Yearly Archives: 2012

Open letter to President Obama (Part 102)

July 8, 2012 – 12:47 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.

I see a few problems with Obamacare. Although you promised that it would cover everyone,  Obamacare will not give everyone coverage!!! Also there are religious values that Obamacare would trangress. For instance, you promised Ben Nelson and other prolife members of Congress that these healthcare plans would not cover abortion.

I also anticipate a  drop in quality we will be seeing and it seems stupid to shove millions into an already bankrupt Medicaid system that will bankrupt Arkansas’ state government.

The real question is how efficient is the government versus the private market. Take your $50 lightbulb.

I’ve written about the government’s war on consumer-friendly light bulbs (and also similar attacks on working toilets and washing machines that actually clean), so I’m generally not surprised by bureaucratic nonsense.

But even I’m shocked the federal government gave an affordability award for a light bulb that costs $50. I’m not making this up. Here’s a blurb from ABC News.

The U.S. government has awarded appliance-maker Philips $10 million for devising an “affordable” alternative to today’s standard 60-watt incandescent bulb. That standard bulb sells for around $1. The Philips alternative sells for $50. Of course, the award-winner is no ordinary bulb. It uses only one-sixth the energy of an incandescent. And it lasts 30,000 hours–about 30 times as long. In fact, if you don’t drop it, it may last 10 years or more. But only the U.S. Government (in this case, the Department of Energy) could view a $50 bulb as cheap.

Isn’t that wonderful? My tax dollars were used to reward a company that produced a light bulb I can’t afford.

Lisa Benson has a very good cartoon about this light bulb, as well as the less-than-shocking news that Obamacare will be more costly than originally forecast.

If you like Lisa’s work, there are some other good examples here and here.

Obamacare, Two Years Later

by Michael D. Tanner

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.

Added to cato.org on March 21, 2012

This article appeared in National Review Online on March 21, 2012.

This week marks two years since of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and if the Obama administration has chosen to all but ignore the second anniversary of Obamacare, the rest of us should pause and reflect on just what a monumental failure of policy the health-care-reform law has been.

What’s more, it has been a failure on its own terms. After all, when health-care reform was passed, we were promised that it would do three things: 1) provide health-insurance coverage for all Americans; 2) reduce insurance costs for individuals, businesses, and government; and 3) increase the quality of health care and the value received for each dollar of health-care spending. At the same time, the president and the law’s supporters in Congress promised that the legislation would not increase the federal-budget deficit or unduly burden the economy. And it would do all these things while letting those of us who were happy with our current health insurance keep it unchanged. Two years in, we can see that none of these things is true.

Obamacare is a costly and dangerous failure.

For example, we now know that, contrary to claims made when the bill passed, the law will not come close to achieving universal coverage. In fact, as time goes by, it looks as if the bill will cover fewer and fewer people than advertised. According to a report from the Congressional Budget Office released last week, Obamacare will leave 27 million Americans uninsured by 2022. This represents an increase of 2–4 million uninsured over previous reports. Moreover, it should be noted that, of the 23 million Americans who will gain coverage under Obamacare, 17 million will not be covered by real insurance, but will simply be dumped into the Medicaid system, with all its problems of access and quality. Thus, only about 20 million Americans will receive actual insurance coverage under Obamacare. That’s certainly an improvement over the status quo, but it’s also a far cry from universal coverage — and not much bang for the buck, given Obamacare’s ever-rising cost.

At the same time, the legislation is a major failure when it comes to controlling costs. While we were once told that health-care reform would “bend the cost curve down,” we now know that Obamacare will actually increase U.S. health-care spending. This should come as no surprise: If you are going to provide more benefits to more people, it is going to cost you more money. The law contained few efforts to actually contain health-care costs, and the CBO now reports that many of the programs it did contain, such as disease management and care coordination, will not actually reduce costs. As the CBO noted, “in nearly every program involving disease management and care coordination, spending was either unchanged or increased relative to the spending that would have occurred in the absence of the program, when the fees paid to the participating organization were considered.”

