What's Wrong with Establishment Republican Strategy

Here is the question: what's wrong with the establishment Republican strategy that has their ideal nominee backed by only 20-25% of the Republican electorate in every poll since the end of the 2010 election?

Here is the entire answer: the establishment believes things will go back to the way they've been before.

Money, Money, Money, Who's Got the Money

Many conservatives remain deeply fearful that a successful Obama campaign will be fueled by tanker trucks filled with the mother's milk of politics: cabbage, cash, cha-ching, coins, dough, gravy, green, jingle, moola, payola, pimp juice, or -- in other words -- all kinds of money!

The Race for the Republican Nomination

Voting to commit delegates for the Republican National Convention will commence in just over two weeks with the Iowa caucuses, or, as Rush deems them, the Hawkeye cauci.

The RealClearPolitics.com poll summaries for the first three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, reflect in differing measures those for the nation as a whole and the differing constituencies represented in those states.  New Hampshire and South Carolina are for their regions favorite son, and Iowa is... well, Iowa.

Greedy, Fascist, Racist Republicans; Bill of Rights Day

My brother sent me this link this morning as a birthday greeting.

He often sends me Bill Whittle's Firewall bits, I really loved this one, and I'm sure you will, too.

And yes, I was born 64 years ago today, six years and a world war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor postponed indefinitely the effort to have December 15 declared a national holiday to commemorate the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

NM Supports School Choice

A September survey of 808 New Mexico registered voters by The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in conjunction with the Rio Grande Foundation shows 2 to 1 support for school choice under each of three different funding options:

• Tax credits for donations to non-profit foundations that make tuition grants
  
• Publicly funded vouchers for families that reallocate school district funding
  
• Educational Savings Accounts

What Has the ABQ Journal Done with Winthrop Quigley?

In just the last few weeks, Winthrop Quigley, the writer of the Albuquerque Journal's Money & Medicine column, has made a sharp break with progressive fallacy and economic fantasy and turned sharply toward economic reality and freedom.

Here [sorry, subscription required] is today's column in the Journal's Business Outlook, but the latest example of this trend.  Only the last 6 of 33 column inches sounds at all like the old progressivist Quigley.

Greece as Model (Part V)

Private investors in Greek bonds are to take a haircut, as part of the next in an unending series of Greek bailouts.  Unless you think half of their bonds' face value is far worse than a haircut.  Happy Halloween!

This is simple government theft by the abrogation of law protecting property rights and contracts.  It won't solve the problem, which -- as I have written -- is a retired-young, unproductive citizenry that wants German cars, Chinese cell phones, and foreign oil in exchange for... what?

This financial tactic will further discourage future investment and ensure that the return of growth and prosperity in the Eurozone will take much longer than it should.  Our current experience with that is explained here.

However, that theft will also serve as a warning against tucking your money away in high-paying junk bonds issued by some half-baked social democratic government... like the progressivists want ours to become.

Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Endorsed by a Big Name Economist

Herman Cain has been taking heat for his proposal to scrap the Federal tax code and replace it with three flat taxes on consumption, on individual income, and on business income of 9% each. 

Many have criticized his 9-9-9 plan because the sales tax could so easily be raised.  Indeed, giving Congress any tax rate to raise, as P. J. O'Rourke says, is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

From the Tab Bar

In days gone by newspaper columnists would now and then run columns consisting of bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam they had accumulated in their In basket, heaped there over the course of a week or a month or season or year.  At some point the ink-stained wretch would rummage through the basket, addressing some of the notes and clippings and letters and throwing the rest away.  They were at no loss for ideas, but having so many, they simply had to give some short shrift.  The column that resulted was often as not titled something like "From the In Box."

I similarly accumulate windows in my Firefox tab bar.  Today, it's time to clean them out.  You get the picture.

The Real Herman Cain

I have received from a couple of different people a reforwarded message of the same title as this one including a resume for Herman Cain.  I won't repeat that here, since you can go to the Herman Cain campaign web site and read their version of it.  The resume I received by email does seem to be accurate.

Technocrat and Company (Part III)

And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on.

Today the Wall Street Journal picks up the T-word to describe Mitt Romney.  First used for that purpose ten days ago by William Kristol on Fox News Sunday, it is the word that describes Romney, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton best: technocrat.  Slick Willy Clinton was known as a wonk, but he believed in the idea of economic management by five smart guys in a DC room and repeated their notions and nostrums ad nauseum to any TV camera in reach.

Of Romney, the WSJ says

Technocrat and Company ( Part II )

In response to my criticism of Romney, a long-time friend wrote

Glad to see your last sentence:

"Unless, of course, the only choice is a progressivist Democrat."

I am with Dennis Miller for Herman Cain. How about a Cain - Romney ticket?

Always remember the Reagan Rule: Republicans should nominate the most conservative person who can win!

Within those limits, I do think that we can do better than Romney.

Mitt Romney, Technocrat

Here's how you run health care if you're Mitt Romney.  You know there just has to be a system. You also know you aren't smart enough to manage it yourself.  So you call together experts from all the stakeholders -- a word that always makes me think of vampire hunters -- you lock them in a room, and you get behind whatever plan comes out of the room.

Obama Woke the Bear!

Now and then a columnist says something I've been telling Sherry.  Then I get to say "See!" especially if it's someone with whom she agrees.

I'm so seldom right that I really can't... er... bear not pointing it out when I am.

I've been saying that Obama and his leftist coterie, better known as the Obamarama, have really angered the independents of the electorate.

A New Day in Politics

It's a new day in politics.  Issues are now everywhere, impossible to ignore, as everyone is constantly immersed in the water of political life.

