At FreedomFest in July, Reason’s Nick Gillespie talked with investor (and Reason Foundation donor) Don Smith about the economy and his outlook for the market. Smith expects the U.S. will continue putting off a meaningful resolution to its debt problem, but he’s thrilled the issue is finally getting attention. Despite recent market woes, Smith is bullish on stocks: With money-market funds paying almost nothing, he says, where else are people going to put their money?

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Like the recent east coast earthquake, the Budget Control Act of 2011 left Washington shaken and completely confused, the epicenter being the Department of Defense.

While some are saying that the super committee will be able to reach a deal and cut the additional $1.5 trillion (half from defense), others are not so confident there will be any agreement, resulting in automatic caps for the next nine years.  Either way, defense spending will make or break a super committee budget deal.

Truthfully, Congress has a better chance of willfully trimming the budget at the super committee stage because they have more tools to orchestrate a reduction. Even if they deadlock, they’ll push through artificial savings mechanisms, anything to merit a Mission Accomplished banner. Medicare doc fixes are an example of such “solutions”. Though Congress’s intention was to curb Medicare spending, they came up with an unworkable formula that has now resulted in temporary increases and extensions of existing physician reimbursement rates, all in an attempt to circumvent a long-term solution. Applying this to what Congress may do with defense spending, a successful deal may be nothing more than a tacit convention of today’s culture on Capitol Hill, do anything to avoid Armageddon. And some do consider the trigger provision of the bill to be deadly. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta even called it the “doomsday mechanism.”

Under sequestration, or the trigger, defense cuts are still a variable certainty. We simply do not know how bad it is. It all boils down to the language of the bill. Here’s why:

1.The bill does not organize any of its spending requirements against any baseline.

2.Positive numbers (discretionary spending caps) without context forces you to make arbitrary assumptions.

3.No analyst can come up with a number that is reasonable/unreasonable.

The question on everyone’s mind: What on earth do we base these numbers against?

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Much has been made of the Jimmy Carter-like malaise that Barack Obama has placed this country in. With good reason, comparisons are being made of the fact that they’re both weak and that neither demonstrates a working knowledge of the military or how foreign policy and energy solutions should be pursued. (Concerning the latter, Carter gave us Gasohol and Obama has given us the Chevy Volt.)

Thus, we’ve been inundated with comparisons to the 1980 presidential elections and predictions of how the right GOP candidate, say Gov. Palin or Gov. Perry, will ring up Obama in November 2012 the way Ronald Reagan rung up Carter some 31 years ago.

But when I recently visited with guest hosts Cameron Gray and John Popp on the NRA’s “Cam & Company,” and we discussed the mobs that betray a seething rage just below the surface in many parts of America, it dawned on me that the comparison to 1980 may not be apropos. Instead, what may be needed is to turn back the clock a bit further to when the counter-culture was in full swing and another Democrat who knew nothing about the presidency was making a fool of himself.

The year was 1968, and the president was Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ).

A Democrat’s Democrat, LBJ spent us into oblivion (and continues to long after his death) via the “War on Poverty.” He watched as the counter-culture went from somewhat peaceful to somewhat violent to completely out of control. And he didn’t take the Vietnam War seriously because he was so intent on passing his domestic agenda (“The Great Society”) and he didn’t want anything to distract from it.

Just think about it folks: Obama has spent us into oblivion (he added more money to the national debt in his first 19 months “than all presidents from Washington to Reagan combined”).  He has not only watched the mobs break loose in certain cities, but has instigated them via his ongoing habit of pitting one group or class of people against another. And while our soldiers are being shot and killed overseas, Obama is angling for a way to pass a second stimulus bill and to raise more taxes in his ongoing bid to “spread the wealth around.”

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For Wisconsin, it seemed that the 2012 election had come a summer early. Until August 16th the airwaves were full of ads by campaigns and outside groups urging voters to turnout and support a candidate of choice in one of the nine recall elections around the state. What would have otherwise been a tranquil summer was brushed aside when a torrent of money, activists and professionals swept the state in a prolonged battle that started in the late winter and early spring over the issue of collective bargaining reform.

The political landscape of Wisconsin didn’t change much as a result of the costly and noisy recall elections. But that doesn’t mean some important lessons weren’t learned. Elections this historic always yield important information and raise intriguing possibilities about how future political battles will play out. In a state historically split nearly 50-50 along ideological, if not partisan, lines with independents often progressively minded, the summer campaign offers some lessons that conservatives can take heart from.

