Of Presidents and Training for the Job, 2015

March 22, 2015 Leave a comment

More and more I have been struggling for the words to express my concern over the frightening incompetence of the current President of the United States. Barack Obama’s economic blunders deepened and prolonged the recession and bequeathed to us the most anemic recovery of modern times. Most of us have been seriously harmed by those policies, some more than others. Unfortunately, the extent of his economic errors are obscured by the benighted economic management in Europe, which amazingly is managing even to underperform ours.

President Obama’s politics have yielded the opposite of what he publicly promised: division in place of unity, secrecy and deception in place of open government, exclusion of those who disagree with him in place of inclusive embrace of open debate, privilege for the few in place of opportunity for the many, racial bigotry for political gain in place of a “post racial” society, rule by breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution in place of rule of law. I am sure that you could easily lengthen the list. Again, these perfidies have been to some degree obscured by congressional Democrat leaders far too willing to compromise their duties of office and the rights of the legislative branch of government, all to cover up and support the Obama Administration’s outrages on the nation and the political institutions of the Republic.

Most frightful of all, however, is President Obama’s dangerously bungling foreign policy. No friend of the United States is safe from this Administration’s blunders. Vladimir Putin, the boss of a second rate economic and military power—albeit one with a formidable nuclear arsenal—has been able to engage in 19th Century military adventures of invasion, conquest, and territorial acquisition against little more than vacuous bully talk from Obama, the emptiness of which has produced similarly pitiful responses from the leading Powers of Western Europe, derision from Moscow, and fear among America’s friends only recently escaped from the Soviet Union. China commits aggression against India and the Philippines, threatens Japan, and toys with close relations with Russia to isolate the United States, while openly engaging in cyber attacks on the U.S. government and American industry. Islamist barbarians increasingly brutalize Muslims, Jews, Christians, and humanists alike, undeterred by inchoate responses from Obama, who asserts leadership while failing to lead, other than with his transparent policies of pusillanimity and indecision. American allies in the Middle East feel abandoned or betrayed, while enemies are emboldened; the best counter strategy that Barack Obama is able to envision is a plan that might delay but will not prevent the nuclear arming of the mullahs of Iran—committed to the incineration of Israel, the more Jews killed the better. Each day seems to extend the list of foreign policy failures.

While considering the consequences of an amateur in the Oval Office, I came across a brief note I wrote during the 2008 presidential campaign. It might be immodest for me to point out how correct my warnings proved. I can make no claims to perspicacity, as all of this was rather obvious. No self congratulations are in order. It is too dangerous a world to trust the Presidency of the United States to one whose inexperience is only matched by his hubris. This is what I penned August 25, 2008, just before Barack Obama received the nomination of the Democrats:

There are some jobs you just cannot safely do without proper training and experience. Flying an airplane is one that comes to mind. Driving a bus is another. I would put being President of the United States in the Twenty-First Century on the list, too.

President of the United States was a tough job in the days of George Washington. It was even a challenge in the days of Millard Fillmore. It has not become any easier in recent years, and next year it will be a very big job. Considering the global responsibilities of the United States, with several irresponsible oil-drunk regimes threatening peace and freedom (ours and other’s) around the world, can we afford to enroll our new President in a foreign policy on-the-job-training program?

Economically as well, there is little room for error. So far we have gone through a year and a half of the housing market bust without falling into a recession. But our economic growth is anemic. A small false step or two can put us into a full-blown economic decline, exploding banking and financial markets that will then take years to recover. It is important that economic policy next year be led by someone who understands economic growth and how to promote it. The formula for growth—low taxes and steady prices—is well known to those who have learned the lesson; we do not need a novice who does not have enough experience to know that you cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. We cannot afford his experiments with our jobs and livelihood.

That is why it is breathtaking that a major political party is on the verge of nominating for President someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama. I am unable to recall a single nominee for President, by any major party, less prepared for the office than Barack Obama. Really, there is the challenge for you. Name a nominee—Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist—less prepared than Obama.