Ethnography is no longer electoral destiny.  Jews used to be liberals first and Jews second.  NY-09 is set to prove that they are intelligent pragmatic people who follow the issues of the day, and, though they are centered on the left, they are not politically immovable.

Central Planning's Calculation Problem

Now that Keynesianism is receiving last rites, we can hope that the next progressivist idea to fade from the scene will be... wait for it... central planning itself!

Robert Tracinski flogs that old canard unmercifully in this paean to free market ingenuity, pointing out that again and again government planners have had even worse luck than the futurists who regularly fail to predict next year's next big idea much less the hundreds of new ideas of the next decade.

Why is that?

How Obama's Progressivism Destroyed the Economy

Mancur Olson's Power and Prosperity was published two years after his death in 2000.  In it, he describes exactly what made the world's major economies so prosperous.

Yes, Olson says, free markets are critical, but the power of trade and of the division of labor to improve the human condition is so great that they can not be stopped, not by an anarchical Hobbesian "state of nature," or by the most oppressive of governments, or by the almost anarchical black markets they engender.  Free markets are so essential as to be irrepressible; informal ones are to be found in all societies and all eras.

How Mega-Stupid Does the Left Think We Are?

Yesterday, the liberal local New York paper (LLNYP) published this whiny essay from Warren Buffet claiming that he and his 400 closest economic peers -- the mega-rich he calls them four times -- wouldn't mind being taxed a whole lot more.

By Buffet's own numbers, if we had confiscated all the top 400's earnings in 2008, it would have raised about $0.09T ($90.9B), or about 0.6% of the 2011 federal deficit.  That's if we take every dollar of it, not just tax it at the highest rate for earned income of 35%, since that would raise only 0.2% of the deficit.

Kinda makes you wonder: if Buffet's so rich, how come he's not smart?

The Economic Tyranny of Commerce Clause Interpretation

The language in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution on regulation of interstate commerce seems clear enough to me.  With some intervening unrelated verbiage excised, it says this

The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce ... among the several states

For over a century, it was held to mean little except that States were prohibited from regulating commerce with other states.  But like a structure with a sound foundation twisted by an architect gone mad, the decisions of Supreme Courts since then have erected a commerce clause jurisprudence -- a fancy phrase for a collection of interpretive decisions -- that has destroyed the original meaning of that language.

If Only the Election Were This November...

If only the 2012 Presidential election were three months away instead of fifteen.

Here is notable Democrat partisan Ronald Brownstein's National Journal analysis of The Awesome One's state-by-state approval numbers for January through June as reported by Gallup.

Saying the Unthinkable

Even those of us who bitterly resent the collectivist nanny state -- the Federal Motherment, as it were -- are often unwilling to recommend to our political champions that they advocate to the electorate what is needed to restore our economic vitality.  We fear the political reaction by the inattentive and muddleheaded middle.  The left uses that concern against us, presuming to the mantle of the Washington wise men, of the elite managers of the economy.   Lately, though, they have shown a sort of group insanity in reaction to the writing on the wall.

What the Dog Didn't Do In the Night (Wall Writing -- Part III)

Here is Michael Barone echoing my commentary on Walter Russell Mead's commentary on Stanley Greenberg's analysis of what the dog didn't do in the night.* 

The Debt Limit Deal (Tea Party On -- Part IV)

Some have asked how I view the debt ceiling deal.

I made clear early on that the Republicans could not stand up against the public pressure that would result from a refusal by the House to increase the debt ceiling.  I said it again, and again.

A fixed debt limit and the subsequent immediate balanced budget would have meant an immediate spending cut of forty percent, since today we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend.  While freeing the resources tied down by that spending would eventually be a good thing, the abruptness of the change would have been economic brutality.

The Writing on the Wall (Part II)

Yesterday, I told the tale of two progressivists seeing the writing on the wall.

Today, the tale becomes an epic, as Walter Russell Mead weighs in, explaining it all to Stanley Greenberg, who is one baffled leftist pollster.  It seems that he can push-poll American adults to tell him what he wants to hear, but the votes don't ever tally the same, never minding the fact that polls of adults don't square with polls of registered or likely or actual voters.

Did The Debt Limit Deal Cause Black Thursday?

If the middle of the US body politic hadn't kicked the debt limit can down the road and Obama and Geithner had pulled the trigger on their plan to stick holders of US Treasury obligations -- three quarters of whom are US citizens -- by defaulting on interest payments, not paying soldiers' families, and not mailing Social Security checks to Grannies everywhere, then the media would surely be telling us at this very moment that the Tea Party Terrorists had caused today's 500 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Boehner Rule (The Math -- Part III)

Almost eight days ago, acting in my previous capacity as math professor I sent you a message titled " I've Done the Math" in which I told you that in order to have the deficit decline toward zero over some number of years, it was sufficient to adopt a simple rule.  That rule, first articulated by the Republican House Speaker John Boehner in May of this year, is that for every increase in the debt limit, an equal decrease be made in future spending over the desired period of decline.

At that time, I said that this point seemed not to have been made by any other observer of the debt ceiling battle.

Progressivists See the Writing on the Wall

And now we have the left's never-ending whine.

Kevin Drum in Mother Jones quotes Jared Bernstein from his blog at length, ending with this

Those of us who do care about [the progressive ideal] will not defeat those who strive to get rid of it all by becoming better tacticians. We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for.

Drum agrees:

The Math (Part II)

I'm sorry, but if you've come to my professorial office hours for help with the exercise, you'll have to wait till next class.

