Category Archives: Essays

Sick Political Theater

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Obama HaloThe events in Ferguson, Missouri are the latest example of sick political theater, carefully orchestrated to shape public policy.  The theatrical productions are pure fiction, but are presented as fact.  They are morality plays with heroes and villains and are intended to create strong emotions directed at a political objective.  All of the elaborate productions are based on central lies.  None would be possible without a complicit media to carry the script.

If you consider some examples you will see that the various plots all have a similar structure.

When Jared Loughner shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the “Why Did Sarah Palin Cause Giffords To Be Shot” political theater began almost immediately.  Palin was not related to the shooting in any way, but there was an explosion of stories about her culpability.   There were headlines like, “Giffords Blood Is On Sarah Palin’s Hands”    Democrat politicians joined in.  Wasn’t it just awful how violent those conservatives are?

False accusations and moral posing by liberals are part of each script.

The climax of the play is when the Poseur in Chief assumes the godlike role of lecturing to us about morality.  We watch the arsonist, who helped set the fire and who stoked the fire, speak to us about how disappointed he is that we have a fire.  In the Palin-Giffords case the climax was quite a grand production.

In the case of Professor Gates arrest, the climax was a small production.  The policeman who answered a call to protect Mr. Gates home was unfairly attacked by the President for “acting stupidly” and then the media script expanded to the topic of racist police.   The climax was Presidential pontification at a “beer summit”.

The fictional stories written for the Mike Brown/Darren Wilson and the Trayvon/Zimmerman morality plays followed nearly the same script.   Two wonderful young black men were shot by racist white men for no reason at all. They were “executed”.   They were “gunned down like dogs”.  America is racist.  Cops are racist.

The leftist media present the fictional story with glee, repeating the lies endlessly, sometimes doctoring the evidence and always ignoring the facts.  They appear oblivious to the hatred and division that they are causing.  Or worse, they appear to seek violence as a ratings booster.  In Ferguson, the mob knew the script.  For media and mob it was, “lights, camera, action!”

In both cases, Obama, Holder and many Democrat politicians played important roles in fanning the racial flames.  In private, they call this motivating the voter base.  In the play, they assume the role of moral heroes.  They are attacking white society, attacking police, attacking America and selling a message of anger and victimization to black communities ‘because they care’.

Obama, who is always happy to attack America in an international forum, discussed Ferguson at the U.N.  as a sign of America’s moral failing.  He met with the mob leaders and urged them to “stay the course”.   Missouri’s Governor, along with many other Democrats, acted as lynch mob leaders calling for Officer Wilson’s head prior to an examination of the facts.

Eric Holder sent large numbers of Dept. of Justice agents to both Ferguson, MI and Sanford, FL.   He does not send large numbers of agents to investigate the massive number of black deaths where there is no political motivation for his ‘great concern’.  He mostly sends no agents at all and shows no special interest at all.  Few people realize that Holder sent community activists to Sanford to foment racial tensions in the Trayvon case.  And he repeatedly got the message out in Ferguson that the problem was racism.  When a policeman shoots a charging 290 pound man who had assaulted the officer moments before, what could it be but racism?

Eric Holder knows every detail of the eyewitness testimony and he knows the physical evidence.  He knows, but he doesn’t care.  He has a role to play in this sick, political drama and the facts will not change his role in any way.  He and the ever-present, ever-despicable, race-baiters like Sharpton and Jackson throw Molotov cocktails of racial division into the crowds.  They are mob creators, and Sharpton (an Obama adviser!), truly has blood on his hands from a mob he created in Crown Heights in 1991.

The work of these hatemongers, with the help of a leftist media, directly created the destructive mobs we have seen in Ferguson and other cities.  In this morality play, their role is portrayed as righteous, justified anger.  They are the aggrieved party.  You, if you are white or are a policeman, are the guilty party.

In reality, the Brown/Wilson tragedy does not fit the narrative of a racist cop killing a gentle black man.  The opposite is true.  Let’s examine some of the other narratives that were pushed by the emotional, misinformed mobs.  Three common chants and protest signs were: We Want Justice, Black Lives Matter, and Stop Killing Us.

