Tag Archives: morality

Government Keynesian Waste

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As if there’s any more need to demonstrate the fallacy of Keynesian stimulus pseudo-theory after its failure in the ’30s, some empirical evidence from today’s economic dislocation and failed “recovery” is neatly summarized in the following graph from Business Insider:

Most are already familiar with those projection curves, from the 2009 hype associated with ramming the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Stimulus Act) through the Democratic and then-economically timorous Congress.  Government standing aside and letting the economy recover on its own was going to let unemployment peak at around 9% and not move below 7% until Dec 2011 or reach “full” employment until Dec 2013.  On the other hand, the Obama Stimulus would cause an almost immediate peak (in August 2009 after a February enactment) at 8% and lead to recovery below 7% unemployment by fall 2010, a year sooner than under non-interference.

Instead, the Obama Stimulus has actively suppressed employment—and so economic recovery.  Unemployment, at roughly 8.5% at the time of stimulus enactment, continued rising unabated to above 10%, and it has remained above the worse-case no-government projection ever since.  Notice further, that actual unemployment has generally followed the shape of the no-government projection curve: the only effect of Obamanomics in this milieu has been to make government involvement worse than no involvement—it hasn’t altered anything else.

Do we have empirical data for the contrary position, that government noninvolvement is actively beneficial?  You betcha.  The Depression of 1920-1921 ran from the start of 1920 through the middle of 1921, and President Warren G Harding’s administration sat it out, with no significant government intervention attempted.  The graph below is constructed from data taken from Table 9 in a paper by none other than Christina Romer.

There are a couple of takeaways here.  One is the sharp, high peak to unemployment and the rapidity with which both the peak and the recovery occurred.  Another is the rapidity with which our economy actually worked its way through this Depression compared to the projected recovery rates in the first graph above.  The projections for our current failing recovery are, compared to hard data, cynically pessimistic.  This pessimism, though, cannot be laid at Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s feet; a broad range of economists assumed that slow pace.

In general, to repeat earlier posts and statements made by others: money spent by government is money not available to the private sector or to individuals to spend on their own goals and needs.  Money spent by the government is money that first must be taken from those private enterprises and citizens in the form of taxes today to pay for that spending or greater taxes tomorrow to pay both for that spending and for the interest on the debt incurred by that spending.  And here we’ve seen empirical evidence that government spending, above a minimal level for funding government itself and national defense, isn’t just useless, it’s actively counterproductive—destructive.

Pax Obama

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Monday op-ed likened Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s actions on the world stage—in particular vis-à-vis Syria—to a Samuel Beckett play.  After all, all the Syrians have to do is simply to hang in, and wait upon Obama’s convenience.

But the cost of that is enormous.  Aside from the 20,000 Syrian murders that have resulted from Obama’s dithering, aside from Iranian near-nuclear bomb achievement (to broaden the scope and result of his waffle), we’ve gone in these last three years from what was Pax Americana to a disastrous Pax Obama:

…thanks in part to Mr. Obama’s calculated abdication, Middle East tension and turmoil are rising.

And everywhere else in the world, especially including Europe and North America, if the Syrian butchery is allowed to continue apace and Iran is allowed to get nuclear weapons.

Winston Churchill’s Advice to Americans

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OK, actually he was talking to his party about how to talk with the British public at the end of WWII, but the advice is valid here, too.  Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s choice for his Vice Presidential running mate indicates that he’s following the first part of Churchill’s advice.  Now the team needs to follow the rest—that seems to be their intent—and we need to support them in that.

This is no time for windy platitudes and glittering advertisements.  The Conservative Party had far better go down telling the truth and acting in accordance with the verities of our position than gain a span of shabbily-bought office by easy and fickle froth and chatter.

All my experience of the British people, which is a long one, convinces me that never at any moment more than this have they wished and meant to face realities, and woe betide those public men who seek to slide into power down the slippery slope of vain and profligate undertakings.

This is no time for humbug and blandishments, but for grim, stark facts and figures, and for action to meet to immediate needs.

What he said.  Americans aren’t as dumb as the Progressives insist on making us out to be.

 

h/t Power Line

More on the Integrity of the Left

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Here are some of the more egregious examples.  The primary Obama-supporting SuperPAC, Priorities USA, is planning to run an ad—an ad that’s already on the Internet—that accuses Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney of being personally responsible for an ex-steel worker’s wife’s death from cancer.  The ad itself is dishonest:

  • The man’s wife died five years after GST, the steel company for which the man worked, filed for bankruptcy.
  • Romney had long since left Bain Capital at the time of her death.
  • His wife had her own health insurance after the man had left GST.
  • The man’s wife died at a time when Bain actually was being run by a major Obama bundler.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been dishonest in connection with this ad:

  • Obama denied, through his Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, that he “doesn’t know the facts” about the steelworker or his story, doesn’t know when the man’s wife became ill or anything about the man’s insurance coverage.  Yet last May, Cutter hosted a conference call in which the man detailed his story, including the specifics now appearing in this ad.
  • Obama, through his campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, insisted that “we can’t coordinate with super PACs and didn’t produce” the ad.
  • Obama has given the green light for members of his cabinet to attend fundraisers for his political action committees.
  • The existence of the conference call, followed by its information appearing in Priorities USA’s ad, together with the SuperPAC fundraising efforts, demonstrate that all of this has occurred: coordination, the Obama staff’s role in the ad’s production, and active Obama White House participation in the “independent” SuperPACs’ efforts.
  • As recently as Friday, Obama still was denying, through his press spokesman, Jay Carney, any involvement or knowledge of the sordid affair.

