We have just passed through the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) brouhaha.

A bill intended to stop theft – an important goal, and a necessary function of government.  But SOPA was overly broad, and deserved in its most recent iteration to go away – which it did.

Because of a bipartisan oppositional uprising – but the two sides arose for very different reasons.

The Theft-Left is vociferously opposed to private property rights.  SOPA is aimed at protecting private property.  So the Left said No.

The Right is loathe to grow government control of anything – including the Web.  And having just witnessed the recent Big Government Network Neutrality Internet power grab, their antennae were highly sensitized – and they said No.

Now, Washington is talking cyber security.  Where there is, again, a legitimate role for government – but we have, again, a bill that defines said role much too broadly.

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Bob Lutz is a good man.  A Swiss-born immigrant American success story.

He’s held big gigs at BMW and Ford.  He also worked way up the food chain at (now $85 billion bailed-out) Chrysler and General Motors (GM) – retiring as GM’s Vice Chairman in 2010.

And he has recently written a piece:

Chevy Volt And The Wrong-Headed Right

…in vociferous defense of the Chevy Volt.

You know, the more-than-$200,000 in government-subsidies-per-unit-sold Volt.

The overproduced, unprofitable, unpopular, combustible Volt.  (And January 2011’s sales were no less disappointing.)

That Chevy Volt.

Are we on the Right wrong-headed?  Let’s take Mr. Lutz’s piece piecemeal and see.

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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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I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses were killer:

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland.

And General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

The scope of the hearing was a bit too narrow – leaving out some fairly important attending facts.  Like, say, the (at least) five other Chevy Volt fires that have occurred besides the one being discussed.

This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze.  The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House.

But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

But:

The White House had no role in the decision to delay disclosure of a fire that broke out in a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt, the Obama administration told Congress on Friday.

Of COURSE not.

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President Barack Obama is in full 2012 reelection mode.  Part of that process is preparing to possibly take on Mitt Romney – whom (it appears) he thinks has the strongest chance to be his Republican opponent.  Which he and many Democrats think is very good news.

Romney fits right into the Left’s absurd anti-capitalism, “robber baron,” Occupy Wall Street anti-1%-er, scorched earth storyline.

Romney is very wealthy, which for Obama and his Democrats is the height of eee-vill (except – these Donkeys are mostly rich…).  Never mind that Romney’s wealth is right in line with many past Presidents and candidates – including 2004 Democrat nominee John Kerry.  (The difference?  Romney earned it, Kerry married it.)

And as Romney recently told us, he these days pays the 15% capital gains tax rate – rather than the (absurdly) higher income tax rates those of us receiving salaries do.  Never mind that this is perfectly legal (and good fiscal policy, and “fair”) – it is culled right from the Leftist, Warren Buffett “I pay less in taxes than my secretary” fraudulent script.

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How did Romney make his coin?  Via the epitome of eeeee-villll free market entities – the venture capital firm.  His was, of course, Bain Capital.

Yes, Bain sometimes invests in failing companies.  Some of which they determine to be not worth saving, so down they go.  Welcome to Reality, Boys and Girls.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (and its Senate alternative, the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA]) have been taking a bipartisan beating.  Conservatives have joined with Leftists to savage the bill and thus its chances for passage.

I too am opposed to this iteration of SOPA – it remains too overly broad.

But something similar and more finely, sharply crafted – must become law.  And conservatives will need to reorient themselves when a better version of the bill comes along – and support it.

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We cannot look at the SOPA debate without putting it into the broader context of the immediately preceding Network Neutrality debate.

Conservatives rightly became highly tuned to Internet censorship as a result of the Left’s drive to impose the truly censorious Net Neutrality by any means necessary.

Following so closely on Net Neutrality’s heels, SOPA got swallowed up in this righteous protect-free-speech verve.

But there are some fundamental differences between SOPA and Net Neutrality that must be acknowledged.

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What’s an absurd Leftist policy without an agitprop song to accompany the inanity?

The attempted spoonful-of-sugar to help force down the bad Progressive medicine they are pushing.