Barack Obama likes to liken himself to Abraham Lincoln. I cannot claim to have known Abraham Lincoln or assert that he was a friend of mine, but I do say, Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. Even liberal exaggerations of Obama’s undistinguished career cannot make it compare favorably with the long and grueling life experiences that schooled Lincoln for the White House.

In short, Obama does not have the training for the job. It may be that the Democrats’ talent pool is so thin that he will be nominated. But the job of President is too important—to all of us—to be extended to someone so unready.

Filed under banking, Barack Obama, bubbles, China, Congress, Constitution, deficit spending, economic depression, economic growth, elections, European Union, hubris, inflation, interest rates, international relations, Iran, Islamists, Israel, jobs, law, Middle East, national security, politics, racism, recession, rule of law, Russia, Soviet Union, taxes, Ukraine Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Plumber Joe and Community Organizer Barry

March 1, 2014 Leave a comment

I first published this before the 2008 presidential election. In the years since, President Obama’s community organizer background has faithfully exerted itself.

It took a real life example to give life to the key difference between the two candidates for president. When Plumber Joe met Barack Obama campaigning in his neighborhood, Joe asked the would-be president, why do you want to tax my small business? Actually, more precisely, Joe wants to buy the plumbing business he has worked at, and Obama wants to raise taxes on it, and Joe asked Obama, why? At first, Obama equivocated and mumbled something about getting some tax breaks to offset the tax hikes. When Joe refused to buy into that sleight of hand trick, Obama fessed up. Obama admitted that he wanted to spread the wealth around. In other words, he said that Joe would be making too much money, so Obama wanted to take from him and give to someone else.

Why would Obama want to do that? Because, unlike Plumber Joe, who has a real job, Obama’s career experience came as a “community organizer” (when he was known in Chicago as Barry). Taking money from people and giving it to others is what community organizers do. Barry the Community Organizer now wants to organize a big community, of over 300 million people, and he wants to keep spreading the wealth around. Community organizers like to do that, because they like to get the credit for being compassionate and generous, compassionate and generous handing out other people’s money.

Joe has worked hard as a plumber. Joe has saved and prospered. Now Joe wants to own his own business and provide work for other employees. The employees, these plumbers, would provide plumbing services and get paid by their customers. Barack Obama wants to take some of that money—O.K., a lot of that money—and spread it around to people who would get their money from Barack, people who have not been as “lucky” as Plumber Joe.

Lucky? My guess is that it was not luck that made Joe work hard over the years and save his money to be in a position to own a business and provide real jobs to other people. Under a President Obama, Joe and others like him would become unlucky.

John McCain has been trying to point out for weeks that the change offered by Barack Obama is a big time return to the tired old tax and spend politics of the big government politicians. John McCain is not the most eloquent campaigner, and the mass media has been doing its best to bury his message anyway. McCain finally found a real life example, and that is the most eloquent statement of all. At the last national debate, on a stage that the mass media could not ignore, McCain introduced us to Joe the Plumber (who by the way did not ask for all the attention and is a bit embarrassed by it), and McCain asked, why raise his taxes? Why raise anybody’s taxes going into an economic downturn?

If you do not raise the taxes, you cannot keep spending other people’s money and winning praise for your compassion and generosity. And that is the point of this election.

(First published October 16, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, compensation, economic depression, elections, fairness, government, jobs, politics, recession, socialism, statism, taxes, tyranny

Of Elections and Consequences

January 16, 2014 Leave a comment

I wrote the following just a few days before Barack Obama was first elected President, in 2008. I am tempted, reading it 5 years later, to congratulate myself on how insightful I was, but, frankly, Obama’s policies were so old and tried and failed, that he made it easy. See for yourself:

Elections have consequences, real, life-affecting consequences. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the mass media attitude toward elections is their approach to them as if they were some kind of game. The running score that they keep of the latest polls, their up-to-date electoral college count, the fixation on who “won” the latest debate, all demonstrate a sentiment that the election is some kind of sporting event, where we all root for one side or another, and when the game is won and the season is over we all go back to business as usual. That is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

After the election in November is over, it will not be back to business as usual. America’s standard of living, our economic welfare, our health, safety, and national security will all be affected. Electing Jimmy Carter meant economic and social malaise, it meant the loss of allies in several parts of the world, it meant civil war in Central America and the rise to power of the Ayatollahs in Iran. It meant a toxic economic brew of high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates. It meant increased crime in our cities. It meant an underpaid and undersupplied military, with Navy ships coming into harbor trading ammunition with those leaving port because there was not enough ammunition to go around.