One of my correspondents at the Club for Growth -- which has key-voted the defeat of the Boehner plan -- replied almost immediately thus:

The only thing that math can't immediately conclude, however, is if the spending cuts will ever materialize.  The big joke about the Boehner Plan is that it increases the debt limit NOW for only the promise of spending cuts over the next 3650-ish days.  It's a fool's bargain.

I've Done the Math

There are two things that have come up during the debt limit battle that deserve some mathematical analysis, and as a former math professor, I'm just the guy to do them for you.

First is the discovery by someone -- trumpeted yesterday by none other than our Hero of the Revolution Rush Limbaugh -- that the CBO would score a ten year clamping of spending at last year's level as a $10T cut in spending over ten years.

The Debt Limit End Game for the Republican House

According to Congressional Budget Office projections, in fiscal year 2011 Federal spending will amount to about $3.7T*, and tax revenue only to about $2.2T.  That excess of spending over taxation of $1.5T, means we are borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar we are spending now.

Thus, if we hit the debt ceiling next month -- our credit card limit -- and have to immediately balance our budget, we will be forced to cut spending by 40%.  Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest in the debt amount to something near 50% of current spending.  If we insist that those are the most important things to do once the debt limit is reached, we will then have only about 10% of current spending to cover the remaining 50%.

The Tale of the Prodigal Brother-in-Law (Part II)

About my tale of the prodigal brother-in-law (Will Failure to Raise the Debt Ceiling Harm Our Credit Rating?) one of my correspondents wrote

This recalls my proposal many years ago for the National Brother-in-Law Act. It was a suggestion that we remove the middle man (i.e., the Federal government) in dealing with welfare. Every family (satisfying some arbitrary income level) would simply be assigned a poor person who would live with them. Like you fabled brother-in-law, he would eat your food, and wear your robe, while sitting around the house, reading your newspaper and waiting for the next free meal. After a brief increase in homicides, these folk would be put directly to work, mowing the lawn, washing the car, cleaning the pool, etc., In some cases, they would take over, but you would know the face of your oppressor personally, (not just as a faceless bureaucrat). For some reason, this idea never caught on.

I think we might have a theme going here.

Will Failure to Raise the Debt Limit Harm Our Credit Rating?

Imagine you have a financially irresponsible brother-in-law.  He's not a ne'er-do-well, as he and your sister make good money, but he spends more than he makes.  He's been doing it for years, and he's deeply in debt to you and your other siblings.  You've been loaning him about five or ten percent of his annual income each year to maintain his life style. 

He's superficially responsible about it, signing a note for each new loan, making interest payments every six months on the notes and paying off the older notes when they come due after one year, or five years, or ten years, but every year he's back asking for enough to pay off the interest and debt that's coming due, and borrowing more to increase the total loan. His debt has mounted up over the years to 70% of his annual income.

How Big Are the Cuts in the Proposed Debt Limit Deal?

I think it's important that we understand the deal on the debt limit that the Republican House and Senate leadership has proposed for months now.

It is that Republicans will vote for a $2.5T increase in the debt limit only if the bill includes $2.5T in cuts in spending and no increases in tax rates.  I have pointed out to all within earshot -- sometimes a quarter mile -- that the deal would get done because the proposed cuts would be over a long period, probably ten years.  That the proposed period is ten years was finally confirmed in very recent news stories on the negotiations.

Judicial Precedents Paved the Road to Serfdom (Part II)

I liked the previous piece of this series a lot.  When I reread it, I liked it so much I reread it again.  In the days after it went out, however, I was reminded of my favorite -- actually my only -- Nietzsche quote: "Every doer loves his deed much more than it deserves to be loved."

From the response I got from you, my faithful correspondents, Nietzsche was right, because it apparently didn't resonate.  One of you said that I had gone all intellectual, and that it was "Too esoteric.  And too long."

Another one said, "I liked that piece you wrote earlier this week."

Which one?" said I, hopefully.

Judicial Precedents Paved the Road to Serfdom

Judicial protection of our economic freedoms under the so-called rule of law* languishes today under a pile of ridiculously reasoned Depression-era precedents extorted from the Supreme Court of the United States (henceforth SCOTUS) by the then President of the United States (henceforth FDR).  He threatened them with loss of face from the overturning of their precedents defending economic freedom -- Oooo, scandalous! -- by a new SCOTUS altered by his appointment of six new, presumably progressivist Justices after having Congress quite constitutionally increase the number of Justices on the Court from nine to fifteen.

By The Rude Bridge that Arched the Flood

My brother lived in Boston for many years.  He used to take visitors out to Concord and give them the story of Emerson's "rude bridge"  in his own way.  Though it's written for Patriot's Day, April 19th, a State Holiday in Massachusetts, it is about the event that led roughly 15 months later, to the Declaration of Independence we celebrate today.

But I should let him tell his story, which I would like to dedicate today to our friend and former Senator Harrison Schmitt and his fellow astronauts of the US space program, past and present.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I've a habit of taking out-of-town relatives and friends, and especially their kids, out to Concord, and walking them to the medium-sized obelisk with the "rude bridge" line from Emerson's "Concord Hymn" on it.

A Day of Reckoning for Economic Ignorance

I have written that when it comes to economic productivity, Democrats are cargo cultists: they have no idea how or why things get made and they believe that the amount of goods and services produced is the same at any price.  Worse yet, they believe that the only job of the five hundred forty-five wise men in DC -- 435 + 100 + 1 + 9 -- is to divvy things up.

