Monthly Archives: October 2012

Blasts from the Past

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This is what FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wrote in his diary in the depths of the Great Depression after years of explosive spending, rapidly increasing debt, enormously high unemployment, rising taxes and tax rates, and drastic intrusion of government controls into our economy:

We have tried spending money.  We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.  I want to see this country prosper.  I want to see people get a job.  I want to see people get enough to eat.  We have never made good on our promises.  I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started.  And enormous debt to boot.

Although slow to (re)learn the lesson, Morgenthau wasn’t the first to articulate the failure of government spending to accomplish much of anything good.  Ludwig von Mises had some remarks on the matter, too.

When the government spends more, the public spends less.  Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand.  They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.

And

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken.  The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found.  Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

And

Government spending cannot create additional jobs.  If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

And

A policy of deficit spending saps the very foundation of all interpersonal relations and contracts.  It frustrates all kinds of savings, social security benefits and pensions.

Now contrast that with what the present administration has done, and the wonderful effects that explosive spending, rapidly increasing debt, enormously high unemployment, the constant threat of rising taxes and tax rates, and drastic intrusion of government controls into our economy have had on our economy and on jobs for Americans.

Lies of my President, Part 6

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This is Part 6 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

Here are some of Obama’s campaign ad lies (as opposed to the exaggeration, hype, and distortion that are part and parcel of campaign ads), from The Wall Street Journal.

One Obama spot says, “To pay for huge, new tax breaks for millionaires like him, Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class: $2,000 for a family with children.”

That claim has been thoroughly discredited, including by PolitiFact Virginia and editorials in this newspaper.

In fact, the Romney plan includes reductions in tax rates across the board—for wealthy, middle class, and the poor (to the extent the latter pay any taxes at all)—while eliminating many deductions.  Since most of the deductions to be eliminated are taken primarily by the upper middle class and wealthy, this would reduce the impact of the rate reduction for those compared to the middle class and poor—while still reducing those rates across the board.  No $2,000 increase.

Another ad says, “As a corporate raider, [Mr. Romney] shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” In response, the Washington Post editorialized, “On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue.”

The Post‘s Fact Checker article debunks the “corporate raider” slur, and it identifies the jobs outsourcing claim as an Obama cynical distortion.

An Obama ad aimed at northern Virginia women intones, “Mitt Romney opposes requiring coverage for contraception.”  In fact, Mr. Romney opposes the president’s unprecedented assault on religious liberties—in this case, the federal government forcing religious institutions (like church-sponsored hospitals, schools and charities) to provide insurance coverage for contraception in violation of their fundamental moral values and, incidentally, the First Amendment.

There’s nothing to add to this correction.

Finally, there’s this whopper in front of an Hispanic audience—the recent Univision “Town Hall” interview—now about his own performance in office:

Obama claimed that his Justice Department’s botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning program was “begun under the previous administration.”  This time it was ABC’s Jake Tapper correcting the record, pointing out, “it was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.”

This is a rather blatant lie.  The program to which Obama is pretending to refer, the Wide Receiver program run under President Bush the Younger’s DoJ, had a number of significant differences with Obama’s Fast and Furious program, beyond the fact that Wide Receiver was terminated before the end of Bush’s term.

There are two differences of particular interest.  On the one hand, the program was done in coordination with the Mexican government, instead of behind its back, as was Fast and Furious.  On the other hand, far fewer guns were involved—about a quarter of the number of Fast and Furious.  In the end, Wide Receiver was terminated because it wasn’t working—most of the weapons were, in fact, lost.

But Obama’s DoJ apparently thought walking four times as many guns and doing it in secret from the Mexican government would help their version succeed.

Unemployment Numbers and Jobs

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In the aftermath of last week’s reported headline number of 7.8% unemployment, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama was out on the hustings bragging about how his policies had created some 5,000,000 jobs since the end of the Panic in 2009.  Like that’s a good performance.

