Author Archives: Jess Jones

It’s Time for Democrats to Vote for Romney

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New York City voted for Rudy Giuliani in 1993. Since then, a city that voted for Obama by a 4 to 1 margin in 2008 has been consistently electing Republican mayors.  Not only did Mr. Giuliani win in a spectacularly hostile environment for the GOP, but he often times enjoyed approval ratings north of 70% during his time in office.   How desperate did the democratic electorate have to be to not only elect a red candidate, but LOVE him for two terms?
Very desperate.   Prior to Giuliani’s reign, New York City was one of the most dangerous cities in the US.  Years of liberal public employee and policing policies had allowed the city to descend into an environment so dirty and dangerous that even a lawless developing nation would find it embarrassing.  Giuliani made tough decisions no democrat would ever find acceptable, and, in very short time, completely turned the city around.  Everyone benefited because of his tough decisions.  Under his watch, the murder rate in the African-American community fell by over 70%, and the city gained status as one of the safest in the nation.

Now, close to twenty years after he took office and cleaned house, the responsible adult supervision has put the NYC on solid footing and the city is ready to turn back over to the Democratic party.  Democrats are now on much better position to institute the programs they have been itching to enact, and it will be some time before the city returns to a state that requires responsible oversight again.

By no means is New York City the only place where this scenario has played out.  Heavily democratic cities and states all over the nation drive their budgets and crime-rates into the red zone with heavy spending and liberal programs.  At some point, the populace tires of living in debt and squalor and asks for an adult to come in and make the tough decisions needed to put them on solid footing again.  The mere election of a Republican in these places often gives the political mandate the adult savior needs to actually make changes.

New Jersey is another great example of a state that needed adult supervision in the capitol building.  The same Garden State that elected Obama by an 18% margin asked Christie to help them manage a fiscal and managerial mess.  Christie made the tough decisions and put the state back in the black.  Now, his state is on strong enough footing to talk about granting an across the board income tax cut.

Are Giuliani and Christie anomalies?  Are they just cherry-picked examples used by a right-leaning author?  To answer that, look at three more very recent examples: Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, and Indiana.  All four states just elected Republican governors and have the exact same story.   Not only have the budgets been turned around in most of those states without tax hikes, but the unemployment rates are lower than the US average.

It is also important to study what happens when states and cities don’t ask for adult supervision and try to solve their problems with even more government largess.  Look no further than the state of Illinois and its flagship city Chicago.  In Illinois, despite tax hikes, the debt continues to expand at a seemingly exponential rate.  Businesses are moving out of the increasingly hostile environment to places like… Indiana.  Chicago has similar budget problems and violence that continues to get worse under Mayor Emmanuel.   It is impossible to afford new Democratic programs when the current ones are already breaking the bank.

Perhaps the best example of a state without adult supervision is California.  The state has bled over 4 million people in the past ten years to free market places like Texas and Nevada.  Though they tried to bring in adult supervision by electing Governor Schwarzenegger, but failed to give him the mandate to make the budget cuts and management changes they needed.  The state was given back to Brown, who is doubling down on the policies that got them into the current mess.   Expect more worker exodus and severe austerity measures in California’s future.

The US is in a similar situation to California.  The country is sinking under $16 trillion of debt and another $60 trillion of unfunded entitlement liabilities.  We are a few interest rate hikes away from having to institute draconian austerity measures that will eviscerate the entitlement programs that Democrats hold dear.   The kids have had the checkbook (that includes big-government Bush) for too long and we are at a crisis point that calls for adult supervision.  If Democrats want a chance at continuing liberal programs and entitlements, they will have to do the same thing they do when things go to hell in a hand basket in their own cities and states: bring in the adult.

Romney has proven himself time and again to be the exact kind of “adult” the country needs.  Democrats cried out for his supervision in Massachusetts, where he faced a $ 3 billion deficit and the lowest job growth rate in the nation when he took office.  By the time he handed the state over to the Democrats, the budget was running $600 – $700 million surpluses and the state had an unemployment rate of 4.6% (down from 5.6%).