This failure to control costs means that the law will add significantly to the already-crushing burden of government spending, taxes, and debt. According to the CBO, Obamacare will cost $1.76 trillion by 2022. To be fair, some media outlets misreported this new estimate as a doubling of the law’s originally estimated cost of $940 billion. In reality, most of the increased cost estimate is the result, not of increased programmatic costs, but of an extra two years of implementation. Still, many observers warned at the time that the original $940 million estimate was misleading because it included only six years of actual expenditures, with the ten-year budget window. The new estimate is, therefore, a more accurate measure of how expensive this law will be. Yet even this estimate covers only eight years of implementation. And it leaves out more than $115 billion in important implementation costs, as well as costs of the so-called doc fix. It also double-counts Social Security taxes and Medicare savings. Some studies suggest a better estimate of Obamacare’s real ten-year cost could run as high as $2.7–3 trillion. And this does not even include the over $4.3 trillion in costs shifted to businesses, individuals, and state governments.

All this spending means that we will pay much more in debt and taxes. But we will also pay more in insurance premiums. Once upon a time, the president promised us that health-care reform would lower our insurance premiums by $2,500 per year. That claim has long since been abandoned. Insurance premiums are continuing to rise at record rates. And, while there are many factors driving premiums up, Obamacare itself is one of them. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, insurance premiums had been rising at roughly 5 percent per year pre-Obamacare. That jumped to 9 percent last year. And roughly half that four-percentage-point increase can be directly attributed to Obamacare. Even Jonathan Gruber of MIT, one of the architects of both Obamacare and Romneycare, now admits that many individuals will end up paying more for insurance than they would have without the reform — even after taking into account government subsidies — and that those increases will be substantial. According to Gruber, “after the application of tax subsidies, 59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”

Finally, if the past two years should have taught us anything, it is that we may not be able to keep our current insurance, even if we are happy with it. The CBO suggests that as many as 20 million workers could lose their employer-provided health insurance as a result of Obamacare. Instead, they will be dumped into government-run insurance exchanges. And, the recent dust-up over insurance coverage for contraceptives is a clear illustration of how the government will now be designing insurance plans for all of us. Regardless of how one feels about the contraceptive mandate itself, it is just the tip of the iceberg as government mandates tell employers what insurance they must provide, and tell us what insurance we must buy, even if that insurance is more expensive, contains benefits we don’t want, or violates our consciences.

Next week, Obamacare will slouch its way to the Supreme Court. How the justices decide will be based on questions of constitutional law. Their decision will set a crucial precedent in setting the boundaries between government power and individual rights. But regardless of whether the Court upholds Obamacare or strikes it down, in whole or in part, we should understand that, simply as a matter of health-care reform, Obamacare is a costly and dangerous failure.

____________

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

Michael Cannon on Medicare and Healthcare

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Healthcare, President Obama | Comments (0)

More Than Half of the President’s Budget Would Be Spent on Entitlement Programs

July 8, 2012 – 12:10 am

More Than Half of the President’s Budget Would Be Spent on Entitlement Programs

Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute.

In combination with other entitlements, such as food stamps, unemployment, and housing assistance,Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security constitute the lion’s share of President Obama’s 2012 budget. In contrast, spending on foreign aid represents 2 percent.

PERCENTAGE OF THE PRESIDENT’S FY2012 BUDGET

Download

More Than Half of the President's Budget Would Be Spent on Entitlement Programs

Source: White House Office of Management and Budget.

Chart 9 of 42

In Depth

  • Policy Papers for Researchers

  • Technical Notes

    The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More

  • Authors

    Emily GoffResearch Assistant
    Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
    Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor

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

Voucher system brings best education at lowest cost

July 7, 2012 – 1:01 am

The True Cost of Public Education

Uploaded by on Mar 5, 2010

What is the true cost of public education? According to a new study by the Cato Institute, some of the nation’s largest public school districts are underreporting the true cost of government-run education programs.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11432

Cato Education Analyst Adam B. Schaeffer explains that the nations five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia are blurring the numbers on education costs. On average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported. Districts on average spent nearly $18,000 per student and yet claimed to spend just $12,500 last year.