Which brings us to General Motors (GM) and one of the Leftist ideological windmills at which they tilt – the Chevy Volt.

We the Taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the Volt.  And continue subsidizing it still.

We bailed out GM ($50 billion) and Chrysler to the tune of $83 billion.  On which the Obama Administration now admits we’ll lose (at least) $23.6 billion.  (President Obama once upon a time promised us we’d actually make money on the deal.)

We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500 million shares of GM stock – on which we are poised to lose tens of billions of dollars more.

But you know what makes all of this terrible-ness so much less worse?  GM spent some of our money on – the Chevy Volt official song and music video:

Don’t you feel better?

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Of wireless Internet bandwidth hogs, that is.

We have for months been odiferously awash in word of the Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) “movement.”

Intellectually and ideologically sloven, these gathered gaggles have been commandeering sporadic public spaces (and some private ones) all across the fruited plain.

When asked why they are so doing, you get an inanity cornucopia – think Jay (Leno) Walking or (Jesse) Watters’ World on ignorance steroids.

The only semi-comprehensible – but still factually vacuous – thing to emanate from the whole mess is the 1% – 99% nonsense.

That being the #OWS-ers saying that the upper 1% of Americans control most of the money and power and thusly must be…destroyed?  Certainly taxed and regulated into utter oblivion.

In an always-and-forever failed effort to “spread the wealth around” – misery being the only thing that ever ends up equally distributed.

Work, work ethic and talent never enter the #OWS equation – but then again, why should they?

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Another tale of OPM addiction. OPM. Other People’s Money.

The problems with ‘green job’ creation and the incompetence of the federal government are both evident when analyzing how a “stimulus” program failed to produce jobs in Wisconsin.

Other than a couple government administrators and about a dozen tech college instructors, the Recovery Act’s Green Jobs Program has not created any jobs in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin received a $6 million award for its version of the green jobs program called Sector Alliance for the Green Economy (SAGE). The stated goal is the “greening” of Wisconsin’s workforce. On paper, the US Labor Department expected the money to help place 2,120 Wisconsinites into permanent jobs.

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The Barack Obama Administration has, since its inception, been moving the United States dramatically leftward, trying to (at the very least) make us a western European socialist entity. Ideologically, a full-on participant in – rather than a rational outlier of – the patently absurd United Nations (UN).

Perhaps the greatest – and worst – example of President Obama’s UN-ing of America was his Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 2010 illegal Network Neutrality Internet power grab.

The Administration going to these unlawful lengths to commandeer control of the ‘Net makes it a little more difficult to persuade international autocrats and dictators to leave alone their portions of the World Wide Web.

Or ours.

Which brings us to the United Nations. (more…)

There’s been a lot of discussion about Mitt Romney’s appeal – or lack thereof – among supporters of limited government.

To put it mildly, many libertarians and conservatives are underwhelmed by his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies.

Notwithstanding this dismal track record, some advocates of free markets argue that anybody would be better than Obama.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Economic history shows that the burden of government often expands the most under Republicans, with Nixon and Bush (either one) being obvious examples.

On the other hand, even a skeptic like me has admitted that Romney’s record in Massachusetts is difficult to assess because he was governor of a very left-wing state and he had to deal with a state legislature with heavy Democratic majorities.

That being said, there’s a new development that suggests Romney may be an unacceptable alternative to Obama. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he basically said he is willing to consider a value-added tax for the United States. Here’s the relevant passage.

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What’s a Barack Obama Administration multi-billion dollar boondoggle without a Czar to oversee it?

For the automobile industry bailout, the Lord Overseer was Car Czar Steven Rattner.

