Galt's Gulch could be north of border

Have you noticed what's been going on in Canada? It is now the right-most of any of the English-speaking nations, or the G-7 for that matter. It is also the only one whose head of government, Stephen Harper, is economically literate. Those aren't my words. They are the opening of a pithy email I got from James Bennett -- author of the important book "The Anglosphere Challenge" and one of Boulder's few resident conservatives -- after my recent column on the impending backlash to Obama's collectivist agenda. The shrug of Atlas may start, of all places, up north under the Maple Leaf flag and then spread to the US, Bennett believes. Here's the rest of his analysis:

Canada had no housing bubble and no housing crisis. (No Community Reinvestment Act, either.) No populist laws forbidding interstate banking, ever in their history, so they have twenty sound banks instead of thousands of ones in crisis.

Obama wants to introduce card check - - they have had it, and have gradually been abolishing it, provonce by province. Paul Krugman is saying we will have to go to a VAT -- Harper is phasing out Canada's. Our corporate income tax is higher than theirs, and Obama will soon have our personal income tax rates higher than theirs. Obama will introduce single-payer health care -- their Supreme Court has said they must start permitting private provision.

Their stock markets have been getting more and more American IPOs, because they avoided the nuttiness of Sarbanes-Oxley, the gift that keeps on giving to London and Vancouuver. And of course because they have "loser pays", no contingent-fee lawsuits, and no punitive damages, their legal system is far less shark-infested.

The biggest problem has been their lack of an effective Bill of rights. But that is starting to change as some people with guts have stood up against their "human rights" commissions. Meanwhile Holder is talking hate-speech laws.

Everything Obama wants to bring in here, has been tried in Canada, and is gradually being phased out. Maybe Alberta will be Galt's Gulch this time around.

James Bennett can be reached at jamescbennett@gmail.com

Obama may abort the American dream

I have been looking for "the sign" that the good times are over for good. It came in a Denver Post headline: "Abortions increase in face of economy". Family planning has a new definition. In the words of country singer Merle Haggard, "Are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for Hell?" Good ol' Merle said things would be better when Ford and Chevy made cars that last ten years like they should.

Gone are the days of procreating children to help run the family farm or business. The word "family" has been destroyed by cultural revolution. The most famous family today depicts a welfare mother prostituting the images of eight new babies. Now there is a retirement plan.

President Obama and Democrats will do what they want now that they can. It's frustrating. Plans for retirement for most of us now must consider a future of massive inflation to repay more debt than all the nations previous presidents had accumulated. Charge today! No payment till next year!

President Obama talks about the urgent need to pass his oversized-credit-card economic plan, some of which already passed without a chance to readthe fine print. Congress deserves a pay cut. Withdrawal is the new plan for the Middle East. Our Mexican border leaks immigrants and drugs, both of which are killing us in their own way. Shall we expect "amnesty and legalization" as a bold border plan? It would fit the mold.

Mortgaging a nation on "false appraisal" is worse than mortgaging our homes for 125 percent of speculated value was. U.S. taxpayers have been conned into bailing out bad-banking behavior. Our creditors have noticed. The Chinese are abandoning the dollar because they fear our inflation will erode their investments. The international Ponzi scheme has been outed.

Market economy must be our future

The economic battlefield is strewn with the lost swords and shattered shields of failed corporations, and the age of the free market seems to have ended. Steel owls of liberal orthodoxy seem to be standing about the grave of the free market, and everywhere the controlled market seems to be the wave of the future. Still, in this melee of "reform" the free market remains the superior system and we must return to it if we ever hope to recover. Doubtless it has gone astray and to get it back on track will require tough choices in regard to spending, regulation and above all conservative theory. The rise and continued eminence of the United States has been possible according to a number of features. A resilient well meaning people, significant checks and balances on government power, and a system that fostered diversity all contributed greatly. But in economic matters the success of the United States can be traced to one form: the free market. The silver-shielded hypaspist of the free market is open competition and no other force has made more money, invented more technology and fostered as much growth as competition. As Americans we pride ourselves in a high work ethic and the ability to compete, but somehow in recent decades we have gone far astray from this concept.

In a strange combination of regulation and deregulation the federal government has seriously weakened the tenets of the free market. Excessive regulation and taxes, designed for large corporate entities, disproportionately burdened small business. At the same time, the government's failure to establish clear rules on a host of business issues created the environment for the recent sub-prime collapse. Companies and banks were allowed to grow to a point where they could not be allowed to fail, prompting a stream of endless bailouts.

Recently, failed companies like GM, were absolved by the government of bad business decisions and essentially given a mulligan on incompetence and bad management. Over regulated on one hand and allowed to run wild in the other, many American corporations ran afoul, overextending themselves and making unwise decisions. Normally, such actions would be offset by the competitive aspect of the free market, but the government has shown an unbridled desire to take away this risk thru guarantees and bailouts. Such action only worsens the decline, subsidizing failure and corrupting the free market into a controlled one. Sadly, this treachery is extended by the fact that the various bailouts are financed by an increased tax and debt burden on small businesses and individual families. Lest we forget, the same week GM asked for 17 billion in additional funds they announced mass layoffs of 50,000 workers.

With the recent economic downturn many state that the free market has been disproved and is no longer in play. But in truth this is impossible because the free market hasn’t been in play for a long time. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for this and both will need to show bravery and leadership in order to get it back on track. In fact, both must come to the conclusion that the role of government in regard to the economy is to preserve the feasibility of the free market and nothing more.

