President Obama and the Democratic Party effectively turned every controversial issue they faced over the past three years into a potential crisis, and convinced the American people to support their solutions without question to avert presumed dire consequences.  Important works of legislation capable of changing the American way of life were passed on the basis of “we have to pass this now – or else!”  Mr. Obama is preparing to face the nation again with another speech that will proclaim urgency and use panic to get his legislative desires passed.  We need to recognize what has been going on and put a stop to it.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the stimulus bill, was quickly passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate without real debate in order to keep the unemployment rate from rising above 8%.  With unemployment at 9.1%, and over 17% when considering all those who stopped looking for work or are working part-time, that crisis was not averted.  All the stimulus bill did was to spend $800 billion of tax payer money to pay government workers salaries for one year and for a few temporary road construction projects.  The law did not provide any incentive for self-sustaining employment and our economy is now facing another recession.

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010, Obamacare, was crammed through the Democratic controlled House and Senate against overwhelming protests by the American people. All this ideologically designed legislation accomplished, with over 2,700 pages and the creation of 159 new bureaucracies, was to create uncertainty for employers and push up the cost of health care insurance.

The recently passed Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the last piece of hastily formed legislation passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate before the November  2010 election shifted power in the House to the Republicans, is an empty bill passed for political purposes leaving its substance to regulations yet to be written.  Our nation’s banking system is now paralyzed by the uncertainty of what will be in those regulations.

From Cash for Clunkers to cash for Solyndra, everything this administration does is preceded by “pass it now, there is no time for debate.”  Economic conditions are difficult for most Americans and with 14 million citizens unemployed and an estimated 25 million Americans in total who are unemployed or under-employed, families are hurting and it would be easy to proclaim a crisis and cause panic.

(more…)

Just outside the DC Beltway, in Maryland’s sprawling first congressional district, an electoral battle is underway that exposes unique ideological fault lines beneath America’s political landscape.

The campaign pits freshman “Blue Dog” Democratic congressman Frank Kratovil in a rematch against Republican Dr. Andy Harris. Given the political tilt of the district, coupled with the Tea Party tsunami gathering force this year, one would think that this race should be a slam dunk for Harris.

A tall, affable family man, Harris is an anesthesiologist, Navy veteran, hardcore free-marketer, and constitutional conservative. By contrast, Kratovil, a former attorney, tries to portray himself as an “independent” who distances himself from Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic majority. However, the Washington Post reports that “Frank Kratovil has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 84.6% of the time during the current Congress.” Among his least popular votes since taking office: support for the “cash for clunkers” program, for the near-trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending orgy, and for the hugely expensive “cap-and-trade” energy bill. Plus, of course, his vote to elevate the widely reviled Pelosi to the Speaker’s position.

Yet, despite all that, a recent poll finds Harris holding only a statistically insignificant three-point lead over Kratovil. This, while other GOP candidates are faring much better even in usually “safe” Democratic districts.

What’s going on here?

One of the most infuriating spectacles this election season is supposedly “Republican,” “conservative,” and “pro-business” individuals and groups supporting entrenched liberal incumbents against free-market, limited-government challengers. For many special-interest “insiders,” even on the right, philosophical convictions are far less important than sharing a “seat at the table” with the politically powerful.

(more…)

While chaos theory has had a place in science since mathematician and physicist Jules Henri Poincare first coined the term in the 1880s, it made its way into pop culture with the introduction of the so-called butterfly effect by fiction writers Ray Bradbury (“A Sound of Thunder,” 1952) and fictional chaotician-in-chief Ian Malcolm with his widely popular “Jurassic Park” in 1993. The idea, of course, is that activity that impacts one part of a system can have wide-ranging, unforeseen (and in the case of government interfering in a free-market economy) unintended and undesirable consequences elsewhere in that system.  While we have had no scarcity over the years of political butterflies in both parties incessantly flapping their wings to, generally, no good purpose, we are currently witnessing a truly historic exercise in chaos theory, Washington style.

