Present at the Creation: Adam Hasner, with Marco Rubio Against the Florida GOP Establishment

“A day in politics is like an eternity. A lot of recent events have altered the political landscape,” Adam Hasner told me by phone. Until last week was running for the U.S. Senate, but he is now running for the congressional seat vacated by Allen West.

Though Hasner hesitates to compare himself to West, the two have a lot in common. They are both principled, “minorities of minorities” who have to make  the case to groups not necessarily receptive to the conservative message. “When you are a black Republican or a Jewish Republican, you have to be even more firm in your beliefs and more principled,” Hasner explains.

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If one was looking for fiery, crowd pleasing, political rhetoric from former Speaker Newt Gingrich as he addressed CPAC today, they were likely disappointed. What Gingrich did do was run through a litany of policy solutions he claimed he has committed to implement immediately upon taking office in January of 2013.

Contrasting an America that can versus an America that can’t, Gingrich compared America’s speed and might in winning WWII versus her current inability to seal its own border. In a lighter moment, the former Speaker contrasted the efficiency of package tracking by Federal Express with the government’s inability to track illegal immigrants, suggesting sending each one a package may be the best way to apprehend the latter.

He also mentioned repealing Obamacare, Dodd Frank, and Sarbanes Oxley on his first day in office. He stated his desire to be a “paycheck president” versus a “food stamp president,” a term he used to denigrate Barack Obama.

Calling for a Fall campaign focused on substance, Gingrich also mentioned eliminating the Capital Gains tax and implementing 100% expensing for all new equipment written off in one year to help get the economy growing. Additionally, he called for a modernization of the workforce, proposing that unemployment compensation be linked to business training programs to avoid paying people for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.” (more…)

When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty.

And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction.

This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly but surely coming around to the same point of view.

• The European Central Bank published a study showing “…a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth.”
• A study by two Harvard economists found that “large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted spending cuts, have often led to expansions.”
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in recent research that welfare programs are economically destructive because they lure people into dependency because “net disposable income would increase despite putting in fewer hours.”
• A study from the International Monetary Fund concluded that “Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth.”

This is remarkable. It’s beginning to look like the entire world has figured out that there’s an inverse relationship between big government and economic performance. (more…)

On Tuesday, February 7, House Republicans proposed adding a “Pelosi Provision” to the fast-moving insider trading ban known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act that would prevent members of Congress from landing coveted and lucrative initial public offerings (IPOs), similar to the Visa stock IPO Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi scored that made them a staggering 203% profit.

The Pelosi Visa IPO revelation made headlines when Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer published the evidence in his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out.  CBS News’s 60 Minutes did a subsequent report based on Schweizer’s book that sparked a media firestorm.

In early 2008, Nancy Pelosi and her real estate developer husband, Paul, were given an opportunity to buy into a Visa IPO.  Despite Rep. Pelosi’s consistent railing against credit card companies, on March 18, 2008, the Pelosis bought between $1 million and $5 million (politicians do not have to report the exact amounts, only ranges) worth of Visa stock at the IPO price of $44 per share. Two days later, the stock price rocketed to $65 per share, yielding a 50% profit. The Pelosis then bought Visa twice more. By their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was worth $85 per share.

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President Obama says we should allow the federal government to take charge of our healthcare; as usual, the “experts” are best positioned to instruct us how to live our lives.

Except they’re not.  Today, according to the AP, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans that they eat too much bread and rolls, and that such foods account “for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips.”  No wonder we’re fat.

Unfortunately, the federal government that now tells us that we eat too much bread is the same government that originally told us to stuff our pieholes with … bread.  Remember the original food pyramid?

I remember this pyramid – I grew up learning about it in my vaunted public school.  Notice how the bottom section is enormous, and suggests 6-11 bread, cereal, rice and pasta servings each day.  Why did the government originally mandate that?  According to Harvard Medical School’s Eat, Drink and Be Healthy (Simon & Schuster, August 2001), the government was attempting to help out farmers via the Department of Agriculture’s recommendations.

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The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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“The new debate in the Republican party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians,” says Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). “A lot of the libertarian ideas that Ron Paul is talking about…should not be alien to any Republican.”

Yet right after the 2010 midterm elections, the influential Tea Party favorite proclaimed that “you can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative,” a comment that was widely viewed as a slap at libertarians. And South Carolina’s junior senator is also a staunch pro-lifer, has favored a constitutional ban on flag burning, and is on the record saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to teach at public schools.

More recently, DeMint has been leaning libertarian. His new book, Now or Never: Saving America from Economic Collapse, is a warning to the nation that we need radical spending cuts (including putting defense spending on the table) or else face economic oblivion. And he was instrumental in getting Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010, including the most libertarian member of the caucus, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who also wrote the foreword to DeMint’s book.

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Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white?

Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to figure out why any organization – even a leftist bureaucracy such as the OECD – would send out a press release entitled, “Rising tax revenues: a key to economic development in Latin American countries.”

Not even Keynesians, after all, think higher taxes are a recipe for growth.

Ah, never mind. I just remembered that the OECD is a hotbed of statism, so the press release makes perfect sense. After all, the US-taxpayer-funded organization has become infamous for reflexively advocating big government.