It is impossible to have a public debate about education policy if public schools can’t be straight forward about their spending.

______________

If we want the best education possible at the lowest cost for the inner city youth then we need to install the voucher system.

Census Bureau Confirms: DC Spends $29,409 / pupil

Posted by Andrew J. Coulson

Four years ago, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post revealing that DC spent nearly $25,000 per pupil during the 2007-08 school year. I calculated this figure from the public budget documents of the District of Columbia, which I subsequently summarized and linked on this blog.

No education reporter followed up on my findings, and much lower per pupil figures continue to be reported to this day. My $25,000 figure was even greeted with skepticism by analysts at free market think tanks. One state education policy analyst wrote to say that my figure was “out of line with credible information,” and that I gave my critics “too much ammunition with this clearly questionable set of statistics.”

Indeed, the Census Bureau figures for DC’s total K-12 expenditures were substantially lower than mine. I made a note to track down the discrepancy, but other projects intervened. When I updated my calculation to use DC budget estimates for the 2008-09 school year, I found that District spending had risen to over $28,000 / pupil. The comparable number for that year reported by the Bureau of the Census was just $18,181 (which you get by dividing the total expenditure figure in Table 1 by the enrollment figure in Table 15).

So you can see why most folks were skeptical. Skeptical, but wrong.

Back in March of this year I asked my then research intern to contact the Census Bureau and ask where they got their total spending data. It turns out, they got them from a DCPS official. We presented evidence to the Bureau that that DCPS official had missed a few line items when completing the Census Bureau’s forms—to the tune of about $400 million. The Census Bureau agreed and is in the process of obtaining corrected data for the 2008-09 year. In the meantime, they made sure to ask DC officials to include all relevant items when filling out their forms for the 2009-10 school year. The result: Census Bureau data now show DC spent a total of $29,409 per pupil (obtained by dividing total expenditures in Table 1 by enrollment in Table 15). This is just a bit higher than my calculation for the preceding year.

Kudos to the Census Bureau for taking the initiative and getting DC to accurately report its public school expenditures. Now that education reporters can simply open a Census Bureau .pdf file and divide one number by another, I wonder if any will report what DC really spends per pupil? I suspect that they still will not, continuing to mislead the general public, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Oh, and, BTW, this spending figure is about triple what the DC voucher program spends per pupil—and the voucher students have a much higher graduation rate and perform as well or better academically.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Vouchers | Comments (0)

“Feedback Friday” Letter to White House generated form letter response (on government spending) July 6, 2012 (part 10)

July 6, 2012 – 11:45 pm

I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet.  (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email July 6,  2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response, but if I had to guess then I think it would be this one below.

Obama on Ryan Plan: “It’s Laughable. It Is a Trojan Horse. It’s Thinly-Veiled Social Darwinism.”

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.

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has hit a home run with this post. If Congressman Paul Ryan could get criticized for wanting to bring down our federal spending to around 20% in 11 years  and earn the label of “social darwinist” from you  then surely you would have thought President Clinton’s effort to cut spending to 18.2 % of GDP in 2001 as extremely devilish.

President Obama Accuses Bill Clinton of “Thinly Veiled Social Darwinism”

April 3, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

Actually, Bill Clinton must be something even worse than a social Darwinist. That’s because the title of this post is wrong. Obama said that Paul Ryan’s plan (which allows spending to grow by an average of 3.1 percent per year over the next decade) is a form of “social Darwinism.”

Proponent of social Darwinism?

But the proposal from the House Budget Committee Chairman only reduces the burden of federal spending to 20.25 percent of GDP by the year 2023.