And there’s this.

Lauren Gray is a dancer who turned 21 last Wednesday and has lived in the US as a legal resident alien since she was 4 years old, having come here when her parents came from England on work visas.  As an adult in her own right, she now must get her own visa in order to stay.  She was on track to get her green card when her priority was dumped, without explanation, into a two-year wait—which means she would have had to return to England—a nation that’s hers by birth but not by loyalty, life, or anything that matters.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s immigration fiat, though, gives those who are in the US illegally a prompt stay—they have only to aver having themselves come here as children and having stayed out of trouble since, and they get, promptly, documents allowing them to continue staying in two-year increments.

Gray has been working with “her” Congressmen (Senator Claire McCaskill, D; Senator Roy Blunt, R; and Congressman Sam Graves, R) from Missouri, the state in which she’s been living her life, seeking assistance, and at the last minute Senator McCaskill was able to get permission for Gray to stay in the US legally until her green card request works its way through the system.  Gray will get a work visa, renewable every two years.

But why did a United States Senator have to get involved?  How many others here legally are being forced out—because they’ve outgrown their parent’s visas, or their student visas or their H-series visas have expired, or…?  This is an outcome of Obama’s immigration amnesty by fiat program—as Obama knew when he issued his “Dream Act” edict; he is, after all, a highly intelligent man and a Harvard-trained lawyer.  He knew full well what the results of his Presidential Bull would include.

Finally, there’s this:

The law breakers that were in the defunct Occupy Wall Street crowd are getting a pass from the Democratic Candidate’s White House.  Emails from the General Services Administration (remember this gang of partiers?) obtained by Fox News indicate that, on orders from the White House, the GSA instructed Federal law enforcement in Portland, OR, not to enforce curfews on protesters camped out on Federal property.  This exchange between DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate Chief of Staff, Caitlin Durkovich, and GSA’s Public Buildings Service Commissioner, Robert Peck, illustrates:

Durkovich: They have chained themselves to a large drum filled with concrete. GSA controls the permits and has asked [Federal Protective Services] not to enforce the curfew at park and the prohibition on overnight encampments…. Our FPS Commander in Portland says they are standing down and following GSA’s request to only intervene if there is a threat to public safety.

Peck: Caitlin: yes, that is our position; it’s been vetted with our administrator and Michael Robertson, our chief of staff, and we have communicated with the [White House], which has afforded us the discretion to fashion our approach to Occupy issues….  The arrests last week were carried out despite our request that the protesters be allowed to remain and to camp overnight….

Never mind that “the arrests last week” were these:  25 demonstrators arrested after they refused to leave Jamison Square in the Pearl District after the park was closed after “an intense standoff.”  And never mind the impact that waiving the law and letting lawbreakers, en masse, go free has on “public safety.”

Obamanomics and Life Expectancy

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Power Line quoted, earlier in the week, a Cato-conducted tongue-in-cheek study that applies Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s standard for attributing deaths to economic behavior, with the arithmetically driven conclusion that Obama has personally killed nearly 60,000 Americans with his own policies.  The Republican Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney, plainly is a piker who does not kill efficiently, having done in only one, and taken far more time to do so.

Of course, the claim by the Democratic Presidential Candidate through his SuperPAC is dishonest, and the claim by Cato is ludicrous and made only to illustrate that point.  A fair question to ask, though, is what is the impact on American lives the Democratic Presidential Candidate has had with Obamanomics?  The answer is apparent.

The connection between poverty level and life expectancy has been well established, as the following graph (which takes a broad-brush view of splitting between poor and rich; however in the present context, finer gradations are not needed) illustrates:

The life expectancy delta between “rich” and “poor” over the 20 years of this study has reached +4-ish years in favor of the “rich” for the population in general, with a larger disparity among men.

On the other hand, the number of Americans living in poverty has been growing sharply during the 3+ years of Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama’s current term on the hustings.  In 2010, the number of Americans living in poverty was 15.1% of the population, while that had risen to 15.7% in 2011—an increase of 2.2 million Americans reduced to poverty in just that one year.  If we go back to 2009, we see an increase of some 5.2 million Americans living in poverty under Obamanomics.

The Democratic Presidential Candidate’s policies have shortened the lives of 5 million Americans by roughly four years—and he’s achieved this in only three years of campaigning.