Monthly Archives: July 2012

Open letter to President Obama (Part 117.2)

July 27, 2012 – 7:45 am

 

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

 
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) 
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Roger Ebert called this flick one of Allen’s best. The director, pictured with cinematographer Sven Nykvist on set, was nominated for three Academy Awards, including best director and writing. “Who else but Woody Allen could make a movie in which virtue is punished, evildoing is rewarded and there is a lot of laughter – even subversive laughter at the most shocking times?” wrote the famous reviewer.

_____________

The founding fathers believed that it benefitted the government for it’s leaders to believe in God and with that would come the view that evil will be punished and good will be rewarded in the afterlife. John Quincy Adams said: There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience,

This point of view is not held by many today. I noticed in Woody Allen’s film “Crimes and Misdemeanors” you can see how Allen’s agnostic worldview permits him to allow the lead character to have his mistress killed when she threatens to call the cops. Judah noted, “God is a luxery I can not afford.” Earlier in the film Judah is terrified when he thinks there is a living God that will punish him in an afterlife, but only after he convinces himself there is no God is he at peace with his decision to have this troublesome lady killed. Check out this movie on Netflix and you will see what I mean about this potential moral problem that atheists can not answer. (I have looked this question many times in my previous posts.)

David Barton is a Christian historian and he has quoted many of the founders concerning their views of the afterlife and how their views impact what is done while leading the nation:

James Iredell, a ratifier of the Constitution and a U. S. Supreme Court justice appointed by George Washington, also confirmed:

According to the modern definition [1788] of an oath, it is considered a “solemn appeal to the Supreme Being for the truth of what is said by a person who believes in the existence of a Supreme Being and in a future state of rewards and punishments according to that form which would bind his conscience most.” 9

 David Barton noted in his article, “Importance of Morality and Religion in Government,”:
01/2000
 

John Quincy Adams

Sixth President of the United States

 

There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.

(Source: John Quincy Adams, Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850), pp. 22-23.)

 

 

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, [and] which denounces against the wicked eternal misery, and [which] insured to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.

(Source: Bernard C. Steiner, The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers, 1907), p. 475. In a letter from Charles Carroll to James McHenry of November 4, 1800.)

James McHenry

Signer of the Constitution

[P]ublic utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

(Source: Bernard C. Steiner, One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland, 1810-1920 (Maryland Bible Society, 1921), p. 14.)

 

 

 

Benjamin Rush

Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Remember that national crimes require national punishments, and without declaring what punishment awaits this evil, you may venture to assure them that it cannot pass with impunity, unless God shall cease to be just or merciful.

(Source: Benjamin Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave-Keeping (Boston: John Boyles, 1773), p. 30.)

 

Joseph Story

Supreme Court Justice

Indeed, the right of a society or government to [participate] in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state and indispensable to the administrations of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion—the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to Him for all our actions, founded upon moral accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can well exist without them.

(Source: Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847), p. 260, §442.)

__________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

 
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” :“A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” VTR: 5/31/77 Transcript and video clip (Part 6)

July 27, 2012 – 7:44 am

Milton Friedman on the American Economy (6 of 6)

 

Uploaded by on Aug 9, 2009

THE OPEN MIND
Host: Richard D. Heffner
Guest: Milton Friedman
Title: A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy VTR: 5/31/77
_____________________________________

Below is a transcipt from a portion of an interview that Milton Friedman gave on 5-31-77:

Friedman: And insofar as I can give any assistance, I am delighted to, both because of my general desire to see freedom prosper, and also because I have a very strong personal sympathy and interest in Israel. I am Jewish by origin and culture. I share their values and their belief. I share the admiration which many have had for the miracles that have occurred in Israel. So if I can make any contribution to a more effective policy for preserving Israel, Israel’s freedom and strength, I would certainly be delighted to do so.

HEFFNER: Let’s turn now, in the moments we have remaining, from Israel to our own home. You had a plus and a minus evaluation of these past two years before. In terms of the president’s attitudes as well as actions, how do you, given your approach to the needs of this country, evaluate President Carter?

FRIEDMAN: Well, I have always argued that you will not solve problems by electing the right man to the White House.

HEFFNER: Certainly not by electing the wrong man.

FRIEDMAN: Yes. The only way you will ever solve problems, in my opinion, in moving the direction we want to move, is by making it a political interest of the wrong people to do the right thing.

HEFFNER: Go ahead. Spin that one out, Professor Friedman.

FRIEDMAN: I’m not knocking it. I do not want a dictator. You do not want a dictator. We want a man as president who is responsive to the will of the people. Now, we also want a man who will exercise leadership. We also want a man who will distinguish between a momentary whim of the people and some longer-run will. And we want a man who will stand up for what he believes, but not too far. Not beyond the point where he destroys his country in the process.

Now, as I look at President Carter, I think his political interests have, to a large extent, coincided with many of his personal values. He is a small, has been a small businessman. He comes from the South, he is fiscally prudent. His desire, I’m sure, to move toward a balanced budget is serious, is sincere and honest. And it has been politically prudent to do so, because we have been in the course of a very good expansion. The economy is growing. The real threat is a rise in inflation, not a recession at the moment. It’s in his political interest to try to keep this expansion going as long as he can. So fiscal conservatism in that sense has been both consistent with his principles and politically profitable. However, he wants fiscal conservatism for a different reason than I do. I want fiscal conservatism to reduce the scope of government. He wants it to enable government to exercise greater power in achieving what he considers desirable objectives. He is not a “conservative” in any way whatsoever, so far as I can see, in the sense of being in favor of a small government. He has come out openly in favor of vast expansions in government power. He has come out in favor of a national health insurance program which would, in my opinion, be a medical as well as a social and financial disaster in the United States. His energy program, as I mentioned earlier, is not a program which is designed to give the market greater play; it’s a program for running things through government. He is fundamentally, as so many people have pointed out, an engineer. That’s his background, that’s his training, that’s his disposition.

HEFFNER: You’re saying he’s also a social engineer though.