As we argued in an earlier column this month, the $2.0 trillion in cash (and growing) that has been accumulating throughout the year in corporate bank accounts is more than enough to jump start the economy out of the doldrums in which it has been languishing for the better part of three years.  All of this capital is locked in irons, as our sea-faring friends like to say, chiefly because a muscle-flexing, game-changing government is piling uncertainty on top of uncertainty with largely unwanted new taxes, new programs, new mandates (mostly unfunded), new regulations and new agencies to enforce them.  What’s a well-intentioned businessman to do?

Rather than stepping aside and giving the marketplace a chance to regain its footing after the financial debacle (also largely the result of government malfeasance) that defined the transition of government nearly two years ago, the Administration, Congress and the Fed have elbowed their way, at great cost, into the commerce of the country with dubious to negative results thus far and, for many, with absolutely devastating impact.

Interest rates have been maintained at ridiculously low rates quarter after quarter and, now, year after year.  The Fed has accomplished its goal and made this a heyday for borrowers. Companies and others who don’t even need the money are borrowing to avoid missing this debtors’ bonanza although in many sectors (notably real estate), banks won’t lend because of marketplace uncertainties.

(more…)

Under pressure from a barrage of bad midterm-election polls, President Obama has gone on the campaign trail to blame Pres. George W. Bush for all our economic problems, and to bash House Republican leader John Boehner as nothing more than a Bush retread.

In Friday’s dreary news conference, Obama acknowledged that economic progress is “painfully slow,” and that voters may blame him for the economy. Yet he nonetheless continued to finger Bush “for policies that cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires, cut regulations for corporations and for special interests, and left everyone else pretty much fending for themselves.”

“Millionaires and billionaires” has become Obama’s favorite phrase as he calls for tax hikes on the wealthy and renews his attacks on Bush. In Cleveland last week, Obama actually blamed the Bush tax cuts for the financial meltdown and severe recession. Now that’s a reach. A big reach.

While Mr. Bush made plenty of economic mistakes, his 2003 reductions of marginal tax rates led to more than 8 million new jobs in the next four and a half years. Under Bush, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent.

And almost all economists agree that the 2007-08 financial meltdown was a housing-bubble and credit event. It had nothing at all to do with cutting taxes.

(more…)

Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith in The Daily Beast:

The case for government deficit spending was that idle unemployed labor and capital would be put to work to increase the output of goods and services. Hence, a dollar of government spending would produce more than a dollar of new output because of the “multiplier effect.” Robert Barro of Harvard has studied wartime and defense spending, and found a multiplier of only 0.8. But those were better times, when businesses, banks, and consumers were not primarily concerned to use new income to pay down debt or save to protect against income loss. Even in better times there wasn’t much bang for the buck.

So what has been the government’s response in the current crisis? Besides spending stimulus, it was tax incentives for new home buyers and cash for clunkers if you bought a new car. All three are programs for borrowing output, homes and cars from future production and sales. Using subsidies to pump up home sales beyond what people could afford was the problem that led to the crisis. Now the problem is touted as the solution.

(more…)

I’m mad as hell, and I’m going to do something about it.

I’ve been to Missouri quite a few times since becoming “Joe the Plumber”: Rolling hills, farmland, beautiful rivers, vibrant cities, honest people. So I’m not in the least surprised that the rural town of Caulfield has produced a true statesman. A statesman that all freedom-loving Americans have searched for since the Reagan years.

I AM surprised and disgusted that these same “conservatives” who have been shouting fiscal conservatism from the mountain tops are now throwing a true statesman under the bus instead of rallying to his side.

Chuck Purgason is a State Senator for a portion of southern Missouri. He’s worked his way up from the House to the Senate ever since his “Tea Party” moment in 1996. He has proven the hard way that you actually can be a man of integrity in a government full of wolves. When liberal U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R) decided to retire, he anointed RINO Congressman Roy Blunt (R) to be his heir apparent. After Roy Blunt’s votes for the TARP Bailout, Cash for Clunkers, No Child Left Behind, taking the most lobbyist money, etc. (I really could go on and on and on . . . ) Chuck said there was no way he was going to let Blunt represent Missouri in the US Senate.

State Senator Chuck Purgason threw his hat into the race for US Senate against mega power broker Roy Blunt.