Yet when Bill Clinton left office in 2001, following several years of spending restraint, the federal government was consuming 18.2 percent of economic output.

And by the President’s reasoning, this must make Clinton something worse than a Darwinist. Perhaps Marquis de Sade or Hannibal Lecter.

Here’s a blurb from the New York Times on Obama’s speech.

Mr. Obama’s attack, in a speech during a lunch with editors and reporters from The Associated Press, was part of a broader indictment of the Republican economic blueprint for the nation. The Republican budget, and the philosophy it represents, he said in remarks prepared for delivery, is “antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it.” …“Disguised as a deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism,” Mr. Obama said. “By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training, research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”

I’m particularly amused by the President’s demagoguery that Ryan’s plan is “antithetical to our entire history” and “a radical vision.”

Is he really unaware that a small and constrained central government is part of America’s history and vision? Doesn’t he know that the federal government, for two-thirds of our nation’s history, consumed less than 5 percent of GDP?

Of course, that was back in the dark ages when people in Washington actually believed that the Constitution’s list of enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8, actually enumerated the powers of the federal government. How quaint.

No wonder this Ramirez cartoon is so effectively amusing. It certainly seems to capture the President’s view of America’s founding principles.

_______________

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

The White House, Washington

July 6, 2012

Dear Everette:

Thank you for writing.  I have heard from many Americans about Government spending and our national debt.  I appreciate your perspective. 

I am committed to working in a bipartisan way to solve the financial challenges before us and to construct an economy where every hard-working American gets a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules.  By focusing on job creation, security for working families, and fiscal responsibility, we can get people the help they need, prepare for the future, and reduce the Federal deficit. 

This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it.  After decades of eroding middle-class security and after a recession that plunged our economy into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover, it is time to construct an economy built to last.  To put our Nation back on a path of living within our means, we must cut wasteful spending, ask all Americans to shoulder their fair share, and make tough choices on some things we cannot afford.  The Federal Government, like families across America, is going to have to cut spending while protecting investments that are vital to growing our economy and creating jobs.  My proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2013 targets scarce Federal resources to the areas critical to growing our economy and restoring middle-class security:  education and skills for American workers, innovation and manufacturing, clean energy, and infrastructure.  This proposal will reduce our deficit by $4 trillion by 2022 and will help put our country back on a more sustainable fiscal path.    

An economy built to last also demands we renew the American values of fair play and shared responsibility—principles that must guide our approach to solving our Nation’s deficit problem.  As we extend middle-class tax cuts to help working families, I am pursuing the end of costly tax breaks and special deductions for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.  I have repeatedly called on Congress to stop giving away $4 billion a year in oil subsidies to an industry that has never been more profitable, and instead, to pass clean energy tax credits to cultivate a market for innovation in clean energy technology.  I also proposed a fee on big banks and other major financial institutions to recoup taxpayer assistance that was crucial to saving the economy. 

To prevent Congress from worsening our deficit outlook, I pushed for and signed into law pay-as-you-go rules for Congress—rules critical to creating the surpluses of the 1990s.  Additionally, I established the Campaign to Cut Waste, which is aggressively rooting out misspent tax dollars, and sent Congress the Consolidating and Reforming Government Act to reinstate the authority past presidents have had to streamline the Executive Branch and create a leaner, more efficient Federal Government.  Through these and other efforts, we can reduce the deficit and ensure a more stable future for our children.  

To learn more about our budget, please visit www.Budget.gov.  Thank you, again, for writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

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

Obama’s government going after Apple next?

July 6, 2012 – 1:52 pm

Dan Mitchell Talking about China, Regulation, and Wealth with Cavuto

We need to lower the amount of regulations on businesses and not raise them.

D.C. Wants a Bite at the Apple

by David Boaz

David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement.

Added to cato.org on May 27, 2012

This article appeared in New York Daily News on May 27, 2012.