How economically illiterate -- illeconomate? -- is The Awesome One really?  He professes to believe that the automation of the bank teller functions thirty-five years ago and the subsequent wide distribution of the remote banking terminals that we know today as ATMs is a cause of his term's lingering unemployment rather than a net time saver for the economy and an efficiency for everyone who needs some cash from their bank account.

The Fantasy of Five Wise Men

George Will here summarizes Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's scathing indictment of Democrats for causing the 2008 financial collapse, a crisis responsible for the length of this recession and the weakness of its recovery.  Morgenson and Rosner make clear that this collapse was caused by government mandates pushed by Democrats starting in the early nineties that forced the financial industry to make home loans to borrowers who would probably not be able to repay them.

Boehner at the Bridge

The Democrats hold fast to their Keynesian economic excuse that stealing a dollar from the private sector and giving it to someone who will spend it on something -- anything at all -- will stimulate the private sector by increasing demand.  This theory has been at least twice discredited: first by FDR's failure to jump start the economy in the thirties, and now by Obama's almost identical failure in 2009.

Only the Republican-controlled House stands against the Democrat desire to enlarge government by spending and taxing more.

The House Republican leadership, their backs stiffened by the Tea-Party response of the American electorate to Obama's first stimulus, at last seem ready to make their stand against this fiscal insanity.

If It Walks Like A Subsidy...

The Senate voted to repeal a tax credit for ethanol blenders this week.  Even though that bill won't become law -- such a bill must start in the House and the President probably would veto it to enhance his electoral prospects in the corn belt -- it is a remarkable event.  Votes in the Senate against subsidies are rare.

Grover Norquist points out that repealing any tax credit without balancing tax rate cuts is a violation of a pledge signed by many Republican Legislators.  Norquist is a Hero of the Revolution and deserves great respect and credit for creating Americans for Tax Reform and its pledge that focuses Republican opposition to increased taxes.  However, anyone who agrees with Grover and ATR that cutting a tax credit is a tax increase needs to think more clearly.

Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law to Go Live

In the bellwether election in Wisconsin earlier this Spring that the unions finally lost a couple of weeks ago, the one that returned Judge David Prosser to the Supreme Court bench, the bell has just tolled for the the unions.

Why Central Planning Fails

In the ISI quiz to which I sent the link earlier today, there is the following multiple choice question:

Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning because:

1) the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends

2) markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law

3) more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise

4) property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system

5) government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers' money

Only 16% of the 2500 respondents to the original survey got the answer right.  Sixteen percent!   The expected value for random guessing is twenty percent.

A Quiz on the Constitution, History, and Economic Freedom

Here is a great quiz on our Constitution, our history, and economic freedom.  It will challenge you in places, but should only take you a few minutes that will be time well spent.

The quiz is the product of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute which says about itself

Tonight's Republican Presidential Debate Transcripts

You can find transcripts of the four segments of tonight's debate at the bottom of this page.

You will find small things with which to disagree, as I did.  But I think that after reading these you'll believe as I do that if any of these candidates were seated in the oval office listening to their advisers argue over one of those issues, they'd make the right decision most of the time.

Thank You, President Obama!

When I stand before a microphone and address a politician, I always like to open with a compliment.  "Thank you for your efforts on behalf of economic freedom," or "Thanks for standing up for smaller government," or "I really appreciate your service to the country."  That way I have them softened up for a substantive question.

Its a little tougher when I face a leftist. 

How You Know That Progressivism Has Peaked

You know that the Progressivists have hit their peak and started the long slide toward historical irrelevance and oblivion when the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities from a small liberal arts college on the Hudson -- a college that the Princeton Review ranked as the second most liberal college in the US -- who claims he is a Democrat that voted for Obama in 2008 and who was, to boot, a one-time Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations writes a commentary titled " When Government Jumps the Shark*."

A Republican Redistricting Strategy for New Mexico

In yesterday's LA Times, there was this very interesting piece on Latino voting with a heavy emphasis on recent New Mexico politics, brought to our attention by New Mexico politico Mickey Barnett.

It comes complete with quotes from former Chairman Harvey Yates of the New Mexico Republican Party, from Albuquerque Journal pollster and political statistician Brian Sanderoff, and from as-yet-un-indicted co-conspirator Bill Richardson, who told the reporter this:

Fanniegate: An Albatross Around Democrat Necks

Walter Russell Mead is a political observer who addresses the problems of the left from the center-left.

Someday I will write about his description of the sequence of collectivist policy approaches he calls The Blue Models, their failures and their forced abandonments, but here I want to point you quickly at his review of a new book on the financial crisis that lays it at the feet of Democrat politicians, and his commentary on that issue's potential political impact should Republicans wake up to it and wield it correctly.  He says

At Last, A Poll, A Poll at Last.

Finally,  we get a poll on the Republican Presidential nomination race after the withdrawals of The Huck, The Huckster, and -- sadly -- The Hoosier.  Here is the RealClearPolitics summary.

That perennial favorite, Ida Noe, is tops with 22%.  Romney is second with his 17% share unchanged from his RCP average before the withdrawals of Huckabee, Trump, and Daniels.  Is that his limit, or is it the effect of his big health care speech?

Thought I Was Wrong Once, But I Was Mistaken...

Yeah, I know.  After I wrote about the Wisconsin Senate seat opening up in 2012, saying that Paul Ryan was certain to get in, he demurred.

But even as I was writing this analysis of the Republican presidential nomination field, including my diagnosis of Newt's ADHD, he had another attack.  On the May 15th edition of Meet the Press, he had this exchange with David Gregory:

Is Chris Christie THAT Guy? (Part II)

My New Jersey friend -- whose judgement I trust -- sends her thanks for my spreading her word on Christie, and adds these points:

Is Chris Christie THAT Guy?

