Tag: Obama

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ideological culture responsibility

If You Build It, They Will Come

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama was criticized for telling business folks “You didn’t get there on your own. . . . You didn’t build that.”

He meant something more than the truism that a successful businessperson functions not in splendid isolation but in cooperation with others, like employees and vendors (presumably compensated). He meant that successful people shouldn’t be so proud of their virtues. Also they must pay more taxes.

Surrogates yipped that Obama’s denigration of individual achievement wasn’t what it sounded like. But his inaugural address was more of the same. Charles Krauthammer calls the speech “an ode to collectivity,” with its stress not on voluntary associations but on coercive orchestration by the state. According to Obama, for example, “No single person can” do all the good things like build research labs and train teachers that we supposedly must do “as one people.”

Sounds like a glaring false alternative. David Boaz observes that “property rights, limited government and the rule of law”—under assault by Obama—are what we need to safeguard the voluntary cooperation critical to our progress and individual flourishing. I would add that we necessarily pay our own way as we engage in voluntary trade. We do “build that,” and so does the other guy.

Government can confine itself to protecting our rights in trade and otherwise leave us alone, or it can actively plunder our achievements. If the latter, we have less of what we built. Even though we did build that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Fiscal Brinksmanship

“America,” President Obama insists, “is not a deadbeat nation.” Mounting evidence to the contrary.

He chastises Republicans for even contemplating a default on the debt. At a news conference this week, he called any attempt to use the debt limit authorization issue to negotiate federal spending down “absurd,” and akin to a hostage situation. Refusing to raise the ceiling, you see, would “crash the economy”:

He demanded that Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives approve a rise in the federal government’s authority to borrow money to pay existing obligations — without seeking policy concessions in return.

The BBC goes on to quote the president, who clarifies his stance. “While I’m willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficits,” said the president, he insists that he will definitely not “have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.”

It’s an interesting approach: accuse Republicans of dangerous brinksmanship, while continuing to overspend and increase debt to the very brink of insolvency.

What Obama won’t recognize is that fiscal conservatives, today, play the same role as a parents cutting up their college kid’s credit cards after the young spendthrift had racked up an extraordinary debt. Obama plays the role of the kid saying: I’ve already budgeted spending, you can’t cut up the credit card — that’d be irresponsible!

It was different in 2006, when Senator Obama opposed raising the debt ceiling and called the increasing debt levels a sign of “a failure of leadership.”

Now that he — and not a despicable Republican — has the leadership role, he’s changed his tune. He says his former cry of “irresponsibility!” was itself irresponsible.

The very best thing we can say about this? The president has been captured completely by the forces he once opposed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S.Soon after the last period of the above squib was struck, I turned on Fox. And there was Sean Hannity, leading his nightly political opinion show with the president’s remonstrance of Republicans for daring to fix tight the debt ceiling. Hannity noticed what I noticed — indeed, what it turns out a lot of people noticed: Obama’s repudiation of a practice that he himself had engaged in in 2006.

But notice what Hannity is trying to prove: “how reckless, irresponsible and fundamentally dishonest a man [Obama] is.” Hannity sees Obama’s press conference performance as indicative of the president’s hypocrisy, demagoguery, and slipperiness-with-facts.

The case can be made, and Hannity has made it. The trouble is, the way Hannity makes it, to his audience, just skips over precisely this kind of behavior from Republicans. For, remember, Republicans repeatedly voted to increase the debt limit while their guy, Bush, was in charge. Another person to notice the differences between Junior Senator Obama and Second-Term President Obama, young Ms. Julie Borowski (“Token Libertarian Girl”), showed more savvy on Facebook than Hannity does on his primetime program:

Most Republicans are against raising the debt ceiling under Obama. But most were all for it during the George W. Bush administration.

Most Democrats are for raising the debt ceiling under Obama. But most were all against it during the George W. Bush administration.

Pssh, here’s a better idea. Dramatically cut spending. Stop manufacturing fake crises and raising the debt ceiling almost every year to finance drunken spending sprees. And why they are at it, members of Congress should pass a budget for the first time in over three years. It’s no wonder that a recent Public Policy Polling survey finds that cockroaches are more popular than Congress.

No doubt, since insecticide is cheaper and more effective than politics.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Spelling Stagnation

The just-re-elected president had promised to slash the deficit in his first term. That didn’t happen, but there’s talk of back room deals being made right now, saith Politico:

Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion. . . . Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion — and perhaps a lot more, to get Republicans to swallow those tax hikes. There will be at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and “war savings.” And any final deal will come not by a group effort but in a private deal between two men: Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. . . .