Barack Obama is not quite as good or experienced as Jimmy Carter. His leading economic proposal is a whopping tax in the face of an economic downturn. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt tried that in the 1930s, which turned a recession into the Great Depression. And Obama lies about his tax increase. He lies that it would not affect 95% of the population. The severe recession that it would cause will affect everyone, even the non-tax payers who are promised a tax cut by Obama.

Obama’s plan for a camouflaged government take over of health care will mean that health services will be provided with the same efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service. That means that sick people will have reduced access to medical services. It means that incentives to develop new medicines and new treatments will melt away. If government runs health care, as Obama wants, that means that political muscle will determine health care priorities rather than patient demand setting the priorities.

Obama’s foreign policies are right out of the Jimmy Carter briefing book. That means betrayal of our friends, appeasement of our enemies, and adventurous use of the military in places and causes that mean little to the national security of the United States. It means preparation always for some other war but inadequate commitment to fight the war we are in (he’s eager to send more troops into Afghanistan, but unwilling to win the war in Iraq). It means further design of the next weapons system, but never deployment of it, a return to starving our military of what it needs to do the job with least loss of life and maximum success. It means that the most important issues for the Obama military will be social engineering of the armed forces rather than a focus on their increased effectiveness and efficiency.

Voting in a republic like the United States is a serious matter. It is not a game. It means far more than bragging rights over whether our team won the World Series. It means that we are responsible for our electoral choices, with a full understanding that the people we elect will mean a difference in our lives and the lives of our families. It is a truism that people get the government they deserve. I firmly hope and believe that the American people deserve better than Obama. I know that my children do.

(First published October 5, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, deficit spending, economic depression, elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt, healthcare, national security, politics, recession, statism, taxes

Of Con Artists and Presidential Candidates

November 15, 2013 1 Comment

There is something disturbing about Barack Obama. I have been trying to put words to it. It is not merely that I disagree with him on his political prescriptions. There are many people, across the political spectrum, with whom I disagree on political policies and programs, even those for whom I used to work. With only a relative handful of them, however, have I sensed the same disquiet that I feel with regard to this year’s Democrat nominee for President.

After the recent presidential debate between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain I found the right words. Obama is a con artist. Fundamentally, he is acting in a deceptive way to get something from you. He wants you to believe that he has your best interests at heart so that he can get from you your precious vote. He pretends to be what he is not, because if you understood what he is all about, you would not vote for him.

Take, for example, his tax policies. Barack Obama promises a tax cut for 95% of the population. He is offering you a financial incentive for your vote. He is offering to buy your vote. He does not tell you that many of those people for whom he promises a tax cut do not pay any federal income taxes. A tax cut to people who do not pay taxes is just a government hand out. And he usually tries to hide the fact that this hand out to people who do not pay taxes is coming from you. We should not be so willing to believe that you can tax just 5% of the people in order to give a tax break to the other 95%—especially if many of the 95% do not pay any income taxes. You cannot get there, even if you try to take all of the money of the “rich,” and once that is gone what do you do for the next act?

If you own your own business, chances are very high that your business is taxed like an individual and that the revenues for that business will be classified as the “rich” that Obama says he thinks need to pay more taxes. Or perhaps you have some investments in the stock market—half of all Americans do. When those rich companies pay the new Obama taxes, that money comes out of the hides of the companies’ shareholders. Moreover, raising taxes into the teeth of an economic decline is a certain recipe for accelerating the decline. That is what Hoover did, and what Franklin Roosevelt did in order to make an economic recession last for a whole decade (eventually history should recognize that FDR was the worst president of the 20th Century—even if he could talk a good game).

A second example follows directly from the tax example. After he is finished talking about tax cuts (on people who do not pay taxes), Obama starts his litany of very expensive new government spending programs. The price tag for these comes to some $800 billion, give or take a hundred billion dollars. Each program is carefully designed to buy votes. Not only do his tax cuts not work as real tax cuts—taken by themselves—they cannot possibly work in the face of $800 billion of new federal spending.

