Institute scholar John Samples, who has released a video under the aegis of the Institute entitled “Advice to Tea Partiers.”

Advice to Tea Partiers

Samples is also the author of the book The Struggle to Limit Government, a political history book which convincingly makes the case for a libertarian resurgence within the GOP grounded on Reaganite principles. The video, which in some ways is a much simplified version of the book, offers five points of advice, many of which are well-taken, but some of which are grounded more in wishful thinking than in actual political savvy.

On that note, the video begins with the dubious statement that because of the “spending” and “expansion of government” that was present during the Bush years, “the Republican Party is part of the problem.” This is a lead-in to point 1, entitled “Republicans Aren’t Always Your Friends.” Samples points out, correctly, that when Reagan’s budget director David Stockman tried to get much-needed budget cuts through the White House, all the various department heads opposed these cuts even as they worked under one of the most spending-averse Presidents since Calvin Coolidge. He takes this as evidence that the culture of entrenched programs in Washington can corrupt everyone, Republicans included.

On this much he is right. However, it’s worth noting that part of the issue with Reagan’s cabinet was also that it had to be selected in order to pass a Democrat-controlled Senate confirmation process, and thus was probably more moderate than anything Reagan envisioned. Thus, the conclusion that can be drawn from Samples’s video is not that mistrust of Republicans is the right option, but rather that mistrust of Democratic legislatures is the right option, for even under Republican presidents, such legislatures can wreak havoc on the agenda of limited government.

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I have been perusing the paper trail for SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan, but most of it is mere puffery written for the purposes of a future nomination.  I will continue to examine her record and analyze her work (because politicians and the press clearly have more important things to do), but I did come across one gem early.

“Richard Posner is the most important legal thinker of our time, and for generations to come legal scholars will dissect and analyze, will praise and criticize, his distinctive legal vision,” gushed Elena Kagan in 2007.  “Rifle through the pages of whatever casebook you have at hand (nearly any subject, common law or statutory, will do) and you will find a grossly disproportionate number of Posner opinions.  Perhaps consciously, perhaps not, Judge Posner writes for the casebooks: for two and a half decades, he has produced simply remarkable teaching materials.  Love them, hate them, agree or disagree with them, Judge Posner’s opinions make people think -about what the law is doing, about what the law should be doing, about why it all matters.  Law professors – actually, anyone who cares about our legal system – should esteem these opinions for this quality.”

Any person with any legal background with an ounce of credibility knows 7th Circuit Appellate Judge Richard Posner to be a brilliant jurist.  So why are we not elevating “the most important legal thinker of our time,” in Kagan’s own words, to the most important institution in shaping the law of our land? (more…)

Sen. Bob Bennett suffered a stunning defeat in his quest for re-election Saturday.  And as the Senate considers the Obama/Dodd financial ‘reform’ bill, other Senators should be asking themselves if they want to be next.

Bennett, representing the most conservative state in the country, was defeated for a number of reasons but none more obvious that his steadfast support for the Wall Street Bailout.  When it came to his vote for the first Bush bailout, Bennett didn’t give an inch defending it all the way to his concession speech.

As political prognosticators read the tea leaves, a CNN interview with a local Tea Party activist perhaps provides the most insightful commentary.  It could not be clearer, grass roots conservatives see support of bailouts as anathema to free market principles; period.  Politicians have now been formally warned — support for bailouts of corporations and big banks is political suicide.

The real question is — is anyone listening.  The Senate is considering a bailout bill that makes the TARP vote that defeated Sen. Bennett look like chump change.  Sen. Corker, Collins and Grassley pay close attention here.  The Obama/Dodd bill is a bailout bill that favors big banks and Wall Street over Main Street.  It’s no different than supporting TARP — just more expensive and now contains a laundry list of intrusive Big Brother provisions like a national database that tracks citizens’ deposits and withdrawals.

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This week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.

The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens and which all involved appear convinced will persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.

At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except I’ve seen a copy of the bill. Yes it is cap-and-trade. And worse.

For this latest effort to hide an enormous tax and wealth transfer — a unilateral move that guarantees jobs will be shipped to China, India, Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere — – these lawmakers will be surrounded by numerous representatives of Big Green. That includes not just the wealthy pressure group industry but many among “Big Business”, numerous of whom are the benefactors enabling those pressure group chiefs’ huge salaries and vast PR budgets to scare you into accepting an agenda that uses the state to, oddly enough, enrich these same companies. Huh.

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The health care legislation recently bulldozed through Congress is only the tip of the iceberg. With some 2,400 pages of dense legalese—with thousands of additional pages of regulations implementing the legislation still to be written—this huge statute puts government in effective control of some of life’s most intimate, personal, and important decisions: who will receive medical care, and when, where, and how it will be received.