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Last April, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took a few minutes from his schedule to talk to a Planned Parenthood group from Cleveland about Ohio Republicans “going after women, and reproductive rights.” Sherrod went to great lengths to make abortion sound like a reason America needs bigger government.

For pro-life Ohioans like myself, the “Heartbeat Bill” to ban abortions after a baby’s heartbeat can be heard sounds like a great idea. According to pro-choice Ohioans, it’s terrible. Surely a U.S. senator with a diploma from Yale and two master’s degrees can dissect the legislation on its merits and explain why abortion on demand is a vital “reproductive right” …right?

Sherrod Brown being Sherrod Brown, what we get instead is a jumbled diatribe making frequent nods to Big Labor. He treats any conflict with his cartoonish Progressive mindset as an example of conservatives “going after” the rights of men, women, and children (wait, scratch that last one) everywhere.

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What’s the worst policy idea that would cause the most damage to society?

I’m tempted to say the value-added tax since our hopes of restraining the federal government will be greatly undermined if we give the buffoons in Washington a new source of revenue. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why Mitt Romney may be an ever greater long-term threat to American exceptionalism than Barack Obama.

But even though the VAT is fiscal poison, it’s not the most dangerous policy proposal.

At the top of my list is global taxation.

I wrote in 2010 about some of the awful global tax schemes being pushed by the United Nations. And I also noted that unrepentant statists such as George Soros are pimping for global taxation.

I even wrote a paper back in 2001 to explain why global taxes are such a bad idea.

The details of the tax don’t matter. It’s the principle.

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I have watched Ron Paul for a very long time and one trend I see over and over is the split that emerges between people of roughly under the age of 40 and those who are older when his name is mentioned. I have no polling data to back this up, but young people seem to like Ron Paul and older people seem not to.

This is by no means uniform. I know plenty of older folks who love the good doctor and plenty of young people who do not like him, but generally the above statement holds I think. Why is this?

Fundamentally I believe it comes down to faith in the markets and whether or not one is playing for the future, or if one is clinging to the past.

Young people have much to lose in the economic quagmire we find ourselves in, namely their future. They recognize that times have changed, that the old economic regime is corrupt, and in order to get things going in any real way (not government stimulated) fundamental reforms must be implemented. Many, including myself would embrace a gold standard or a standard based on a basket of commodities. This is a radical departure from the Fed centered fiat currency regime. It would disrupt the current economic order, but a reset is needed and many young people recognize that it is vital that we head in this direction before it is too late. The economic hubris of the 20th century has come home to roost. We would like a real economy.

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Charles Sykes is a longtime Milwaukee talk-radio host and the prolific author of a number of books that helped to shape my personal political worldview, including 1988’s eye-opening “Profscam,” and 1993’s “A Nation of Victims,’ two works as timely today as they were decades ago.

“A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing” (St. Martin’s Press) was just released, and the fact that I’m writing this at the very moment President Barack Obama is announcing yet another government plan (his fourth, I think) to “bail out” those “victims” who bought homes they couldn’t afford, makes this informative and engaging page-turner feel about as urgent and timely as any author could hope for.

What you need to know up front is that “Moochers” isn’t an attack on the poor or needy or, for that matter, a specific political party. In fact, from beginning to end, Sykes makes clear that as a country we have an obligation to feed the hungry and offer shelter to the homeless. Moreover, he isn’t even targeting a particular group, which would be impossible without a sawed-off shotgun anyway, because America’s moochers come from every level of our society.

What Sykes is targeting is a mentality, a dangerous and un-American mentality that infects almost every aspect of our culture, and one that is currently being bred into our children by those on both the left and right who are empowered by fomenting and excusing the dependence, greed, and selfishness of others. From corporate welfare to school lunches for the well-to-do to Wall Street bailouts to paying millionaires not to grow crops to tax breaks for Hollywood gajillionires to unending unemployment benefits to disaster relief for those who haven’t suffered disasters to TARP, and finally, to the shameless who walk away from mortgages they can afford to pay — what Sykes is exposing is that we are on the march to becoming Greece. Not just a European welfare state, but the kind of welfare state where the populace has been engineered by a nanny state to riot at the very thought of not being able to mooch the life to which they have become accustomed.

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Wednesday night, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R.3567; The Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011; which makes it illegal to use an EBT card in a strip club, liquor store or casino. The concern began, shortly after welfare recipients were issued funds electronically through ATMs, when Welfare Reform passed in 1996. Since then there has been a disturbing trend of welfare not being spent on the things people think welfare should be spent on.

And I don’t understand that concern. It is the theory of most Democrats that giving money to people stimulates the economy. It should be of no concern to anyone whether that money is used to stimulate patrons of a strip club, liquor store owners, or casino magnates (who BTW are often HUGE political contributors).

The bill is almost completely futile. It won’t insure that welfare money is not spent at a strip club; it only means that the ATM at the gas station across the street from the strip club is going to see a lot more traffic.

This is just the kind of government bias, that gives legitimate business a bad name. Certainly those girls are working as hard as any SEIU employee; whose pensions were paid out of stimulus funds, while they protested in Wisconsin. Money spent on bikini wax, cover stick, and glittery lingerie will trickle down through the economy just like any other stimulus package.