So why are Democrats desperately clinging to Obama? The financial sector is frozen under regulation, companies are holding on to over $2 Trillion of cash that will go overseas in the face of higher regulation and taxes, and the unemployment rate has only decreased to a nasty 8.1% because millions have left the work force.  Most importantly, we are facing a debt crisis that everyone agrees will crush all government programs for years to come.  Romney is a proven moderate who spent four years in Massachusetts compromising with Democrats and successfully solving these exact situations.

There is no real need for Democrats to worry about anything but the draconian fiscal hole we will be in after another four years of Obama.  The choice isn’t a Reaganesque paradigm shift of the American spirit. Romney will not derail the entitlement society path that LBJ firmly set us on.  Single mothers and entitled society will continue to out-breed those who are focused on working for a living.  Have no fear, Democrats will win in end.  Romney will just buy us more years to keep the entitlement society solvent and maybe even allow Democrats to add a few more programs before passing the crisis to the next generation.

Worst Magic Trick of All Time?

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What do Jack Welch, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and the US labor department all have in common?  They’ve all known for months that the unemployment rate would be just under 8% the month before the election…

Good magic tricks are both unpredictable and subtle.  The 7.8% number put out by the US Labor department for September was neither. Every major economist at every bank and independent group measured the unemployment rate to be between 8.1% and 8.2% for the month of September.  Most economists predicted the employment gains correctly at around 120,000 for the month.  The “establishment” employment numbers confirmed their prediction at 114,00.  Since that number doesn’t keep up with the monthly population growth contribution to employment of 150,000, economists predicted that the unemployment rate would edge up from about 8.1% to approximately 8.2%…

But wait! What is this behind your ear Uncle Sam? Oh, look at them apples – over 800,000 new jobs magically appeared in the “household” indicator!  No one saw that one coming (except for every conservative “conspiracy theorist” for the past six months)!

If Obama’s little magic trick doesn’t make you feel like a embarrassed parent quietly texting your spouse that you will NEVER HIRE BOZO THE EX-CON CLOWN MAGICIAN AGAIN for your child’s birthday party, then you are obviously the child.  The mastoid process behind your ear is also a winning penny slot machine.  Congratulations.

How a “Busy” Obama Could Have Been Better Prepared for the Debate

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Last night’s debate inspired total panic on the left.  For a campaign whose motto is “Forward”, there was enough political side-stepping in the post-debate review on the left to make viewers wonder if they had accidentally tuned into the Discovery special on Christmas Island’s crab mating migration.  Probably the best sour grapes line of the evening was that the president didn’t have as much time to prepare, on account of being president and all…

When the tears of sympathy stopped flowing, I got to thinking about what Obama might have done to get ready for the debate.  Where in Obama’s 24/7 schedule of managing the free world and turning around the Great Recession could he have possibly found time to prepare for the most important debate of his presidency?  Then it hit me… a crazy idea that would involve some serious soul-searching sacrifice for Obama.  What if, bear with me now, Obama had spent 33% of his golf time playing with congressional Republicans?

Historic Golf Course Multitaskers

President Obama has played 104 rounds of golf since he took office by the last count.  The president is a notoriously slow golfer and takes around 4.5 hours per round of golf.  That means that he has golfed for approximately 468 hours since taking office.  Given that a normal work week is 40 hours, that means that Obama has spent about 11.5 weeks of his presidency chasing around the dimpled ball.  That averages out to just over three weeks a year spent on the golf course (in addition to one month of vacation).  With the one notable exception of the “golf summit” round with House Speaker Boehner, most of Obama’s three golf weeks per year are spent with celebrities and advisors who spend the day trying to shank drives and tell the President how great he is.  “Sacrificing” just one of those weeks to discussing the economy with House and Senate Republicans while playing golf might have helped the President prepare for someone actually disagreeing with him off teleprompter.  It could have provided 27 days of prep time for the debate in addition to the 3 days he spent in Vegas prepping against debate legend John Kerry.

