Population-Control Weirdos

Posted At : September 5, 2009 11:28 AM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Economics Errors,Current Events

The population-control weirdos believe that people are a blight on the planet. (I am not being harsh calling them weirdos—wait until you see my argument). They think that all people do is use up resources, and eventually the planet will be void. In fact, as the late, great economist Julian Simon pointed out, national income accounting counts the birth of a calf as an increase in capital, but the birth of a baby as a decrease in capital. Those economists who worship mathematical methods divide amount of capital by population. So, if you have $1,000,000 in capital and you have 1,000,000 people, you have one dollar of capital for every person. But if you have $1,000,000 of capital and then give birth to 10 babies, you get $1,000,000/1,000,010, or .9999 cents of capital per person, clearly a decline. One thing that these folks never seemed to learn in Economics 101 is that everybody, except the most handicapped or the most lazy people, produce more than they consume. This is true even in less-developed countries.

These characters also believe that the amount of natural resources in the earth has already reached its limits due to population growth. For example, Paul Ehrlich, a professor of biology specializing in butterflies, wrote the book The Population Bomb in 1968, in the middle of the hippie revolution. In that book, he predicted that in the 1970s there would be worldwide famines and resources would run out despite any emergency programs that would be put into place. To show the nonsense of this, in 1970, Dr. Julian Simon, late economics professor at University of Maryland, bet Ehrlich that the prices of any ten natural resources Ehrlich chose would be lower in 1980. The bet was for $10,000. Simon won; the prices were lower. Why? The resources were more abundant, not less. Ehrlich’s theory of worldwide shortages was an Armageddon fantasy. Simon offered the bet again in 1980 to anyone, but no one took him up on it. Why was that? They knew they would lose, which meant Simon was right, but also they had too much invested in this fantasy. One needs character to admit that one is incompetent, didn’t do his homework, and sold a profitable book on a fraud.

But today the racket continues. It is said that we must cut down on population, especially in developing countries, so they do not have so many mouths to feed. But economists know better, and the studies are there to prove it.

In a very well-researched book, The Mystery of Capital, Latin American economist Hernando de Soto shows that there are two main (among many others, none of which is population) causes of poverty in developing countries. The first is bureaucracy. The charts in his book show that sometimes it can take 20 or 30 years to get a permit to run a business due to all the offices which one must visit and to which one must submit paperwork. This would and does discourage many people from becoming entrepreneurs. The other reason is a caste system. Many people in developing countries are not allowed to own property. Despite this handicap, they run businesses anyway, with the fear that the government would ask for a property title which they could not produce, and thus lose the property and thus the business operated out of it. Notice that this has nothing to do with population.

But the population weirdos will not go away. In 1977, when Paul Ehrlich was watching the prices fall on the resources he picked in the bet with Julian Simon, Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote another great tome with a man whose name is John Holdren entitled Ecoscience. In this book, the three authors continued Ehrlich’s apocalyptic scenarios of death and destruction due to population burgeoning. They recommended required abortions, dumping infertility drugs in the water supply, and forcibly taking babies from teen and single mothers and giving them to couples to raise. But the big question is (drum roll), who is John Holdren? He is Barack Obama’s science czar! Despite all that has been studied by economists, not to mention the morality and constitutionality of this kind of thing, these people never go away. Would you give a position of trust to someone who was dead wrong and never apologized for it?

This is what we are facing, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. If these folks who surround the president succeed in getting their plans into law, we will all be in danger, and by all, I do not mean just those now living, but the future generation as well, who may never exist.

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There’s a Bridge…

Posted At : August 27, 2009 10:28 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Economics Errors,Current Events

“Cash For Clunkers.” This, as everybody knows, was the administration’s plan to get environmentally unsound cars off the road. The idea was that if somebody had a car that had been around too long, the piston rings were probably so worn down that you could drive a car through them, burning oil was spewing through the atmosphere, they were gas hogs, and were bought before the current environmental regulations on autos were imposed. If you turned your clunker in, you got $4500 in cash from the government which could be used to purchased a NEW car, which would be less harmful to the environment. The car you traded in would be destroyed so that it could not be resold and put back on the road.