“We Want Justice”- It is an undeniable fact that the credo, “snitches get stitches” dominates black culture.  Co-operation with the police is explicitly forbidden and those who testify about crimes are very often punished for it.  There are many black murder cases where significant numbers of people witnessed the murder and none of them will talk to the police.  The do not want justice.

“Black Lives Matter”- Where are these demonstrators when thousands of other black lives are snuffed out.  It appears that “Some Black Lives Matter”, the ones that are part of the show. “Stop Killing Us” -  91% of black murder victims are killed by other African-Americans according to FBI statistics.  You should stop killing you.  White people and white policemen are not the problem. Thomas Sowell has some insight on the real problem here and Jason Riley here.

Not all of the plays reach the final act.  In some, the central lies are too great to be sustained.  The debacle in Benghazi was not “caused by a video”.  The extensive targeting of conservative groups by the IRS was not “caused by a couple of agents in Cincinnati”.  The massive recent influx of young illegal aliens was planned in advance to be a “humanitarian crisis” and an inducement to change immigration laws, but it backfired.  The final act of the Fast and Furious gunrunning operation was supposed to be Holder and Obama (the gunrunners) speaking as moral authorities, bemoaning the damage caused by American guns and explaining necessary restrictions on the second amendment.  The “Cruel Republicans Shut Down The Government ”  story did not fool the thinking people, but it did fool the Republican leadership, who have now essentially abandoned the power of the purse.

To a large extent, it is elaborate fictional stories that shape public discourse and public policy.  In the current drama about race, it is very disturbing to see blacks manipulated like angry puppets on a string by their perennial masters.  It is very disturbing to see the degradation that the welfare state has produced.  It is sickening to see the very people who produced this degradation, the people who profit from this dependency, posing as saviors.  What an evil and destructive game this is.

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This essay was first published at American Thinker.

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Updates:  The grand jury transcripts show that several witnesses were threatened and pressured not to tell the truth…  because the mob doesn’t want justice, they want lies. There is a chilling story of witness intimidation here.

There also is a column here about “Black Lives Matter”.  An excerpt:

 The focus of the [black lives matter] campaign would have much more moral authority and would be taken much more seriously if it focused on those actions that do devalue black lives- which have very little to do with white cops and everything to do with blacks themselves. According to data collected from 1980-2008, in 2008, the homicide offender rate for blacks was almost 25 percent, seven times higher than the offending rate of whites (3.4%). The homicide victimization rate for blacks was about six times higher than the victimization rates for whites. Blacks were also 47.4% of all homicide victims and 52.5% of all homicide offenders. During the same period, blacks accounted for 62% of all drug-related homicides compared to 37% committed by whites. Over 65% of all drug-related homicide offenders were black; whites comprised 33 percent. Blacks were 44.1% of felony murder victims and almost 60% of felony murder offenders. For gun homicide rates, blacks were 51.4% of all victims but 56.9% of offenders. Black offenders committed 93% of all black homicides. The FBI statistics aren’t any better. In 2012, of the 2,648 black victims of homicide, blacks were responsible for 2,412. Of the 14,581 total murder offenders that year, 5531 (38%) were black.

Neal Boortz on “black lives matter”:

 Here’s a question … how many blacks have been killed by other blacks since Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown.  One estimate I’ve read says 2,100.  Thousands of young blacks are murdered every year.  The numbers in recent years range from almost 6,000 to 9,000.  The average is around 7,900.  One statistic that is borne out is that 93% of these murders of blacks are committed by other blacks.  This is to the tune of over 20 each and every day.       Michael Brown attacked Officer Wilson on August 9th.  That’s 108 days between the incident and the report on the grand jury’s findings.  Multiply by the average of 20+ a day and you have 2,160 during that period.  If you want a more alarming statistic, try this one.  The number of days elapsed since the killing of Trayvon Martin and the report from the Ferguson grand jury? That would be 1003 days.  That means 20,000 killed and over 18,000 of them killed by other blacks.

During this entire time frame the ONLY time I saw a “black lives matter” sign was in connection with a protest over Michael Brown’s death.  Didn’t the other 20,000 black lives matter as well?  Where were the signs? ….