Even though Democrats are touting their ability to knock off two incumbent state senators as a major success in the face of failed GOP attempts to go after three Democratic senators, Democratic gains are shallow. Every incumbent senator who faced a recall challenge (regardless of party) survived except when a massive personal scandal or political earthquake hit. Sen. Randy Hopper’s ill-timed affair with a staffer exploded early in the recall cycle and irreparably damaged him politically. Sen. Dan Kapanke’s district had for years been trending Democrat, and his personal connection to voters was not enough to outweigh the long-developing party shift that finally flipped the seat’s party affiliation.

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One of the co-conspirators in a White House-approved plot to use federal resources to produce partisan propaganda to advance President Obama’s policy agenda has been chosen to lead an Obama 2012 get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort.

The Obama operative chosen to head the GOTV effort, Buffy Wicks, was deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. In that capacity she participated in a now-infamous 2009 conference call in which Obama officials urged artists to create art that would help advance Obamacare and the rest of the president’s policy objectives.

Wicks will head a GOTV effort named after the branch of ACORN that employed Obama in 1992. Perhaps to honor Obama’s radical roots, the “campaign-within-a-campaign” will be named “Project Vote,” according to Politico’s Mike Allen.

Obama’s storied performance as head of Project Vote in Illinois during the 1992 campaign was widely credited with getting the radical left-wing Democrat Carol Moseley Braun elected to the U.S. Senate. It also helped Obama cement his reputation as a master community organizer.

The original Project Vote is part of the ACORN network. It continues to operate out of ACORN’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, and works with the new ACORN front groups created after ACORN, the shell corporation that ran the network, filed for bankruptcy last November.

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Federal authorities entered the warehouse brandishing automatic weapons. Employees were separated and interrogated. The Fed seized over half a million dollars of product.

What was the Obama Administration after? Weapons grade plutonium? Heroin? No…something much more sinister.

Guitar fingerboards.

In apparent effort to lose the musician vote, the Obama Administration has launched not one but TWO Kafkaesque raids on one of America’s iconic brands – Gibson Guitars, makers of such classis insturments as the Les Paul, SG, ES-335 and the brand new Firebird X.

Listen to my exclusive with Gibson CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz

Here’s Gibson’s official press release…

The Justice department bullies Gibson without filing charges

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

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As reported in the Boston Globe and as seen in the New Hampshire debate video, both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich believe it is perfectly okay for the federal government to mandate that every private sector worker in the United States pay forced-dues to labor unions as a condition of getting or keeping a job. Attention Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich: Right To Work is not a states’ rights issue, it is a freedom issue. The Federal government should not mandate compulsory unionism.

Mitt Romney from the Boston Globe, “Pressed by John Kalb, executive director of New England Citizens for Right to Work, about whether he would actively advocate for a federal law, Romney responded, ‘I’m a Tenth Amendment guy. I’d like the states to be the place we carry out this path.’”

It appears that Forced Unionism is a Big Government idea that Newt & Mitt embrace. In fact, it was the brain child of our Biggest Big Government president, before Obama. Franklin Roosevelt’s 1935 Wagoner Act used, for the first time, federal powers to force every working man and woman to pay a third party, Big Labor bosses, in order to get or keep a job. It was wrong then, and it is outrageous now. Why would Gingrich and Romney embrace it?

In 1947, the American public had become so exasperated with Big Labor abuses of power that Congress made a half-hearted effort to fix the problem and passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Harry Truman’s veto. (Truman’s presidential campaign had been heavily financed by forced-union dues.)

The Act gave states the right to opt out of federal forced-unionism created under the Wagoner Act. But, the platform for federally imposed compulsion remains in-effect today. Essentially 50 states had forced-unionism for twelve years before their citizens had an opportunity to opt out of it.

Americans are forced to fight the forced-union dues financed Big Labor political machine to obtain Right To Work freedom. Though freedom is a Big idea, Big Labor “taxes” employees to create political machines that spent, by their own admission, over $1.1 Billion in the 2010 election cycle to prop-up legislators who support forced unionism.