FRIEDMAN: Of course. He’s an engineer. And he’s in a position…where can he engineer? On the social level. He is a social engineer. And he believes in it. I’m not questioning that. From that point of view, I believe his principles are very undesirable for what we need for the future. Now, how it will work out…
HEFFNER: Now, in terms of what you said, that may work out well.

FRIEDMAN: What?

HEFFNER: In terms of what you said a moment ago, that may work out well.

FREIDMAN: It may. That depends, exactly. That’s why I say that what matters to me is much less what his own beliefs are than what you and the others out there and what the people of this country decide they want their government to do. Let’s not kid ourselves. The government is responsive to the public. This is a democracy. If we have been moving in the direction of collectivism, if we have been destroying the springs of private initiative and private freedom, if we have been restricting ourselves in many areas as we have, it is because the public at large has sent instructions to Washington to do that. Take a simple case. We all bemoan inflation. Inflation is terrible, it’s awful. Nobody likes inflation. Why do we have inflation? Because we the citizens have demanded it. We have sent a message to Washington. We said, “We want you to spend more on roads, we want you to spend more on health, we want you to spend more on education. But don’t tax us for it. We don’t like those damn taxes.” What happens? Congress listens. It votes more expenditures. It doesn’t vote taxes enough to cover them. But after all, the difference has to be paid for somehow. And so the difference is paid for by the hidden tax of inflation, which is the only tax that can be imposed on the American people without anybody having to vote for it. And so that inflation, we’re responsible for the inflation. Other people have been the intermediaries, but we’re ultimately responsible. Well, in the way, whether Mr. Carter’s propensities are a force for good or ill will depend in a very large measure, almost entirely, on what the sentiment of the public is, what is politically feasible, what is politically profitable for him to do. And that’s where the changing attitudes and ideas of the public play such a large role.

HEFFNER: In coming full circle as we end the program, I gather you do feel that you see signs of a changing attitude on the part of the public.

FRIEDMAN: Oh, there’s no doubt about that. Changing attitude on the part of the public, there’s no doubt about their reaction to the New York case. There’s no doubt about their loss of confidence in the ability of government programs to achieve their objective. You know, if you want to get a laugh out of anybody you talk about the post office. And it’s a universally understood thing. When I say when I try to talk against the energy program is to say, “Are you really seriously suggesting that we should turn over the production and distribution of energy to the people who run the post office? That’s what Mr. Carter is proposing.” And that gets a laugh out of people. Why? Because attitudes and views are changing.

HEFFNER: I think we’ll look again maybe two years down the road as to whether they’ve changed in the direction that you want or not. Thank you so much for joining me today, Professor Milton Friedman. It was a very, very great pleasure to talk with you once again.

FRIEDMAN: I’m very glad.

HEFFNER: And thanks, too, to you in the audience. I hope that you will join me again on The Open Mind. Meanwhile, as an old friend used to say, “Good night, and good luck.”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

Spending cut suggestions sent to Senator Mark Pryor electronically every Monday and displayed here on the www.thedailyhatch.org

July 27, 2012 – 12:11 am

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:

I have faithfully sent spending cut suggestions to Senator Mark Pryor every Monday for almost a year now and at the same time I have posted all of them on www.thedailyhatch.org every monday after they have been sent electronically.

I have suggested cutting out the complete Dept of Education on several occasions.

Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself:

GUIDELINE #4: Terminate failed, outdated, and irrelevant programs.
President Ronald Reagan once pointed out that “a government bureau is the closest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on earth.” A large portion of the current federal bureaucracy was created during the 1900s, 1930s, and 1960s in attempts to solve the unique problems of those eras.
Instead of replacing the outdated programs of the past, however, each period of government activism has built new programs on top of them. Ford Motor Company would not waste money today by building outdated Model T’s alongside their current Mustangs and Explorers. However, in 2004, the federal government still refuses to close down old agencies such as the Rural Utilities Service (designed to bring phones to rural America) and the U.S. Geological Survey (created to explore and detail the nation’s geography).
Government must be made light and flexible, adaptable to the new challenges the country will face in the 21st century. Weeding out the failed and outdated bureaucracies of the past will free resources to modernize the government.
Status Quo Bias. Lawmakers often acknowledge that certain programs show no positive effects. Regrettably, they also refuse to terminate even the most irrelevant programs. The most obvious reason for this timidity is an aversion to fighting the special interests that refuse to let their pet programs end without a bloody fight.
A less obvious reason is that eliminating government programs seems reckless and bold to legislators who have never known a federal government without them. Although thousands of programs have come and gone in the nation’s 228-year history, virtually all current programs were created before most lawmakers came to Washington. For legislators who are charged with budgeting and implementing the same familiar programs year after year, a sense of permanency sets in, and termination seems unfathomable.7 No one even remembers when a non-government entity addressed the problems.
The Department of Energy, for example, has existed for just one-tenth of the country’s history, yet closing it down seems ridiculous to those who cannot remember the federal government before 1977 and for whom appropriating and overseeing the department has been an annual ritual for years. Lawmakers need a long-term perspective to assure them the sky does not fall when a program is terminated. For example, the Bureau of Mines and the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration, both closed in 1996, are barely remembered today.8
Instead of just assuming that whoever created the programs decades ago must have been filling some important need that probably exists today, lawmakers should focus on the future by asking themselves the following question: If this program did not exist, would I vote to create it? Because the answer for scores of programs would likely be “no,” Congress should:
  • Close down failed or outdated agencies, programs, and facilities, including:
  1. The U.S. Geological Survey9 (2004 spending: $841 million, discretionary);10
  2. The Maritime Administration ($633 million, discretionary);
  3. The International Trade Commission ($61 million, discretionary);
  4. The Economic Development Administration ($417 million, discretionary);
  5. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($1,892 million, discretionary);
  6. The Technology Opportunities Program ($12 million, discretionary);
  7. Obsolete military bases;
  8. The Appalachian Regional Commission ($94 million, discretionary);
  9. Obsolete Veterans Affairs facilities;
  10. The Rural Utilities Service (-$1,493 million,11 mandatory); and
  11. Repeal Public Law 480′s non-emergency international food programs ($127 million, discretionary)

This is how bad it is getting:

  • Discretionary spending is the portion of the annual budget that Congress actually determines.
  • Since 2000, discretionary outlays surged 79 percent faster than inflation, to $1,408 billion. The “stimulus” is responsible for $111 billion of 2010 discretionary spending.
  • Between 1990 and 2000, $80 billion annually in new domestic spending was more than fully offset by a $100 billion cut in annual defense and homeland security spending, leaving (inflation-adjusted) discretionary spending slightly lower.
  • Since 2000, all types of discretionary spending have grown rapidly.
  • Overall, since 1990, domestic discretionary spending has risen 104 percent faster than inflation and defense/security discretionary spending has risen 51 percent.

