Tag Archives: freedom

Another Demonstration of Leading from Behind

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…and of its…effectiveness.

Thomas Donnelly of The Weekly Standard wrote that

President Obama said at an August 20 news conference that it was a “red line for us [if] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”  That would “change my calculus,” he declared.

But then came the weasel words.

But what has changed is the definition of “move.”  Apparently, it doesn’t mean the Syrian Army moving chemical rounds in order to use them on rebel forces or mixing the “precursor” elements that give a chemical warhead its lethality, but, in the clarifying words of National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, “ ’moving around’ means proliferation,” as in transferring them to Hezbollah.

Anything to avoid making a hard decision.  Please.

As long as the Obama administration continues to allow itself to be held hostage to such (imaginary) foreign threats—if that’s what the administration is doing—it will continue to be a helpless laughingstock in the eyes of our enemies.

Or, as William Kristol writes,

Obama’s inaction in Syria now is of a piece with his inaction in Iran in 2009, that the abandonment of Iraq in 2011 prefigured the prospective abandonment of Afghanistan over the next couple of years, and that defense cuts at home go hand in hand with an oh-so-light footprint abroad. The Obama administration has chosen a course of American retrenchment and retreat.

In which case, it’s not timidity but a deliberate retrograde advancement.  Which doesn’t change in any material way our enemies’ perception of us.

This is where trailing along behind events while yelling, “I’m going there, too” has gotten us.

Spending

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Here‘s an interesting table, from The Motley Fool.

A couple of notes.  Spending in 2012, the fourth year of the Age of Obama, relative to our nation’s total economic output, our GDP, is up 18%.  The government spends nearly a quarter of our total economic production, production that by the government’s usurpation we in the private sector cannot use for our own ends.

Defense spending is down more than 17% from its long term average.  Even so, President Barack Obama is bent on gutting our defense capability by another half-trillion dollars, starting next month.  Never mind that al-Qaeda is resurgent across northern Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia.  Never mind that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakout.  Never mind that Russia and the People’s Republic of China both are increasing their own military spending and that the PRC, especially, is becoming increasingly aggressive militarily with their growing capability.

Welfare spending is nearly 9% of our GDP, up nearly two-thirds from a skosh over 5%.  Yet Obama wants to increase welfare spending even further.  I’ve written here about the trap that is welfare; one can only speculate about Obama’s motives for this.

Gimme

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Collis P Huntington, President of the Southern Pacific Railroad (among others) is reputed to have said

Whatever is not nailed down is mine.  What I can pry loose is not nailed down.

Via Spirit of Enterprise comes this AEIDeas article of charts illustrating the attitude from a different perspective.  Below, some of those charts.

The rate of entitlement growth per capita has been nearly twice as fast as per capita income growth for the last fifty years

Note: Derived by author on the basis of data on official transfers, price changes, and population change. Sources: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Dept. of Labor, US Census International Data Base

And

In the 1960s, the federal government spent $2 on governing for each $1 it spent on entitlement transfers. Today that ratio has completely flipped:

Sources: Derived from: Federal government entitlement transfers: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Budget Outlays: White House Fiscal Year 2012 Historical Tables

And

Here’s where the money goes:

Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer price index

And

As the Welfare State has expanded, Americans are working less.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, One Screen database, Labor Force Statistics, Series “LNU01300001”, “LNS12300001”

And there’s this from The Daily Caller:

After accounting for federal taxes, the median hourly wage drops to between $21.50 and $23.45, depending on a household’s deductions and filing status.  State and local taxes further reduce the median household’s hourly earnings. By contrast, welfare benefits are not taxed.

Now it’s the culture of dependency which the Progressives have created that is making the demand.  And President Barack Obama is prying ever more loose, actively abetted by an increasingly pliant Republican Party.

Rule of Law and Prosperity

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA) has issued a report that discusses, among other things, the relationship between rule of law and national prosperity and freedom.  Some excerpts follow.

From

Less noticed, but perhaps even more important—especially to the over 20 million Americans currently out of work or underemployed—is the link between a breakdown in the rule of law and reduced economic growth and individual prosperity.

Property rights and rule of law are essential for the proper and efficient functioning of society and the economy.  Unambiguous laws and procedures provide a framework by which free people agree on the scope and reach of their government’s actions, whereas unclear laws or arbitrary enforcement undermine individual liberty and the notion of popular sovereignty.  Clear, transparent, predictable rules that are applied without preference or prejudice allow individuals to invest, build businesses, and create jobs.  When there is a breakdown in the rule of law, increased uncertainty leads to reduced investment and less growth.

Numerous economic studies have documented the relationship between a strong rule of law and economic growth. In 2008, The Economist published the following chart alongside a story entitled “Order in the Jungle.”