There would have been other benefits to taking a multitasking businessman approach to golf and conducting a little business 33% of the time he was on the golf course.  It might have been possible to convince at least one of your new golfing buddies to have voted for any of his major legislation like Obamacare or Dodd-Frank.  That would have provided some shred of evidence for the public that President Obama isn’t the most divisive partisan president in our nation’s history.  It might have also been possible that one of those golf buddies could have convinced Obama to support Simpson-Bowles, which would have provided a great bit of evidence that the president isn’t the most divisive partisan president in our nation’s history.  Finally, the golf outings would have provided photo evidence and talking points that Obama was constantly trying to work out deals with the congressional Republicans… and not the most decisive partisan president in our nation’s history.

Obama Took My Advice

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There is nothing quite a satisfying as validation of a great idea.  A few days ago, I posted advice for the Romney campaign about how to take over the dialogue with 30min televised segments explaining both the failure of the Obama policies and how Romney would do it better…  A friend of mine in the media said that the idea was good, but it would have to be broken down into 3-4min segments that the average viewer attention-span can handle.

Looks like the campaign loved my idea and ran with it, the Obama campaign that is…

Obama & Co did their homework. It turns out some of the American public isn’t as vapid and focused on the Jersey Shore as certain campaign managers may think.  The undecideds are craving a solid explanation of where we stand and how either of the candidates hopes to get us out of this mess. Unfortunately, the side that has kept us in this mess got the idea first.  Hopefully, the rapid response team in the Romney camp catches on and follows their lead…

Good Video on Media Bias…

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No one can honestly dispute that the majority of the main stream press leans pretty hard left.  There are some notable exceptions such as Foxnews or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, but the majority are shills for the Democratic party.

Ten years ago in my grad student days at Columbia, I dated a woman who was attending the Pulitzer School of Journalism.  She described the environment at the journalism school as very hard left.  Though a self-labeled liberal Democrat, she said she felt like a right-winger during class discussions about politics.  She was unaware of any Republicans attending the school….

Indeed, polls among journalists show that the political skew is overwhelmingly left.  This is by no means a new phenomenon and for years it has been something that political candidates have had to plan for.  However, this election cycle has been something special.  For the first time, journalists are going a step beyond bias and are now actively abdicating their roles as news reporters if it helps Obama.  Here are some examples of “missed” reports that would end Republican presidencies:

  • Obama chooses The View over world leaders at the UN while our embassies burn
  • Bombing citizens with drones and re-labeling them as combatants to keep your numbers clean
  • Openly ignoring your own intelligence reports to publicly blame terrorist attacks on obscure youtube videos

It really is a dangerous line that the American press has crossed.  Former Democratic pollster and strategist Pat Caddell has a rant about it that is worth watching in its entirety:

America’s Recession-Busting Record: A Non-Partisan History

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Perhaps the most studied aspect of economics is the “boom and bust” cycle of a free-market economy.  The Left will claim that the unhealthy oscillation of the economy is due to an unpredictable market place where under-regulated speculators of various types (real estate, stocks, currency, etc) create a bubble of false wealth that eventually pops.  The ensuing recession that occurs post-pop leads to unemployment and wide-spread misery disproportionately shouldered by the middle and lower classes.  The Left claims that the only way to avoid such catastrophes is to regulate the irresponsible risk-takers and revive the economy with spending and stabilizing regulations.

The Right has a different take what causes the boom-bust cycle.  As per the free-market crowd, economic booms and busts tend to be the result of government meddling in an otherwise rational system.  Government regulation, federal reserve currency policies, and other market distortions create the bubbles and then retard the recoveries.  From the Right’s perspective, recoveries can only happen when the market-distorting government interventions are removed and marginal tax rates are lowered.

So, who is correct? Both sides can line up impressive lists of Nobel Laureates to make their case.  To say that the debates can get complicated and tedious to follow is an understatement. Rather than get mired in esoteric theory, let’s take a look at how each side fared in the history books.  Below I have listed the three most interventionist presidents and the three most free-market presidents of the last 100 years.  The measure interventionist vs free-market was determined by a mix of marginal tax adjustments and regulations enacted under their presidencies.  The results would be surprising to any Republican or Democrat.