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On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website.

Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s.

But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit a wall. Or maybe the Obama recovery was the economic equivalent of a late bloomer.

So let’s look at the same charts, but add an extra year of data. Does it make a difference?

Meh…not so much.

Let’s start with the GDP data. The comparison is striking. Under Reagan’s policies, the economy skyrocketed.  Heck, the chart prepared by the Minneapolis Fed doesn’t even go high enough to show how well the economy performed during the 1980s.

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Based on the fact that you’re reading this online, I assume you’ve seen the online outcry over Komen for the Cure cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood. In the words of CBS News:

Many suspect the cutoff is linked to the abortion debate. Komen has been under fire by anti-abortion activists, after its connection to the pro-choice organization was publicized.

I’ve ruined the trademark CBS subtlety by marking in bold the network’s refusal to frame the debate as “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice,” or “pro-abortion” vs. “anti-abortion.” Pro-lifers should be glad the reporter didn’t label Live Action and its allies “anti-choice,” I guess!

Unyielding sympathy for Planned Parenthood isn’t limited to fossilized media outlets and your NPR-loving Facebook friends. Many of the senators and representatives up for reelection this fall support abortion so strongly, they’ve voted repeatedly to make you pay for it.

The following Senate incumbents’ races are rated Toss Up or Lean D by The Cook Political Report.

All five of these incumbent Democrat senators are rated 100% by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

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The leading breast cancer charity organization has announced that it is ending its relationship with Planned Parenthood because the latter is under investigation of whether it has used public monies to fund abortions. The Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure has provided grants to Planned Parenthood for breast prevention screenings and breast education at their centers throughout the country.

Leslie Aun, a Komen spokesperson, told the Associated Press that her foundation’s break with Planned Parenthood comes as a result of a policy change which blocks grant money to organizations which are under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities.

According to Planned Parenthood, funding from the Komen Foundation has provided 170,000 breast screenings over the past five years. The family planning organization has announced a recent “emergency fund” of about $250,000, from the Amy and Lee Fikes’ Foundation, that will compensate for the funds lost from the Komen Foundation.

In response to the drop in funding from the Komen Foundation, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, openly criticized the anti-abortion sentiments that led to the end of the relationship between the organizations. Ms. RIchards said in a press release, “We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count.”

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Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly.

When CBO issued new numbers early last year, I repeated the exercise and again found that the same modest level of budgetary restraint would eliminate red ink in about 10 years.

And when CBO issued their update last summer, I did the same thing and once again confirmed that deficits would disappear in a decade if politicians didn’t let the overall budget rise by faster than 2 percent each year.

Well, the new CBO 10-year forecast was released this morning. I’m going to give you three guesses about what I discovered when I looked at the numbers, and the first two don’t count.

Yes, you guessed it. As the chart illustrates (click to enlarge), balancing the budget doesn’t require any tax increases. Not does it require big spending cuts (though that would be a very good idea).

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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)released a study telling Americans if they want a raise, they should go work for the federal government, because federal workers are compensated much better than those in the private sector. The CBO did an apples to apples comparison of federal and private sector employee salaries and benefits from 2005-2010. The compared workers who were similar in the following characteristics:

• Level of education
• Years of work experience a
• Occupation
• Employer’s size,
• Geographic location (region of the country and urban or rural location)
• Demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, immigration status, and citizenship).

…and what they found was staggering.

Salary:

• Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.

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Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent.

Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax rates are punitive, folks earn and report less taxable income, and vice-versa.

• When tax rates increase, sometimes they engage in tax avoidance, lowering their tax liabilities legally.
• When tax rates change, sometimes they choose to alter their levels of work, saving, and investment.
• And when tax rates go up, sometimes they resort to illegal steps to protect themselves from the tax authority.

In a previous post, I quoted an article from the International Monetary Fund, which unambiguously concluded that high tax burdens are the main reason people don’t fully comply with tax regimes:
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Over the last three years, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by two-thirds and stands at a record-high 46 million citizens, or one out of every seven people in the United States.  Despite the historic rise in food stamp use, however, the Obama Administration believes not enough people are receiving food stamps who should be and is offering $75,000 grants to groups who devise “effective strategies” to “increase program participation” among those who have yet to sign up.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website singles out Hispanics and elderly Americans as groups who often fail to enroll in the food stamp program (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and says  that one of the contributing factors that must be overcome to get more people to sign up for SNAP benefits is individual “pride”:

There are many reasons why eligible people, including seniors and Hispanics, do not participate in the SNAP. These include unawareness of eligibility, confusion about program rules and requirements, a complex application process, and a lack of transportation and pride.

To reduce these “barriers” to food stamp enrollment, the Department of Agriculture offers non-profit groups the chance to receive $75,000 grants for projects designed to boost food stamp participation among those who are eligible but have yet to sign up.  The Department of Agriculture believes that the SNAP program is “severely underutilized” and says that 33 percent more Americans who are eligible to receive food stamps have yet to apply, thus the need to offer federal grants to sign more citizens up.

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