Now, let me get this straight, and maybe put it in more truthful terms. If you were driving a real clunker, could it be that you could not afford a new car to begin with? Now you are to bring the ol’ jalopy in, and for $4500 in cash, go into debt for a new car costing, say, $25,000? While it is true that a clunker would not bring in much exchange value, so that this program would up the return, would you bring in your old car in for $4500 if you were not already going to sell it and buy a new one anyway? Just take my own experience. I drive a 2000 Buick. I bought it used, and it is a great car. I have no intention to sell it, but even IF I wanted to trade it in for a new one, and IF I could have gotten $4500 dollars for it, I still could not afford a new car. Would the promise of $4500 make me go into debt to buy a car I could not afford to make the payments on? Absolutely not. Forget the fact that I am a trained economist. My dog would not do that either.

Take another aspect. In my experience, real clunkers are driven by poorer people anyway. They can’t afford a new car either—hence they drive the clunker until it can drive no more. What do they do then? Buy another clunker from the used car market.

But, in fact, many people did trade in their cars. As mentioned above, some of those were going to trade them in anyway and buy new ones; they just got more on the trade in than they expected. What about the rest? Were these folks lured into the trade-in by the promise of government cash who never should have bought new cars? Is not this the same thing as the Community Reinvestment Act, which tried to persuade people to buy houses they could not afford? And what happened? Many lost their houses because the Act encouraged people to buy houses they could not make the payments on and subsequently they lost their houses. Don’t you think the same thing will happen to many people who foolishly brought in their old cars for brand new ones? I believe the repossession statistics will bear this out in a few months.

Maybe, despite the sucker ploy that this cash for clunkers program stimulated, the worst thing is that the country is in a recession. Just today, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said that the real unemployment rate is now 16%! Do families need more debt? If they can’t make the payments on their new car, they lose the car. If they do not live in a big city where there is lots of public transportation, how will they get to work? Did Obama do anybody any favors?

Then there is the used car market. Poor people live by the used car market. When their car dies, they cannot afford a new car, so they get a used car. But the cash for clunkers program has cut back on the used cars available. Assuming the demand is relatively stable, there are fewer cars to go around, so the price per car is higher. For all the rhetoric from Obama about helping the poor, and the Catholics who support him because he claims to be helping the poor, how did this plan help the poor?

Lastly, as we know, the plan ran out of money and had to be refunded and finally was recently stopped. What does this tell you? Coupled with the gigantic government debt, it says that government always underestimates the cost of programs. Social Security, Medicare, even wars are all underestimated in the beginning and always need massive injections of funds after that.

So, what does this have to do with a bridge? Well, a lot. If you thought that the cash for clunkers program was a good idea, there is a very nice bridge in Brooklyn, built in the late 1800s, beautiful style, and I will let you have it at a deep discount!

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What a Character!

Posted At : August 20, 2009 4:36 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Current Events

A thorough reading of the Old Testament will show that the worst, and the most persistent, sin that the Chosen People committed was that of idolatry. They did it time and time again. This, and God’s punishments that followed, were actually predicted in Deuteronomy 29, 30, and 32. The people of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, were captured by the Assyrians, never to return, and the Assyrians populated their land with other pagan peoples. The Southern Kingdom, Judah and Benjamin, were captured by the Babylonians and taken to Babylon for about 45 years. When the Persians defeated the Babylonians, the Judeans and Benjaminites were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city wall and the Temple, which the Babylonians had destroyed.

What does this have to do with anything? Plenty. We are all sinners. But when we commit a sin, we need to go to confession, if it is a serious sin, and “fess up” before God in the person of the priest. If not a serious sin, we still need to admit our sin to God. Now many, if not most, have skeletons in their closet. If you opened my closet, the skeletons would hit you on the head. These skeletons are generally between you and God, and anyone else who took part in the skeleton formation process. They are no one else’s business—unless they are publicly discovered. But if it is made public, we need publicly to own up to the fault, as painful as it is. Lying is a sin, too. Assuming that this horrendous act is actually true and someone finds out about it, we need admit it and not try to lie our way around it. This applies especially to public figures, upon whom the public trust reposes.

The case I wish to bring up is former Senator John Edwards. In the last campaign leading up to the nominations for president, Edwards tried to take the high road, coming across as the defender of the poor, pushing his point to the verge of, I believe, class warfare. Despite the fact that he was loaded with cash (which he seemed not to wish to share with the poor), had a gigantic house, and made his money as an ambulance chaser, he still came across as the candidate who really cared. Then, a newspaper caught him with his hand in the “nookie jar.” Not only did he have a long-time mistress, but he even fathered a child through her. What was his first and continuing reaction? Denial. Only recently did he announce he would have a press conference and own up to his skeleton.