Check out some of the links below:

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 139)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 138)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 137)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 136)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 135)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 134)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 133)

  Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 132)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 131)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Comments (0)

Toughest schedules in the SEC? (Part 1)

July 26, 2012 – 7:23 am

Many times the team with the toughest schedule will win the conference. That was not true in the SEC East last year when Georgia got to represent the East and they avoided LSU, Bama and Arkansas from the West.

2012 SEC Schedule Analysis

Who are the big scheduling winners and losers in the SEC for 2012?

-by Braden Gall (follow at @BradenGall)

Athlon Sports predicted the Georgia Bulldogs would win the East in 2011, and we got absolutely hammered by South Carolina fans. We understood why. We were out on a limb. The Gamecocks were the reigning Eastern Division champs with the best running back in the nation and a stellar defensive line returning.

However, one major aspect of our Dawgs-to-Atlanta prediction was the schedule. Now, South Carolina didn’t have to play Alabama or LSU either in 2011, but Georgia didn’t have to make that trip to Fayetteville to play Arkansas. South Carolina did – and got housed, in effect, giving the SEC East to Mark Richt and Georgia in the process.

I don’t think much will change in 2012. The SEC released its first 14-team schedule in history this morning. With Missouri and Texas A&M adding more intrigue to what is already the most powerful conference in football, the announcement made for some anxious moments.

So what conclusions can we draw about the potential outcome of the 2012 season? Since the SEC will be going for its seventh straight BCS national championship, the schedules that were released today just might have a small impact on the national landscape next fall:

Related: Very Early 2012 Athlon Sports Top 25

Beasts of the…West?

As I mentioned, South Carolina and Georgia were the picks in the East in 2011 because neither had to face Alabama or LSU. With those two teams still likely atop the West once again in 2012 — and Arkansas an easy pick to be the top challenger to those two — who has the good fortune to miss all three? Georgia misses all three (again) with Auburn (Nov. 10) and Ole Miss (Nov. 3) as its crossover games. Ole Miss should be picked last, and Auburn is replacing both coordinators after a poor showing this season and should be picked no higher than fourth in the West. It will be hard to take the first-team All-SEC quarterback and his defending SEC East champion Bulldogs off the top slot in the 2012 preseason.

Vanderbilt also misses all three of the Western powers. The Dores, too, get Ole Miss (Nov. 10) and Auburn (Oct. 20) in the crossover contests, and that is why Athlon Sports preseason magazine could pick Vandy ahead of Tennessee in the East for the first time since 1976.

Can The Razorbacks Unseat the Champs?

Entering 2012, Alabama and LSU will have claimed three of the last five BCS National Championships. And the two national powers combined to defeat Arkansas by an average of 24 points in 2011. So can Tyler Wilson and Bobby Petrino wedge their way into the SEC West title race? Certainly, they will be the clear challenger to the Tigers and Tide — especially with Knile Davis returning from injury. But most importantly, the schedule sends both LSU and Alabama on the road to face Arkansas. The Hogs also get lowly Kentucky and South Carolina in their crossover games. All of their four road games are winnable considering how the Hogs played the last time they visited the Gamecocks: at Texas A&M (Sept. 29), Auburn (Oct. 6), South Carolina (Nov. 10) and Mississippi State (Nov. 17).

Where Hogs fans will be watching some of these games, however, is still yet to be determined. The LSU game has been played in Little Rock in the past, and the site of the season finale has yet to be deteremined. Arkansas will play five games in Fayetteville and two in Little Rock. Either way, the schedule sets up for 2012 to be the year Arkansas finally challenges the balance of power in the West.

South Carolina Will Not Win the East

The good news is that the Gamecocks get key divisional swing games against Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee at home. However, their  crossover opponents are possibly the toughest in the entire conference: At LSU (Oct. 3) and Arkansas at home (Nov. 10). Additionally, trips to Florida and Vanderbilt won’t be easy either. With this schedule the Gamecocks cannot be considered the favorite to win the East in 2012. A trip to Kentucky (Oct. 29) is the only guaranteed win on the ’12 Gamecock schedule — though don’t forget that South Carolina lost to UK in its last trip to Lexington.

Welcome to the SEC, Texas A&M

Texas A&M averaged 39.3 points in conference play in 2011 with big wins over Iowa State, Texas Tech, Kansas and Baylor. They scored 50 in a loss to Kansas State and 31 in an overtime loss to Missouri. Anyone think Kevin Sumlin is excited about having to face Florida and Arkansas to start SEC play? Or how about three consecutive road games on three consecutive weekends against Auburn, Mississippi State and Alabama with a home test against LSU as the appetizer to the road trip? This is probably the toughest SEC schedule of any of the 14 teams. Best of luck, Aggies.

Missouri’s Split Stats

The Tigers, much like the Aggies, didn’t get any favors either. But at least Mike Slive gave Truman the Tiger a chance to be competitive. At least, early on. Four of the first five SEC games in Mizzou history will be played at home, with a visit to South Carolina (Sept. 22) the only road test before November. In fact, Gary Pinkel was given a great opportunity to make an early statement and swing the balance of power in the East with division favorite Georgia coming to Missouri to start the SEC Era in Columbia. You can bet that atmosphere will be electric.

However, the Tigers’ maiden voyage through SEC play will finish with three of the toughest venues in all of college football: At Florida (Nov. 3), at Tennessee (Nov. 10) and at Texas A&M (Nov. 24). None should be picked to challenge for the league title, but all three have massive home-field advantages — unlike most stadiums the Tigers are accustomed to in the Big 12. Dealing with 100,000-seat atmospheres after slugging it out in the SEC for the first time could prove extremely difficult.