New Jersey governor Chris Christie has drawn accolades from fiscal conservatives for battling with union members and others and for publicizing those battles on YouTube.  He certainly is combative and I cheer him for his choice of targets.

But is he a free-market fiscal conservative? 

Mitch Daniels Will Not Run

If I could send this out bordered in black, I would do so.

Stephen Colbert Learns the FEC Way

Actor-comedian Steven Colbert is the on-air personality of The Colbert Report, a Comedy Central TV show that could be called the Leftist Dummy Report, since many of its fans get their only news there.

You may recall that when the Dems ran the House, Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration invited Colbert to testify in character on his vast 10 hour experience working in the fields.  That session turned into a sideshow, upsetting John Conyers and other Democrat committee members as well as Conservative Hero Steve King.  You can read about it in this CBS report, which amusingly changes Lofgren's last name to Longfren -- presumably to protect her innocence.

When Colbert decided to show how bad the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision was by starting his own PAC, the real hilarity started.

Want to exercise your freedom of speech and association?  First get a lawyer, and then ask the Federal Election Committee for an exemption!

The Man Who Should Be President

If likability and intelligence are the criteria for electability, and, along with a firm understanding of conservative principles, the sine qua non for candidates worthy of conservative support, then Pat Toomey, freshman Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, is certain to be nominated for President someday.

Don't know him? 

Democrats Cover Up True Story of Financial Crisis

As the election approached in September of 2008, John McCain briefly pulled ahead of Barack Obama in the polls.   Then the roof fell in on the unfortunate Republican as the financial industry locked up tight and New York money managers stopped loaning to each other.  They did so because of the doubtful viability of mortgage-backed securities comprising huge fractions of the financial industry's portfolio, and comprised of terrible mortgages the government had forced the mortgage industry to make.  The potent question after Lehman Brothers went down without a trace was whether there would be any more US government bailouts.

TARP followed, and in the aftermath, the government put together a commission to review that credit crunch, and that commission concluded that -- wait for it --

Dead Cat Bounce

Obama's killing-Osama polling bump is gone, the shortest such bump on record.

The IMF Rape

No.  Not the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn for sexual assault in New York, about which you have heard on the news this weekend.

Rather, the International Monetary Fund Rape is the conversion of the IMF from an advocate of the Washington Consensus -- a largely conservative set of recommendations tempered with a bit of welfare state seasoning for financially troubled emerging economies to restore themselves -- to an advocate of Socialist/Keynesian spend-to-win policies.

The recommendations of the Washington Consensus called for unilateral liberalization of trade on the part of the troubled county in exchange for loans to cover its debt, and were reasonably successful at increasing trade with, and improving the productivity of countries that accepted them.

Of course, the IMF rape victims include most citizens of those states that accept the IMF's new collectivist recommendations, whose economies revert to stagnation.

Kohl (D - WI) Won't Run Again. Paul Ryan to Consider Senate Run.

Senator Herb Kohl (D - WI) announced his retirement Friday.  Paul Ryan is thinking about it.

That shouldn't take long.  Ryan has super-star popularity with a national conservative base.  Raising money should be easy for him.

Wisconsin has been trending more conservative for quite a while.  The Wisconsin public employee's union's state-collected-dues cash stream should have dried up by then.

Ryan'll be in by Friday.

Publish Post

Stick a Fork in 'Em. They're Done

Michael Barone offers here a perceptive analysis of Mitt Romney's "front-runner" standing in the polls.  Barone knows what is easy to see: give people a lit of ten possible candidates for the Republican nomination, and the best known ones will get 14-16%.  Interestingly, last night, Mike Huckabee -- another one of the sixteen percenters -- did what I figured and hoped he would do: he dropped out.

The pregnant question is where Huckabee's social conservative supporters now turn.

How Do Politicians Get Rich in Office?

I know a fellow named Eric Singer who runs a mutual fund called the Congressional Effect Fund.  His management strategy is simple and direct: buy stocks when Congress recesses and sell when it comes back in session.  Why is that?  Simple.  His market studies show that strategy makes money. 

How does it work?

How to Use the Debt Limit Votes (Tea Party On, Part III)

Immediately after the Final extension of the 2011 continuing resolution was agreed to back in April, I wrote about debt-limit vote strategy for the Republican House.  In particular, I described the political value of insisting on the inclusion of mandatory spending cuts in any debt limit increase this way:

How to Select a Republican Presidential Nominee?

Jay Cost wrote an interesting piece for the Weekly Standard recently, giving three criteria he thought the Republican Party would use to decide who to nominate for President

I don't think his criteria are very cogent.
 
i. Electability? The easy answer to that is for the Republicans to nominate -- wait for it --

Are You One, Too?

The Pew Research Center has done a recent comprehensive survey on political attitudes, about which you can read more later.  As part of that, it has devised a classification of people into political groups by their responses on key issues.  Their web site has a very nice quiz form you can use to classify yourself in a minute or two.  You will find that here.  Enjoy....

By the way, it tells me I'm a Libertarian.  Duh!  Bet you already knew that.

The story on the poll can be found here.

The Fight of the Century

This is more than just a bit of fun.  Many years ago, I concluded that getting Hollywood on our side would be the best way to counter the educational establishment's leftist slant and reach the young earlier.  The Moving Picture Institute is a group trying to get that going by supporting young conservative film makers to make movies advocating individual liberty.  They are doing a great job.