Why did it take so long to admit his actions? I submit that it was a form of idolatry. The most important thing to Edwards, and of course I am not judging his subjective guilt, and maybe he does not even realize it, is his status in the world. That is his real god! Once a person is caught and it is verified that he or she really did and is doing these things, they not only need to repent, but reject further sin, by avoiding outright lying. People need to take responsibility for ALL their actions and the consequences of those actions. It was only when the Chosen People admitted their sin, and repented, not half-heartedly but fully, did God smile on them and restore them.

All through the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, God seeks to get Adam and Eve and Cain to admit their sin. None of them did. Adam even blamed Eve and God in the same breath, saying that the woman God gave him tricked him. Do we not do the same things? Is this a good thing? Obviously not, and we need to work on this.

Please do not accuse me of picking on a liberal Democrat. The governor of South Carolina is in a similar boat, and by the way, the now former governor of New York State. And then there are the governors of Illinois, Gary Hart and President Nixon, and on and on. This is a question of character. We are all weak, and any of us can make these moral blunders. Frequently, we get the “holier-than-thou” bug, but this usually happens when God tries to teach us some humility by allowing us to fall. It is not for nothing that there is the old saying, which is from St. Paul, I believe, “Pride cometh before a fall.”

If the United States, or the West for that matter, is to rejuvenate itself in economic matters, the people need to get some character and begin, not only to try not to abuse money, power, and other people (Bernie Madoff comes to mind as the triple threat) but admit it like adults when they fall; first to God, with a firm purpose of amendment, but even to the public when necessary. If you make a god of your social status, political job, or anything else, you will bring down on yourself and many others the punishments just like the Chosen People did, in God’s attempt to call his child into repentance.

I have pointed out in previous articles that our profligacy has brought on the current economic crisis. This is not something that fell from space one day; we collectively did it. We need to own up to it, and repent.

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Stimulate This!

Posted At : July 24, 2009 5:49 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Economics Errors,Current Events

It is very seldom that economists have a laboratory in order to test theories. For an Austrian, this is not a problem because the axioms of economics are apodictic, meaning they are self-evident. But even so, to the average non-economist, some verification is nice as an illustration. Normally, a specialist in economics is necessary to delve beyond the host of activities in the economy and the government to isolate the economic factors that lead, say, to a recession. Praise God! Besides the Great Depression, which I find easy to diagnose, we have such a laboratory—JAPAN.

The Wall Street Journal recently summarized the Japanese recession that has gone on from about 1991 to today. When we older people think of Japan, we think of an up-and-coming, technologically savvy nation—a competitor of the United States. But in this article entitled “Obama-san” (the “san” is a respectful way of addressing people in Japan), it shows that Japan embarked on the exact same Keynesian path that President Obama and his Congressional allies are embarking on today, and that was started by President Bush. That path is to cure a recession by dumping large amounts of tax monies, through deficit government spending, into the economy.

Well, how did the spending program do? Japan’s GDP, adjusted for inflation, rose 16%—wait for it!—in 14 years. That means that the Japanese GDP rose slightly more than 1% per year. The Japanese economy is a corpse that does not know it is dead yet. The government, with the blessing of John Maynard Keynes, has spent $1 trillion (double this figure to see the US amount to date) and got what? Nothing. Even the United States from 1929-1939 had an annual GDP growth of a paltry, nevertheless better 3.05%.

So, you the reader, tell me, will this gigantic stimulus plan work? As any economics student knows, productivity only grows by investment, not consumption. If you doubt this, take the rest of the summer to read Jesús Huerte de Soto’s book Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles, available at Mises.org. What President Clinton started to call “investment” was a euphemism for the same kind of government spending we have now, just smaller. It was not investment at all. Take the recent housing boom. It was caused by expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve, artificially lowering interest rates, making buying houses more attractive, and because of rising demand, building them, and putting a huge strain on the building industry, forcing wages and prices of everything used to build, up until it became too expensive to buy a house.