Perhaps blacks need to recognize that negative attention focused on their communities isn’t necessarily due to feelings of white or genetic superiority. Maybe it has something to do with the prevailing culture of violence in the urban black community … especially the YOUNG urban black community.  A community that revels in mimicking prison garb, complete disregard and disrespect for women, an anti-learning and anti-achievement culture in schools, and visceral hatred for the police is not a community that is going to be well regarded by others.  It has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with culture – behavior.

Thomas Sowell explains in “Opinions vs. Facts” who benefits and who suffers from the actions of the racial grievance industry. The last paragraph is about the history of Detroit, but it could also be about the future of America.  Read it here

Bill Whittle exposes the real race war.  There is a staggering amount of racial violence that is well hidden:

20 Delusions That Shape How Liberals Vote

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unicorns-for-obama

It is instructive to consider the premises that underlie the liberal view of the world.  These are the ideas that determine their votes in elections; ideas that could shape the future of our country.  Taken together, it is striking how detached from reality the beliefs are.  The list could be much longer, but consider the following 20 beliefs from the imaginary world where liberals live.

 

  • The “Affordable Care Act” will reduce the cost and increase the quality of health care, because if you want something done efficiently and economically, then you definitely want unionized government bureaucracies to handle it.  History has demonstrated that bureaucrats provide efficient service at lower cost.  If we can eliminate consumer choices and let a government monopoly take care of things, like managing all health care, that is a dream worth fighting for.
  • President Obama is correct that “we don’t have a spending problem” and Nancy Pelosi is correct that government is cut to the bone and “there is no place left to cut”.
  • It is morally acceptable to borrow massive amounts of money from our grandchildren to support our own current consumption.
  • The 22 trillion dollars spent on the War on Poverty was quite successful in reducing the number of people in poverty.
  • As you look at the plight of women around the world, it is clear that the most important problem for feminists to concentrate on is free birth control for American women.
  • The Social Security Program is a trust fund where your money is placed in a government account for you and invested intelligently.  That money belongs to you and you will be guaranteed a good return.  It may be true that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are headed for certain bankruptcy without major reforms, but the people who want to talk about reforms to protect the programs from collapse are just mean people.  We should stay on the course we are on.
  • Political “compromise” means move to the left and only to the left.   Those who do not understand this are “obstructionists”.
  • The most serious problem effecting black communities is that racist policemen are shooting young black men for no reason at all.  The facts around the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin cases show that these two fine young men did nothing to provoke the racists who killed them.  This proves that our racist country has not really improved at all since the 1950’s.  The lynch mobs in the streets, and the lynch mob organizers in these two cases have the moral high ground.  There is just no reason in the Michael Brown case to spend much time seeking the facts when you know the policeman is white.
  • The way to help black people is to teach them that none of their problems are their fault and none of the solutions are their responsibility.  The good men in the racial grievance industry, like Sharpton and Jackson, are creating the kind of anger that will lead to a brighter future.
  • All the problems in black communities are caused by racist Republicans who want to return to segregation and are trying to keep blacks from voting.  It was racist Republicans in the South, who tried to keep black people out of white schools and keep them sitting at the back of the bus.  Fortunately, the Southern Democrats worked hard to stop this Republican racism.
  • The earth has been warming very rapidly in recent decades.  The polar ice caps are disappearing and polar bear populations are dying from lack of ice.  ‘Climate change’ means that it is much warmer, colder, wetter, drier, and stormier than ever before.  And it is going to get much, much warmercolderwetterdrier in the future.  There is good news, though.  Politicians in this country can vote to change the world’s climate to be an ideal climate.
  • Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.  The fear that Islamic Jihadists represent a supremist, totalitarian ideology, similar to Nazism, only worse, is an irrational fear called “Islamophobia”.
  • The best available evidence from intelligence agencies and from those on the ground during the Benghazi attack was that there was a demonstration about a YouTube video that got out of hand.  Administration officials reported the best information they had to the public with no consideration given to upcoming elections.
  • President Obama immediately authorized the military to do every single thing possible to protect our Benghazi heroes.  As the law requires, he immediately granted Presidential authorization for rescuers to cross the Libyan border, an essential first step in the rescue.  As our men fought bravely for many hours, begging for help, our Commander in Chief was doing everything he could to rescue them.
  • There is “not a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS.  Some people say there was an organized effort to silence the political speech of those extremists who want limited government, but the whole, so called , ‘problem’ was just a couple of agents in Cincinnati who made a harmless mistake.  There was “nothing political about this at all”.
  • The “Fast and Furious” gun-running program was a sensible plan to sell weapons to drug cartels and then track these non-trackable weapons right to the doorstep of the drug kingpins.  Those who question Holder’s and Obama’s story on this (or any other) policy are racists.
  • The rules for stopping the spread of highly contagious diseases should be shaped by politics and multi-cultural sensibilities.
  • With the right politicians in power, people will be given their expanded human rights.   Everyone has a right to a certain standard of living including good housing, food, education and medical care.  Progressive politicians can make these goods and services free for anyone who wants them.  If politicians who really care vote for more free stuff, it will just be there.
  • The concept “earn” must be replaced by the concept “deserve”.  People deserve things, so liberal politicians will reshape reality to create that wonderful utopia where people have everything they want. The leaders in the past who have tried this and have left only blood and poverty in their path were doing it wrong.  We can do it right this time. Forward!
  • If a government program does not work and creates more problems than it solves, you can fix it by spending more money.  If the intentions of the program were good, then it’s a good program regardless of the results.

