The jobless rate is currently at 10% (or higher if you count the discouraged), so clearly we need a little government job promotion, right? Barack Obama thinks so, and is set to unveil his latest “plan.” But not so fast! Haven’t we done this before?
This will be the third time government has acted to “create jobs” since the beginning of 2008. Why should we believe it will be any more successful now than it has been in the past?
In early 2008, President Bush teamed up with Nancy Pelosi to pass a $150 billion (then considered a lot of money) stimulus package. This “booster shot” to the economy, consisting primarily of rebates to individual taxpayers, was supposed to head off recession. At the time, the unemployment rate was under 5%.
A year later, Pelosi found herself with a new dancing partner in Barack Obama. President Obama’s subsequent stimulus package dwarfed that of President Bush. Passed when the unemployment rate was not yet 8%, it was promised that the $800 billion stimulus would hold joblessness below a peak of 9%. This package also failed, and today the unemployment rate is in double digits.
Leave it to government to insist we continue down a path with such a sterling record of failure. It is time to abandon the Krugman-championed policies of Keynesian economics. Government cannot create jobs by taking money out of the economy, funneling it through a wasteful bureaucracy, then directing it to the most politically connected and favored industries. No economy has ever been successfully powered by such a model.
The best thing Democrats can do is to stop threatening to destroy so many industries via regulation and government control. This would reduce the uncertainty hampering investment. If they combined that by lowering the rates of the most destructive taxes, such as the corporate and capital gains taxes, an improved job market would follow. Otherwise, we can continue banging our collective heads against the wall while insanely expecting an outcome other than pain.
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An interesting perspective on different presidents (and congresses) and their contributions to the national debt:
Hat tip: Econosseur
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The primary benefit of a free market system is that it rewards companies that are capable of meeting our needs and demands, while punishing those that do not. Economist Joseph Schumpeter famously referred to this process as “creative destruction.”
The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler is evidence of the process in action. As Greg Mankiw recently noted on his blog, the 2009 Consumer Report ranked Chrysler dead last, recommending zero percent of tested cars for purchase. General Motors came in next to last, with 17% recommended. At the top was Honda with a score of 95%.
Standing in the way of this capitalist process was the administration’s of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Obama in particular has above and beyond in his counterproductive effort to prevent GM and Chrysler from facing the consequences of producing shoddy products. He opened the corporate welfare spigot in a flawed effort to save the floundering companies, but to no avail. Like the grim reaper, the bankruptcy of capitalism knows when the time has come for a business to be put to rest, either to be reborn again as a new company (even if it’s under the same name), or for good.
Democrats who pushed for a passage of corporate welfare bills to prop up the automakers portrayed bankruptcy as an unacceptable course. Gov. Rendell flat out called it “a disaster to put them in Chapter 11.” Obama seemed to share this aversion to bankruptcy when he asserted a need to “figure out ways to put the pressure on the automakers the way a bankruptcy court would. Demand accountability, demand serious change, but do so in a way allows them to keep the factory doors open.” Yet despite the efforts of Obama, the GM and Chrysler of yesterday that ranked at the bottom of the 2009 Consumer Report will finally be laid to rest. Having finally realized that the best way to “put pressure on the automakers the way a bankruptcy court would” is to let an actual bankruptcy court do it, Obama should now get out of the way and let the capitalist process make the ulitmate decision on the survival of their new incarnations as well.
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The subject of torture is suddenly unavoidable. I suspect this is a deliberate effort to distract from poor economic news and the recent tea party backlash against big government. Be that as it may, the narrative needs to be addressed.
America, and Americans by and large, do not believe in torture. This has always been true, and it’s no more true today than it was in the Bush administration. Any government that seeks to avoid torture must, by necessity, define just what torture is. The Bush administration sought to do this. Now the Obama administration, not happy with the prior definition, seeks to adopt its own. It’s to be expected that, when a new party comes into power, issues such as this will be readdressed and new positions taken. But Obama is going one step further. Not only does he find the Bush definition wrong, he wants to label it criminal.