It’s hardly been a fair fight, but thanks to millions of members of the National Right To Work Committee and others there are currently 22 Right To Work states. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Hurricane Irene, Warren Buffett’s mysteriously timed investment in Bank of America, and the Fed meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Track Hurricane Irene on Stormpulse
Berkshire Hathaway Invests $5 Billion in Bank of America
Obama talks to corporate titans on economy
Buffett to Host Obama Fundraiser in New York
Economic Growth Slows to Crawl, GDP Increase at 1%
What Do Markets Expect From Jackson Hole? (more…)

There is a lot of talk, during these pre-presidential election days, of whether Republicans should stick to fiscal policy issues or include social issues as well in their platforms. Liberals are attacking fiscal/social conservatives, and some “establishment” Republicans are also criticizing their socially conservative colleagues, fearful that Independents will be turned off by the thought that Republicans are appearing rigid, strict, and hard.

Political strategy aside, however, what often strikes me about these debates, which always seem centered on how conservative Republicans are trying to force their social views on the nation, is that liberals do it all the time and are successful at it. Their belief that the government should take care of everyone, from birth till death, has permeated our national policies and slowly destroyed our economic stability.

Nowhere, in this most liberal of all administrations, is the forcing of liberal social ideology on the nation more clearly visible than in Obamacare, and in the person of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), who will be the most powerful woman in the United States if Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012.

As many of us heard earlier in the month, the Obama administration has approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine that the new healthcare law guarantee full health insurance coverage for birth control, including the “morning after” pill. Beginning August 1, 2012, health insurance plans will be required to provide full coverage- without co-payment, co-insurance, or deductible- not only for contraception, but also for breast-feeding support and other services. Ms. Sebelius said, “I want to thank the Institute of Medicine for providing this important report recommending additional preventive services for women’s health and well-being. This report is historic.”

According to Ms. Sebelius:

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In the abysmal economic climate America presently finds itself in, almost no one is immune from unemployment, because joblessness threatens everyone. While Barack Obama duffs around on the golf course, one can’t help but wonder if he fully grasps the fact that, thanks to his own incompetency, the potential to be dismissed from his highly sought-after job is more than a distinct possibility. Except for “saving and creating” jobs for the slew of workers needed to staff the Department of Labor’s unemployment division, Obama continues to singlehandedly undermine both the economy and job creation. Wherever he goes, crowds are waving layoff notices in lieu of the typical “Yes we can” banners Barack Obama is more used to seeing.

If America is the employer, and if polls are the equivalent of a job evaluation, Obama is definitely on probation. In fact, Obama’s discharge papers are already filled out and tacked to the White House door. Rather than respond to the threat by working toward winning the title of “Employee of the Month,” the President is doing everything one should never do when unemployment is a looming likelihood.

Knocking around on the beach when he should have forgone the down time and chosen to stay on the job, the president doesn’t seem to be concerned that within the next year he might find himself in line with unemployed Americans who are stimulating the economy by collecting  jobless benefits.

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When the National Association of Manufacturers polled around 1,000 of its members in July about the National Labor Relations Board’s case to shut down Boeing’s South Carolina plant, costing up to 5,000 potential jobs, the clear majority indicated the union-backed case likely will, or has already, had a negative effect on America’s job creation.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal:

Some 60% said the government’s case already has—or could—hurt hiring. Sixty-nine percent said the case would damage job growth. And 49% said capital expenditure plans “have been or may be impacted by the NLRB’s complaint.” Around 1,000 of the association’s 11,000 members contributed to the survey.

Despite this, however, Barack Obama’s union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board are continuing their assault on America’s job creators with yet another attempt at doing union bosses’ bidding by skirting Congress to require all employers covered by the National Labor Relations Act to post union notices in the workplace to advise employees of their ability to unionize their company. (more…)

This is the final installment of the Indoctrination Fridays series.  They can all be read at PublicSchoolSpending.com.  A book featuring more leftist curricula, entitled, “Indoctrination! How Useful Idiots Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism” will be released later this year.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake mercilessly shook the country of Haiti, causing death and destruction of Biblical proportions. By the time the last aftershock was registered, approximately 85,000 Haitians were dead, and hundreds of thousands more were injured or left homeless.

Some observed that the 1989 San Francisco earthquake also reached 7.0 on the Richter scale, but that left 63 people dead and left about 12,000 homeless. The difference between the two was that California’s buildings are designed to withstand powerful earthquakes, and Haiti’s are not.