The Interventionists:

1. Herbert Hoover (Republican)

The single greatest act of revisionist history in the world of economics was to call President Hoover a symbol of laissez-faire capitalism. Hoover signed the notorious Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, which raised US tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.  The act and retaliation to it by other countries was said to have reduced US imports and exports by over half.  Many argue that it is one of the primary causes of the great depression after the federal reserves wild expansion of money supply and credit (sound familiar?).  To make up for the lost market, Hoover signed in massive subsidies to farms and business, increasing government’s share of GDP by over a third. Late in his first (and only) term, President Hoover enacted another interventionist policy: The Revenue Act of 1932.  The act enacted the largest peacetime tax hike in US history. The income tax was raised from 24% to 63% in the upper bracket. The interventions of Hoover were so egregious, that then candidate Franklin Roosevelt criticized him for overspending, interfering with trade, and putting millions on the government dole.  FDR’s running mate, John Garner said Hoover was, “leading the country down the road to socialism”.  The supposed symbol of free market capitalism lost the election because he was pegged as a socialist by FDR.

2. Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)

After running against Hoover’s failed interventionist policies, FDR would go on to use the crisis to enact many more interventions into the US economy.  FDR had even given election promises including a balanced budget, return to the gold standard, and a 25% reduction in spending.  In his first three years, government expenditures rose by over 80%. Over his tenure the income tax would climb from 63% to over 94% in the upper bracket.  The corporate tax rate was raised from 13.5% to 40%, and the capital gains tax rose from 12.5% to 39% in 1937 and then was lowered to 25% by 1942.  Quite possibly the most interventionist policy of his presidency was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933.  The NIRA put most manufacturing industries under government control and regulated what prices goods and where they could be sold.  It was fascism in its purest form (see definition of economic fascism here), and lasted until the Supreme Court struck it down as such in 1935 (the only reason FDR is in second place).  FDR also enacted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 1935 with the Wagner act which took labor disputes out of the courts and put them under the federal government.  Union membership skyrocketed on the heels of the act.  There were many more acts and spending programs enacted throughout FDR’s four terms.

3. Barack Obama (Democrat)

President Obama has enacted sweeping regulations of the economy during and in the wake of the Great Recession.  A combination of massive regulations and planned tax hikes put him in third place behind FDR & Hoover for most interventionist president of the last 100 years.  In the wake of the credit-induced recession of 2008/9, president Obama promised to hike income taxes from 35% to 39.6% (+.9% medicare tax).  The capital gains tax rate would be raised from 15% to 20% (+3.8% medicare tax) and the dividend tax will rise from 15% to 43.4%.  Medical device companies will see a 2.3% tax on revenues, which translates to about a 15% tax increase on profits (35% corporate rate raising to approximately 50%).  From a regulatory perspective, President Obama enacted the Dodd-Frank bill, which controls how credit is issued in the United States and gives new capital requirements.  The act has effectively halted small business loans and slowed the non-subprime mortgage market as banks try to interpret the new mountain of red tape (see Economist article here).  President Obama passed a massive intervention of 1/6th of the US economy with the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (AKA Obamacare).  The bill will effectively control the health insurance industry and what services/technologies will be compensated by Medicare/Medicaid.  In addition to sweeping regulations and tax hikes, Obama maintained the extremely high (and market distorting) spending pace of President George W. Bush’s last year throughout his presidency.

The Free-Market Presidents:

1. Ronald Reagan (Republican)

President Reagan presided over the largest tax cuts in US history and substantial de-regulation of the economy.  Over his tenure, the top income tax rate decreased from 70% to 28%, the corporate tax rate decreased from 46% to 34%, and the capital gains rate fell from 28% to 20% (and then came back up to 28% by 1987).  Reagan issued an executive order in 1981 that required that regulatory agencies had to prove that the potential benefits of their regulations would outweigh the potential costs before the regulation could be enacted.  He would also go on to symbolically break the union stranglehold on American business by busting the air-traffic controller strike.