Every successful company finds out that it can’t just work on improving its products and serving consumers. Sooner or later, it’s going to have to deal with politicians and regulators sniffing around its business.

Yes, Apple — praised to the skies for being an innovator and job creator by Washington politicians when that narrative serves their interests — has become the latest target of the political class.

According to Politico, the daily newspaper of lobbyists and political consultants, industry giant Apple spent a mere $500,000 in Washington in the first quarter of 2012, compared to more than $7 million Google and Microsoft spent on lobbying and related activities from January through March of this year.

Then Politico lowers the boom: “The company’s attitude toward D.C. — described by critics as ‘don’t bother us’ — has left it without many inside-the-Beltway friends.”

With a rising position in the market has come endless, reflexive scrutiny.

“Don’t bother us”? I say, amen. But Washington says, no way. The attitude on the Potomac is: “Nice little company ya got there, shame if anything happened to it.”

The core problem, as far as Washington sees it? After years as a cute little niche player, Apple has suddenly started producing wildly popular products such as the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

With a rising position in the market has come endless, reflexive scrutiny.

The biggest example: The Federal Trade Commission has started rumbling about Apple’s threat to competition. Note the absurdity here. Apple creates whole new products and industries, consumer benefits that didn’t exist before — and the federal government wrings its hands about the possibility that it’s somehow going to “limit” competition in a market it created.

David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement.

More by David Boaz

It’s not just the FTC. The Justice Department’s antitrust division is investigating Apple’s e-book pricing arrangements. The U.S. International Trade Commission has conducted investigations into Apple’s wireless patents (finally clearing Apple in one recent case).

And congressional committees regularly pressure the company about how smartphone apps — which a very savvy consumer marketplace is perfectly capable of monitoring on its own — might threaten privacy or enable illegal activity.

Make no mistake: This will continue unless and until Apple gets with the program and starts spending a few million a year on Washington lobbying.

And even then, it will not stop.

Heard of “too big to fail”? Well, to Washington, Apple is now too big not to nail.

Sadly, I get to write this same column every time a new company makes enough money to draw the attention of the wielders of money and power in Washington. Remember Microsoft? For more than a decade, Microsoft went about its business, developing software, selling it to customers and — legally — making money.

Washington politicians and journalists sneered at the company’s naiveté. A congressional aide said, “They don’t want to play the D.C. game, that’s clear, and they’ve gotten away with it so far. The problem is, in the long run they won’t be able to.”

A major antitrust case and a few other inquiries later, Microsoft got the message. They now play the game.

A decade later, it was Google. After a humble start as a research project by two Stanford students, Google delivered a terrific product — and became the biggest success story of the early 21st century.

But in our modern politicized economy, which author Jonathan Rauch called the “parasite economy,” no good deed goes unpunished for long. Policymakers worried about the company’s size and influence — including in many markets it had ostensibly created — started threatening Google.

Sure enough, Google opened a Washington office, hired well-connected lobbyists and ramped up its spending.

And now Apple.

Make no mistake: A growing drumbeat of questions from Washington puts a damper on innovation. Reflecting on Microsoft’s decline after its decade-long antitrust case, tech expert Adam Thierer wrote in Forbes, “When antitrust hangs like the Sword of Damocles, every decision about how to evolve and innovate becomes a calculated gamble.”

A bigger and bigger priority becomes how to bend the tax and regulatory system so it causes as little pain as possible.

Why? Because government is a weed. The federal budget has grown steadily over the last 60 years or so to about $3.7 trillion. The number of pages in the Federal Register, where new regulations are printed, now grows by about 70,000 every year.

No wonder total spending on lobbyists has doubled in the past decade, to $3.3 billion in 2011.

Dragging Apple into the political swamps is just the latest tragic example.