Here is a message from the Institute via their Persistence of Vision blog about the release of a new rap music video -- yes, that's right -- featuring a debate between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek -- still right -- testifying before Congress.  Very slickly produced and lot of fun to watch, these videos are available on YouTube.
These folks at the MPI are having entirely too much fun.  You should watch "Fear" before "Fight", and in case you don't know... Keynes is the bad guy!

Enjoy!

Canada Turns Right

With the dramatic double tap on bin Laden still dominating the news, you can be excused for missing Tuesday's results in the 41st Canadian Parliamentary Election held Monday.  Conservatives won a flat out majority of 167 seats to 141 for all other parties combined.

This is still further indication that the rise of the Internet and unfettered availability of economic information may spell doom for collectivists everywhere.  In years past, only readers of the financial newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times of London would be aware of the financial collapse of the statists' dream social democracies in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and, soon, Spain, and the very real non-financial consequences.  Now every grandparent with an Internet connection can alert his friends and family to the disaster that socialists wreak on national economies.

Quite a stunner, eh?

Fruit Flies Like a Banana

Sherry is fond of telling me whenever our Federal government does something that favors large businesses over small that a Progressivist government prefers a few large companies with which to deal.  She's always -- well, almost always -- right, but in such cases she's absolutely right.

It is also true that such companies prefer unionized labor, because they only have to negotiate with one party.

If you don't believe me on that latter point, read this plea from Roger Goodell -- commissioner of the National Football Monopoly... er... League -- for professional football players to be forced not to drop their union.

Some things are inarguable facts: big governments like big companies; big companies like big unions.  I suppose for the same reason that fruit flies like a banana.

Please don't tell me I forgot to say "Time flies like an arrow."  I didn't because it doesn't.  We've gone back to the early 20th century and are reliving the advance of collectivism.

Progressivist Disincentives Hurt the Poor

Please read this analysis of just one of the disincentives built in to a Progressivist dream, in this case ObamaCare. The premiums will be higher on the new policies mandated to cover every person in every health care situation, even after they become sick and haven't been paying premiums.

Lower income people will get subsidies to help pay those new higher health insurance premiums.  Those subsidies will start at 100% of the premium, about $24,000/year for a family of four at zero income, and phase out as income rise to $100,000/year.

This an effective tax rate of 24%. Don't agree? 

Calling All Purple State Birthers (The Disclaimer)

A couple of you have sent me info about the President's birthplace.  If you were thinking of sending me something on the subject, please don't.  I meant what I said about not being willing to go there.  Neither do I want to spend any time following the theories.

People pursuing this are wasting their time until they can challenge his eligibility in the appropriate court, and have lawyers prepared to do it.  My interest begins only when some court agrees to hear their case.

Calling All Purple State Birthers

The surest way for a public figure to get disrespect from the mainstream media today is to say that he thinks that the Awesome O does not meet the constitutional requirements to be President.  I won't go there.  I do think its worth knowing the state of the law on the subject, including how someone's qualifications for the office might be effectively challenged.  A little background goes a long way when you are accosted by someone with an overpowering belief in conspiracy theories, or are forced to listen to Jim Villanucci deal with such people.

The Obfuscator in Chief Speaks

The Awesome Obama (TAO) addressed the nation from George Washington University in DC on Wednesday, ostensibly to deliver his administration's budget counterproposal to Paul Ryan's plan.  I didn't listen and I bet you didn't either.

Reactions from known partisans have mostly been predictable.  Just read through the titles and authors at the morning-after RealClearPolitics.com.  Generally, pundits on the right point out that TAO used the occasion for a partisan attack to obfuscate the complete absence of a plan, while the leftist writers display tingly-leg enthusiasm for the voice of reason and judgement's descent from Olympian heights into the pit as bare-knuckled brawler.  Of course, those descriptions are not inconsistent....

How to Use The Debt Limit Votes (Tea Party On -- Part II)

Here is something you may not have heard about last Friday night's budget deal: Harry Reid agreed to a debate and vote in the Senate on the House-passed bill for repeal of ObamaCare.  That has the potential to drag in enough class-of-2006 Red State Democrat Senators to put the repeal bill on the Awesome O's desk to veto.  How amazing is that?

In case you think that Friday's 2011 budget victory was small, remember that in politics as in war, the goal is to demoralize your enemy so that he no longer has the will to fight.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

If all of the talk of the Impending Government Shutdown -- Ooooo! -- distracted you, you might have missed the developments in Wisconsin, where a State Supreme Court election took on all the significance of an off-year Congressional election.

There, Wisconsin public employee unions, enraged by the duly elected legislature and governor's perfectly legal actions to weaken their collective bargaining stranglehold on Wisconsin government, threw everything they could against a sitting Republican justice to try to elect a Democrat who openly vowed to overturn the legislation.

On Wednesday morning after the election, it looked like their efforts had been successful and the Democrat had won by 200 votes.  But then Thursday came,

Intermanitarian Huventionism and Tother Opics

Sherry and I are staying once again in Washington, DC at the J.W. Marriott Hotel.  We prefer the Pennsylvania Avenue view rooms that overlook Freedom Plaza, with its inlaid stone depiction of L'Enfant's plan for Washington shown here. The view from those rooms include the DC City Hall and the Ronald Reagan Building, complete with its amphitheater where the Capitol Steps perform a satirical political revue every Friday and Saturday night.  This time we're actually tucked into an interior corner of the face of the building, so Reagan building is not visible, but nevertheless, last night we crossed E Street and then Pennsylvania Avenue, and took in the revue.