The mainstream media, popular culture and the education establishment live primarily in this imaginary world.  They believe in it and they teach it.  They also teach a strong sense of moral and intellectual superiority to fellow believers.  They are the good people.  And, despite the detachment from reality of their voting premises, they consider themselves the smart people.

Our country’s future will be determined by this:  Do the voters who live in reality outnumber the voters from the world of liberal delusions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking Clearly About Profiling

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There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.

                                                                         Reverend Jesse Jackson   NY Times, 12-12-93

 

Profiling is a very unsavory activity, we are told.  There are marches against it and laws against it.  Let’s consider what profiling is, starting with the definition of three terms relevant to the discussion :

profiling: the act or process of extrapolating information about a person based on known traits or tendencies; the act of suspecting or targeting a person on the basis of observed characteristics or behavior.

discrimination: The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.

prejudice: An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.

“Profiling” and “discrimination” are morally neutral terms.  They describe the normal processes of thinking and making judgments.  Discernment based on observable characteristic is rationality.

Prejudice can cloud rationality if an adverse opinion is formed without knowledge or examination of the facts.  It is prejudice that should be condemned, not making judgments from observable facts.

Here are some observable facts:

  1. Rapes are primarily committed by men.
  2. Major terrorist attacks, worldwide, are primarily committed by young Muslim men.
  3. NBA Basketball teams consist primarily of young black men.
  4. Young black men are 7 times more likely to commit murder, and 8 times more likely to commit robbery than white men.

When you are looking for a rapist, it is rational to target men.  When you are screening airline passengers, it makes sense to target those most likely to be a security threat.  That would not be little girls and grandmothers.  When you are on a dark street, being approached by a group of young men, it is rational to feel safer if it is a group of white men.

These are not foolproof judgments, but they are not prejudiced judgments either.  They are simply factual observations.  The makeup of sports teams is determined by judgment from observable facts, not from racial prejudice.  There is no need to apologize to white people for their lack of representation on NBA teams.  The position on the team was earned.  The other judgments we are talking about are earned as well.  There is no need to apologize for seeing reality as it is.   There should be no laws against it.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, are calling for more laws against profiling in the wake of the Martin/Zimmerman case.  The prosecution, defense and both families agree that this incident was not about race.  Yet, Ben Jealous, of the NAACP, said, “We are outraged … and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”

Apparently unaware of the statistics about racial violence and ignorant of the facts in the Zimmerman case, the NEA just launched an anti-profiling campaign.  They say, “the case of Trayvon Martin has activated millions of Americans to urgently seek answers to how we can finally end wide-spread, officially-sanctioned, racial profiling and racially motivated violence….”

The campaigns against racial profiling and  “Islamophobia” are campaigns against reason. It is unfortunate, but perfectly logical, to have an increased fear of violence from young black men or Islamic Jihadists.  We must be clear that those who observe the problem are not the cause of the problem.

Millions of peaceful black men and peaceful Muslims suffer from the acts of the violent members of their group.  They suffer directly from black on black and Muslim on Muslim violence, but they suffer indirectly from the bad image created by the violent minority.  It is the violent minorities that deserve condemnation, not the people who observe and react to the violence.  The observers are the effect, not the cause.