The third example is really the most prominent. Barack Obama says that this is all “change.” He says you should vote for change, because he thinks that you want change and that his promise for change will get you to give him your vote. If you believe that major tax increases and massive new government spending programs are change, maybe he will succeed in getting many votes. But maybe people will say that they have heard that formula before, and whenever it is applied the nation always becomes poorer.

Barack Obama looks good, talks smooth, promises everything. If he loses this race for President, maybe he could try his hand selling used cars.

(First published September 28, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, deception, deficit spending, economic depression, elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt, politics, recession, redistribution, taxes

Of Presidents and Training for the Job

October 22, 2013 Leave a comment

There are some jobs you just cannot safely do without proper training and experience. Flying an airplane is one that comes to mind. Driving a bus is another. I would put being President of the United States in the Twenty-First Century on the list, too.

President of the United States was a tough job in the days of George Washington. It was even a challenge in the days of Millard Fillmore. It has not become any easier in recent years, and next year it will be a very big job. Considering the global responsibilities of the United States, with several irresponsible oil-drunk regimes threatening peace and freedom (ours and other’s) around the world, can we afford to enroll our new President in a foreign policy on-the-job-training program?

Economically as well, there is little room for error. So far we have gone through a year and a half of the housing market bust without falling into a recession. But our economic growth is anemic. A small false step or two can put us into a full-blown economic decline, exploding banking and financial markets that will then take years to recover. It is important that economic policy next year be led by someone who understands economic growth and how to promote it. The formula for growth—low taxes and steady prices—is well known to those who have learned the lesson; we do not need a novice who does not have enough experience to know that you cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. We cannot afford his experiments with our jobs and livelihood.

That is why it is breathtaking that a major political party is on the verge of nominating for President someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama. I am unable to recall a single nominee for President, by any major party, less prepared for the office than Barack Obama. Really, there is the challenge for you. Name a nominee—Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist—less prepared than Obama.

Barack Obama likes to liken himself to Abraham Lincoln. I cannot claim to have known Abraham Lincoln or assert that he was a friend of mine, but I do say, Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. Even liberal exaggerations of Obama’s undistinguished career cannot make it compare favorably with the long and grueling life experiences that schooled Lincoln for the White House.

In short, Obama does not have the training for the job. It may be that the Democrats’ talent pool is so thin that he will be nominated. But the job of President is too important—to all of us—to be extended to someone so unready.

(First published August 25, 2008)

Filed under Abraham Lincoln, banking, Barack Obama, bubbles, deficit spending, economic depression, economic growth, elections, George Washington, inflation, interest rates, jobs, national security, recession, taxes

Of Claiming Good and Doing Bad

October 13, 2013 1 Comment

A very good book was published this month. Ostensibly, it is about our economy and the recession. It is actually about much more. It is the first book about the current American economy written by a philosopher, and it is perhaps the best book I have read yet about all the recent unpleasantness. Some might say that the economic trouble still continues, more like a long, slow convalescence from a serious illness than a healthy recovery. For many whose financial condition stagnates, for those who have replaced a full-time job with one or two part-time jobs, for graduates who have a degree in hand but no work in the field for which they have trained, and especially for the millions who remain out of work, talk of an economic turnaround can seem like a mockery.

For those and others, Infiltrated, by Jay W. Richards, can help make some sense of what hit us. The book does not suggest that there was a massive conspiracy to drive our nation into economic turmoil. It explains how turmoil came nevertheless as national policymakers followed the prescriptions of people who claimed to be doing good but tried to cheat the laws of economics and markets to impose what they might call “benevolence” on the rest of us.

It was their idea that in order to help more people own homes lenders should ignore such things as ability to repay a mortgage, strong history of employment and steady income, and having some equity in the value of the house so there would not be an incentive to walk away if prices dropped. They also agitated for the government to expand its guaranties for mortgages to people with poor credit histories and loans where lenders cut corners. And they badgered builders to keep building more houses.