Most of the skits -- over 70% by Sherry's count -- lampooned the right, and weren't even witty in doing so.  However, one bit they have used again and again over the years had us rolling on the floor laughing hours later.  Known as Lirty Dies, it uses spoonerisms -- reversing the initial consonants of two nearby words in a sentence -- to great effect.

A Letter of Gratitude to Congressman Stevan Pearce

The Honorable Congressman Steven Pearce
The House of Representatives
Washington, DC

Dear Congressman Pearce,

Sherry and I watched the House vote just after midnight last night on HR 1363, providing an extension of the continuing resolution until Friday, April 15.  This morning I looked up the roll call vote here, and found that yours was one of 28 Republican votes against this brief CR. 

We thank you for that vote, and for all your other votes against these CRs.  We agree that these are but timid steps against spending increases that are completely crazy, and we feel that your vote and those of your courageous colleagues are the only thing keeping your leadership's feet to the fire.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Tea Party On

Though you might think the 2011 budget deal pending after Friday night's extension of the continuing resolution indicates that the Tea Party tsunami has subsided after breaking upon Washington, yet in reality it rolls on.

It is true that the proposed deal to cut $38.5B from 2011 appropriations seems modest compared to the $100B rollback of discretionary spending to 2008 levels that the Republican party sought and even tinier in comparison to the $4T expenditure, but is also true that it is probably all that we could have hoped for.  It is also more than 60% of the $61B that the caucus agreed to seek from the Democrat President and Senate.  While that cut in spending is a tiny couple of tenths of a percent, it is nevertheless a cut in spending -- that rarest of things in Washington -- and in fact is the largest in history.

Romney Arrives at Tea Party

Romney got the message from Sherry.  Maybe someone on his staff googled "What Romney ought to say about RomneyCare."

Be sure to read down to this:

Why didn't you ask if this was an experiment, what worked and what didn't and I would have told him, I know, what you're doing, Mr. President, is going to bankrupt us.

You heard it here first!

That may work during the general election if he is the nominee, but during the primary, the question from conservatives will be, "Why so late to the tea party, Mitt?"

Or, "Where were you during the debate on the (Un)Affordable Health (Don't)Care Act?"

Free Trade and Its Importance

A friend wrote me saying that he had gone online after hearing me recommend Club for Growth and joined it.  As you know, Sherry and I believe that until the advent of the Tea Party, the Club was the pointy end of the political spear of economic freedom.  They still are the group most focused on electing strong advocates for that liberty in safe Republican districts during primaries.

But he wanted some clarification on the idea of free trade, one of the Club's basic tenets.  He wrote:

I have thought of free trade as being an agreement between two nations that allows goods made in one country to be exported to the other nation, up to the limits that no impact would be felt by either country's own businesses. In other words, if importing rice would cause economic harm to the receiving country's growers, then limits in the form of restricted goods or quotas would be mutually agreed upon.

I replied at length.

Atlas Shrugged -- the Movie

I bought a Kindle last November, and downloaded Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged onto it.  Last night, about 9:30, I finished it.

I have never been a big fan of Rand's magnum opus, and I have not been converted by this reading.  My concern is mostly that it is too easy to take literally her dramatic device that prosperity depends upon the brilliant few, when, as you know, it depends on economic freedom for all.  However, the allegorical approach makes for a better read, and there never has been a stronger literary advocate for individualism and economic freedom than Ayn Rand. 

A few days ago, at the Club for Growth Winter Economic Conference -- about which more later -- I was privileged to attend a screening of the new movie Atlas Shrugged -- Part I, and to meet the writer and producers.

What Romney Ought to Say on RomneyCare

We returned from the Club for Growth Winter Economic Conference Sunday.  At breakfast yesterday morning I whined about the Republican Presidential candidates we had seen, and especially about Mitt Romney.

I said to Sherry, "How can he continue to defend RomneyCare?  Though it's true that a state is on sounder ground regulating intrastate economic activity than the Federal government is, he'll never be able to attack ObamaCare until he repudiates his Massachusetts program.  He must be worried about looking like he's waffled.  Again."

Bam!  Her steel trap mind slammed shut on the right argument again.  She said "Romney ought to say that the states are indeed laboratories for democracy, and now that his experiment has failed in Massachusetts, it's clear it won't work for the nation, so we must repeal it."

Now, why couldn't I think of that?

Of course, he didn't say it during the dabate before passage, either....

Rights -- A Working Definition

Sherry and I went to the NM Progressivist's "Oxford Style Debate" in Santa Fe tonight.  The debate topic, "Cut Education and Public Services or Raise Revenues" was poorly framed, since it left the affirmative a choice.   "The State of New Mexico should raise taxes rather than cut spending," would have been better, but the debaters certainly didn't mind, and their arguments would have fit my restatement just as well.

(Stay with me, I'll get to the definition of Rights... eventually.

Oxford Style Debate: Raise Taxes or Cut Services

For New Mexico, this issue was settled last fall with the election of Susana Martinez and enough Republicans to the State House of Representatives to uphold her veto.  She will veto any tax increases, and that will be that.  But for the looter/planners who live and breathe the leftist atmosphere in Santa Fe, there is need to gather together and vote for their position in front of the cameras.

So below the jump is your chance to foil their dastardly plan of self-gratification.  Go.  Vote your heart and mind.

There will be a vote.  Pack the house.  Tell everybody you know to go and to get there early.

Do it now.  Forward this to everyone in New Mexico you can.

Mitch is The Man

Mitch Daniels is the Republican Governor of Indiana, and a former member of the Bush 42 Administration.  As a governor, and especially as a governor who has shrunk his State government and avoided tax increases in this difficult economy, he has been mentioned as a potential Presidential candidate.