Alabama Gets No Road Favors

If you are trying to pick out the subtle difference between LSU and Alabama — and who to pick to win the West next year — look no further than the road games for the Tide. The road slate for Alabama is brutal. The SEC opener at Arkansas (Sept. 15) will seriously test a revamped Nick Saban defense. Trips to Missouri (Oct. 13) and Tennessee (Oct. 20) will also feature two of the better quarterbacks in the SEC. And then there is that little visit to the Bayou and LSU late in the year (Nov. 3). Alabama’s totally reworked defense (which is still loaded with elite talent) and a Trent Richardson-less offense will have to defeat three of the top five teams in the league on the road if it expects a return trip to the BCS title game. The only comfort is a relatively easy slate of home action. Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Auburn all visit the Capstone and all will be picked fourth or worse in the West.

Colonel Reb Is Crying

How about this for a road slate in 2012 for Ole Miss: At Alabama (Sept. 29), at Arkansas (Oct. 27), at Georgia (Nov. 3) and at LSU (Nov. 17). In case you missed it, those are likely to be the best four teams in the conference in 2012. Well, at least they have never lost a party in The Grove.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 9

July 26, 2012 – 7:22 am

Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 9

On my blog www.thedailyhatch.org I have an extensive list of posts that have both videos and transcripts of MiltonFriedman’s interviews and speeches. Here below is just small list of those and more can be accessed by clicking on “Milton Friedman” on the side of this page or searching for Milton Friedman also.

Related posts:

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Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 2

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Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 1

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99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 18) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 4 of 7)

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below: The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, […]

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Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [5/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 17) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 3 of 7)

Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below: Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments Off

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 16) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 2 of 7)

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 16) Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below: George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees […]

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 15) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1of 7)

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 15) Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below: Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – […]

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 7 of 7)

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. […]

99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 14)

Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 06 99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 14) Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below: November […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 6 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: FRIEDMAN: But I personally think it’s a good thing. But I don’t see that any reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t have been required […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 5 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 5 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Are your voucher schools  going to accept these tough children? COONS: You bet they are. (Several talking at once.) COONS: May I answer […]

Milton Friedman:Republicans are wrong to oppose payroll tax reduction (Part 2 of Friedman interview with John Hawkins)

 Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan John Brummett is critical of Republicans for opposing the payroll tax reduction and I have to agree with him on this. In an interview shortly after the Bush Tax Cuts passed Milton Friedman was asked: John Hawkins:Do you think George Bush, with the economy being as it was, did the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

Video interviews of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin (Part 4)

July 26, 2012 – 7:21 am

As far as I know they have never done an interview together. Therefore, I have included separate interviews that they have done below and I have some links to past posts I have done on them too.

Shane Warne – Chris Martin Interview (Part 1)

Uploaded by on Nov 24, 2010

Originally broadcast on the 24 November, 2010, on Channel Nine Australia as part of the ‘Warnie’ television series. This is part one of an interview with Chris Martin.

Apologies for the semi-low quality

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Gwyneth Paltrow in the kitchen

Uploaded by on May 17, 2011

Actress and singer Gwyneth Paltrow shares some recipes with Chris Wragge from her new cookbook, “My Father’s Daughter,” including baked macaroni and cheese.

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Shane Warne – Chris Martin Interview (Part 2)

Uploaded by on Nov 24, 2010

Originally broadcast on the 24 November, 2010, on Channel Nine Australia as part of the ‘Warnie’ television series. This is part two of an interview with Chris Martin.

Apologies for the semi-low quality. 

Are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin looking for Spiritual Answers? (Coldplay’s spiritual search Part 4)jh62

  I wrote this article a couple of years ago. Are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin looking for Spiritual Answers? Just like King Solomon’s predicament in the Book of Ecclesiastes, both of these individuals are very wealthy, famous, and successful, but they still are seeking satisfying answers to life’s greatest questions even though it seems […]

Insight into what Coldplay meant by “St. Peter won’t call my name” (Series on Coldplay’s spiritual search, Part 3)jh61

Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]

Will Coldplay’s 2011 album continue on spiritual themes found in 2008 Viva La Vida? (Series on Coldplay’s spiritual search, Part 2)jh60

Views:2 By waymedia Coldplay Coldplay – Life In Technicolor ii Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the second part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the […]

Will Coldplay’s 2011 album continue on spiritual themes found in 2008 Viva La Vida? (Series on Coldplay’s spiritual search, Part 1)jh59

Coldplay performing “Glass of Water.” Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the first part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the Afterlife.” Coldplay’s latest musical […]

 

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Transcript and video of Milton Friedman on Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan (Part 2)

July 26, 2012 – 7:20 am

Below is a discussion from Milton Friedman on Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

February 10, 1999 | Recorded on February 10, 1999

PRESIDENTIAL REPORT CARD: Milton Friedman on the State of the Union

with guest Milton Friedman
Former Hoover fellow and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution and Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences grades the achievements of the Clinton administration and evaluates the programs the President proposed in his 1999 State of the Union address.

Milton Friedman vs Bill Clinton (1999)

Published on May 28, 2012 by

ROBINSON Just the last eight years, or would you give high marks to Volcker as well, Greenspan’s predecessor?

FRIEDMAN That’s an interesting case, because you have to give the credit there really to Reagan. There’s no other President who would have stood by while the Fed followed the policy it did. If you remember— you don’t remember that period but if you go back…

ROBINSON I do actually, I had just started at the White House in those days…

FRIEDMAN …if you go back to that period, stopping the inflation that was raging which reached double-digit levels at the end of the ’70s and early ’80s required stepping on the brakes hard and produced a recession. And if you remember, Reagan’s popular ranking went way down in…

ROBINSON Down into the thirties.

FRIEDMAN …thirties, right. No other President would have stood by and said to the Fed, keep doing what you’re doing, you’re doing the right thing. But Reagan did do that. And that’s what enabled Volcker to do what Volcker did.

ROBINSON Back to the present to find out what Milton Friedman thinks of President Clinton’s legislative goals for the rest of his term.