2. John F. Kennedy (Democrat)

President Kennedy, the father of trickle-down economics, gave a speech in 1963 to the Economic Club of New York extolling the virtues of a marginal tax cut.  He claimed that his income tax cut from 91% to 70% (top bracket) would lead to economic growth and increase tax revenues in the long run.  He also cut the corporate tax rate from 52% to 48%.  Though he didn’t live to sign the bill, President Kennedy gets the credit.

3. William J. Clinton (Democrat)

Clinton may have raised the individual income tax rate from 31% to 39.6%, but he was also responsible for the one of the largest capital gains tax decreases, from 28% to 21%, in US history. Other contributions that earned him third on the list were not tax related retreats from government intervention.  Under his presidency a landmark free trade agreement was signed (NAFTA), and a balanced budget amendment that would dramatically rein in government spending was enacted.  The federal government under Clinton contracted enough to create budget surpluses by the time he left office.

The Results:

The interventionist presidencies are all characterized by abnormally long and deep periods of recession. President Hoover inherited a credit bubble collapse and chose to pile onto a weak economy with a trade-crushing tariff and almost tripled the tax rate.  When FDR swept him out of office with promises of fiscal restraint, he went on to build on Hoover’s failed policies of higher taxations, spending, and created a partial fascist state level of industrial control.  The economy was severely damaged with this one-two punch and the longest and deepest depression in our history resulted.  President Obama has chosen to repeat the mistakes of the depression with his tax and regulatory legislation.  The credit bubble recession created by the federal reserve and government housing policies was never allowed to correct itself with the Dodd-Frank bill and extreme Federal Reserve and Treasury department policies he enacted.  In addition to the credit freeze in the country, health care regulation and massive tax increases have frozen business decision-making and held trillions of dollars of private capital on company books and overseas.

The three free-market presidents had a great deal of success with their policies.  President Reagan inherited an extreme inflationary recession and turned it around to one of the strongest growth periods in our nation’s history. JFK’s tax cuts also led to strong growth rates and very low unemployment.  President Clinton’s policies led to a balanced budget and a roaring economy in the late 1990′s.

The history of free-market vs interventionist presidencies is surprisingly non-partisan.  Both lists are split between Republicans and Democrats.  The one commonality is that free-market policies have yielded consistently higher growth rates no matter what economy was adopted by the president.  Interventionist policies have consistently retarded growth and led to protracted recessions.

How Romney Can Win With a Mandate

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It is panic time for the Romney campaign.  We are in the final stretch toward the most important election of our lifetimes, and Romney’s campaign still hasn’t left the starting blocks.  The fact that he is as close as he is to an incumbent president in the polls is a powerful testament to the failure of our current leader, not shrewd tactics from Romney’s campaign team.  By every measure, Obama’s policies have been an unmitigated disaster to the United States.  Until this past month, Obama could claim to have some solid footing on foreign policy, but now even that part of his presidency is proving to be an epic fail.  It would be hard for a cardboard cutout to poll any worse than Romney given the circumstances.

So, how do you lose what should be the easiest election against an incumbent president since Richard Nixon?  The problems to date widely recognized by the pundits and a very confused electorate are the following:

  1. No one has any clue what Romney’s positions are.
  2. There is no sense of urgency.
  3. The public only knows Obama’s lies as to why we are in a recession.
  4. Romney has been defined entirely by the Obama campaign.
  5. The public doesn’t know how to get out of the recession.

There is an easy way to answer all of these concerns and a way of giving the nation a secure understanding of how Romney will turn us around:

Three to Five 30-minute “Fireside Chats” discussing the most important topics of the day.

These fireside chats will accomplish the following things that state to state campaigning, 30-second commercial advertising, and media outlets cannot:

  1. Provide a clear explanation of our current situation.
  2. Debunk the left’s lies about what caused the Great Recession.
  3. Give the sense of urgency of how important this election is.
  4. Give a clear concise message of what Romney will do to save the economy.
  5. Provide powerful sound bites and themes to carry through November.

Though important, Romney cannot depend on the debates to accomplish these objectives since they will largely be run by highly motivated liberal moderators who will keep the subjects to personal attacks and issues they know are republican losers like contraception and abortion.  He needs to control the medium and content to correctly define his positions and explain how he will save the United States.