And what is investment, really? It is using savings to purchase capital goods, goods such equipment and plant and inventions and the like. You can’t get that by massive government deficit spending. Well, you might add, if that is true, why is such a path so popular? Economists who haven’t sold their soul, and there are very few of those, know the truth of it. But the ordinary people have no clue about the necessity of investment, and politicians don’t care for anything except votes and polls (with few exceptions). So the politicians say that they can cure our economic ills with this massive government deficit spending, and the people believe it. There it is. Vice-President Biden, whose gaffes usually contain much truth that he lets slip out, said the other day that people can’t spend their way to prosperity, but government can! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!

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The Wise and Powerful Obama Knows the Cost of Government-Run Medical Care!

Posted At : July 2, 2009 10:48 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Current Events

The Congressional Budget Office has given us an estimate of how much it will cost to insure one-third of all the uninsured medical patients in the United States by something like 2012, and it will cost a certain bazillions of dollars, which Obama is now saying will not expand the deficit, while also having promised in his campaign that he will not raise taxes of anyone who makes below $250,000. There is nothing in the media but talk about how he can possibly do this without taxing, and the fact that this ginormous amount of money will cover only one-third of those allegedly needing coverage.

Believe it or not, all this is beside the point! Why? Cost to the good or service provider and price to the consumer are decided at the point of exchange. Let’s look at a simple example. I like bananas. If I go to the supermarket and see bananas which are so green they look like St. Patrick’s Day bananas, I won’t buy them, because they might rot before they ripen, and in the summer, they may get fruit flies. The price does not even get consideration. But if they are getting yellow, I will look at the price. If they are already ripened, they had better be selling cheap, because I know that the store cannot keep them much longer, because they will begin to rot and the stock must be moved. If they are too ripe, I will probably avoid buying more than one or two, because I will not be able to eat them in time, again, regardless of the price.

Now look at medical procedures. Most medical insurance plans have a co-pay. This means that when you go for treatment, you must foot part of the cost of that procedure. Why? This prevents people from going to the doctor for minor problems that one could fix with things one finds in one’s medicine cabinet. Minor scrapes, bruises from sliding in at third, typical common colds, etc., no normal person wants to shell out money for a physician to tell them to go home and put ice on it, or stay in bed and drink plenty of liquids. The higher the co-pay, the less frequent the visits, and the more serious the complaints for patients to be willing to spend on doctor’s office visits. Just as in the bananas example, even though the provider seems to “set” the price, the consumer has the choice of paying it or not, by not buying the bananas or not going to the doctor’s. Of course, necessity changes things. If I promised a relative I would make banana bread, the fact that I might not like the bananas for sale might not make a difference. I will buy them regardless of price or condition, up to a point. It is the same with a doctor’s visit. If I get something with weird symptoms, or excessive pain, or suffer a more than ordinary trauma, I will seek help, regardless of cost, depending of the desperateness of the situation.

This brings us to the wise and powerful Obama and his cohorts in the Congress and the CBO. How is it possible for someone, anyone, to predict the future cost/price of medical care? One can’t. Since cost/price is decided at the point of exchange, the wise and powerful Obama would have to be present at every transaction, and update the cost figures at every moment. He would also have to predict events, such as car accidents, diseases, etc., which no one can predict, or we would avoid them. The only thing we have is current trends, which are only past history and may not continue at all. Remember that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in 1938, after meeting with Adolf Hitler and signing an agreement with him, never predicted the things that Hitler would do just a year after that document was signed. How can someone predict what people will do about conditions this observer knows nothing about in people he has never met? Only the free market can do that, because the market adjusts to these transactions on a minute-by-minute basis, and there are billions of transactions every minute.

This explains why, in all countries having socialist medical programs, the costs are going off the charts, the number of doctors are declining and health care is now being rationed. This is what is coming to the United States.

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Government “Health Care”

Posted At : June 20, 2009 9:09 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Economics Errors,Current Events

Almost all the talk in the news today is about health care reform in the United States. I think that we should examine the true status of this “health care” situation.

Firstly, the proper term for what is being discussed is “medical care,” not health care. Health care is the responsibility of each and every person according to his ability to influence events that affect his or her health. This would include eating good foods, getting enough sleep, trying to stay away from dangerous situations if possible, and so forth. But when even doing these things do not work to preserve one’s health, one seeks out medical professionals to aid in returning to health, if possible. So we are really speaking about medical care, not health care.