Now this is where the story begins to get interesting. Just a week or so ago, Democratic Governor Jay Nixon ($170,000+ donations from unions) called for a special session to pass a $150M “tax cut” to Ford Motor Company. Every Republican started lining up like good little bees because tax cuts are good – right? Besides, Missouri has a lot of unions – they wouldn’t win their re-elections if they didn’t vote for this bill.

(more…)

In a June 14th editorial entitled “Politicizing the Fed,” the Wall Street Journal sheds light on one of the dubious regulations of the upcoming financial reform bill.  The Journal states:

The biggest underreported threat comes from Subtitle I, Section 1801 of the House financial reform bill titled “Inclusion of Minorities and Women; Diversity in Agency Workforce.” Sponsored by California Democrat Maxine Waters, the provision requires each federal financial agency, the Fed Board of Governors and the 12 regional Fed banks to “establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.”

So what else is new, you say? Don’t the feds already dictate racial and gender hiring? Yes, they do, through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assorted other federal laws. As a matter of racial and gender diversity, the Waters provision is at best redundant.

But Ms. Waters and the House are hunting bigger game—to wit, the political allocation of credit.

[...]

The House provision makes that very clear by making each diversity officer a Presidential appointee who must be confirmed by the Senate.The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”  The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”

The law says this diversity czar will “ensure equal employment opportunity and the racial, ethnic and gender diversity” of the work force and senior management of these institutions. More ominously, this creature of Congress and the White House will also be charged with “increas[ing] the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts” of each agency and conducting “an assessment” of stated inclusion goals.

Mull over that one for a minute. Having recently lived through a financial mania and panic caused in part by political pressure for “affordable housing,” Congress will now order regulators to allocate credit by race and gender.

In an article I wrote on February 28th entitled “Fiscal Death by Welfare,” I argued: “I believe that as the downturn goes on the government will blame the banks for the lack of economic growth and force them to allocate credit to chosen political entrepreneurs and other bad credit risks…”  I truly wish I had been wrong in my assessment.

(more…)

Jo Ann Emerson is back in the news today as one of nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives sponsoring H.R. 3936, a $165 billion union pension bailout bill. But why?

It could be that the seven-term Republican elected in the 8th Congressional District of Southeast Missouri simply loves bailouts. After all, she did vote for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and “Cash for Clunkers”. But I don’t think her love for bailouts is the main reason why she is behind the bill.

Instead, I think her sponsorship of the union bailout bill stems from the fact that she is married to Ron Gladney.

In a May 3 post, I pointed out that her second husband is both a Democrat and an labor union attorney for St. Louis-based Bartley Goffstein LLC and that, according to Federal Election Commission records, she has received campaign contributions from a variety of union entities, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). And that’s not all!

(more…)

“Make It So!” Jean-Luc Picard, the intrepid, clever and compassionate leader of the USS Enterprise, often issued this directive to his loyal crew to execute a plan, to save the ship, themselves, or entire worlds.  And, the Enterprise crew got it done.  Consider President Barack Obama, worlds to appease, a nation to cajole, and a Congress with more plans to assimilate than the Borg. With jobless numbers at 10.2%, Obama is likely wondering: what went wrong?

Picard’s introspective and analytical nature bluntly assessed his actions, refusing excuses, with a plan to improve his performance.  Obama may spend time on the White House holodeck, envisioning “what if” scenarios, but an assessment of the year since his election, shows that few of Obama’s campaign promises have come to fruition.

The deficit of $459 billion, which President Obama inherited from George Bush has grown to $1.4 trillion, while the economy has shrunk.  The 3.5-million-jobs-created campaign promise has been watered down to claim 600,000 jobs “saved” .

(more…)

Last night, BigGovernment.com Editor in Chief Mike Flynn discussed government spending on the “Kudlow Report” with Jeremy Anwy of Edmunds.com and Joe Weisenthall of Clusterstock.com.

(more…)

National Science Foundation studies gossip and workplace politics in elementary school

$1.47 million grant from the National Science Foundation will fund a 3-D virtual recreation of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair

National Science Foundation funds self-help for Members of Congress

$1.57 million stimulus grant to search for fossils… in Argentina

Thirty companies ranked among the most egregious offenders of state and federal laws awarded more than $1.2 billion in federal stimulus contracts

Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car under federal Cash for Clunkers program

(more…)