The chart aptly illustrates the strong relationship between adherence to the rule of law and economic growth.  As economist Hernando de Soto—a leader in the field of the impact of property rights and rule of law on economic growth succinctly stated: “So the origin of the rule of law— which will allow a modern nation to grow and so bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the world—is property rights.  And the rule of law will actually generate prosperity.”

And

In the United States, the ultimate law is the Constitution, which specifically provides how laws are to be enacted and requires the President to take care that the laws that are enacted are faithfully executed.  The laws of the United States establish the process whereby individuals can enforce their property rights and private contracts and provide the framework by which executive agencies are to conduct rulemakings and the other regulatory activities.

When “laws” are created without going through Congress; when laws are selectively executed; when an administration intervenes into the normal judicial process and diminishes an individual’s property rights; and when the normal regulatory process is circumvented, the rule of law is eroded.

All of this increases uncertainty.  Individuals, families, and businesses now not only face uncertainty with respect to the policy decisions made by government, but they face uncertainty as to how those decisions will even be made.  Numerous economic studies and surveys indicate that uncertainty itself (which is certainly increased with the breakdown in the rule of law) also hinders economic growth.

While Administrations of both political parties have been known to test the bounds of the limits of their power, the breadth of the breakdown in the rule of law in recent years has reached new levels.  In the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal‘s annual Index of Economic Freedom, the United States scores lower today on the rule of law than it did in 2008.  As the 2012 report notes, “Corruption is a growing concern as the cronyism and economic rent-seeking associated with the growth of government have undermined institutional integrity.”  Individuals and businesses are increasingly forced to rely on the courts to enforce their most basic substantive and procedural rights.

To

There is no excuse for this continuous disregard of legislative authority and the Constitutionally-required separation of powers.  In some instances, President Obama attempted to garner legislative authority, failed and then acted unilaterally in defiance.  In other instances, the President never even sought to find consensus and instead ignored Congress and its authority from the outset.  In speeches, the President has proudly acknowledged that he has acted without Congress, contending that he has no other alternative.

This is no way to govern.  The President has set a precedent that even his supporters should find troubling.  After all, what would now prevent a subsequent President, with opposite policy predilections, from bypassing the checks on his own authority and enacting his own policies in this same manner?  The Founding Fathers wisely gave the President many powers, but making law was not one of them.  They understood that laws should not be made by one individual acting alone, but rather through elected representatives working to achieve consensus.

House Republicans have acted to prevent and overturn the President’s harmful actions in order to return economic growth, opportunity and certainty to the American people and American job creators.  However, the majority of the bills the House has passed are sitting idly in the Democrat-led Senate, without any action on the part of Democratic Leader Harry Reid or President Obama.

Throughout our nation’s history, presidents have sought common ground and achieved legislative success with opposing party leaders.  Many of the laws circumvented in this report were achieved in that manner.  Congressional authority must not be disregarded to suit political interests, create unpopular regulations and to avoid the hard work of bipartisan negotiation that has been a hallmark of our Republic since its inception.

Note that such measures as are required by the erosion/breakdown of the rule of law as bringing legal cases to court only adds to business’ and individual’s current costs and increases their uncertainty, since court outcomes are largely unpredictable.

RTWT.  It’s a long-ish read, but it also includes a list of current examples.

 

h/t Grim’s Hall

Welfare and Economic Mobility

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I’ve written elsewhere of the trap for Americans that is welfare in  the form of handouts. The CBO’s Nov 2012 report, Effective Marginal Tax Rates for Low- and Moderate-Income Workers, makes this explicit.  Here are two examples from the report:

[T]he single parent who moved from not working to working part-time would face a marginal tax rate of 36 percent because even a modest level of earnings would result in the reduction or loss of several transfer benefits [the tax].  Earnings from part-time work would result in a loss of eligibility for assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, some reduction in the housing voucher, and a decrease in benefits available through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

And

The marginal tax rate associated with moving from part-time to full-time employment…would be higher—47 percent.  Earnings from full-time work would place the single parent in the EITC’s plateau range and would allow him or her to claim the maximum EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit] amount ($3,169 in 2012).  However, because moving from part-time work to full-time work does not increase the EITC as much as does moving from not working to working part-time, marginal tax rates in this scenario would be higher than in the first scenario.

The disincentive to get work is large, but by remaining in her current situation, the single mother (yes, I’m assuming) is foregoing opportunity to improve her economic situation: there is potential for advancement, pay raises, and so on with a paying job.  Remaining on the government’s dole leaves this woman dependent on her government for her livelihood.  And doing so makes it even harder for her child(ren) to move up the economic ladder in his own time.  Upward mobility is severely handicapped, if not foreclosed altogether.