Next, the medical care system in the United States is the best in the world. We have the best-trained physicians, nurses and technicians in the world, and we have the most up-to-date medical equipment.

Thirdly, we have the best medical financing system in the world. We have many medical insurance companies, including one that will insure you for $10 per day, which advertises on television. Our emergency rooms are required by law to take anyone who comes in, and our ambulances are required to take anyone who wants to go. This includes people who have colds, flu, a “boo-boo,” regardless of their ability to pay, and the cost for this is foisted on the paying patients of the hospital, unknown to them. The hospital is not required to cure the nonpaying patient who is seriously ill or injured, but must get them at least to where they are stabilized.

Fourthly, physicians and hospitals are willing to take payments.

Fifthly, there is Medicare and Medicaid for the poor.

What then is the problem? The question is raised by the current administration as to what to do with those who do not have health insurance. According to CNN, there are 86.7 million people who did not have health insurance in 2008. But reading further on, we find that this was not a constant number. Many people lost their health insurance because they were between jobs. Many young people, whose likelihood of illness is very remote, put off getting health insurance because they see it as a waste of money. Rich people tend to be self-insured. The poor, as stated above, have Medicaid and the elderly Medicare. So there is really no accurate data on the gaps in the current system, and therefore the much-touted need for “reform” may be based on a false premise, panicking good natured Americans into visualizing people dying right and left from minor and treatable illnesses.

Another problem is that many people do not take care of their own health. It is a commonplace that Americans are too fat and get too little exercise. Whose fault is that? Many lower class people are diagnosed with high blood pressure. A bottle of blood pressure pills costs about $6.00 per month. Just about everyone can afford this; the problem is, some people are notoriously bad at taking this medication, which must be taken every day regardless of how one feels. So young, virile people come into emergency rooms with irreversible kidney failure, because they did not follow the doctor’s instructions, and now they require dialysis for the rest of their life. Chronic alcoholics and smokers, etc., eventually come down with incurable diseases. All of this ratchets up the cost of medical care, and it is the fault of the patients themselves. Are those who take care of their health and pay for their own medical insurance supposed to pay for these people?

This week, both the president and his press secretary stated that there were countries where the people were completely satisfied with a “single payer” (i.e., socialist, government-run) medical system. When the press secretary was asked to name one, he could not. But a study by the Cato Institute has some very interesting data. Patients having to wait for more than four months for non-emergency surgery: Britain, 36%; Canada, 27 %; New Zealand, 26%; Australia, 23%; the United States, 5%. The elderly evaluate their health care way better in the UK than in either Canada or the United States. During a 12-month period, in Ontario, 71 patients died waiting for coronary bypass surgery. The United States also has the lowest hospital stay period compared to the other western socialist countries. Prostate cancer mortality rates among those diagnosed with the disease: UK, 57%; France, 49%; Germany, 44%; Australia, 35%; New Zealand 30%; Canada, 25%; and the United States, only 19%. Remember, this is under the current systems, which, in the US, is a free-market system, but in all the aforementioned other countries is a socialist system. (See http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa532.pdf.) Do these other systems sound like ones where people are completely satisfied?

Lastly, there is the question as to whether the new government system will shut out private medical coverage. The Heritage Foundation stated that currently 170 million Americans have insurance coverage. Under the new system, 119 million could lose their coverage. Why? The competing government service will be cheaper than the private coverage, because the costs will mostly be paid with taxes. Companies, due to cost savings, will be strongly influenced to enter the government system. Since most of us have medical insurance through our jobs, we will have the public-run system foisted on us through our companies. Hence we will lose our private coverage, and hence our choices in medical care, and the efficiency with which the private system operates, as seen in the Cato Institute study discussed above. This, also, will force out of business many private companies, which, I argue, is the ultimate goal of the current administration.

During the recent presidential campaign, candidate Obama said that he would propose a system that would allow regular citizens to have the same health care system that members of Congress had. Congress members have a private system. Why not just open that plan to membership from anyone or any company who wants to join? Because his original statement was baloney, intended to get people to vote for him, since that plan sounded reasonable. The ultimate goal was socialism, which is why the deception.

By the way, we have not said anything about costs. Perhaps next time.