This is a frightening development for anyone who supports our democratic system. The United States has enjoyed a long track record of peaceful transitions that most of the world can only dream about. A large part of the reason for this is that we do not seek to criminalize political differences. When your average Latin American military junta assumes power, the first order of action is to jail everyone in power previously. The United States is better than that. It used to be, anyway.
Barack Obama is willing to leave open the possibility that Bush administration officials may be tried for drawing a line in a slightly different place than Obama draws it. Not, mind you, for wantonly and maliciously running torture dungeons where any and all practices were acceptable, but for approving a single tactic which Obama did not like, and which is routinely conducted on our own soldiers for training. Peaceful democracies are not supposed to handle complicated legal and moral issues by jailing those who take opposing positions. If Obama wants to elevate the game to that level, he should keep in mind that his entire economic agenda is flagrantly unconstitutional; whereas if he has his way on waterboarding, we might just have to start calling it criminal as well.
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Mark Steyn notes how some in the leftmedia are still stuck on stupid when it comes to George W. Bush:
In turbulent times, it’s good to know some things never change. After a week in which President Obama thanked himself for inviting him to the White House, compared AIG executives to suicide bombers, and did the first Presidential retard joke on national TV, I was impressed to find that Slate is bravely keeping up its Bushism Of The Day feature.
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President Obama has, to much liberal fanfare, undone the Bush era decision not to prohibit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He then, with a straight face, attacked Bush for putting politics ahead of science.
It’s laughable that someone could seriously claim that politics has no place in science when he just finished using a political act to influence science. Yes, Bush made a political decision regarding science when he decided not to fund embryonic stem cell research (and he also made a moral decision – an issue which Obama and the left wants to pretend doesn’t exist). But Obama is just as political when he decides to fund it as Bush was when he decided not to.
Government is inherently political. If politicians are deciding what scientific endeavours deserve funds, those decisions will inevitably be political. Federal funding is what brings politics into science. The only way to truly remove politics from science would be to remove government from science. Every indication is that Obama wants to do the opposite. He has all kinds of pet projects that he – based on his ideology – thinks are worthy, from embryonic stem cells to “green energy” and global warming research. He wants to take more money from the private sector, thus diminishing the capital it has to allocate to research, and decide himself where it should go. That won’t remove the influence of politics from science, it will enhance it.
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Asked by the New York Times if he was a socialist, President Obama responded with a simple statement that, “the answer would be no.” But apparently the question gnawed at him so much he had to call later and add to the record.
…“It wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks,” Mr. Obama said. “And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement, the prescription drug plan, without a source of funding.”
He added, “We’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles, and some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same.”
…But his budget plan prompted criticism suggesting that he was intent on undoing the dominance of conservative ideas that started under Ronald Reagan, and that he had revealed himself as a free-spending liberal.
Mr. Obama pushed back against that characterization in the phone call and, in the process, issued one of the sharpest critiques that he has directed toward the Bush administration.
“By the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system,” he said, adding, “The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.”
Ignoring the discredited account of the crisis that Obama is pushing in the last paragraph there, his statement is quite revealing. The best defense he can come up with to explain why he’s not a socialist isn’t a philosophical defense of freedom, liberty or markets – which we would expect if Obama was the great intellectual his faithful proclaim – but a red herring. All he had to offer was: “Bush did it too!”
What he’s really done here is to point out what many of us have been saying for years: Bush is not a principled conservative. The biggest thing that does is show how much the left lied for 8 years. Now, all of a sudden, they remember that he pushed a “massive new entitlement,” something a real conservative wouldn’t do. We are once again reminded that the truth is just whatever view the left finds most useful at the moment.
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I was too tired to do a write-up after the last two days of the conference, so I’ll recap my impressions of them both now.
Day 2
Although there were a number of good speeches, the star of day 2 was Newt Gingrich. Like many speakers, Newt quickly picked on Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” remark. Unlike others, however, he flipped it completely around on Holder and challenged him to a dialogue on cowardice in Detroit, where “bad government, bad politicians, bad bureaucracy, [and] bad ideas” have driven the city into the ground. He adds that “we should be committed to eliminating bad government, bad bureaucracy and bad politics to liberate the people of Detroit.”