THE SUNSHINE PLOYS

ROBINSON Let me ask you to apply your thinking to the principle points of Bill Clinton’s program for the remaining couple of years in office. The President’s program is intended— we’ll take old folks first— to, I quote now, “Address the challenge of a senior boom by using the budget surplus to help save Social Security.”

FRIEDMAN Well, the proposal, if you look at it in detail, is a complete fake.

ROBINSON A complete fake?

FRIEDMAN Absolutely.

ROBINSON He wants to take sixty percent— a little more than sixty percent of budget surplus over the next fifteen years…

FRIEDMAN Where does that come from? He’s counting that twice. That comes from the proceeds of the payroll taxes that are now in, which, in principle, though not in practice, are supposed to be used for Social Security, but which have indeed been financing every regular event. If he doesn’t do a thing about the surplus, that would still end up in bonds in the hands of the Social Security so-called Trust Fund.

ROBINSON You say he’s guilty of a little bit of a flim-flam game with the books.

FRIEDMAN Absolutely.

ROBINSON Within forty-eight hours of that State of the Union Address in which he made this proposal, Alan Greenspan, whom you have just praised, endorsed the proposal— in general terms, not specific terms, but he endorsed the proposal— and the Republicans in Congress said yep, that’s a good idea, sign us up for that too. How is it that he’s able to get everybody to go for what you call a flim-flam game?

FRIEDMAN Look, do you need to ask that question now after six years of Clinton? How he’s been able to get one flim-flam game after another. How he’s been able to bamboozle the people into thinking that he deserves higher ratings because he lies. Clinton is a superb politician who has a most extraordinary capacity to exude sincerity. He’s an incredible phenomenon. I think he’s a genius. But go back to the Social Security program. The first thing to be said is that all this nonsense about saving something for Social Security is pure fiction. It’s wrong to think that what people are paying into Social Security, what people are paying in the form of wage taxes, is what they’re paying for their own security. [

ROBINSON That’s nonsense.] There is no relationship whatsoever. We have a system under which you have a set of taxes for Social Security— named for Social Security, but it doesn’t matter, they’re payroll taxes, terrible taxes, regressive taxes. Nobody… you could not get a legislature to vote such a tax on its own. Can you imagine proposing a tax that would impose — let’s say sixteen percent tax— on all wages from the first dollar up to the maximum and nothing beyond that. Can you imagine voting that? Similarly, the other side of the picture is that we have made a series of commitments to people like me— I receive Social Security payments…

ROBINSON Oh so, it’s my payroll tax that goes to…

FRIEDMAN Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s not only your payroll tax, it’s your income tax, it’s whatever taxes you pay. I get them. And if you think you’re going to get ’em, you’re kidding yourself.

ROBINSON It is a fundamental deceit hoisted upon the American people and sustained for lo these six decades.

FRIEDMAN Absolutely. If you read the Social Security brochures, they say this is a system under which you are putting aside money now for your retirement.

ROBINSON And that’s nonsense.

FRIEDMAN That is utterly fake. But let’s suppose it were true…

ROBINSON All-right.

FRIEDMAN …for a moment. Why is it that it’s appropriate for government to come and tell me what fraction of my income I should save for my old age? If that’s okay, why can’t it come in and tell me exactly what fraction of my income I have to spend for food, what fraction for housing, what fraction for clothing. Let me show you the absurdity of this.

ROBINSON All-right.

FRIEDMAN Consider a young man of thirty-five who has AIDS for whom the expected length of life is ten years at the most maybe. Maybe there’ll be a cure. But his expected length of life is not very long. Is it really intelligent for him to put aside fifteen percent of his income for retirement at age sixty-five?

ROBINSON It’s outrageous.

FRIEDMAN It’s outrageous.

ROBINSON Outrageous.

FRIEDMAN Exactly. The only word you can give to it. And in my opinion, the whole Social Security system is an outrage.

ROBINSON If Social Security is ‘an outrage,’ what would Milton Friedman do about it? A Bonding Experience

ROBINSON How would you get rid of it?

FRIEDMAN Very simply. Here I am, I’m entire to a certain number of payments in the future. Have the government give me a bond equal to the current present value of— expected value of what I’m entitled to. You have already accumulated some rights. And so have the government give you a bond which will be due when you’re sixty-five which will be the present value of what you’ve already accumulated under the law. And then close the whole thing up.

ROBINSON And just close the books.

FRIEDMAN Everybody gets what he’s entitled to— what he’s been promised. The unfunded debt under Social Security is funded, it’s made open and above-board. There’s not a penny of transition cost, and everybody is… In my world, the payroll tax would be abolished, would be eliminated. It’s the worst tax we have on the books. And everybody would be free to do what he wanted about his own retirement.

ROBINSON Okay.

FRIEDMAN And on the whole he would do very well. Now undoubtedly, people who argue against that say, well what are you going to do about these people who are so careless and so unprudent that they don’t accumulate anything for retirement. That’s a general problem. What do you do about people who are poor, whether for their own fault or not for their own fault? You and I and society in general is not willing to see ’em starve to death.

ROBINSON Correct.

FRIEDMAN Well, I have always been in favor of having a program under which (a negative income tax) under which you will have some income minimum you will provide for people whether they are indigent because they’re wastrels or whether they’re indigent because they’re in bad health…

ROBINSON Even if it’s their own fault, they don’t starve.

FRIEDMAN The problem is, it’s always seemed to me absurd that you make a hundred percent of the people do something in order to make sure that one or two percent of the people don’t behave badly.

ROBINSON Milton, that negative income tax proposal actually started to go someplace, if I remember my history correctly, that actually started to go someplace during the Nixon years, didn’t it? Didn’t Cap Weinberger…

FRIEDMAN Yes, it did… No, Moynihan, Pat Moynihan…

ROBINSON Moynihan. And what happened to it? Why did it die?

FRIEDMAN Because the public pressure was converted into a program that I testified against. It’s what happens in Washington all the time.

ROBINSON Right, right, okay.

ROBINSON Next question. What would Milton Friedman do with the mounting budget surplus?