He was invited to address the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) this last weekend. CPAC is put on by the American Conservative Union, and is the biggest conservative wingding of all.

Here you will find the video of the first ten minutes of his speech, and here, the full text.

Nails in the Coffin of Statist Ideas

John Stossel and Robert Samuelson just can't miss.  They keep swinging those big economic freedom hammers and keep hitting those crazy liberty nails right square on their heads, fastening ever tighter the coffin lid on the Obama's preferred state-planned economy.

Here Stossel explains prices as information and their ability to enable spontaneous economic organization.  In a free market, that is.

And here Samuelson explains just how economically dead high speed rail schemes are. 

I really like this paragraph:

Whose Constitution is It?

Ruth Marcus is "bristling" at conservatives who insist that the Constitution has been hijacked by the left and who are out to take it back.  She says " Hey. It's my constitution, too!"

She is leg-tingling proud of Obama for offering up morality -- presumably his and hers -- as the proper authority for government action.  She quotes him as saying

No Newt is Good Newt

Newt Gingrich is on the stump seeking the Republican Party nomination for President -- in all probability, at least.  That's why he was in Iowa touting the green benefits of the heavily subsidized ethanol production industry, though those benefits mostly accrue to that industry itself, and, of course, to its touts like Newt.

He took a swipe at the Wall Street Journal editorial board for pointing out the illogic of the subsidies, and look what he got in return.

It is my belief that we can do much better than Newt and my hope that we will.

The Rule of Law and Individual Liberty

High toned discussions of the American legal system almost always hinge on the phrase "the rule of law."  Lawyers wield the phrase like a cudgel.  But what does it mean?

Generally we accept it to mean that the rule of law protects men from rule by the whims of other men.  How exactly does that work?

Conservative Uses for the New Commerce Clause

Congressional Democrats, Obama, and his Justice Department claim to find in the Constitution's commerce clause the authorization to force people to engage in commercial actions like buying health insurance the majority deems to benefit others.  Never mind, they say, that the far-reaching consequences of this New Commerce Clause would include completely negating all constitutional restrictions on the powers of the Federal government.

However, before conservatives take up pitchforks to attack that constitutional interpretation, and before liberals take to the barricades to defend it, both should consider how it might be used against its defenders.

How then might a conservative majority wield such a power to force commercial behavior they think right and proper?  Here are

The Top Ten Conservative Uses for the New Commerce Clause

State of the Union Addresses

If you didn't listen to Paul Ryan's State of the Union address... er... Republican response, I encourage you to watch the video here -- it is well worth your time at just under 11 minutes -- or read the transcript here.  It is perhaps the most honest and straightforward policy address you will ever be privileged to hear or read.

Michelle Bachman's Tea Party Express response was more theatrical but truthful and informative.  Her video is here -- just under 7 minutes -- and her transcript here.

The Prince of Progressivism's address, touting every crazy government patronage scheme the leftists didn't get into the first two years of running the economy into the ground -- a  63 minute video here replete with Joe Biden mugging for the camera and atmospheric references to Sputnik -- can and should be ignored.

Wimpy Words Won't Win

Tony Blankley pokes the Republican establishment again here, taking on the notion -- lately offered by the Wall Street Journal itself here -- that all the Republican House can do is frame the 2012 issues battle, and that they should not attempt any cuts to the deficit-driving entitlements of Medicare and Social Security.

He recommends that Republicans, to use Admiral Lord Nelson's phrase, "Go right at 'em."   Nelson, you surely know, divided his smaller fleet and crossed the Spanish and French line to decisive effect at the Battle of Trafalgar, ensuring a victory that ushered in a century of naval supremacy for Britain.

The Second Great Lie

Whenever a bond issue comes up for a vote, someone in favor of the spending is likely to say "Vote for this.  Your taxes won't go up."  It's the second great lie of political discourse.

A fiscal conservative should always reply, "That's just plain wrong.  Taxes will be higher if this bond issue passes than if it does not.  And that's all that matters."

Is This the End of the World?

Here is a piece from The New Republic on why the media botched the story on the Tucson shootings.

There's a sentence I bet you never thought you'd read from me.  I certainly never expected to write favorably about any story from The New Republic, and particularly not one about the media botching a story by following the leftist meme.  Nevertheless, there it is.

What's the world coming to?

Sheriff Bart Richardson

For the last couple of weeks as New Mexico governor and publicity hound Billy (The Scuzzball) Richardson's term wound down toward midnight December 31, the nation hung on every press release as he considered a pardon for Henry (Billy the Kid) McCarty .

Early on the morning of the last day of his term, The Scuzzball went on Good Morning America to announce his decision -- drum roll please! -- to NOT do it.

All in all, his ploy reminds me of the escape scene in Blazing Saddles.  Something like "Next man makes a move to ignore me and the Governor GETS it...."

Robber Bar... Er... Bureaucrats

Josh Barro and E.J. McMahon point out in this NY Post article that state and local pension benefits are generally twice as large as private sector pension benefits. 

The productive loss to the economy caused by these high benefits is best exemplified by the whiny response from government union members: "I wouldn't have taken this job if I hadn't been promised that generous retirement."

By enticing people into the government and out of the private sector we lose any capacity their labor might have to meet the individual needs and desires of consumers, however modest that might be!

Of course, we also gain the interference with the private sector of too many regulators with too much power and too much time on their hands.  After all, what else have they to do except perhaps while away the time till retirement, calculating and recalculating their benefits and ways to increase them.