In President Obama’s July 19 black victimology speech, (brilliantly deconstructed here), he discussed profiling as a very significant problem that white folks need to reflect on.  He said, with Clinton-like lip biting for effect, that many black men have the experience of walking near a car and hearing the doors lock or otherwise sensing fear from “white folks”.  His implication was that this was proof of continuing white racism.  It’s not.  It’s fear of crime.

If Obama himself did some honest reflection he would see that doors have been unlocked for him for most of his life because he is black.  At almost every point in his life it has been a huge advantage for him.  This inexperienced Senator from Illinois was a viable Presidential candidate, not it spite of being black, but because he is black.

The Only Real Revolution

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USAThis essay was last published by FrontPage Magazine on Independence Day last year.

I believe that the most useful way to look at political history is to discard the idea of “right” and “left”.  There is Liberty and there is Tyranny.  For most of human history, men have suffered under tyranny.  Our Founders intended to change that…

 

 

The Only Real Revolution           by Bryce Buchanan

“Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution that has no parallel in the annals of human society. . . . In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty.”

                                     – James Madison

Throughout history, small groups of men with political power have controlled the masses of men by force. On every continent, stretching back through the centuries, the pattern was essentially the same — a pharaoh, king, emperor or dictator had ultimate control over the lives and fortunes of his subservient followers. The underlings were taught that their proper role was to serve those in power. Whatever small freedoms the common men had were considered to be gifts from the sovereign — gifts which could be taken away if the sovereign chose to do so.

Then, in eighteenth-century America, a group of enlightened men turned the world upside down. They instituted a government that was subordinate to the people. They believed that whatever powers a government has are granted by the people. Government exists to serve the people. People do not live to serve the government.

They declared that each man owned his own life and could act freely in peaceful pursuit of his own happiness. They said the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are “unalienable” — that is, they are not gifts of government and may not legitimately be taken away. They stated that the sole purpose of a moral government was to secure these fundamental and inherent rights. Thus, they wrote a constitution that was intended to strictly limit the power of government over the lives of free men.

This was the only political revolution in history that was truly revolutionary. It was a total break with the principle that men are mere pawns in the grand design of those in power. It offered a radical new political system. Other revolutions had merely produced a new tyrant — simply a new person to exercise control over men. The true revolution was the one that openly questioned the control.

Eighteenth-century Americans lived and died in the spirit of liberty. Virginian Richard Henry Lee said, “The first maxim of a man who loves liberty should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well-being of society.”

Boston preacher Samuel Stillman said, “We are engaged in a most important contest; not for power but for freedom. We mean not to change our masters, but to secure to ourselves and to generations, yet unborn, the perpetual enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, in their fullest extent.”

Even small encroachments on liberty were met with defiance. When the Stamp Act was passed in 1765 — an act which levied only a very small tax on certain transactions — the strength of the resistance forced a repeal of the law in less than a year. A prominent Boston preacher, Jonathan Mayhew, said that while a few people quietly accepted the stamp tax, most Americans “were firmly united in a consistent . . . plan, to run all risks, to tempt all hazards, to go all lengths, if things were driven to extremity, rather than to submit; preferring death itself to what they esteemed so wretched and inglorious a servitude.”

And we all know how the Sons of Liberty reacted to a two-cent tax on tea. They took their rights — their liberty — seriously. They knew that when a tyrant gets his foot in the door, the rest of the beast is sure to follow. As George Washington said in 1774, “The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition which can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us . . . slaves.”

The contempt felt for those who would not fight for their own liberty was expressed by Samuel Adams: “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Imagine that men from that era were observing us today. They would see that we send up to 50% of our income to different levels of government, and we are told that this is not sufficient —  that our duty is to sacrifice more. (Consider this shocking fact: the colonists paid approximately 1% of their incomes in taxes.) They would see an incredible number of regulations on all types of domestic and foreign commerce. They would see an immense army of bureaucrats to enforce the regulations and another army of real soldiers residing more or less permanently in other countries. It would be clear to them that Jefferson’s statement is unfortunately still true that “even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operation, perverted it into tyranny.”