That realization brought renewed attention to the poverty of the Haitian people. Onlookers began to question why the tiny Caribbean country was so hopelessly poor and ill-prepared.

Garrett Glass of the Digital Freedom Network suggested a possible reason:

“In Haiti’s 200-year quest for freedom, one of the most crucial components of freedom, which leads to prosperity, has never been effectively implemented or even seriously tried (much less respected). The Haitian system of establishing property rights is so convoluted, complicated and corrupt that to the average citizen of Haiti owning any property will always remain just a dream. The connection between poverty and the lack of property rights is often overlooked.”

George Mason University economist Walter Williams noted that the rule of law is virtually nonexistent in Haiti:

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Hurricane Irene is racing towards the East Coast. Earthquake. Now a Hurricane. Let us know when the swarm of locusts are arriving.

Don’t you just hate it when a protest doesn’t go as planned?

Anyone who follows politics knows that Congressman Paul Ryan has been on vacation with his family. Dozens of national media outlets reported on this fact while several movers and shakers unsuccessfully lobbied Ryan to run for President.

The Left in Wisconsin, bored now that the occupation of the State Capitol and the recent recalls are over, decided it would be the perfect opportunity to embarrass Ryan. So they orchestrated a series of demonstrations at his in-district offices.

The liberal activist group Wisconsin Jobs Now is in the news again. Last month we reported on the questionable election activities of the group during the recent recall elections, and their tie to a candidate for public office.

Now the group is engaging in disruptive demonstrations at the offices of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Their litany of complaints mixes in some class warfare with a touch of projection.

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Kinky Friedman in The Daily Beast:

Rick Perry has never lost an election; I’ve never won one. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world. On the other hand, I’ve long been friends with Bill Clinton and George W., and Rick Perry and I, though at times bitter adversaries, have remained friends as well. It’s not always easy to maintain friendships with politicians. To paraphrase Charles Lamb, you have to work at it like some men toil after virtue.

I have been quoted as saying that when I die, I am to be cremated, and the ashes are to be thrown in Rick Perry’s hair. Yet, simply put, Rick Perry and I are incapable of resisting each other’s charm. He is not only a good sport, he is a good, kindhearted man, and he once sat in on drums with ZZ Top. A guy like that can’t be all bad. When I ran for governor of Texas as an independent in 2006, the Crips and the Bloods ganged up on me. When I lost, I drove off in a 1937 Snit, refusing to concede to Perry. Three days later Rick called to give me a gracious little pep talk, effectively talking me down from jumping off the bridge of my nose. Very few others were calling at that time, by the way. Such is the nature of winning and losing and politicians and life. You might call what Rick did an act of random kindness. Yet in my mind it made him more than a politician, more than a musician; it made him a mensch.

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The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, made a surprise appearance at the Iowa Straw Poll earlier August 13th. During a short interview, she claimed “common ground” with several Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, on renewable energy subsidies. Much to the chagrin of economic conservatives, her claim appears substantiated.

Parked horizontally on the grounds of the Iowa Straw Poll throughout the weekend was a blade from a wind turbine. Prominently displayed on the turbine blade were the corporate logos of GE and TPI Composites. These two companies partner together to develop subsidized wind farms throughout Iowa. Representatives of this partnership provided magic markers to straw poll attendees and to politicians. People could then indicate support of the projects by signing the turbine blade. In addition, politicians were provided a speaking area to verbally express their support of renewable energy subsidies in front of the blade.

Both Mitt Romney and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), amongst other politicians, attached their signatures to the declaration of support for wind energy subsidies. Considering Mitt Romney’s portrayal of himself as a businessperson with an economic vision starkly opposed to President Obama’s, his apparent support for renewable energy subsidies for TPI Composites may give conservatives pause. Unbeknownst to most Republican primary voters, several other prominent Democrats strongly support corporate welfare for TPI Composites. In fact, President Obama mentioned stimulus funds provided to TPI Composites in a speech last year. Another Massachusetts politician, stalwart Leftist Barney Frank, recently proudly announced the placement of a TPI plant in Fall River, MA—a plant supported with a $250,000 grant from the government.

The apparent endorsement by several Republican presidential candidates of this particular corporate welfare recipient will likely raise questions with conservative primary voters.

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Just about everyone knows that Democrats have a real passion for abortion. In fact, few things make them prouder to be an American than to catch sight of an abortion clinic. Of course, most never come and outright say they support abortion. No. They are pro-choice. That is until Uncle Joe let the cat out of the bag.