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A LETTER EXPRESSING MUCH OF WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY

Posted At : June 17, 2009 6:25 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Current Events

Glenn Beck: The Letter

Audio Available:

June 17, 2009 - 10:36 ET

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Sign the petition: An open letter to our nation's leadership

GLENN: I got a letter from a woman in Arizona. She writes an open letter to our nation's leadership: I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Glenn Beck's Common Sense
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Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ?? what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band?Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ?? please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

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Requirements for a Supreme Court Justice

Posted At : May 28, 2009 10:05 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Current Events

There has been a lot of discussion about President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States. There has been much persnickety analysis of a few remarks she made at a conference, and one or two decisions she made, including the fact that her decisions as a Court of Appeals judge have been overturned more often than not by the Supreme Court itself. The big question is whether she will stick to the law or be an activist judge, which means that she will want to make law and public policy from the bench.

The reader may ask, “What does this have to do with economics?” The answer is, a lot. The economic system never operates in a vacuum, but is part of a three-legged stool, the other two legs of which are a religious-moral system and a legal system. These three legs of the stool operate together to form the character of any country. Since we are discussing law, let us take an example of the economy of a country trying to operate a free-market economic system, but where the courts are corrupt. There will always be disputes in business. People understand agreements in different ways, interpret contracts, especially the more complex ones, differently, and, of course, some people are downright dishonest. Instead of taking matters into one’s own hands, business people take the matters in dispute to an impartial court for a decision. But if the courts are corrupt, it means that they will decide for the one who bribes them, or the one with the political connections, or in favor of friends and relatives, rather than according to the law. This corruption limits the amount of risk that the business operator is willing to take, because, if something goes wrong, there is no sure legal remedy. Countries with this type of court system tend to live in primitive economic conditions for that reason.

Any country that to expects to have a prosperous economy needs citizens who respect the rule of law, and courts that will adjudicate disputes according to that law. Judges who legislate from the bench, that is, who decide not according to the law but according to what they would like to see, destroy the confidence in the courts needed to operate business successfully, not to mention the penal law system.

But do not take my word for it. The great Constitutional scholar (a non-lawyer, I might add, and don’t get me started on lawyers’ ignorance of the Constitution) Dr. George Carey of Georgetown University wrote an article many years ago, bringing us back to the intent of the framers of the Constitution regarding Article III of the Constitution, the judicial article. All legal decisions must take into account right off the bat the intentions of those who wrote the article or statute in question. The words of the article or statute cannot be understood reliably by using the words themselves, because words are susceptible to a variety of meanings. Therefore, any legal scholar or judge who is competent goes to what the authors of the law intended to accomplish by the law in question. In interpreting the Constitution of the United States, there is a hierarchy to be used in ascertaining the meaning of any section. After the words themselves, there come the debates in Constitutional Convention, and after that, the most thorough, authoritative explanation of the document, the series of newspaper articles written by three of the Founding Fathers, called The Federalist, written under the pseudonym “Publius,” the intention of which was to explain the provisions of the new Constitution to those who had objections. Dr. Carey points out that in discussing the ability of the Supreme Court to overturn statutes, liberals never refer to the preeminent Federalist on the subject—Federalist 78. Why is this?

First of all, Publius tells us, we must understand that the Constitution is “fundamental law.” This means that it is foundational. The Constitution is an official expression of the will of the whole people, hence it begins, “We, the People of the United States . . . .” Statutes, law passed by legislatures, while binding, are the will of the representatives of “We, the People of the United States . . . .” In a conflict of laws between a statute and the Constitution, the Constitution must prevail. The Constitution itself does not speak of the ability of the Supreme Court to overturn statutes, but Federalist 78 tells us that limitations of the power of the legislative branch “can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void” (my emphasis). The word “manifest” means “evident to the senses,” and “tenor” means an exact copy. In this case it means the literal words of the document (Black’s Law Dictionary). Publius notes that in order for the Court to declare a statute unconstitutional, there must be an “irreconcilable variance” between the two.

Publius goes on to say that “The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgment, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body” (emphasis in the original).