The biggest surprise to our observers would not be that those in power seek to expand their power. They would have expected that. The biggest surprise would be the degraded state of many Americans who have lost the stature that comes from taking responsibility for one’s own life. They would see millions of dependent creatures, comfortable in their dependency, crouching and licking the hands that feed them, and begging for more, asking only that the benefits they get are paid for by the sacrifices of other people.

Can any of us deny that the citizens are primarily to blame for the erosion of their own liberties? Most are traveling the road to serfdom willingly. But the road goes nowhere new. It leads only to the same forms of tyranny that have characterized most societies in history.

There is liberty … and there are thousands of forms of tyranny. There are men’s rights … and thousands of rationalizations for violating them. When it comes to liberty, everything but the real thing is the wrong thing. We must accept no substitutes.

 

Common Sense Economics: Spain

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The Real Madrid vs Barcelona rivalry is about to heat up…

One of the most ambitious, and successful, efforts of the academic Left has been a war on common sense.  True economics is a science governed by very intuitive rules.  Extremely complicated monetary theories have arisen to confuse the subject and contradict common sense conclusions any high school graduate can come to with minimal effort.  The confusion puts up a veil behind which leftist social engineers can operate with reduced risk that someone empowered with simple intuition can identify that the King, in fact, has no clothes…

On of the most intuitive rules is the following: The more you punish success and take the fruit of people’s labor, the less productive they will be.  Spain has ignored this rule for many decades.  Years of anemic growth and re-distribution of capital from productive hands to the lazy regions of the country have created a fragile economy unable to weather the global downturn.  More importantly (here comes one of those intuitive laws economics/human nature), the productive parts of the country are starting to resent supporting the dead weight. The Catalan region of eastern Spain has long been the industrious part of the country.  As per a recent article in Reuters, a significant part of the economic output of the region (8% or $21 billion) is redistributed from Catalonia to the remainder of the country every year…

Which brings us to our second super-simple economic lesson:  People grow entitled to charity quickly.  Give someone a dollar one day and they say “thank you”.  Give that same person a dollar for seven days and then try to walk by on the eighth day.  He will angrily ask where ”his” dollar is.  Appreciation turns quickly to entitlement.  When I lived in Spain eighteen years ago, I don’t recall a “Catalonia appreciation day” for supporting the rest of the country.   I am guessing that it hasn’t started since.

Liberals will argue that there has always been a separatist movement in Catalonia, and they would be right.  However, it didn’t gain any political power until the economy tanked and the country raised taxes to meet the bills.  Since tax burdens weigh disproportionately on the most productive parts of society, Catalonia was hit especially hard.  Rather than continue to support an entitled country incapable of balancing the checkbook, the people of Catalonia are looking to shrug off the oppressive weight.  Just recently, the local government gained a majority capable and willing to vote for separation.  Who can blame them?

How much worse does it have to get before we see the same thing in the US?  Secession petitions have been submitted by people in more than 30 sates in the US, but there is no real political will behind them.  However, what happens when the people of Texas and Florida see their taxes going to bail out the entitlement groups of California and Illinois.  Like in Spain, England, and France the increased taxes in those states will not bring in nearly as much revenue as their predictions and certainly not enough to meet their debt obligations.  Eventually, like with Greece and Spain, the other states will have to come to their rescue, but the constituencies of the bailed out states will not allow any fiscal restraint. We will see riots and paralyzed liberal politicians who, like a child whose gambling debt comes due, will be backed into a very uncomfortable corner.  At some point Texas and other productive states will not want to pick up the tab for California.  Secession risk will become real.

The road we are on and where it leads has never been so clear. You don’t need a crystal ball to figure it out, just pick up the paper.  Only a nation that has lost its ability to exercise common sense will be caught by surprise.