However, the cuts all come in the far, Star Trekkie future. Nick Gillespie of Reason not unreasonably asks if Boehner is really “Dumb enough to take $400 billion in cuts a decade from now in exchange for $1.2 trillion in tax hikes that start ASAP?” Gillespie defines “dumb” in the context of history:

[T]here’s a clear pattern: Republican presidents ratchet up spending and Democratic presidents consolidate the increases. This reality is at almost complete odds with political rhetoric. . . . Perhaps the near-total disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the reason why we can’t get anywhere — taxpayers are constantly being misdirected by the powers that be.

Still, Republicans have stood for lower tax rates. Are Republicans alone in “standing by principle”? No.

There’s another: the 77-member Progressive Caucus “will not support any deal that cuts benefits for families and seniors who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to put food on the table or cover their health costs.”

So, realistically, there is no insider constituency for reducing spending. If enough congressional Republicans vote to increase taxes, they’ll be bilked. Meanwhile, debt overhang strangles the economy, and increased taxes will also cut into the investments that make jobs.

Thus stalemate spells stagnation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

The Dictators’ Drones

Partisanship leads to mass delusion.

The “targeted” drone runs of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama have killed thousands of innocent people in foreign lands — without a declaration of war.

The main theme of Greg Greenwald’s terrific and much-tweeted Guardian article, “Obama: a GOP president should have rules limiting the kill list,” is how Americans have deluded themselves by partisan loyalty and trust into caring about constitutional limits only when thinking about “the other guys.” Democrats fear Republicans in charge, but not their own “Messiah” (to use Andy Levy’s term for the president, on RedEye).

Republicans fear The Socialist Kenyan with his finger on the button, setting off cluster bombs and cruise missiles and the like, but applauded the previous, “Texan” president’s bombing runs a great thing, just what the War on Terror required.

But of course, when drone strikes in multiple Muslim countries kill thousands, when innocents are killed “collaterally” (the previous euphemism) but are redefined as “terrorists” because of proximity or familial relationships, and when even American citizens overseas are targeted for kills without any legal framework for such decisions, something has gotten out of hand.

The president is now above the law, like a Roman emperor. Might as well call him “dictator” and let it go at that.

Both progressives and conservatives need to be reminded that the rule of law — as “inconvenient” as it may seem when it comes to fighting terrorism — is there to protect all of us, including those who wield power.

And not merely from others. Also from ourselves.

Why? Power tends to corrupt. No one is immune. And who seeks to be corrupted?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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U.S. Constitution

Romney-Biden 2012?

The most interesting presidential election in U.S. history may have been the fourth, wherein Thomas Jefferson won. Sort of. How Jefferson got to be president may be relevant in this election, which is now so close that some wonder what would happen if there were an Electoral College stalemate, 269 votes for Romney and 269 for Obama. (Remember, it’s the electors who count, not the popular vote.)

In 1800, because of a constitutional glitch, Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr got the same number of electors, and the whole issue went to the House, which the Federalists still controlled, and it took a lot of negotiations and in-fighting to put Jefferson in office as the president.

The 12th Amendment settled the VP glitch, and cooked up a solution to the possibility of an Electoral College tie, as well. It’s never been used.

If, this Tuesday, the distribution of the popular vote forces the Electoral College into stalemate, the 12th Amendment would kick in, and the House would vote in a peculiar fashion (one vote per state), to select the President — Romney, considering the complexion of that body. Then the Senate would select the Vice President — Biden, considering the complexion of that body.

A wild finish, but it could get even wilder. In 1972, an elector jumped ship, voting for the Libertarian Party’s John Hospers/Tonie Nathan ticket (making Nathan the first woman to receive an electoral vote). Even against state laws forbidding it, a similar jump for Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Jill Stein — or Ron Paul — might complicate further. Or simplify.

Happy voting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

China Syndrome, 2012

The two major presidential candidates, incumbent Obama and challenger Romney, must spend their final weeks of the campaign appealing to

  1. Members of their respective parties disappointed enough to stay home on election day — or vote the dreaded “Third Party” ticket;
  2. Independent voters apt to find something distasteful about both candidates;
  3. The apathetic and the uninformed.

How to appeal to all three groups simultaneously? Well, go for the old standby: fear and hatred of foreigners.

This year, it’s the Chinese.

Romney started the China-bashing by calling our Chinese trading partners “cheaters.” Apparently he is much vexed about how the Chinese don’t respect established intellectual property rights, “stealing” our technology, “everything from computers to fighter jets.” Of course, this mainly happens after “we” set up manufacturing plants for that technology there. He charged that President Obama has not deigned to “stand up to China.”

Earlier, he had accused China of manipulating its money in its favor. He seems to have dropped that, perhaps out of embarrassment — our own Fed’s monetary manipulations, after all, dwarf China’s.