The “fireside chat” tradition was started by FDR early in his presidency, when he addressed the nation with radio speeches organized into what he considered to be the most important topics.  The best candidate to have recent success with speaking to specific problems and solutions in a controlled 30 min format was Ross Perot.  He attracted a huge audience (over 16 million) and used very simple charts and graphs to explain subjects in a way that resonated with the public.  Though he was unable to ultimately capture votes from party loyalists, he had powerful support with the independents, that same 5-10% that Romney now so famously said were his focus at a fundraiser earlier this year.  Most importantly, it will allow Romney to take control of the national narrative that has been dominated by the Obama camp to date.

Below are suggestions for subjects and the information that could be presented in each.  The following proposal lists important topics and gives a synopsis of what has happened under the “Obama Record”.  Some of the points should be illustrated in pictures, charts , and graphs that will show the magnitude of the problem.   After the synopsis, there is a description of what “Romney’s Plan” would accomplish and why it will address the problems that have festered under Obama’s presidency.

Growth

Obama Record:

  • Labor force participation rate Jan, 2008 to Aug, 2012: 66.2% è 63.5% or about 3.7 million fewer jobs than the beginning of 2008.
  • 8.1% unemployment only made possible because of those dropping out of the force.
  • 5.2 million long-term unemployed.
  • 7.3% decline in median household income ($4K per family).
  • 15% poverty rate.
  • Over 46 million on food stamps as of Aug, 2012… up from 26 million in Jan, 2008.
  • Over  $2 Trillion in cash sitting on company books.
  • Hundreds of billions sitting outside the country because of tax concerns.
  • Regulatory uncertainty freezing business activity.
  •  Frank-Dodd freezing nearly all small business loans.
  • Obamacare driving medical innovation offshore.

Romney’s Plan:

  • Create an environment for business to invest and grow.  North of $2 Trillion of money sitting on balance sheets and off shore that would go DIRECTLY to investment in R&D and hiring, not the favors and pension padding of Obama stimulus dollars.  That money will go to where it gets the best return.  Under Romney that is in the US, under Obama that is offshore.
  • Lower business taxes to 25% and cut out loopholes.  Lower taxes will bring in offshore money and increase the returns for domestic dollars.
  • Repeal Frank Dodd, which will lift the freeze on banks to lend to small business.  Business start-ups have to go to “mom and dad” because Obama destroyed their ability to get money from banks.
  • Repeal Obamacare.  The device tax is a company killer and 1/6th of the economy is in lock down as companies try to figure out regulations that are still being written.  Show examples of companies that are taking their innovation dollars overseas.
  • Reduce regulations that make US investment onerous.  Name some of the bad ones.
  • Encourage energy production in the US.  Give numbers to show our untapped reserves.  Give numbers to show how many jobs can be created.  Mention that the oil will either be refined in our “green” refineries or seriously pollute in unregulated Chinese facilities.
  • Grant work visas to any foreign national who gets a graduate degree in the US.  Stop educating the world’s innovators and then sending them away.

Taxes

Obama’s Record:

  • Higher tax rates kill growth.  Period. This has been shown by the likes of even liberal economists Christine Romer and John Maynard Keynes. It is something that scares business and has created uncertainty.
  • Outsourcing at an accelerated rate partly in anticipation to higher business taxes (and partly due to increased regulations). Even the head of Obama’s jobs council, GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt is shipping thousands of their jobs off-shore.
  • Money made in the global markets does not return to the US because of high business taxes.
  • Over 50% of companies in the US file as S-corps and will see large tax raises well ABOVE the Clinton levels.  That directly drains from hiring.
  • Obama’s tax cuts were temporary, econ 101 shows that temporary cuts do nothing to spur the economy.
  • The tax code is horribly confusing, counterproductive, hurts the little guy, and allows the rich to hide their money.  It needs to be completely reformed.  Describe what simplification means. Give real world examples.