California’s Road To Hell

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Those Golden Bears aren’t doing so well these days:

Not only are the businesses in the Golden State facing the federal fiscal cliff tax hikes next year, but they also get a swift retroactive-tax-hike-kick-to-the-shorts for anything earned this year as well.  When you know a certain number of people are going to leave your state after yet another tax hike, it is good to make it retroactive since people can’t leave retroactively…

There was a great article in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day describing how much the state genuinely despises private sector job creators. Unless, of course, those job creators start “supporting” some of the “business friendly” legislators in congress…

The game of tyranny was described in explicit detail by Ayn Rand over 50 years ago in her novel Atlas Shrugged: In a free society, people can start businesses and succeed without ever knowing their local legislator.  The only barrier to success would be their own ability to create something people want better than a competitor.  Power-hungry rulers recognize that the free system doesn’t allow them to gain power.  The same people who created products that make people’s lives easier, produce jobs, and a create a social ladder for society must be made to look evil so that politicians can lever themselves into the system. The rulers use the tragic human character flaws of jealousy and greed to malign the successful.  The accomplishments of the entrepreneurs are discredited (“you didn’t build that”) and their intentions are painted as exploitive rather than constructive.

Once the democratic (or revolutionary) mandate is achieved with popular consent, the legislators use two powerful tools to gain power: business-crushing regulations and heavy tax structures.  The taxes allow the legislators to look “charitable” by funding a redistribution of wealth and creating an entitled class of reliable voters.  The taxes can also be used to subsidize favored groups like unions and large banks that will then support those in power.  The heavy regulations are used as a gun to the head of business.  Legislators create laws that make it difficult/impossible to do business.  If companies want to survive the taxes and regulations imposed by the government, they must “support” the legislators to gain subsidies and loop-holes.  Anyone not willing to play the game are publicly denounced by the politicians as evil exploiters (Wal-Mart, med tech companies, surgeons, etc) and special taxes/regulations are applied to their livelihoods until they submit.  Once everyone is under the thumb or supported by the government, the rulers have ultimate power.

Am I exaggerating?  In addition to the link above, Joel Kotkin describes how business owners feel about political expression in the following article, “For A Preview Of Obama’s America In 2016, Look At The Crack-Up Of California”. The article describes the consequences of “free speech” for California business. The exact same thing is happening on a national scale in DC.  The system is rigged in favor of the tyrant.  Who is a better bet to give money to:  The politician extolling the virtues of liberty and fighting for your right to pursue it, or the politician saying that he is going to crush you when he gains power so you better pony up to the table? We saw what happened to each side when Obamacare passed.  The med tech companies fought for freedom and now have a special tax just for them.  The pharma companies paid tribute to the master and got branded pharmaceuticals on the formularies of the expanded coverage.  Welcome to the ‘Nanner Republic of America…

The scenario has played over and over and over again throughout history.  Democracy is the most insidious mechanism for tyrants, because it needs/uses the sanction of the very frogs being boiled to work.  Forced or fooled, at least 50% of the frogs have to vote for their own demise. If you feel a little sick to your stomach these days, it is because we can see the “cooks” applying butter and salt to the frogs in California and Europe.  A system we thought only existed in banana republics and “those other countries” is suddenly revealing its true colors much closer to home than we had suspected.

It is getting harder and harder to hide the dire consequences of political tyranny… Especially now that Europe and California are laying it out for us in explicit detail.  California, like the US, was once governed by Ronald Reagan.  That fact makes his foreboding quote all the more powerful:

 

Senator Hiram Revels Would Be Ashamed Of President Barack Obama

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The front page of cnn.com has been running a story by John Blake entitled, “Parallels to country’s racist past haunt age of Obama“.   From start to finish the article is a blatant attempt to paint the entire Republican agenda as a plan to restore racial segregation and institutionalized discrimination in the United States.  Mr. Blake uses anecdotal stories of the N-word in twitter accounts (though presumably not referring to the twitter responses to Stacy Dash’s tweet) and complaints about “black flash mobs” alongside citing any opposition to Obama’s legislative agenda as examples of Republicans trying to undo years of racial progress made by the courageous Democratic party through the years.  Mr. Blake uses the example of Senator Revels and failure of the Reconstruction movement to draw an analogy to today’s President Obama and the failure of his “post-racial” legislative agenda.  The analogy is very appropriate, but not for the reason that Mr. Blake presented.