How does one keep the courts from doing just what Publius says that they should not do? He continues: “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents which served to define and point out their duty in every particular case that becomes before them” (my emphasis). In other words, these strict rules and precedents, coupled with the clearly spelled out functions of the Supreme Court Publius noted above, should make the judicial the “least dangerous branch.” In terms that the layman can more easily understand, perhaps, the “trappings” of the court, i.e., the judicial robes, the wigs (in England), the wood-paneled courtrooms, the respect that the judges are shown—all of these tend to make the judges, if you will, “high priests” of the law, designated to protect the law, not to substitute their own will for either the Law (the will of the people) or legislation (the will of the legislators). But this is just what judicial activism is—a substitution of the will of the judge for that of the people as expressed in the Constitution, or the will of their representatives as expressed in legislation. If there is no irreconcilable variance between the fundamental law and the statute, then the Court has no business changing anything. If the judge disagrees with a policy of the legislature, the place to discuss that is in the legislature, not the Court. If the judge does not like a provision of the Constitution, the way to change that is through the amendment process, which is spelled out clearly in Article V.

Of course, this assumes that the judges believe that the manifest tenor of the Constitution IS fundamental law with the meaning the Founders intended it, and not their version of it. If a judge thinks that the Constitution is a “living document,” he or she clearly intends to insert his or her meaning of it (his or her will) into their interpretation of it. You have to wonder what these judges learned in law school. This is why I always wondered if lawyers were the best candidates for judgeships. Law schools generally train you only in case law. “The law is what the Supreme Court says it is,” was a famous statement by a judge, which shows that basically the last case, even if deviating from the Founders’ intent, is the meaning of the Constitution. However, good graduate schools of political science teach law too; the difference is that the Ph.D.s from those schools are not practitioners, but are much better read than most lawyers, meaning that they generally have actually read the original documents related to the founding, as well as studied English law, from which much of our law derives. I remember that at a pro-life conference, a paper was given by a very good pro-life Federal prosecutor, but he was challenged by a famous legal scholar, Walter Berns, who had a Ph.D. in Political Science with a concentration in law. The question was about the trend of the court cases in the life questions. Dr. Berns made a fool out of the prosecutor; not only did he have better Constitutional theory, showing great erudition, but even outdid the prosecutor on the case law. (Oh, you got me started.)

So, I ask the sitting judges and the senators who are to discuss the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor, what standards will you use to judge her qualifications: those of the Founding Fathers as seen in Federalist 78, or some other standards?

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Notre Dame, Obama and Economics

Posted At : May 22, 2009 4:17 PM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Current Events

I am sure that readers of this blog are familiar with the recent episode relating to the supposed Catholic university of Notre Dame inviting President Obama, the most pro-abortion president in history, to be the commencement speaker and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

There are a number of things to be said about all of this. For example, the argument was made that we have to hear the other side of the story. Can anybody really say that any Notre Dame students have not heard the various arguments both for and against abortion in at least one course in their academic career? If so, Notre Dame is really running a kindergarten under false pretenses. Even I got both sides of the arguments at the Catholic university I attended, and abortion was not even legal yet. Secondly, the academic freedom argument says that in a university setting, professors have the right to express various aspects of a subject, or else academic discourse will be hampered. There are a number of problems with this argument, but the one that is relevant here is that academic freedom applies to classroom instruction, not to public speeches, especially by politicians, which, by their very nature, are open to discussion in the public forum; in fact open to public disputation, which is exactly what the protesters were doing at the university.

It is this latter situation which lends itself to an economic analysis. Giving the president of Notre Dame some credit, it probably was the board of trustees which invited president Obama to the campus, never thinking that that decision would be the source of such controversy. By and large, Catholic universities run by religious orders have given up control of their institutions by putting mostly laypersons on the board, most of whom are there because of the large amounts of money they can contribute and get their friends to contribute. But this means that, assuming the invitation to President Obama was not Father Jenkins’ idea, Father Jenkins is faced with the following dilemma: waffle in justifying the invitation, which he personally opposes and was outvoted on, or resign. He obviously did not quit, so he had to waffle; he had to try to fit the invitation of the radically pro-abortion Obama into the clearly stated principles of the university. This could only be done by using the above stated arguments.

There are then two economic sides to this situation. President pinnochi-obama said the he wants to cut down on the number of abortions, and in that he agrees with Notre Dame. But does he? It is simple supply-demand and price. Obama is in favor of funding abortion, both here and abroad. Giving government money to abortion clinics allows them to charge less for abortion. If the price goes down, the demand goes up. Therefore the policies of Obama will actually increase abortions. The fact that the remaining crowd at Notre Dame were wildly enthusiastic of his speech tells me that either the so-called Catholic Notre Dame is not doing its job of teaching in accord with the Catholic faith AND natural law, and/or the people there were stupid. In either case, it leads me back to the kindergarten analogy I mentioned above.