Romney’s Plan:

  • Make the Bush cuts permanent.  It will send a signal that S-corps and investors will continue to get good returns on investments in the US.
  • Decrease the corporate tax rate to 25%.  This will directly free up money for hiring & innovation and encourage companies to keep their facilities in the US.
  • Give a one-time tax break for repatriating the hundreds of billions from overseas.  This will provide a real stimulus directed by those who actually make jobs: businesses
  • Cut out loopholes in the code and simplify.  The lower rates with fewer loopholes will actually be a more progressive tax. Describe what the loopholes are going to be with examples!
  • Give examples of how much easier it will be for someone to fill out their taxes and not feel like the IRS is always out to get them.

Debt

Obama’s Record:

  • On the Road to Greece.
  • Taxpayer money was spent to create jobs in foreign countries.
  • Taxpayer money was spent to promote and fund gas drilling by Mexico and Brazil.
  • Debt looks benign because interest rates are low. As soon as rates go up it will crowd out other government spending and lead to economy crushing taxes, on everyone
  • Over $6 Trillion added with little to show for it.  Cost per job created is an astonishing figure.
  • That equates to $55,000 of debt per household added under Obama.  Do you feel better off now?
  • Stimulus didn’t stimulate anything but uncertainty about the future.
  • At current rate of spending (and Obama projected budgets), we will have to take a 750 billion annual haircut on government programs in 10y just to service interest.

Romney’s Plan:

  • Reagan, Keynes(!), JFK, and even Clinton (large capital gains tax cut) showed that the best way to raise revenues is growth-inspiring tax cuts.
  • Entitlement reform!  Show how to bend the curve and preserve the social programs.  Show what kind of cuts you have to do if the budget is left under current projections.
  • Show the Bain Chief’s abilities to identify and cut waste out of systems with examples.
  • Show example of states and how they beat their deficits: New Jersey, Wisconsin, Massachusetts (under Romney), Indiana and contrast it with Obama style states like California and Illinois that raised taxes and pandered to labor interests.
  • Other good stats to show: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/09/obama-versus-economic-freedom.php

Sound Money

Obama’s Record:

  • Fed continues to benefit Wall Street at the expense of Main Street under Obama.
  • Show how much purchasing power has decreased in the past four years and who that hurts.
  • Show the increase of money supply and show what that means for future “poor taxing” inflation when banks start lending.
  • Adds uncertainty to the market.

Romney’s plan:

  • Replace  Bernanke with someone who will protect the value of money
  • Give business the kind of long-term certainty they need to make decisions.
  • Mirror what Reagan did with Volcker to get us out of the Carter mess

Branding

Obama’s Record:

  • Everyone thinks Bain was some financial engineering group that hurt companies for shareholders
  • Convinced the public Romney is pitching the same toxic policies that got us here in the first place.

Romney’s Pitch:

  • Romney’s business history was to create a firm that engages distressed companies or divisions and turn them around.  Banks and institutions lined up to lend to Bain’s companies because of Romney’s record returning the money and building enterprises with it.
  • It doesn’t makes sense that a corporate raider who would loan companies up with debt and fire everyone would be a called upon by the Olympic committee to rescue them from too much debt… or for the people of Massachusetts to vote in a REPUBLICAN to rescue them from crushing debt and the nation’s worst job creation rate.
  • Romney went into a debt-crushed state and came out with a surplus, tax cuts, and maximum theoretical unemployment. Obama went into a debt-crushed country and came out with double the debt, tax hikes, and 3.8 million fewer jobs…

A series of talks that illustrate the above points in clear simple language, using charts, graphs, and real world examples, would win over the undecided and elect Romney with a mandate to put us back on the track to free markets.  If Romney doesn’t reveal a clear plan, we will have four more years of Obama and solidify a “new normal” of high permanent unemployment, low growth, and steady progress to a debt crisis that will inevitably remove our status as the international superpower.

Nationwide Stockholm Syndrome

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The latest numbers are out on the economy, and things have been worse than we thought:

GDP revised lower, manufacturing orders fall

The GDP was revised from an anemic 1.7% growth rate down to 1.3% growth through Q2 of this year (the half-way point).  That officially puts us .5% behind Canada for the same period.  Other great news included that the demand for long-term durable goods decreased 13% in August, about 10% worse than we had thought….