It is important to understand historical facts before addressing how shockingly false and malicious Mr. Blake’s article really is.  When one moves beyond the rhetoric and looks at the historical achievements of the Republican party, it is shocking that any African-American votes Democrat:

  • 1865 – Republican Abraham Lincoln won the civil war and abolished slavery.  Good start for the party.
  • 1870 – Republican Hiram Revels is elected to the US Senate.  The first black man to be elected to the US Senate got some support from Democrats because they thought that his election would break the Republican party.
  • 1870 – 1948 Not much happened for the Black population of the US despite powerful presidencies of Democratic heroes like FDR and Truman.
  • 1948 – Republican Dwight Eisenhower forces desegregation of the armed forces against strong opposition.  After Brown vs Board of Education, Eisenhower famously deploys the 101st Airborne Division to forcibly desegregate schools in Little Rock, AR.  He declares racial segregation a national security issue and establishes the Civil Rights Commission and puts a permanent civil rights office in the Justice Department.  The first civil rights legislation since the 1870′s, the Civil rights act of 1957 was passed despite strong Democratic opposition. Senate Democrats did manage to water down the bill so that a second voter rights bill was necessary.  Partially at the request of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. President Eisenhower passes a follow-up voter protection civil rights act of 1960, again against strong Democratic opposition.
  • 1964 – Democratic President LBJ passes the landmark Civil Rights Act against Democratic opposition in congress.
  • 1970 – Republican President Richard Nixon signs the Philadelphia Plan and Affirmative action is born (yes, Richard Nixon is responsible for Affirmative Action).  Though not pertinent to racial issues, it is also interesting to point out that Nixon is responsible for the Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing equal rights for Women under the law.
  • 1983 – Republican President Ronald Reagan makes Martin Luther King, Jr day an official federal holiday.  In 1988, he would expand and strengthen the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
  • 1991 – President George H. W Bush appoints the second African-American Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas.

The road to equal rights under the law was largely paved by Republicans. However, most Republicans (sans Nixon), view legal equality as the just end goal fo legislative activity.  Until the time of the Civil Rights act, Democrats largely sought to deny civil rights to the African-American population.  Since then, the Democratic party started a new, though equally devastating, policy towards the African-American population.  The plan was to create an entitled dependent class that would get “special” protections and privileges under the law.  Such special privileges would be justified by stoking racial tension and convincing the African-American population that anything short of special treatment under the law is oppression.  Quotas, affirmative action, and over-reaching anti-discrimination laws that make it very easy to sue employers were passed ensuring that people would always doubt the accomplishments of minorities and make employers think twice about employing people that they would not be able to fire. The measures ensured that African-American unemployment would always remain high. In addition to destructive “special” privileges under the law, entitlement programs were geared towards the African-American population and created a dependent class that required government handouts to survive.

This narrative of this policy is clearly illustrated in Mr. Blake’s CNN article.  Anyone who denies that narrative and points out the devastating consequences of those policies is deemed a racist.  The Democratic party has been using narrative of racial strife, special rights, and government handouts to manipulate the African-American electorate into voting for them.  Any African-American who votes against the Democratic party is viciously attacked as a sell-out or “uncle Tom”.

Manipulating the black vote for personal benefit by keeping old conflicts and hatred alive is by no means a characteristic unique to the modern Democratic party.  The same immoral and powerful narrative was used by the Republican party for a short time in the 1870′s.  One courageous man stood up to his own party and publicly denounced the strategy:

Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it….. My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people…. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.

The man behind this courageous quote was ex-senator Hiram Revels, in 1875.  The Republican party had been using slavery and the crimes of the civil war to secure the black vote.  Senator Revels knew that the only way to move on to a post-racial society is to come together and stop stoking up racial and cultural hate of years past.  He even voted to give confederates citizenship if they swore an oath of loyalty to the US.  He knew that the hate narrative continued by President Grant to secure political points would ruin the Reconstruction efforts and negate the powerful symbolism of his own election into the US senate.  How ironic that an article designed to fabricate stories of white oppression and stoke the fires of racial strife would highlight the most courageous figure in US history to rage against such tactics.

The article concludes by asking how Senator Revels might feel if he could see Obama and America in 2012.  That one is easy to answer:  Senator Revel would have seen a familiar historic election of an African-American to an office that had never been available to his race.  He would have celebrated the promise that election held to launch America into a post-racial era.  Now imagine if after the promise and hope that election gave, the party that achieved it falsely used racial hate and divisiveness to secure political gain.  For once we don’t have to speculate what his reaction would be, because the story is the exact same as what Senator Revel experienced 140 years ago.  We can safely assume that he would hang his head in shame.

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.

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.