Next, there is the old expression that there is no such thing as bad publicity. We are in economic hard times. The Notre Dame website recognizes this, but says it will not freeze pay, let people go or freeze spending. Nevertheless, the possibility that prospective numbers of applicants will decline might be worrisome to the administration. Now, what Catholic institution was the subject of lengthy discussions, articles and coverage in the media recently? Only one—Notre Dame University. It got more free publicity in the past few weeks than even its football team can get for it. And who will be attracted to Notre Dame as a result of this free publicity? Pro-abortion, pro-Obama fans, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Considering the audience at graduation, both the graduates and their guests, this is not surprising. On the other hand, my employer, Christendom College, had Father Pavone and Dr. Jude Dougherty, both famous orthodox Catholics and foes of abortion. My undergraduate alma mater, St. John’s University in New York, run by the Vincentian Fathers, had Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Catholic Rwandan genocide survivor, who has been on EWTN. Neither Christendom nor St. John’s got any free, big national publicity from these speakers and degree recipients, even though they got some in certain circles. But if you wanted a real Catholic education based on who got honorary degrees, which would you pick: Notre Dame? Or would you pick Christendom and St. John’s? All those who believe that Notre Dame is the pre-eminent Catholic University in the United States need to think this out again. So Notre Dame waters down its commitment to our Faith, yet cries all the way to the bank. The rest of us must earn our money the old-fashioned way—we earn it—by pleasing God.

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Keynes: Alive and Well in Conservative Circles

Posted At : May 15, 2009 8:58 AM | Posted By : name
Related Categories: Economics Errors,Current Events

I have never listened to the Glenn Beck radio show, but I have enjoyed watching his television show, first on CNN Headline News, and, more recently, on Fox News Channel. I also agree with almost everything he says on that show, and I am impressed with his guests, especially, but not exclusively, the economists. However, today he blew it!

Glenn has been recommending the book Animal Spirits by two economists, Robert J. Shiller and George Akerlof. Now, Glenn has been complaining for months, ever since the original bailout during the Bush administration, about excessive government spending, and has been properly championing the idea that the free market can get us out of this economic mess. Since the Obama administration took over, Glenn has also ratcheted up his criticism of government spending, and the Federal Reserve’s printing of money, which economists call creation of credit ex nihilo, i.e., out of nothing.

So, what is with Animal Spirits? In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the book, but now I do not have to. Shiller and Akerlof were on the Glenn Beck television program today. In his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936, p. 161), Keynes tells us that almost all of our economic activities are not a result of studying a situation, and estimating the probabilities of success or failure, but merely “animal spirits,” by which he means “a spontaneous urge to action rather than to inaction.” This is akin to what former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan called “irrational exuberance.” According to what Shiller and Akerlof said on the show, our current economic problems are caused exactly by these animal spirits, which make people make business decisions based on emotional factors such as “confidence” or “trust.” In addition to this, according to them, the only remedy to this “animal spirits” situation is, wait for it . . . fiscal policy (i.e., government deficit spending) and monetary policy (i.e., creation of credit ex nihlo by the Federal Reserve).

What nonsense! To make things worse, Glenn Beck, who has been complaining for months about government deficit spending and the Federal Reserve’s printing of money, thought that this was a great idea and a great book, recommending it to all his viewers.

The truth is that economics is a science and we know exactly what has caused the economic crisis we are in—government deficit spending and creation of credit ex nihilo by the Federal Reserve. (I have written about this in other articles in this blog.) These activities send false signals to entrepreneurs and other business people regarding prices and costs, and they make bad decisions. The fact that Freddie and Fannie were in the government’s pocket made things even worse, as well as the Community Reinvestment Act, which threatened banks with penalties if they did not lend to minority potential borrowers even if they were unqualified.

This whole scenario was predicted long ago by Ludwig von Mises in his Theory of Money and Credit, which was originally published in German in 1912, and also, more recently by Jesus Huerta de Soto, in Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles, originally published in Spanish in 1998, long before the current crisis erupted. It is a shock that Glenn Beck, a fierce opponent of government tampering with the economy, has now become the Dr. Frankenstein of the resuscitation of Keynes!

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