Videos: Since You Brought It Up, Mr. Vice President

On Ponzi Schemes

First the vice president:


Now Rand Paul:


And Dr. Williams:

Tea Party Inflence On The GOP

                            

Click here for an excellent article by Jonah Goldberg.  It needs consideration. 

The primary season suggests the GOP "establishment" is quietly acknowledging the Tea Party's influence.  As per Goldberg's observation, the establishment has not mounted a public opposition to the Tea Party and has been encouraging some RINOs to exit the scene.

I might add that if there is one thing politicians are ever-obsessive of, it is their chances of being voted out of office.  This includes the primary cycle.  Real, common sense, pro-freedom reform has to therefore begin and maintain from grassroots level and at primary elections.

In Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Mises argues that: "[g]overnment must be forced into adopting [classical] liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people; that they could voluntarily become [classically] liberal is not to be expected."

The history of recent years teach us it is not to be expected that the GOP will carry the banner of limited government and liberty.  But, this primary season the Tea Party and like-minded voters are forcing it to think otherwise.

Video: Worse Than Elitism

President Obama's latest "town hall" revealed a disturbing attitude toward the attendees and, thus, toward everyday Americans.  The word "elitism" seems insufficient to describe this attitude.

"There are a whole host of things that we've put in place that do make your life better."

Let's think about this:
"..a whole host of things..." = government legislation, spending, and regulation

"...we've..." = the people holding legislative and executive power that have acted

"...put in place..." = placed with foresight to determine some economic and social purpose--what classical liberal economists call central planning. 

"...to make your life better."  And there is the punchline.

Is the president of the U.S. in a postition to know what makes our individual and respective millions of lives good, let alone "better"? Who has the privilege of making that determination, us or him and his circle of advisers? And even if he could somehow ascend to this omniscient position, is it his place to make our lives better--as he sees it--through the coercive force of the federal government? 

How free is a society if its constitutionally elected president assumes this responsibility and then acts upon it?

Thomas Sowell’s excellent book The Vision of The Anointed explains why the “elites” in academia, government, and the media try again and again to implement bad social and economic policy in spite of the fact history teaches such policies have failed and will continue to fail.   In short, they are infatuated with an elevated and delusional sense of their own intelligence and see fixing the world and everyone in it to their liking as their mission in life.  Some samples:
 

“[T]here is, as the bottom line, a power agenda by which the vision of the anointed is to be imposed on the masses.”  

“ ‘Waste,’ ‘quality,’ and ‘real needs’ are terms blithely thrown around, as if some third party can define them for the other people.”  

Video: Who Knows Best?

"The efficient allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses is not just an abstract notion of economics.  It determines how well or how badly millions of people live." Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics

A $30 billion small business bill will soon be law.  President Obama claims that for new federal loans will help businesses "To grow and to hire..."

The premise here is that businesses need to hire additional personnel but cannot due to a lack of available lending in the private market.  This premise is seriously flawed. 

Businesses do not hire people because of tax cuts and lending intitiatives doled out by the federal government.  Businesses hire in order to meet current or expected demand for their goods and services; they hire when the market (us consumers) tells them more of what they make or provide (supply) is wanted for purchase (demand).

And there is no increased demand so long as there is uncertainty among both consumers and producers.  Coming clean on what will happen with taxes soon would go a long way to create more certainty in the market.


The president goes on to state there are "Many steps we have to take..." to continue an economic recovery.  If by "we" he means consumers and producers, and all the untold millions of people who, uncoordinated by government planners, spontaneously interact countless times a day to efficiently allocate resources to provide for a consumer economy of 300+ million people, he's right.  There are many steps that need to be taken.

If by "we" he means his government overseers, then there are equally "many steps" they should not be taking.  Unless, of course, he means stepping back out of our way.  Then please, do, take some steps.

Videos: The Tea Party and The Primaries. What "Purity Test"?

To date, the Tea Party movement has made its momentum felt in the primaries.  The Delaware Republican primary is bringing the issue of grass-roots, pro-freedom upward pressure on the GOP to a head.

Some view the primary as a "purity test" of the GOP:


How, exactly, does asking the GOP to stand on and by its own principles make activists "purists"?  