Their plans horribly miscarried, and yet those people have even more control over us and our economy today and are more able and determined to try again. The recession, rather than educating and deterring them, has made them bolder.

I am reminded of what the late Louis Rukeyser, the very popular host of the PBS program Wall Street Week, wrote in the 1990s:

Washington has been taken over by an impregnable mob of short-sighted, power-hungry megaclowns.

They try their worst to micromanage every detail of the economy, but succeed only in whipping the markets back and forth, up and down in spastic patterns. They despise the gentler forces of a free market, which would moderate swings far more predictably.
(Louis Rukeyser, 1993 advertisement for his financial newsletter)

The people to whom I refer and whom Richards exposes in his book do not like the markets. They trust themselves more and think that you should trust them, too. They seriously do believe themselves smarter than the markets, and that is the problem. No one, other than God, is smarter than the markets. A large part of economic history, the tragic part, is a chronicle of the disasters caused when a small coterie of people are able to enforce their wishes and preferences on the rest of us in contravention of economic reality. It never works.

That was the story of the Great Depression, and it was entirely the story of communism, where whole societies were based upon the now well-proven fallacy that any group of people, no matter how smart or well intentioned, can gather sufficient data and know and understand enough to run a national economy. It is just far too complicated, with billions of economic decisions being made by millions of people all day and all night long. The markets make it all work, because the markets are the sum combined total of all of those economic actions and decisions interacting with each other. No human five-year plan for economic control has escaped failure.

What is worse, as well intentioned as such people may start out, all too often, as Richards’ book exposes, their efforts not only fail to do what they set out to do, they fail to stay virtuous and instead become enlisted in the service of private gain at the expense of the rest of us. The Soviet system might have worked pretty well for the party owners of the dachas along the Black Sea but only by impoverishing the workers their leaders claimed to be serving.

Do not let yourself be put off that Richards is a philosopher. His book is remarkably readable, one that you can take with you to the beach and actually enjoy, and feel that you have learned something—a lot—in the reading. Richards mixes real life narrative with hard facts and good research, unified by sound reasoning to expose a nasty and growing problem in American government today. The problem is a big part of why government is expanding and becoming more intrusive in all aspects of our lives, including our financial affairs, education, healthcare, energy use, the products we buy, the food we eat, and the entertainment we enjoy, and even the breath we exhale.

That is to say that the story told by Jay Richards, in Infiltrated, is actually a longer story, a story that began long before the recession, and continues afterward, a story that is bigger than his book. The recent economic events and their painful aftermath illuminate Richards’ core message, the human wreckage caused when some people are able to harness the coercive force of government to impose their personal notions of “benevolence” on the rest of us.

Roger Kimball, writing in 2011 in The New Criterion, warned that such efforts are “intoxicating, addictive, expensive, and ultimately ruinous.” (Roger Kimball, “Liberty versus benevolence,” The New Criterion, February 2011, p.6) Richards offers several well-described examples, well illustrating the truth of Kimball’s observations.

A valuable lesson for policymakers and for the people they would govern: the more discretion you give to government, the more you create the opportunity for abuse of that discretion for private gain. Europe in the 18th century was lousy with the practice. Our forebears sought to escape it and fought a revolution to get out of its grip. The men who threw the tea into Boston Harbor were acting in protest of the partnership between the British Crown and the British East India Company.

Beware the public-private partnerships. Jay Richards explains how some public-private mortgage partnerships went bad, very bad, for the partners and for all of us caught in the dust and debris of their collapse. I am reminded of the warning by former Congressman Dick Armey, that when you enter into a partnership with the devil, you are always the junior partner.

I conclude with the words of New York City Democrat Congressman Bourke Cockran, delivered 110 years ago:

That Government only is good, that Government only is great, that Government only is just, which has neither favorites nor victims.

(W. Bourke Cockran, speech given before the National Liberal Club of England, London, July 15, 1903, in W. Bourke Cockran, In the Name of Liberty, p.190)

Our government should be that government.

(First published August 18, 2013)

Filed under banking, benevolence, economic depression, economic growth, economics, healthcare, jobs, markets, personal finance, progressives, recession, rule of law, socialism, statism, tyranny