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato”—meaning, “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

I recall this expression frequently as I observe the government’s growing reach in American society. Washington’s medical-care power grab is only the latest example.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real-estate development, home construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not 1,000 other areas and aspects of economic and social life.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote on BigGovernment that the GOP Today is much different than the party was a few years back.  I was glad that my post generated attention, and very pleased to read through the different responses – both positive and skeptical.    Today I write again for two reasons.  First, to announce an exciting new project devised by the House Republican Economic Working Group.  Second, to take another step in earning your trust by showing you that we understand that actions speak louder than words.

We all know that Washington has a spending problem – and both Democrats AND Republicans bear some responsibility.  But as I wrote last week, America is at a crossroads and the choices we make at this critical time will determine what kind of country we want to be.  To get back on the right path, Congress MUST start to make some choices that simply can’t be delayed any longer.

While we won’t be able to solve our deficit problems overnight or with one silver bullet, we CAN and we MUST begin to replace the culture of spending that now dominates Washington with a culture of savings.  Just imagine if your government was as focused on saving money as it is on spending money.  Imagine if Congress spent less time naming post offices – 62 and counting – and more time reducing wasteful spending.  Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Today, we are launching YouCut – a first-of-its-kind project designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress.  It allows YOU to vote, both online and on your cell phone, on spending cuts that you want to see the House – YOUR HOUSE – enact.   That’s right, instead of Washington telling YOU how THEY will spend YOUR money, YOU can tell THEM how to save it.  After several days of voting, on Monday, May 17^th, we will announce the first winner and later that week House Republicans will call for an up-or-down vote on the spending cut.  We will repeat this cycle every week for the rest of the year.

For the first week of voting, here are your choices:

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Today, in 1962, General Douglas MacArthur delivered his “Duty, Honor, Country” speech at West Point.

RightChange.com, Inc. today released “The Attack of the 50-Foot Pelosi” ad in Pennsylvania for the Tim Burns’ special election race.  In a tight race, Tim Burns, the Republican candidate is running against Mark Critz, a former congressional staffer for John Murtha and the Democratic candidate.  The election will be held on Tuesday, May 18th to fill John Murtha’s congressional seat.  Murtha died unexpectedly on February 9, 2010.

The 30-second ad uses new technology for political ads with humor and cutting-edge animation similar to watching a Pixar movie. In the ad, Speaker Pelosi transforms into an enormous menace as she defies the will of the American people by pushing the costly liberal agenda including higher taxes and bailouts.  The Pennsylvania voters fight back to subdue Speaker Pelosi with Tim Burns campaign buttons and save America.

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Woah!… Raging Muslim students in Sweden attacked artist Lars Vilks during a free speech lecture in Sweden. 15 Muslims screaming “Allahu Akbar” rushed the podium, headbutted Vilks, broke his glasses and tackled him to the floor. The whole assault was caught on tape:

Vilks has been receiving death threats since he drew an image of the prophet Mohammad with a dog’s body.

The AP and Atlas Shrugs have more on the attack:

A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was assaulted Tuesday while giving a university lecture about the limits of artistic freedom.

Lars Vilks told The Associated Press a man in the front row ran up to him and head-butted him during a lecture, breaking his glasses but leaving him uninjured. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attacker.

Vilks has faced numerous threats over his controversial drawing of Muhammad with a dog’s body, but Tuesday’s incident was the first time he has been physically assaulted.

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On Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau sent a welcome memo addressed to the part-time workers his agency had allegedly hired to complete the 2010 Census.  He referred the memo to his “600,000 new colleagues,” whom he called “the heart of the operations for the second half of the census” and “the face of the US Federal government.”

On Friday, May 7, the U.S. Department of Labor released its latest official monthly jobs report, which noted that “Federal government employment was up in April, reflecting the hiring of 66,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.”  This followed prior DOL reports of Census hiring in March(48,000), February(15,000), and January(9,000). Even if all those “temporary” Census workers hired as early as January were still on the job on May 4 when the Director sent his“welcome” note, the official data through April suggests the Census Bureau has hired 138,000 temporary workers this year, not 600,000.

Where are the other 462,000?

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This ad from John McCain has to be one of the worst advertisements in the history of politics:

The stiff, scripted read serves as a perfect analogy to the way politicians like John McCain have failed to do anything to protect America’s sovereignty regarding our borders and immigration laws. Instead, they read meaningless words in a lame and transparent attempt to make us think they are “One of us,” working day and night to solve the problems that vex us all.

What a crock. They are just empty words being recited (poorly) from a script.

Besides, the “danged” fence, as John so condescendingly puts it, is not alone the answer. Ending the drug war and making legal immigration more accessible would cure most of the human smuggling issues currently plaguing this country.