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

“Friedman Friday” :“A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” VTR: 5/31/77 Transcript and video clip (Part 3)

July 6, 2012 – 1:36 pm

Milton Friedman on the American Economy (3 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: Now what’s wrong with that? Two things are wrong. First place, nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. We talked about New York City. About seven or eight years ago (I’ve forgotten exactly when it was – Kenneth Galbraith in a n article in New York magazine said there were no problems in New York that could not be solved by the city spending enough money. If my memory serves me right, he said by doubling New York’s budget. Well, in the meantime, New York’s budget has quadrupled, and the problems have gotten worse, not better. And that’s cause and effect. Because when you say spend more money, whose money? The City of New York spent more money, but where did it get it? From its citizens. There is no more money in total to be spent. But nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. So you had more money being spent carelessly, and less money being spent carefully.

In the second place, equally important, you cannot spend somebody else’s money unless you first get it. How do you get it? Ultimately and fundamentally be sending a policeman to take it away from him. So the concept of doing good with somebody else’s money has force or coercion built into it as an essential feature. And those flows, the waste which arises out of spending somebody else’s money and the coercion which is unavoidable, destroy the good and the idea of doing good and convert it into doing bad.

HEFFNER: I’m interested in your second point because I’ve wondered, as you were addressing yourself to the subject, I’ve wondered whether it would be the philosophical climate that’s created, that of the policeman who comes and takes those tax monies, those funds, or is your opposition that of the economist? Is it that of the economist of that of the philosopher? Can we distinguish between them?

FRIEDMAN: We can distinguish between them very much. The economist, as economist, I can say what will be the consequences of doing something or other. As an economist, if you say to me – let me take a New York City problem – if I analyze to you the disastrous consequences of rent control in New York City, the effect which that has had on the deterioration of buildings, on the abandonment of buildings, on the reduction in the tax base, on slums, all of that is a predictable consequence of rent control. It’s a straight matter of technical economics that can be shown with a curve. Wherever rent control was introduced, whenever it was introduced, whether in Britain or in France or anywhere, it doesn’t matter; that’s purely a technical consequence of rent control. On the other hand, if I say, regardless of the consequences it is morally wrong for a government official to force me to rent a piece of property to you for less than the price at which I would voluntarily rent it, at that point I am now speaking as a man with values and philosophy. That is to say, you have both principle and expediency involved. The economist talks to the expediency; and the philosopher, the ethicist, the human being, talks to the principle.

HEFFNER: Now, the philosophers may disagree. Do the economists on this question of rent control and its relationship to New York’s…

FRIEDMAN: Oh, no, no. On rent control there’s no disagreement whatsoever. Oh, the interesting thing is that the public at large believes that economists disagree. The fact is that on most technical subjects in economics you’ll find almost no disagreement.

HEFFNER: All right.

FRIEDMAN: Rent control is certainly one example in which I will challenge you to find from the professional economists from the left to the right, I will challenge you to find anybody who will defend rent control from a technical economic point of view.

HEFFNER: All right. Now, when the program began, I was going to refer to you as this country’s foremost conservative economist. And you demerit that, you object to that characterization. And I can appreciate that. Is it not appropriate or proper though to say that there are economists in this country who fall into a camp that one might generally say is on the right, and others who fall into a camp that others might generally say is on the left?

FRIEDMAN: Yes.

HEFFNER: Or can we not say that economists disagree on major issues?

FRIEDMAN: Well, they disagree on major political issues. The question is whether they disagree on economic grounds or on noneconomic grounds. First, my objection to conservatives is not the same as the objections to what’s right or left. Right or left are very ambiguous terms. But conservative is a very definite, clear term. A conservative is somebody who wants to conserve, who keeps things as they are.

HEFFNER: And you don’t like the way things are.