There will be blood

Recently I wrote a piece noting that Obama's economic policies are less about fixing the economy and more about retributive justice -- a pernicious form of wealth redistribution designed to achieve a liberal social agenda. This agenda is at the heart of Obama's philosophical orientation -- that same "spreading the wealth around" view that he inadvertently let slip to "Joe the Plumber" on the campaign trail. Many didn't pay attention to this off-hand comment -- but we know now just how revealing it was. Daniel Henninger reinforces the retributive justice argument in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today and highlights the underlying theory that alights the Obama redistribution plan. He cites a graph created by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists who "are rock stars of the intellectual left."  Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration" -- code words for socialist theory designed to validate confiscatory economic policies. It turns out that Piketty and Saez are for Obama what Arthur Laffer was to Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it tells you all you need to know about Barack Obama that his economic philosophy comes from French economists -- that nation of stagnant growth, high taxes and huge public sector unionization. That in itself should be troubling enough.

Piketty and Saez have provided the Obama Administration with their rationale for "soaking the rich". See the following graph:

"As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income. This trend, Fig. 9 notes, began during the Reagan presidency, skyrocketed through the Clinton years, dipped after George Bush beat Al Gore, then marched upward. Widening its own definition of money-grubbers, the budget says the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth."

This kind of income inequality is anathema to those who see an equality of outcomes in society. Never mind, of course, that the top 1% of earners pay almost 40% of all Federal income taxes to begin with, and that from these earners come a huge percentage of the jobs that fuel the economy. Socialists like Piketty and Saez would prefer that everyone dumb down to a common denominator where so-called "winners" and "losers" were much closer together. They would prefer that everyone be mediocre rather than have a few big winners who raise the tide for everyone. And it is exactly the economic philosophy that Obama has now embraced. Massive wealth transfer as social policy.

And it matters not that it is bad economic policy, because fixing the economy is a poor second to the need to dumb America down. In Obama's own words:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not.

Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.

There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

So if you made a lot of money you somehow cheated -- not living up to your responsibilities, even though you paid your fair share of taxes in what is already a highly progressive tax code.

What a tremendously offensive statement.

This is class warfare pure and simple. Or, as Henninger says, "the primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

And for those top earners -- the engine of our economy -- there will be blood.

Principle, expediency & the Republicans

A handful of GOP governors, including Jindal of Louisiana and Sanford of South Carolina, are taking a courageous stand against the stimulus. Pressed with the threat of amending welfare laws in their states for years to come and violating the principles of good governance made this nation great, these governors are refusing to accept funding for new unemployment benefits, much to the chagrin of their Democratic counterparts. "This to me is not about philosophical theory, [but] about real people who through no fault of their own, are laid off because of a recession," argued Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm on "FOX News Sunday" this past weekend.

Apparently Republican stances, based largely on core beliefs but even transcending them into the realm of good governance, particularly the issue of the dangers it sets for future welfare programs in their states, are inappropriate in a time of “crisis.”

This, Governor Granholm, isn’t just about philosophical theory, though that is certainly important. It is also about the people—“real people.” Consider: Three years from now, when federal funding dries up and the states are stuck with these laws, how are higher taxes to make up the difference going to help the people? When Dick and Jane decide to stay on welfare for five years instead of two, how is that helping to get them moving and making better lives for themselves, their family and their community?

The answer is, it’s not. Principles may be driving these stands, but underlying each principled governor is justified concern for the future of their state. They’re doing what leaders should be doing: looking toward the impact of their present decisions on the future, not just the effect of those decisions on the now.

Of course, while America’s greatest national interest has been at stake—its security—the Democrats had no problem crying “principle” and putting “philosophical theory” over effective interrogation procedures. But when their own political interests in appearing to be strong, firm leaders are being threatened, and their own agendas to expand government in unprecedented ways are on the line, they have no problem throwing principle out the window.

Terrorism is a different issue; most of the actions that were taken on the part of U.S. interrogators were not, in actuality, torture. Contrary to popular misconception, waterboarding has only been used three times—and in each of those three times it worked, and innumerable lives were saved. Early on some cases were questionable, such as Abu Graihb and early Guantanamo Bay practices, but by and large principle did guide the nation’s interrogation policy.

On the issue of warrantless wiretapping, the government was not wiretapping every phone in America without a warrant, converse to ACLU misinformation. Rather, if Abdul’s conversations are being monitored in Pakistan and he calls Ahmed in the United States, is the government supposed to put down the phone and say, “Oops, American citizen?” Of course not, and that’s what the policy ensured. Yet the Democrats made a big fuss about how this violated the “rights of the citizen.” They cried “principle,” yet none were actually violated.

But now the tide has turned and the Democrats are the one whose policies are being challenged. Their reckless willingness to throw up their hands and truly abandon our ideals is troublesome at best. If we can just casually say, whenever a new crisis arises, that principle is irrelevant, what will we have left? Can we pick and choose when to let core beliefs be our guide and when to ignore them?

Far too many leaders have given the same argument—we’re in a crisis, so let’s set aside our core beliefs. Such is the true test of leadership. Will our leaders stand by those convictions in troubled times, or will they set them aside because of the perceived ease in doing so?

If we refuse to allow our conscience of principle to be our guide in crisis, instead only permitting its surface in pleasant times, our ideals are rendered meaningless.

Thomas Jefferson’s statement that his “reading of history convinces [him] that most bad government results from too much government” no longer holds any meaning for the Democrats, as well as Republicans like Governors Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is, if it ever has.

“The spirit of resistance to government,” Jefferson once said, “is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.”

One can only hope that more governors will have the courage to stand up and resist the temptation to cede more power and authority to government. The future of this country may depend on it.