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As incumbent Utah Sen. Bob Bennett (R) was losing the right even to run in the primary for the seat he’s held for 18 years, word from California was coming in that Meg Whitman, long considered a shoo-in in the Golden State’s gubernatorial primary, might be in trouble.

Whitman has invested close to $60 million of her own money for the right to lead a state careening toward bankruptcy and at one point enjoyed a seemingly insurmountable lead over Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner reminiscent of, say, the lead Florida Gov. Charlie Crist once enjoyed over Marco Rubio in that state.

In recent days Poizner has closed the gap considerably and is within eight to 10 points of Whitman in a race already far closer than anyone would have predicted possible six months ago. Poizner has thrown a good bit of the money he’s made since serving in the Bush administration into his campaign, but while his pockets are deeper than most, there’s no way he’s going to outspend former eBay CEO Whitman. If he wins the primary, it will have to be because he strikes California voters as better able to deal with the continuing crisis in which the state finds itself or because they reject Whitman as too much of an establishment candidate. Either could happen in today’s political world.

It’s difficult for one who doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in the peculiarly unique political world Californians inhabit to understand what goes on out there, so while I won’t pretend to predict who will win the June 8 GOP primary, the contest itself is interesting and instructive.

Whitman apparently decided early on to position herself as the “establishment” candidate in the race. Her campaign chairman is former Gov. Pete Wilson, and she has sought and advertised the endorsements of every Republican with a recognizable name, from Mitt Romney to Eric Cantor. In some years, this would have been a great strategy, but this year, voters are leery of such endorsements and seek  candidates who will look at problems anew. As a result, Whitman allowed Poizner to position himself as an outsider in the year of the outsider.

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Under a bombardment of condemnation, Arizona has taken action to address illegal immigration and is fighting back by telling Washington to “do your job.” Meanwhile, on Sunday President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department was “considering” a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law.

How did the immigration crisis occur? It happened because Washington didn’t do their job and secure the borders — and because under both Republican and Democratic leadership, the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), formerly the Immigration Naturalization Services (INS), ran amok.

If Americans want to see how broken and incompetent America’s immigration agency is, and get a glimpse of their future in the hands of bureaucrats, be it in healthcare or elsewhere as government takeovers persists, take a look at what legal immigration looks like. This could be your future at the mercy of big government.

The first step towards legalization typically begins at the USCIS’ mail room when lawful immigrants mail their application and filing fees with the reasonable expectation that it will be processed only to discover that is not always the case. Why? Because at the USCIS, the basic task of processing mail can be like spinning the roulette wheel in Las Vegas.

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), January 2009, report entitled Federal User Fees: Additional Analysis and Timely Reviews Could Improve Immigration and Naturalization User Fee Design and USCIS Operations, “Contractors perform all operations for incoming and outgoing mail at the [USCIS]… they are paid according to a fixed unit price for each piece of mail processed… and the USCIS has not developed an agency wide standard operating procedure for validating the contractors’ count… In most cases…USCIS cannot verify that it is receiving the services that it is paying for…”

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Yesterday we brought you “As Tea Party Activists Protest Dodd’s Big Brother Bill, Bank of America Deploys Security Forces,” the story of a group of  Tea Party and 912 Project protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina who showed up at the Bank of America headquarters to protest the bank’s sweetheart deal with Senator Kay Hagan on the financial reform bill currently moving through the Senate.  As protesters arrived with the intention of standing peacefully while holding signs that read things like  “No More Bailouts” and “CFPA = Big Brother”, they were met by several local police officers, a number of Bank of America paid security guards, and a few hired security extras from Wackenhut.

No one knows how the police or Bank of America were informed of the protest, as the event coordinators had not sent such a notification, nor had they filed for a permit with such a small number of attendees.  Further, the event was only scheduled the prior day.  Nonetheless, the bank was obviously prepared enough to have beefed up their security staff and hired the extra guards.

All that, for this peaceful bunch of patriotic citizens, there only to exercise their 1st amendment rights and express their discontent with the out of control bailouts and Big Brother environment created by the marriage of Big Government and Big Banks.  The financial reform bill only makes that environment even worse.  So they had something to say about it.

Sure, officers and security guards have every right to direct citizens away from private property and onto the public property boundaries.  Standing there in a line however, and hovering in the corner  in numbers that outweigh that of the protesters themselves only creates a chilling effect on 1st amendment rights like free speech and the right of the people to peaceably assemble.

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The reported Pakistani capture of Taliban founder and overall leader Mullah Omar is potentially a game changing event in the Afghanistan war, with profound implications for the stabilization of Pakistan.