Others focus on the likelihood, or lack thereof, of the Republicans gaining seats in the Senate this November if the the Tea Party voice carries the ticket:


How does winning the general and continuing to be part of the problem help anything?  If we're going to drive off the cliff, doing so in a bipartisan fashion brings little comfort to those on the bus who see the cliff approaching.

The larger question remains: If hangers-on from the same old, myopically establishment, go-along-to-get-along, "moderates" win the primaries in order to win the general election, will that further the cause of freedom and bring government closer to being one with limited power in our lives, or will it keep us on the path to fiscal oblivion and government ubiquity upon which we are currently speeding?
Will implanting one more big-spending Republican into the visible government help the general public distinguish between the parties?

Put another way, does or does not the Democrat-lite, Rockefeller crowd in the GOP have any fingerprints on our current unsustainable spending and deficit?  Should they or should they not be kept in office?  Should they or should they not be put into office?   If so or if not, would the Oracles from on high please condescend to us unwashed rabble (who are irrational rubes who somehow are simultaneously sophisticated enough to be "purists") and enlighten us? 

I've been scouring the Federalist Papers for some applicable passage; there is something in there or some other source.  Suggestions are welcome. 

I suspect even the founders, with all the prudential insight into human nature, history, and politics could not even see this coming.

Video: Big Brother Knows Best

Ever get the feeling the federal government views the public like we're lost, unthinking sheep incapable of the responsibility to govern our own lives and desperately in need of being shepherded by their all-knowing, paternalistic regulatory agencies?

No?  You must not be a smoker:

Lost Federal Revenue?

Tax breaks do not "cost money." Bloated government programs cost money.

Tax cuts raises the question, "What will this do to the deficit?" and, "What will this cost the government?"

What does massive, unpredictable government programs cost in terms of "lost federal revenue"?  That statistic does not weigh so heavily on our minds.  We are counting dollars not-to-be confiscated but do not count dollars that have to be confiscated in the future.

That amounts to a lot of lost taxpayer revenue.

Really, Really Unconstitutional?

"The house of representatives... can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny." - Federalist 57

Oregon senator Wyden's (Democrat) recent move to exempt his home state from the cornerstone of Obamacare, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance of the federal government's liking, raises a curious question: How does exempting an entire state population of US citizens from the federal legislation that affects all other US citizens not residing in said state constitutional?

We know the mandate is a first.  Has this exemption move been done before?

Madison did his best to assuage the angst of those opposed to the new constitution by arguing House members would be subject to the same laws they had a hand in imposing on the rest of the country.  The same has always been for senators and the president. 

Who would have seen the possibility of a senator working to push through a law that forces Americans to purchase a good that that the government approves of---itself novel and wildly unconstitutional---then work to exempt the people of his home state from that federal dictate?

This could be something beyond unconstitutional.  All kinds of precedent is being set here: A federal mandate to buy something is passed on a strictly partisan basis, with its own lawmakers attempting to exempt their constituents from its legal reach, after passage.  Whatever term we or the courts can come up with for all this will have to new, too. "Unconstitutional" is just too insufficient to describe what is occurring here. 

Extra-Unconstitutional?  Double-Unconstitutional?  Everybody-Point-And-Laugh-Unconstitutional?

In deference to the president's unprecedented use of the word, unprecedented, how about Unprecedentedly-Unconstitutional.

That seems to fit.

Video: The Tea Party and The Federalist Papers

In Federalist 10, James Madison says one of the great virtues of a republic, as opposed to the workings of a pure democracy, is representation of the people's interests and views in government by their elected representatives.  Public opinion is thus "refined and enlarged" for broader and just national purposes and less likely to be used for narrow and destructive purposes.

The Tea Party represents a sustained and widespread opinion of We the People, an opinion decidedly in favor of returning the government back to the restraints of the Constitution that protect our freedom.  Its momentum and message has now had success in Republican primaries. 

Once such public opinion is carried into government after the general election, to whatever degree, the next step will be to "refine and enlarge" it into real policy, and curb the destructive short-sighted policies.

Go Joe Miller.  (And all the rest.)