Let’s look at that.  He promised in 2009 a 5.5% unemployment rate by now.  How many new jobs would have been created had we actually reached his promised number?  In December 2009 (some six months after the nominal end of the Panic of 2009), the civilian labor force was 153,059,000, of which 137,792,000 Americans were employed, a 10% unemployment rate, according to BLS statistics, and using round numbers.

In September 2012, again using BLS numbers, the civilian labor force was larger, at 155,063,000 (and it had a smaller participation rate than in 2009, but we’ll gloss over that).  There were some 142,974,000 Americans actually employed—that increase of 5,000,000 of which Obama is so proud.

However, a 5.5% unemployment rate corresponds, if my 1st grade arithmetic serves me well, to 94.5% of the civilian labor force actually employed: 146,535,000 Americans.  Again consulting my 1st grade arithmetic book, there are some 3,561,000 Americans that should be employed but aren’t—because Obama’s proudly proclaimed policies have come up short, and we aren’t anywhere near 5.5% unemployment.

Let’s look at this another way.  It’s been widely reported that this “recovery” is the weakest, most anemic post-recession recovery in our nation’s history.  Those reports aren’t far wrong.  A normal recovery coming out of a downturn as deep and steep as was the Panic of 2009 typically sees growth rates of 5%-6% per year, or more.  This Obama recovery has been 6.7% over the entirety of his term in office—nearly four years.  Had we seen a normal recovery (and using a pessimistic 5%/year growth rate), we would have reached today’s unemployment rate after a shade over one year—in 2010—and we would have been back to full employment (in the range of 4.8%-5.5%) in just under 2 years—by last year.

Obama says his policies are working.  Sure.

Another Chinese Attack

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…this time against the White House’s computers.

White House sources partly confirmed an alarming report that US government computers were breached by Chinese hackers.

“This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network,” a White House official told FoxNews.com.

Spear phishing consists of attempts directed at specific individuals.  Sure enough, “This [White House Communications Agency] guy opened an email he wasn’t supposed to open,” according to a law enforcement official investigating the attack.

Most likely, this was a preliminary, probing attack, in preparation for a later, more fully developed assault.  Or a demonstration of things to come if we don’t step back.

Sure enough,

[a] White House official downplayed that report, saying that the system involved was not a sensitive nuclear system, and no evidence indicated that information was actually taken.

That’s OK, then.  The fact of the successful probe is itself no big deal.  Sure.

John Silber

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…was, among other things, the President of Boston University and the son of an immigrant.  Here’s what he had to say in April 1996 about a bilingual America, as reprinted last week in The Wall Street Journal [emphasis mine]:

English has never been declared our official language for the simple reason that, until recently, no one doubted that it already was.  The country was established by English speakers, its founding documents and laws are written in English and its legislatures transact their affairs in English.

This is a lesson my father learned soon after he came to this country from Germany in 1903 to work on the German pavilion at the St Louis World’s Fair.  When the fair closed he went to look for work.  Walking down the street, he saw a sign saying, “Undertaker.”  Supposing this to be a literal translation of the German word “unternehmer,” meaning “contractor,” he went inside and was surprised to find himself in a room full of coffins.  Embarrassed, he concluded that it was time to learn English.

Like all immigrants seeking naturalization, he had to demonstrate proficiency in English.  It would never have occurred to him or to any of the millions of other immigrants speaking many different languages to seek accommodations such as ballots in their native tongue.  He, like them, had freely chosen to live in a country where the language was English.

This is our historic tradition.  But in 1975 Congress amended the Voting Rights Act to require bilingual ballots.  Thus the lawmakers abandoned tradition, making a change of Constitutional consequence, amending in effect the very concept of US citizenship.  The naturalization statutes presume that English is the language of US citizens.  Why else is English required for naturalization? …

In the last weeks of the Soviet Union, I visited Moscow.  I was struck, reading my visa application, to see that the Soviet government wanted to know both my citizenship and my nationality.  I found this incomprehensible, for as an American, my citizenship and my nationality are one and the same.  America is a nation based on a set of ideals and allegiance to those ideals—it’s not based on ethnicity or national origin.

What he said.