If the report is correct, and if Omar is persuaded to talk (which is not at all assured) the information he has could reduce the Taliban networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan to a level at which – for a time – they were no longer an existential threat to both governments.  And, equally important, he could expose the details of the Iranian support of the Taliban, naming people in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan who give and receive arms, funding and training.

But let’s not celebrate too quickly.

First and foremost, we need to get the Pakistanis to delay giving him into US custody.  That is contrary to our normal instincts, but this man – taken alive and brought to any US detention facility other than Guantanamo Bay — would be Mirandized and pushed into the civilian criminal justice system where he, and his ilk, manifestly don’t belong. We would be forfeiting months of probable success in interrogating him.

The other reason to keep Omar in Pakistani custody is the Iran question.  The Obama administration still hasn’t formed the so-called “high-value detainee interrogation group” promised as the alternative to the now-banned “enhanced interrogation techniques” which proved so valuable in the Bush era.

If Omar can be persuaded to give up information on Iran, it should be either to CIA or US military intelligence personnel or to the Pakistanis.  US civilian interrogators would be more susceptible to Administration pressure to ignore information about Iran which might put them in the position of having to do something serious in response to the information.  Obama wants no inconvenient truths interrupting his “open-hand” strategy to Iran.

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You’ve no doubt heard liberal Members of Congress and other interest groups calling the Tea Party movement “Astroturf,” a play on the term grassroots.  Like our good friend Nancy, for example…

Or the liberal pro-net neutrality group Free Press, which has an entire section on its site devoted to “outing” so-called Astroturf operations.  This page includes a handy-dandy widget with a graphic of large corporations pulling the strings of Congress. Pretty clever, really.

They claim that the whole movement is the invention of a bunch of Beltway insiders backed by piles of corporate cash.  For them, it simply does not compute that ordinary Americans could be fed up with trillions of dollars in debt, tax hikes, and runaway regulation.  It MUST be the orchestrations of rich puppet-masters in DC, right?  Instead of spending hours debunking those claims, I’ll point to a post I made on the National Taxpayers Union’s old blog after the massive 9/12 March on Washington.  Several hundred thousand people from all across the country, none of whom were paid, will do a better job of dismissing these silly claims than I could here.  Instead, let’s focus on liberal activists employing exactly the kind of shady strategies that they accuse us of using.

So, that group I mentioned, Free Press?  The ones that have a page on their site to expose “Astroturfing?”  Last week, they were outed as being the true authors behind a letter supposedly written by Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA).  The letter is being passed around to various Congressional offices to solicit support for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s radical effort to thumb his nose at the limits of his regulatory authority, which I blogged about here recently.  But the properties of the electronic file itself show that the real author of the letter was not Mr. Inslee or a member of his staff, but none other than Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott!

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There are many bad things contained in Chris Dodd’s Restoring American Financial Stability Act,” the financial regulatory “reform” bill that after filibustering for three days — with the assistance of Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson — Republicans agreed to let come to the floor for amendment and debate.

Among its horrors are a massive new consumer agency with the power to track virtually every financial transaction to share with other big agencies like the IRS, onerous new restrictions on angel investors and venture capital that greatly delay funding promising startup firms, proxy access provisions that would federalize state incorporation laws and empower unions and other progressive shareholders to wage director campaigns at the company and other shareholders’ expense, and no attempted reform of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the center of the financial mess.

But the most destructive portions of the bill — the one that would in my judgment go beyond even Obamacare in making the American free enterprise system unrecognizable — has been little discussed even by critics of this bill. To put it bluntly but absolutely accurately, this bill sets up a mechanism for the Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to nationalize virtually any business they deem to be a threat to American “financial stability.”

I include myself among these critics not focusing on this issue and I apologize for not informing readers sooner, but I wanted to be sure the bill would do what I suspected it would do. Many of the bill provisions are interconnected, and what can seem like a mild measure by itself becomes lethal when combined with another sections. As Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett recently wrote: “Buried in [the bill’s] pages are numerous clauses and sub-clauses, many of which have been largely ignored until now (partly because they strike most non-financiers as pretty dull). Yet, the fine print could turn out to be crucial in the coming years.”

And after reading and rereading the “fine print” of this 1336-page piece of legislation (which will grow by hundreds more pages when amendments are added), it is clear that the bill’s “orderly liquidation authority” would facilitate outright government seizure of a wide variety of firms with very limited judicial review.

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Yesterday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would pick up his ball and go home, clearly the way for a possible Labor/Liberal Democrat coalition government. David Cameron and the conservatives would continue on in opposition. Cameron, of course, tried to ‘moderate’ the Conservatives and, in the process, squandered a double-digit lead and fell short of an outright majority. Yes, there is a lesson here.