SAVING PRIVATE EARNING

ROBINSON We’ve got seventy-nine, eighty billion dollars more coming in this year than the government…

FRIEDMAN I am in favor of reducing taxes under any circumstances, for any excuse, with any reason whatsoever because that’s the only way you’re ever going to get effective control over government spending. Sooner or later [

ROBINSON Choke off the supply.] if you don’t reduce taxes to get rid of that surplus, it’s going to be spent. The rule from not only the last few years, hundreds of years, is that governments will spend whatever the tax system will raise plus as much more as they can get away with.

ROBINSON The Republicans are calling for a ten percent…

FRIEDMAN It’s not enough.

ROBINSON …cut. Not enough. What is… Now Dan Quayle, who’s running for President— this is the most extreme- extreme may be the wrong word but this is the most dramatic proposal I’m aware of that’s on the table anywhere at the moment— he’s called for a thirty percent cut. Is that enough?

FRIEDMAN I don’t know. I would cut it as much as you can get away with.

ROBINSON So you’d run the numbers and give back virtually all the surplus.

FRIEDMAN What do you mean give back? Not take.

ROBINSON Excuse me. It’s not take. You’d lower taxes…

FRIEDMAN You know, this idea of giving back, which is a word you use, assumes…

ROBINSON I take back my words, but go ahead and ram them down my throat.

FRIEDMAN …it assumes that every individual is a property of the government and that all of the income that you earn is really the government’s, and it decides how much you can keep and how much it gets. I’ve always said, it treats people as if they were running around with an IBM card on their back which says ‘do not mutilate, punch, or disturb.’

ROBINSON Right. You’ve got more money coming in at the moment than is going out.

FRIEDMAN You ought to reduce taxes by enough to generate…

ROBINSON You don’t want to pay down the debt.

FRIEDMAN Oh no. No, I want to generate a deficit because I want pressure on to get the government to spend less.

ROBINSON You like a federal deficit.

FRIEDMAN No, I don’t like a federal deficit, but I like lower government spending.

ROBINSON All-right. President Clinton has another proposal for using that surplus, and he calls them USA accounts. He’s proposing to use about eleven percent of the surplus over the next fifteen years or so to establish, I quote now from his speech, “universal savings accounts, USA accounts, to give all Americans the means to save,” again quotation here, “with extra help for the least able to save.” Details to follow. You like that idea?

FRIEDMAN No, I think it’s a terrible idea. You know, the idea is saying, I’m going to take your money, but then I’ll give it back to you if you do with it what I tell you to do. Is that a way you have a free society of free, self-reliant individuals who are responsible for themselves? It’s a terrible…

ROBINSON Do you even agree with the premise that the savings rate is too low in this country?

FRIEDMAN I don’t agree with that premise. What is the right savings rate?

ROBINSON Well, gee, you’re the Nobel Prize winner, I thought you’d be able to clue me in.

FRIEDMAN The right savings rate… In a world in which you did not have distortions, in which you did not have government stepping in and distorting the rate at which people save or not, the right saving rate is whatever all the people of the community simply want to save. How much you want to save, how much I want to save. Why shouldn’t people be free to save what they want?

ROBINSON Let’s move to a more theoretical question. Why do we end up with so many stupid government programs when we’re supposed to be so smart in our own private affairs?

THINK LOCALLY, ACT GLOBALLY

ROBINSON How is it, you credit great intelligence, shrewdness, on the part of individuals when they’re spending their own money and managing their own property in the marketplace, how can we all be so dumb when we give up being players in the marketplace and become citizens participating in the political process? We get hoodwinked by Clinton, we go for this crazy sham of Social Security, how can we be so dumb?

FRIEDMAN Because it’s always so attractive to be able to do good at somebody else’s expense. That the real problem of our government. Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else. That’s— I’m just repeating what Bastiat said two centuries ago, more than two centuries ago. You know, the thing that people don’t really understand is that free societies of the kind we’ve been lucky enough to experience for the last hundred-hundred and fifty years are a very rare exception in human history. Most people, most of history, and at any one time, most people at any one time, have lived in tyranny and misery. And it’s only for a brief period, and why? It is precisely because once you get some government program in— may have been a very good idea, it’s always proposed for good reasons— once it gets in, it becomes a special privilege of a small group which has an enormously strong interest to maintain it, and you do not have any comparable group that has the interest to get rid of it. And therefore, the hardest thing in the world is to get rid of any government program, however badly it works. In fact, try to name any government programs that have been eliminated.

ROBINSON The draft. Well, that’s not a…

FRIEDMAN Yes, the draft is an example, it’s one of the rare examples of a program that has been eliminated. One of the others was Postal Savings. It used to be that the postal system had a savings system which became very popular as a result of the Great Depression. But it disappeared. Why? Because by accident when they set it up, they limited the interest they could pay on postal savings to two percent, and when the market rate got higher than that, all the money was taken out of postal savings and postal savings came to an end. But aside from that, can you name programs that have been eliminated because they failed? And so how will we set a limit on government, and keep it coming back, and the only thing I can see on the horizon that offers a real chance are term-limits.

ROBINSON Term limits?

FRIEDMAN Right now, being a politician is a lifetime career. Being a Congressman is a lifetime career.

ROBINSON Do we have any evidence in the states where term-limits apply that it has worked as you would like to see it work? Term-limits have been in effect here in California for about a decade now… They may have been enacted a decade ago, so they’ve been in effect for perhaps six years…

FRIEDMAN It’s a little early. We don’t really have any very good… However, it so happened, I had occasion to have a conversation the other day with a former Governor of Virginia: Allen, George Allen.

ROBINSON Who, everybody says he’s going to be running for the Senate. Against Chuck Robb.

FRIEDMAN Yes, that’s what he intends to do.

ROBINSON He intends to do. All-right.

FRIEDMAN However, he had, Virginia has a one-term four-year term for the Governor. And he said, you know, he said, if we had had a two-year term, if we had had the situation in most states, that you can run for a second term, I would have spent the third and fourth year of my term working for re-election. I would never have been able to get done what I got done. It was the first real hands-on testimonial I’ve seen to a term-limit. It’s not a good idea for being a legislator to be a lifetime profession. The founders of our country had the idea of legislation as a part-time activity. It is in many states today. But at the federal government level, it’s a full-time profession. And that is very unhealthy because the legislature— it’s not a criticism of the individual— but any human being in that position, he’s going to sit in committee meetings, and day after day he’s going to hear arguments, good arguments, worthy arguments for new programs. He’s going to get very few arguments for getting rid of programs. And the evidence is clear: the longer people are in Congress, the more willing they are to vote government spending.