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family.  The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people.  Not sustainable.

Thank you for those encouraging words, Uncle Joe. We feel secure knowing you are representing all of us abroad.

Joe understands? Joe refuses to second guess? What exactly does he understand about forced abortions? The trauma that is inflicted upon innocent mothers as she is forced to kill off her own flesh and blood against her will? I would like to know how any of this is justified and would encourage Joe to come forward and further explain his sympathies with the CCP of China’s barbaric and murderous policies.

Speaking of something “not sustainable” below are the effects of China’s one-child policy. I wrote this at Big Peace last week. The subject is how China’s one-child policy is affecting military readiness. But more to the point here is how it has affected society.

China instituted the one-child policy in 1979 under the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in order to control China’s exploding population rate. Then China was largely rural with a large peasantry class. That still remains the case outside of China’s major commercial cities. The policy was passed as a temporary measure but is still a fixture for roughly 40% of married couples, 30 years later. To mention that it has affected society goes without saying. Parents are forced to be selective about births. As a result, infant girls are aborted, abandoned, or go unregistered. Infant boys are overwhelmingly chosen over girls and have caused an unnatural demographic shift in the male female ratio. (I believe the natural ratio is 104:100?) This has government planning authorities worried.

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We all have fears.  They rise up out of the muck of our subconscious and exert extraordinary power over us.  Some fears are perfectly rational, others are strictly irrational.  Irrational fear arises out of 1) deep-seated knowledge that the other side is right (the ego perceives a threat to a well-entrenched belief), 2) a projection of one’s more unpleasant qualities onto the “Other” (the Jungian Shadow), or 3) Plain old-fashioned ignorance.

I’ve noticed that many of my Liberal friends constantly harped on George W. Bush’s faith in Jesus.  They wrung their hands in terror that something would be implemented that would…be really bad.  Ultimately, they just didn’t like his religion being foisted on them, although when pressed, they had trouble specifying exactly what would result from the President’s faith.

Now, we’re seeing the same fears being sounded over Gov. Perry’s faith. The message is that Liberals don’t want to be forced into believing something they don’t want to believe in, or that some religiously-driven policy will be enacted against their own interest, or that it will somehow restrict their personal freedom.

That is perfectly reasonable, and I agree with them completely.

The irony is that the Liberal approach to policy in general is cloaked behind its own ideological philosophy.  It may not be an established religion, but Conservatives and Libertarians are equally opposed to some policy being put in place that restricts freedom, that forces them to believe something they don’t want to believe in, or that is against their own interest.

And I naturally agree with them, as well.

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Wealthy liberals are spreading false and misleading information about new drilling techniques that have opened up natural gas resources in Pennsylvania, according to a report from the Commonwealth Foundation.

A geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which cuts across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Viriginia, was beyond reach not too long ago. Fortunately, this has changed as a result of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Almost 489 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is sufficient to cover all of America’s natural gas needs over a 20 year period is now recoverable, the foundation reports.

Unfortunately, anti-drilling activists have stepped in to obstruct further development of the natural gas industry, which is responsible for creating tens of thousands of new jobs, according to the report. Herb and Marion Sandler, who founded the S&L known as World Savings Bank, are identified as the primary culprits here. In 2007, they launched an investigative reporting outfit called ProPublica, which proceeded to inveigh against the natural gas industry.

“Much attention has been paid to the efforts of gas companies to influence the political debate through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts,” the report says. “But anti-drilling activists—while claiming gas companies use their vast financial resources to weaken regulatory structures and silence poorly funded environmental groups— influence politicians through their own lobbying efforts and by spreading myths about drilling. Among the myths alleged about “Big Gas” is that drillers are flocking to Pennsylvania’s rich Marcellus Shale reserves, engaging in dangerous and highly polluting drilling activities, and shirking responsibility for damages while successfully avoiding paying taxes.”

After scrutinizing several of the natural gas articles produced by ProPublica, the Independent Institute uncovered several “errors and exaggerations” that cast the industry in very bad light. There is, for example, a 2002 study from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission that could not find any evidence of groundwater contamination resulting from hydraulic fracturing contrary to what was reported in ProPublica. The commission surveyed agencies in 28 states. This effort spanned the entire history of hydraulic fracturing in those states.

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