The Obama campaign responded by avoiding the intellectual property issue just as Romney now avoids the monetary one, calling Romney himself a “cheater.” You see, in his Bain Capital days, Romney invested in firms that relocated jobs to “low wage countries like China.” Romney, we are told, has “never stood up to China.”

By which is meant: Romney engaged in globalism and opposed protectionism.

Is Mr. Obama really suggesting that prosperity will come if we shrink from global competition and enact barriers to international trade in goods and services?

The biggest problem the U.S. economy faces isn’t Beijing; it’s Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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video

Video: State Department to Prez, “You Don’t Know What You Are Talking About”

While the president seems not to regard Egypt as an ally, the State Dept. has slightly different notions:

Categories
ideological culture

Predictable Prescription

President Obama loves a laugh line he uttered during his convention speech and is now on tour with it, using it to stoke up his campaign whistle stops.

Obama told us that Republican policy amounts to this: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call us in the morning.”

Obama is correct that tax cuts don’t magically cure behemoth deficits or leviathan debt. And, frankly, Republicans are often as loathe as Democrats to cut — really cut — government spending.

But it’s not as if Obama were the Lone Ranger when it comes to hacking away at the federal octopus, constantly proposing only balanced budgets and demanding shutdowns of federal agencies and programs. No. Obama, like so many in DC, demands ever higher spending, ever higher taxes, ever more regulations — as exemplified by Obamacare. The president demonizes as Darwinian dastards all who support even vanishingly small reductions in projected increases in spending.

If the GOP plays a one-note tune of tax cuts, ad infinitum, the Democrats’ have their own long-playing record spinning around and around: the idea of government as the solution to every problem. But whatever “fiscal irresponsibility equivalence” exists between Republicans, who want to cut taxes in the face of trillion-dollar a year deficits, and Democrats, who want to keep spending more, the underlying issue remains whether we need more government or less.

Take less government, less spending, lower taxes, and call me on election morning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

716 Billion Lies

As the campaign for the presidency heats up, we’re going to hear the words “taxes” and “deficit” and “spending” repeated ad nauseam. And this number: $716,000,000,000.

That’s the amount of future Medicare spending that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress (exclusively, without a single Republican vote) cut, slashed, ripped, hacked out of the hands of elderly Americans over the next ten years.

And I thought Democrats loved Medicare, believed in it, wanted to keep it like it is against the bitter schemes of GOP Scrooges!

Now, as Republicans attack the Democrats’ attack on Medicare, Dems have counter-attacked by charging that in his plan GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan cuts Medicare this exact same $716 billion. Ryan explains that his approach simply took the status quo as the baseline, and, sadly, tragically, that includes Obamacare’s nearly trillion dollar malpractice in gutting Medicare funds.

With older citizens constituting a huge voting block, this fall’s election may hinge on this $716 billion being taken from Medicare. Funny thing is, the number is a mirage. Meaningless. Not real. Medicare will not be cut $716 billion. Not really. Instead, it will grow in leaps and bounds over the next decade.

Nothing in Obamacare stops Congress from spending that $716 billion and more in coming years. In fact, they already plan for Medicare spending to grow by far more.

That’s the problem more broadly with the cuts Democrats offer in exchange for higher taxes. The cuts are illusory because the spending continues to grow. Therefore, any tax increases to plug deficit spending would be pouring water into a bucket full of holes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Waste, Fraud and Abuse

There are few things less inspiring than listening to Republican and Democratic Party candidates and their flunkies discuss entitlement reform.

Last weekend, the Romney camp defended its newly acquired reform high-ground from assaults by the current administration. Rep. Paul Ryan had famously charged that the Democrats’ health care reform package of 2010 had “raided” nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars to help extend Medicare-like benefits to younger populations. The Obama camp swears on a stack of, uh, Bibles, that all it did was cut waste and fraud and, yes, expanded services to seniors in the process and . . .

I don’t have the heart, or stomach, or liver (which organ is it that deals with bile?) to diagnose all this with scientific scrutiny, but I will say, off-hand, both sides look pathetic.

Who can believe that politicians and their hangers-on in the bureaucracies have actually honed in on — much less will actually cut —nearly a trillion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse?

Not that they aren’t there. It’s just that waste and fraud seem awfully stubborn, given that even those spending a lifetime in politics have made no progress against them.

Except during campaign speeches,

Washington politicians seem much friendlier to the wasters, fraudsters and abusers than to taxpayers. And the former are better organized, too.

It’s all preposterous.

And the supposed Republican reformers? They are “defending Medicare” so that older people don’t have to lose anything. But if the system is falling apart, it may be that the only fair thing is for every current recipient to lose something, so as not to lose everything.

The unmentionable truth? Waste is part of the system, and the programs are themselves fraudulent and abusive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.