ROBINSON The polls all show the American people are very concerned about our public schools. What does Milton Friedman think of President Clinton’s proposals to improve those public schools? Hire Learning

ROBINSON President Clinton on public schools. According to the White House fact sheet, he wants to, I quote, “raise standards and increase accountability in public schools (I’ve got to take a deep breath to get through this) through proposals to end social promotion, bring high-quality teachers into the classroom, intervene in failing schools, provide school report cards to parents, strengthen our commitment to smaller class-sizes, and boost our efforts for school modernization.” What grade do you give that proposal?

FRIEDMAN F.

ROBINSON F.

FRIEDMAN What does it mean? It means more government control of schools. What do we really need in schools? We need competition. What we have is a monopoly, and like every monopoly, it’s producing a low-quality product at a very high cost. The way to improve that is to have competition, to make it possible for parents to have a choice of the schools their children attend. All high-income people have that choice now. They can choose their residence for a place with good schools, or they can send their children to private schools, pay twice for schooling: once in taxes and once in tuition. But the lower income classes can’t.

ROBINSON They’re stuck. Milton, didn’t public schools used to work?

FRIEDMAN Yes. When I graduated from high-school in 1928, there were 150,000 school districts in this country. Today, there are 15,000 and the population is twice as great. In the early day, you had local control of schools, and there was effective competition between a large number of local areas. But school districts got consolidated. They got run not by local people but by the professional educators. And most important of all, in the 1960s you began to have the emergence of teachers’ unions taking control of the schools. And since 1960, since the teachers’ unions started emerging, you have had on the whole a rather steady decline in the quality of schooling. If you want to improve automobiles, do you have government step in and tell people what brakes to put on, and so on, or do you rely on the fact that General Motors is going to try to beat Ford, is going to try to beat Toyota? Competition is the most effective way to improve quality, whether in computers, in automobiles, in suits, or in schooling.

ROBINSON Let me ask you to close, if I may, with a prediction. It’s 2009, ten years from today. Is the government of the United States bigger, or smaller?

FRIEDMAN Smaller.

ROBINSON Your ideas are winning?

FRIEDMAN No. The Internet is going to make it harder and harder to collect taxes.

ROBINSON How come?

FRIEDMAN Because you’ll be able to evade taxes, you’ll be able to do your deals in the Cayman Islands.

ROBINSON So the Internet…

FRIEDMAN At the moment I see the Internet as the most likely source of the smaller government.

ROBINSON But in your mind it really will have an effect. That’s not speculative…

FRIEDMAN No, no, no. I believe it will and I believe it’s having it now.

ROBINSON I see. Okay. Milton Friedman— Bill Clinton I hope you’re taking notes, we’ll send a tape of this to the White House— Milton Friedman, thank you very much.

FRIEDMAN That’s all-right. I assure you they won’t look at it. Thank you.

ROBINSON Doctor Friedman believes the government should be smaller and that it will become so. Maybe some future President will preside over such a small government that he can shrink up the State of the Union Address enough to get rid of the Teleprompter and deliver the speech from memory. I’m Peter Robinson. Thanks for joining us.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Bill Clinton, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 117.1)

July 26, 2012 – 7:19 am

Glenn Beck Presents: F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” (Part 2)

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. 

You can see how wise this man was and you could benefit by reading his books. He shows that socialism will always fail and we should rely more on the free market.

Happy Birthday, F. A. Hayek

Posted by David Boaz

Today is the 113th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek, perhaps the most subtle social thinker of the 20th century.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. He met with President Reagan at the White House, and Margaret Thatcher banged The Constitution of Liberty on the table at Conservative headquarters and declared “This is what we believe.” Milton Friedman described him as “the most important social thinker of the 20th century,” and Lawrence H. Summers called him the author of “the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today.”

He is the hero of The Commanding Heights, the book and PBS series by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. His most popular book, The Road to Serfdom, has never gone out of print and sold 125,000 copies last year. John Cassidy wrote in the New Yorker that “on the biggest issue of all, the vitality of capitalism, he was vindicated to such an extent that it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the 20th century as the Hayek century.”

Last year the Cato Institute invited Bruce Caldwell, Richard Epstein, and George Soros to discuss the new edition of The Constitution of Liberty, edited by Ronald Hamowy. In a report on that session, I concluded:

Hayek was not just an economist. He also published impressive works on political theory and psychology.

He’s like Marx, only right.

Cato published two original interviews with Hayek, in 1983 and 1984.

Find more on Hayek, including an original video lecture, at Libertarianism.org.

 
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

 
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, President Obama | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman’s biography (Part 2)(Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 3)

July 26, 2012 – 7:17 am

Biography Part 2

In 1977, when I reached the age of 65, I retired from teaching at the University of Chicago. At the invitation of Glenn Campbell, Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, I shifted my scholarly work to Hoover where I remain a Senior Research Fellow. We moved to San Francisco, purchasing an apartment in a high-rise apartment building in which we still reside. The transition of my scholarly activities from Chicago to California was greatly eased by the willingness of Gloria Valentine, my assistant at Chicago, to accompany us west. She remains my indispensable assistant.

Hoover has provided excellent facilities for scholarly work. It enabled me to remain productive and an active member of a lively scholarly community.

Initially we continued to spend spring and summer quarters at Capitaf, our second home in Vermont. However, we soon came to appreciate the inconvenience of maintaining homes a continent apart and began to look in California for a replacement for Capitaf. In 1979, we purchased a house on the ocean in Sea Ranch, a lovely community 110 miles north of San Francisco. In 1981, we disposed of Capitaf and began to spend about half the year at Sea Ranch at intervals of a week or so, spread throughout the year, rather than in one solid block. It proved a fine locale for scholarly work. The Internet plus an assistant at Hoover more than made up for the absence of a library near at hand.