This is the same Steven Rattner who late last year reportedly paid a $6.2 million Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fine and accepted a two-year ban from associating with broker-dealers or investment advisers.  For an alleged “pay-to-play” New York state pension fund kickbacks scheme he orchestrated after leaving Washington and his Czar-ship.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

His current gig – besides being a (shocker) MSNBC Morning Joe “Economic Analyst”?  Managing New York Mayor – and 1%-er billionaire – Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

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Naturally I disagree with much of the opposition and my well-meaning colleagues on the left in regards to Keynes and his school of economics. Many in this school of thought cannot accept the fact that Keynesian economics has never worked; it did not work in the depression nor has it worked any time since then. The only time stimulus has “worked” is after the economy has already recovered and then becomes overheated by the stimulus. Keynesian economics is an excuse for politicians to buy off special interest and voters with other peoples’ money. Let me address some of the opposition’s specific points:

Stimulus spending creates jobs

False, stimulus spending financed by taxes substitutes relatively inefficient government spending for private spending. In other words, government spending “crowds out” private spending. The opposition may disagree that public spending is less efficient but the recent analysis of the government spending does not support their point of view.

It is not taxation but debt that is financing the government spending

I maintain that government debt crowds out private borrowing and investment. Many of my anti-capitalist colleagues say that government spending is not crowding out private investment because interest rates are low. Therefore there is plenty of money to finance private investment. Unfortunately, in an attempt to protect depositors, and the government guarantee of such deposits, the bank regulators have increased the credit underwriting requirements on banks. Consequently, they are not lending to small and medium sized businesses.

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In 1776, three powerful words, “Taxation without representation!,” incited a small faction of brave American colonists to take up arms against the world’s greatest superpower, the British Empire. In this old regime, our early forefathers were politically voiceless and therefore unable to influence how the State spent its money. Yet they were still taxed to pay for government expenses that they never approved or voted for. In order to ensure that none of their descendants would ever undergo that same injustice, these colonists established a new, democratic society where the government would serve the interest of the nation’s citizens, both contemporary and future, not the other way around.

Nevertheless, 235 years and 15 trillion dollars later, the United States government has abandoned that moral foundation, instead preferring to pile all its expenses on top of the only demographic in this nation largely without a vote — youth and future citizens. Through record annual deficits and unsustainable debt, this President and members of his ideological faction have passed on the ruinous results of their fiscal irresponsibility to future generations (which never voted for or approved such financial imprudence). Just as the British Empire did not consider the needs or grievances of its colonists when drafting legislation, this current administration no longer takes into account the adverse affects its actions will have on American citizens in years to come. Whether debating energy policy, immigration policy, tax rates, or federal spending, this government does not consider our future prosperity to be an important priority, yet they still expect us to pay for their fiscal malfeasance after we reach adulthood.

When the British crown began abusing their repressed subjects across the Atlantic, our forefathers rose up and produced the Declaration of Independence in order to voice their demands and needs. Today we, the youth of America, are the repressed subjects that are witnessing our future prosperity being mortgaged away due to our current government’s inability to live within its means. Hopefully by outlining bold, new conservative reforms for the nation’s future, this organization can be our Declaration of Independence. We want to restore the voice and hope of America’s youth and lead us on to victory in our revolution against “deficits without representation!”

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I’m not a big fan of Senator Schumer of New York. As I’ve noted before, he’s a doctrinaire statist who wants the government to have control over just about every aspect of our lives.

But that describes a lot of people in Washington. I guess what also bothers me is his willingness to say anything, regardless of how divorced it is from reality, to advance his short-run political agenda (sort of a Democrat version of Karl Rove).

For example, here’s part of what the clownish Empire State  Senator recently had to say about fiscal policy, as reported by a Washington Post columnist.

Schumer said, “…Republicans came in and said, `We can solve your problem by shrinking government’…We tried their theory…The American people resent government paralysis, but most of them would say that government is doing too little to help them, not too much.”

What’s remarkable about this statement is that it’s so inaccurate that we can’t even decipher what he means. I’ve come up with three possible interpretations of what he might have been trying to say, and they’re all wrong.

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$787 billion.  Plus interest.  At downgrade – and thusly increased – rates.

Behold the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – the “Stimulus.”  Brought to you by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their Congressional Democrat cohorts.

Passed in the panicked wake of the 2008 Community Reinvestment Act-Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac-government-induced global economic collapse.  Because “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Passed, we were told, to create “or save” jobs.  In places like non-existent Congressional districts.

