Weak and Mindless Public Discourse: How do you feel about it?
by George Landrith
The question Left of center is, “How do you feel about it?” How do you feel about ObamaCare? How do you feel about gun violence? Do you feel that the rich pay their fair share? Feelings are legitimate, but they apply to relationships and people, not public policy issues. I love my family. But I think about public policy.
Sadly, too many Americans “feel” about public policy issues which unfortunately “liberates” them from thinking. As a result, more and more people are becoming unaccustomed to rational analysis and thought.
I don’t visit the doctor to hear how he feels about my health, nor a plumber to learn his feelings about my leaky pipes. We want expertise, not feelings. Read more
White House Data Debunk Myth Bush Cuts Built Deficit
“After President Bush in late May 2003 signed the largest tax cut since President Reagan . . . government receipts from individual income taxes rose from $793.7 billion to a peak of $1.16 trillion in 2007, when the mortgage crisis began, a 47% jump.”
by Paul Sperry
While President Obama insists the Bush tax cuts caused the recession and record deficits, his own economists say otherwise.
He might want to consult their data for the truth. Read more
Federal Spending is the Problem: Defense is Not!
by George Landrith
With a long history of federal overspending and the recent explosion of more federal debt, it is obvious that the federal budget must be cut back to a reasonable size. We need an intervention. But the Budget Control Act — which would force an “automatic sequester” of $500 billion in across-the-board defense spending cuts over the next decade, in addition to the $487 billion in defense cuts already scheduled — is not a good solution to our spending crisis. Read more
The Real Fiscal Cliff
“After the phony cliff, we face the terrifying one.”
by Conrad Black
Last week, Fareed Zakaria and Charles Krauthammer appeared in Toronto (where I live much of the time), and while I did not go to their main debate, I went to a tasting of it at a luncheon. There was, I regret to write, as a longstanding friend of both of them, a surreal aspect to the exchange. After the usual compliments one exchanges (as I know from my time on that circuit), they embarked on a dialogue of the deaf, and a mutual flight, joined at the wingtip like Jurassic pterodactyls, soaring above the mighty chasm of American fiscal problems below. The otherworldly discussion of whether the Republican leaders in Congress will reach an agreement with the president about the automatic expiration of the Bush tax cuts of a decade ago vastly overshadowed the issue of reinserting spontaneous growth into the U.S. economy and grappling with the deficit at last. Read more
Clinton Era Taxes and Clinton Era Spending
by George Landrith
With the budget and fiscal crisis facing the United States and difficult economic times surely ahead for the foreseeable future, President Barack Obama has vociferously argued that Republicans must agree to tax increases. He argues for what he terms are modest tax increases on the wealthiest Americans that are equal to the tax rates during President Bill Clinton’s time in office. Why is Obama only interested in Clinton era tax rates, but not Clinton era federal spending rates?
There is one correction that must be made from the outset — despite Obama arguing that he wants to return to Clinton era tax rates, Obama’s tax proposal is actually substantially higher than the Clinton era tax rates. Read more
Fiscal Crisis: Failing the Details, Math and Leadership Tests
by George Landrith
President Barack Obama repeatedly chided Mitt Romney’s budget plan during the presidential campaign on at least two grounds: (1) it lacked detail, and (2) the math didn’t add up. Perhaps, we should use these two standards to see how Barack Obama’s plan stacks up. There is more than a little irony in Barack Obama criticizing others for not providing details or for their math not adding up. Obama has always been short on details and his math has almost never passed even the straight face test, much less actually adding up. Read more
Why the Founders Matter
Securing the Blessing of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity
by Scott L. Vanatter
The things of politics and public policy are of deep import. It takes time, experience, and careful and ponderous and even solemn thoughts to inform whether and how we act. Politicians, by their words or policies, either expand or contract the frontiers of our freedoms. We, The People, need to encourage and benefit from its progress, or mourn and suffer its decline.
The more we as citizens stand informed and aware, then the better able we will be to advocate for those principles which will tend to the greater public good. Then we can act with confidence in this great undertaking. As Lincoln called it, the last best hope of mankind. Read more
Forward? No, we’re going backward
by George Landrith
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden never miss a chance to tell us that the economy is moving in the right direction. They claim they need more time to pull the nation out of the recession that began in 2008.
There are several problems with this line of argument. First, Obama said he would solve this problem in his first term and cut the deficit in half. He told us if he didn’t solve the problem, he would be a one-term president. Second, Obama ran for office knowing the economy was bad and he won because he convinced more voters that he would fix it. Obama got everything he wanted in his first two years because he had a compliant Democrat Congress. He spent hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus and bailouts. The only verifiable result is massive debt that saddles the economy and slows future growth. Third, the biggest problem with claiming that Obama is moving us forward is that it is not true. In fact, things are getting worse.
Read more
The Obama Press is Shameless
Yesterday, the media stepped in it again and showed how deeply dishonest and deceitful they are. An open microphone at the Romney press conference caught reporters strategizing how to cast Mitt Romney has the bad guy because he had dared to be critical of the Obama Administration’s weak initial response to the violence in Cairo and the assassination in Libya.
Reporters were picked up by the mic planning to repeatedly ask Romney if he regretted his statement, if it was the wrong tone, and if he stood by his statement. The reporters were recorded saying, “I’m just trying to make sure that we’re just talking about, no matter who[Romney] calls on, we’re covered on the one question … do you regret your statement?” The interview went precisely as the reporters conspired with a barrage of the same question over and over — all aimed at making Romney the focus and avoiding any review of Obama’s lead from behind approach. Read more
Saved GM? Really? GM is losing $49,000 on each Volt it builds
by Bernie Woodall and Paul Lienert and Ben Klayman (Reuters)
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others. Read more