Newt went on to argue that the democrats actually think we’re “just plain dumb.” As examples he cites Obama’s pledge to allow no earmarks when he was about to sign a bill with 8,000, Obama’s attack on CEO’s who use private planes while Pelosi flies around privately thanks to U.S. taxpayers, and finally, Obama’s claim that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making $250,000 while at the same time making clear he is for an energy tax which, since everyone uses energy, would significantly raise taxes on people making less than $250,000.
He also laid appropriate blame on the last minute policies of the Bush administration and talked of an Obama-Bush economic continuity that cannot work. He then further criticized Obama’s desire to punish companies for taking jobs out of America instead of rewarding companies for bringing jobs in. There was plenty more in the speech than I touched on here, so you can see it for yourself at Newt.org.
Day 2 also saw good speeches from Ron Paul, Wayne LaPierre and Mitt Romney. Ron Paul (speech available here) received a pretty positive reception, including on issues which he might not have in the past. His call to change our foreign policy is clearly getting wider consideration within the conservative movement. While I don’t agree with the degree to which he’d have us retreat from the world stage, I think it’s an important realization that we simply cannot afford to do again what we did in Iraq, regardless of whether one thinks it was necessary (or we were justified in believing so based on the evidence) or not. The movement, myself included, got a bit too caught up in Wilsonian idealism in response to 9/11. The goal’s of the Bush Doctrine are admirable and would improve our security, but spreading democracy is not as simple as removing a dictator. Democratic government first requires democratic culture, and that has to come from within. Open economic and cultural trade and soft power need to be used in all but the most extreme circumstances.
I was also glad that Ron Paul clarified that he does not want to abolish the Fed entirely, but thinks it needs serious reform. He cited a bill recently introduced to audit the Fed, which got widespread applause. Clearly the institution needs reform. The idea that we can count on technocrats at the Fed to tweak interests rates and perfectly balance between the triple threats of unemployment, inflation and speculative bubbles is simply no longer credible. We need to rethink the government role regarding the money supply, and reforming the secretive nature of the Fed is a necessary first step.
Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the NRA, offered a stern warning against the Obama administration’s plans for gun rights. Following the recent and fallacious comments by Eric Holder attributing Mexico’s problems to our gun freedoms, he portrayed the administration as poised to strike against gun owners. It was highly effective and, if the administration pursues a reckless gun grabbing agenda, it is likely that the NRA could return as a potent political force in the next election. Guns motivate the right, and Obama would be wise to remember this.
Mitt Romney’s speech was also well received. He said a lot of right things, but it all just felt like a testing ground for potential campaign lines. Still, he had a few memorable lines. Perhaps my favorite was when he said that “passing on that kind of debt to our children is not only fiscally irresponsible, it is morally wrong.” He also defended his support of TARP, saying “I believe that it was necessary to prevent a cascade of bank collapses.” I’m not convinced that is true, but it’s more plausible than any justification given by proponents of the other big spending initiatives.
He also won the straw poll with 20%. Following him was Bobby Jindal (14%), Ron Paul (13%), Sarah Palin (13%) and Newt Gingrich (10%). I did not catch the speeches of John Cornyn or Jim DeMint , and there were other good ones I have not mentioned.
Day 3
Day 3 saw a number of terrific speeches and presentations. In addition to the expected headliners, there were a few surprises, for me, in day 3. Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) gave an impassioned speech on why energy taxes are an attack on the poor. He got everyone fired up and received a grateful ovation from a crowd that was clearly bored by the previous presentation. Ward Connerly followed with a strong but calm speech on ending racial preferences.
The next two presenters were a big thrill. Out to talk about their recent film (Not Evil, Just Wrong) on how the environmentalists agenda destroys lives, Irish couple Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer mixed in various clips with the story of how they converted from European leftists to free marketeers – or “recovering Europeans,” as they called themselves. They are doing exactly the kind of works conservatives need to support to help counter the powerful hollywood propaganda machine of the left. I missed the speeches of Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty and Ann Coulter.