But who cares? Terrible economic news to Americans these days is like telling someone in Chicago that a kid got shot on the south side. People shrug and mutter a lackluster “bummer”, but no one seems to have an emotional response to bad news anymore.

Perhaps even more disturbing, it seems as if the worse things get economically, the higher Obama’s ratings go. People are starting to believe that being trapped in a government-induced recession is the new normal.  There is a growing perception that the Obama administration masters are controlling our lives for the better and we should be content with the impossible hoops we have to jump through to get a small business loan now or that chasing investment capital off-shore is better for us… It can only be described as national Stockholm Syndrome. The problem with Stockholm Syndrome is that the victim no longer wants the cure…

The Democrat’s Freedom Dilemma…

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For years, I couldn’t understand the liberal fascination with the liberal arts.  There was a powerful force at work beyond a casual name association. Our best and brightest have been encouraged to get degrees in spectacularly useless subjects like sociology and comparative literature.  Nowhere in the educational system are people encouraged to study math or the sciences.  Go to any engineering or math department in an American university, and you will be almost entirely surrounded by our “deportation class” of immigrants facing a one-way flight home within days of graduation.  It is almost as if our public education system (and immigration policy) shuns competence in logic based degrees.

Disdain for the sciences isn’t by any means a typical characteristic of leftist regimes.  Soviet Russia, China, and other old-school socialist havens have long encouraged their citizens to study the “useful” sciences.  So why is so important to the American left to suppress the left side of America’s brains?

The answer is Freedom.  Ever the foe of collective control, freedom is the number one hurdle to an argument for big brother.  A free society is allowed to question big brother and has access to information that quickly defeats arguments for collectivism.  The Soviets and Chinese didn’t have to contend with freedom when feeding information to their subjects thirty years ago.  Their citizens were not able to make logical conclusions about their conditions with the little information provided by Big Brother’s press. When Reagan freed up investment capital with massive tax cuts in the early 80′s, free Americans, backed with a new flood of Venture Capital, launched the Information Revolution.  Freedom knocked down the doors of the Soviets and Chinese as information leaked into their countries and the logical associations of freedom with happiness and progress broke the arguments of Big Brother.

The virtues of free markets were so self-evident, that few dared to suggest that we should return to big government.  Even the leader of the American Left made this declaration in the mid 1990′s:

The Devil doesn’t sleep, and politicians love power, so how do Democrats overcome this “freedom dilemma” and the information revolution feeding its progression?  The gross failure government largess is at everyone’s fingertips now.  Everyone knows that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.  The math just doesn’t add up.

Wait, how do you add that up again?  The government spends over 150% more than it takes in?  Every year? Is that a lot? No?  I shouldn’t worry about it then? That’s a relief.  So, 4.5 million jobs have been created since Obama took office?  How many have been lost in the same period?  Oh, that’s not important? Ok.  Quick question: How is government is going to rein in the costs of a government controlled health system with more government oversight? Didn’t Medicare go from $100 Billion / year in 1990 to about $500 Billion / year in 2010 under their watch?  It would have been more in the private system because the profit motive drives the cost of things up? Ok. Sounds funny, but I’ll believe it.  Give me a second, I need to go to Wal-Mart and buy a hammer made in Taiwan, a pineapple grown in Brazil, a quart of milk from a cow 500 miles away, and 10 pencils with parts originating from five different countries around the globe for under $20…

If the American public doesn’t know what to do with the numbers or how to logic through a Krugman non-sequitur, then free information loses value.   Creation of a dependent class becomes possible again once government-controlled education ensures that the masses are dependent on the ruling class to think.  How else would one explain the constant erosion of standards in the school system? Why would school districts in California go out of their way to graduate Hispanic students who don’t speak the tongue of the politicians? Ignorance is vital to Democratic success no matter what form it comes in.  Even among those with “higher education”, when logic is abdicated for the “virtue” of the liberal arts, big brother can tell them how do add up numbers that don’t make logical sense. Who is to say that Santa Claus doesn’t exist?