After more than two wonderful decades at Sea Ranch, we sold our house to simplify our lives. We now have one home, our apartment in San Francisco.

To return to the 1970s, not long after we arrived in California, Bob Chitester persuaded us to join him in producing a major television program presenting my economic and social philosophy. The resulting effort, spread over three years, proved the most exciting adventure of our lives. The end result was Free to Choose, ten one-hour programs, each consisting of a half-hour documentary and a half-hour discussion. The first of the ten programs appeared on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) in January 1980. Since then, the series has been shown in many foreign countries.

When we agreed to undertake the project, little did Rose and I realize what was involved in producing a major TV series. As a first step, I gave a series of fifteen lectures over a period of nine months at a wide variety of locations. The lectures and question-and-answer sessions were all videotaped to provide the producers with a basis for planning the programs.

The filming began in March 1978 and continued for the next eight months at locations in the United States and around the world, including Hong Kong, Japan, India, Greece, Germany, and the United Kingdom – in the process generating more than six miles of video and audiotape.

Three months after the end of filming, we returned to London to view the documentaries that Michael Latham, our wonderful producer, and his associates had created from that tape and to dub the voice-overs. Another six months passed before we gathered again in Chicago where we filmed the discussion sessions – one of the most stressful weeks I have ever experienced.

One distinguishing feature of the series was that there was no written script. I talked extemporaneously from notes. When we returned to Capitaf from London with the transcripts of the final documentaries, we set to work to convert them to a book to appear simultaneously with the TV program. The book, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980) was the bestseller nonfiction book of 1980 and continues to sell well. It has been translated into more than fourteen foreign languages.

As Rose wrote in our memoirs, “As we look back at the events chronicled in this chapter, it all seems like something of a fairy tale. Who would have dreamed that after retiring from teaching, Milton would be able to preach the doctrine of human freedom to many millions of people in countries around the globe through television, millions more through our book based on the television program, and countless others through videocassettes” (p. 503).

Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, published in 1982, was the final major product of a collaboration with Anna J. Schwartz under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research that lasted more than three decades. Money Mischief (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) collects assorted pieces of monetary history, some of which I had published elsewhere, some of which appear first in this book.

I have continued to be active in public policy since 1977. I continued my tri-weekly column in Newsweek until it was terminated in 1983. Since then, I have published numerous op-eds in major newspapers. I served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his candidacy for the presidency in 1980, and as a member of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board during his presidency. In 1988, President Reagan awarded me the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in the same year I was awarded the National Medal of Science.

We have traveled extensively since 1977, including a trip through Eastern Europe in 1990, where we filmed a documentary on former Soviet satellites. The documentary was included in a shortened reissue of Free to Choose.

Perhaps the most notable foreign travel consisted of three trips to China: one in 1980 when I gave a series of lectures under the auspices of the Chinese government; one in 1988 when I attended a conference in Shanghai on Chinese economic development and had a fascinating session in Beijing with Zhao Ziyang, at the time, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, deposed a few months later for his unwillingness to approve the use of force on Tiananmen Square; and one in 1993 when I traveled with a group of Chinese friends from Hong Kong throughout the country. The three visits covered a period of revolutionary economic growth and development, the first stage of a shift from an authoritarian, centrally planned economy to a largely free market economy.

Ever since the 1950s, Rose and I have been interested in the promotion of parental choice in schooling through the use of vouchers. Finally, in 1996, when it became clear that our personal involvement would have to be limited, we established a foundation, The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation devoted to promoting parental choice in schooling. We were fortunate in being able to persuade Gordon St. Angelo to serve as president. He has done an outstanding job. Progress toward our objective of universal vouchers has been distressingly slow, but there has been progress. The pace of progress shows every sign of speeding up, and our foundation has made a significant contribution to that progress.

In 1998, the University of Chicago Press published our memoirs, Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People.

Milton Friedman died on November 16, 2006.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

Dear Senator Pryor, why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? (“Thirsty Thursday”, Open letter to Senator Pryor)

July 26, 2012 – 7:15 am

Dear Senator Pryor,

Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).

On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.

New CBO Numbers Re-Confirm that Balancing the Budget Is Simple with Modest Fiscal Restraint

Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell

Many of the politicians in Washington, including President Obama during his State of the Union address, piously tell us that there is no way to balance the budget without tax increases. Trying to get rid of red ink without higher taxes, they tell us, would require “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts.

I would like to slash the budget and free up resources for private-sector growth, so that sounds good to me. But what’s the truth?

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its 10-year projections for the budget, so I crunched the numbers to determine what it would take to balance the budget without tax hikes. Much to nobody’s surprise, the politicians are not telling the truth.

The chart below shows that revenues are expected to grow (because of factors such as inflation, more population, and economic expansion) by more than 7 percent each year. Balancing the budget is simple so long as politicians increase spending at a slower rate. If they freeze the budget, we almost balance the budget by 2017. If federal spending is capped so it grows 1 percent each year, the budget is balanced in 2019. And if the crowd in Washington can limit spending growth to about 2 percent each year, red ink almost disappears in just 10 years.

These numbers, incidentally, assume that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent (they are now scheduled to expire in two years). They also assume that the AMT is adjusted for inflation, so the chart shows that we can balance the budget without any increase in the tax burden.

I did these calculations last year, and found the same results. And I also examined how we balanced the budget in the 1990s and found that spending restraint was the key. The combination of a GOP Congress and Bill Clinton in the White House led to a four-year period of government spending growing by an average of just 2.9 percent each year.

We also have international evidence showing that spending restraint – not higher taxes – is the key to balancing the budget. New Zealand got rid of a big budget deficit in the 1990s with a five-year spending freeze. Canada also got rid of red ink that decade with a five-year period where spending grew by an average of only 1 percent per year. And Ireland slashed its deficit in the late 1980s by 10 percentage points of GDP with a four-year spending freeze.

No wonder international bureaucracies such as the International Monetary fund and European Central Bank are producing research showing that spending discipline is the right approach

Daniel J. Mitchell • January 27, 2011 @ 12:00 pm
Filed under: Government and Politics; Health Care; Tax and Budget Policy

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, spending out of control | Comments (0)