Of course, the main attraction of the day was none other than the Maha Rushie himself, Rush Limbaugh. For hours leading up to his speech, you could feel the anticipation grow in the crowd, finally erupting when he came on stage to his signature introduction music. The extemporaneous speech (Rush made a point of highlighting that he had no teleprompter or script) was broadcast live on Fox, C-SPAN and CNN, and Rush made light of this fact numerous times by referencing it as his “first address to the nation.”
In the first part of the speech, Rush gave an impassioned explanation of conservative principles. Conservatism wants people to succeed and all obstacles that stand in the way of success to fail. He repeatedly highlighted the difference between the left’s agenda of punishing success in the name of equality of outcomes, and the conservative ideas of liberty and opportunity. Philosophy, not narrow debates over process and even policy, are how he says conservatives must sell themselves. As usual, Rush is right. I could probably say a lot more about the speech, but I highly suggest you watch it for yourself. It is an hour and a half long (an hour longer than his original half-hour scheduling), but it’s worth it. You can find the transcript and links to video on Rush’s site.
Over the course of the entire convention, some issues stood out more than others. The most notable observation is that domestic issues were prominent. There was still a consensus that the jihadist threat is real and we must remain vigilant, but there was some disagreements over the nature foreign policy should take, and it was more than just Ron Paul on the side of less interventionism. This is a healthy debate to be having.
Domestically the most important issues included education, health care, unions and “card check,” and the free speech (fairness doctrine). On education the view was unanimous: we need school choice. On health care the main theme was that we cannot allow universal health care to happen. Ditto on card check and the fairness doctrine.
All in all I’d say the future of the conservative movement is bright. People were excited about the future as they could see conservatism returning to it’s roots of limited government and personal responsibility. The first step to ending the era of big government was ending the idea of big government conservatism, and I’d say CPAC all but completed that task.
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If one were to believe the conventional wisdom espoused in the media, the conservatives are demoralized after that election and that conservatism itself is dead, then one would expect a conservative conference to be lightly attended and full of sulking zombies. The conventional wisdom is wrong. CPAC 2009 is the biggest ever. Let me say that again: CPAC 2009 has more registered participants than any previous conference.
Moving on to the substance of the conference, day one featured a number of impressive speeches. Right off the bat, Paul Ryan, one of the future stars of the republican party, got things started with a speech impressive in both substance and style. The policy ideas he discussed, such as scraping our “byzantine tax code,” were from his Roadmap for America’s Future.
John Bolton followed in his usual direct and humorous style. He had some criticisms for the Bush administration’s foreign policy, suggesting that they allowed North Korea to develop their weapons programs unhindered, and also attempted to block Israeli action against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2007. Criticism of the Bush administration continued from many other speakers throughout the night. Someone referred to him as a “pseudo-socialist,” though I don’t remember who. The most humorous was Tucker Carlson’s plea to find a conservative leader who can actually articulate conservatism. He described watching a Bush speech as watching a drunk try to cross an icy road, all the while waiting for him to slip on a prepositional phrase and eat it (summarizing). More seriously, he pointed out that after 8 year’s of Clinton’s articulate lies, it was understandable to conclude that presentation didn’t matter over principles (non-existent as Bush’s turned out to be).
The day’s best speech belonged to Mike Pence. After Ryan’s brilliant opening, I wasn’t expecting anyone to top it. Pence did. He has an impressive delivering style to go with an unimpeachably conservative message. His commanding speech was far better than anything John McCain delivered in his entire campaign, and the crowd responded with numerous stnading ovations, something which other speakers were lucky to get only when they came and left.
After the next day or two of the conference, I’ll discuss some the important themes I’ve noticed.
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The New York Times reports on the changing nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq. As America pulls back and Iraqis take on more responsibility, the dynamics and nature of the relationship necessary changes. This is all well and good. But wouldn’t you expect on article such as this to mention, at least once, the negotiated security arrangement completed by Bush which began our victorious withdrawal? Or would that contradict too many years of hysterical reporting and anti-Bush screeds?
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