Passed, we were told, to keep unemployment below 8%.  How’d that work?

The unemployment rate when Obama took office was 7.6%. The stimulus was passed in February 2009. According to Obama, it was never supposed to go above 8% — well, it was already at 8.1% when the stimulus became a law. And it never got any better. According to the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, the unemployment rate remained high. There were some predictions that it would stay above 9% until 2012 (and this was from the White House no less). The CBO also predicts that the unemployment rate would be 8.2% come November 2012 which is higher than when he took office.

It worked swimmingly.  Drowning-ly, actually.

As we said way back in February:

Government attempting to “assist” the private sector is the D.C. version of the elementary school game Red Light-Green Light.

If the government has given itself the Green Light – and is lumbering and lurching around the free market, blindly and ignorantly throwing around laws, regulations and money – the private sector freezes in place, afraid to move in any direction for fear of the next federal anvil to fall.  The overactive government has thusly emplaced a Red Light in front of the private sector.

Rarely if ever has the federal government been more active than they have been these past two plus years.  And as a result the private sector has been exceedingly timid – which explains why our “recovery” has been so pathetic – if not non-existent.

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Which brings us to the government “helping” the Internet.

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(Washington D.C.) – Today, the Co-Chairs of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, Representative Jeb Hensarling and Senator Patty Murray, released the following statement.

“After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.

“Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve. We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee’s work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.

“We are deeply disappointed that we have been unable to come to a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement, but as we approach the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to express our appreciation to every member of this committee, each of whom came into the process committed to achieving a solution that has eluded many groups before us. Most importantly, we want to thank the American people for sharing thoughts and ideas and for providing support and good will as we worked to accomplish this difficult task.

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Specifically, on Senate Joint Resolution (S.J.Res. 6) – the vote to overturn the Obama Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Net Neutrality Internet power grab.

If you live in Massachusetts – please call/email/fax the Senator and let him know he’d be very wrong to do so.

And that he next year needs Conservatives and Republicans – from Massachusetts and around the nation – if he has any hope to keep his seat.

• Scott Brown – Massachusetts
  • Phone: (202) 224-4543
  • Fax: (202) 228-2646
  • Email: Here

From most appearances, the Senate will this week vote on Senate Joint Resolution (S.J.Res) 6 – the Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval of the Obama Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s illegal Internet Net Neutrality power grab.

Only 51 votes are required for passage – which means only 4 Democrats are needed.  There are 23 Democrat Senate seats up for reelection next year.  A few of these folks aren’t running.  The rest are – many in center or center-right states.  Additionally, there are a few other Senators that should also be subject to Constitutional reason, and thusly contacted.

Behold a list below the fold of some of these Senators and their contact information.  Reach out and tell them to vote Yes on S.J.Res 6.  Also tweet it all out using the hashtag #freethenet. (more…)

I’ve always wanted to be a writer for that satirical rag The Onion, but (sad to say) this story’s headline is not a fake.

For some time now, our local sports talk radio station has been carrying a very clever public service ad campaign warning young people about the dangers of overspending and having one’s credit score downgraded.  Recently, I noticed that this campaign is being sponsored by the Advertising Council and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Now, I had always believed that Ad Council projects of this kind were completely free; but, alas, that isn’t entirely the case.  According to two different Ad Council officials with whom I spoke, when a federal agency or non-profit organization contracts with the Ad Council to do a public service campaign, only the creative talent (to come up with the clever ideas) and the air time (to broadcast the ads) are provided pro bono.

All of the campaign’s “hard costs” – for research, recording, editing, studio rental, focus group testing, public relations, etc. – are the responsibility of the project’s sponsor.  According to the Ad Council, these expenses “typically run between $2.5 million and $3 million per campaign.”

While the Ad Council would not divulge (for “proprietary reasons”) the exact amount that the U.S. Treasury Department spent on its campaign to warn young people about overspending, their officials assured me that this project required a significant payout from its federal sponsor. (more…)