FRIEDMAN: I don’t like things. I want to change them. I’m a radical. Who are conservatives today? The New Dealers, the people who are called in this country erroneously, liberals, the people who are in favor of big government. Mayor Beame’s a conservative. Hubert Humphrey’s a conservative. They want to continue along the path we’ve been going. You have two different dimensions along which, it seems to me, you can consider people. One of them they want to keep things the way they are, or change them. Conservative or radical. From that point of view I’m a radical. Second, insofar as things are changed, in what direction do they want to change them? You may have radicals who are people who are not conservative, who want to move farther in the direction we’ve been going, who want to have a completely socialized state, a completely collectivist state. And there is seems to me to the right terms are the ancient and honorable term “liberal” in its original sense and meaning of and pertaining to freedom; people like myself who want to maintain a free society. A word that has been much abused. And collectivists or stateists. People who want to have things organized through the state.

Now, the interesting thing about your question about economists is that there is a misleading impression of disagreement among economists. I’ve had this experience many times. Get a dozen people in a room together, some of them economists and some noneconomists, political scientists, sociologists, journalists, whatever they may be. Start any subject going. Within 15 minutes all the economists will be on the same side. Whatever their political persuasion is. Now, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have different political views and different political attitudes. But those derive very little from their technical economic discipline, and a great deal from their values, their political orientations. Let me show you, again illustrate. When President Ford two years ago and more had a summit conference in Washington at which there were a collection of economists, to discuss the problems of that time, there was a manifesto issued by all the economists present with the exception I think of two, in favor of a long list of 28 (I think it was) measures at reducing governmental intervention into the economy. Economists from the left to the right were in favor of eliminating interstate commerce commissions in control of rail, of CAB control of airfares. And I now have forgotten of the… But there were, I think 28 such items on which they agreed. So I think the appearance of disagreement is very much greater than the reality.

What happens – let me take the energy problem we started about – suppose you were to ask economists – I don’t care whether they’re on the left or the right – “What would be the appropriate way to handle the energy problem if you could neglect all considerations of political feasibility? As technical economists, how should the energy problem be handled?” I will lay you a large wager that the bulk of the economists, 80, 90 percent will say, “Oh, well, that’s easy. You should let the market go. Let market price oil and market price natural gas.” Among the things that all the economists were agreed on at that summit was that you ought to get rid of the price ceilings on natural gas.

HEFFNER: Now, their differences will arise from what?

FRIEDMAN: At this level their differences will arise because they will say, “Oh, of course that’s the right solution.” But you know it’s not perfectly feasible. And so they go down the trap you were trying to drive me down before. Having accepted that it’s not politically feasible, then instead of being in favor of what I think is the right thing, I’m going to try to ask which is the least bad thing. So the economist comes out and says “Well, as the second best thing…” — he doesn’t even say this, but he thinks it – he says, “Well, I really have to be practical. It’s not feasible. You’re going to continue with price control on natural gas. You’re going to continue with price control of fuel crude oil. So maybe it would be a little better if we allowed those fixed prices to be higher, so we’ll come out in favor of higher prices and not attack the controls.”

HEFFNER: But now, Professor Friedman, you use the word “political.” You say this is a political decision. Is it political, or is it philosophical? Does it relate to the desire to have one’s party reelected? Elect, elect, elect; or spend, spend, spend and the elect, elect, elect? Or is it related to the sense of what we can impose upon the human beings who make up the electorate?

FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, you’re trying to put things into watertight categories that cannot be put there.

HEFFNER: Then take them out.

FRIEDMAN: Human beings are, every human being has a capacity of knowing what he believes is the right thing is also the right thing for the country.

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

Pro-life posts can be seen on the www.thedailyhatch.org

July 6, 2012 – 3:07 am

Uploaded by on Jan 29, 2011

The Miracle of Life by Valley Baptist Church of Bakersfield, California.

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If you want to see some more great pro-life videos and articles then check out these links below:

Kathy Ireland’s argument with Planned Parenthood over abortion

  Science Matters #2: Former supermodel Kathy Ireland tells Mike Huckabee about how she became pro-life after reading what the science books have to say. Everyone remembers Kathy Ireland from her Sports Illustrated days and actually she has became a very successful business person.  However, I wanted to talk about her pro-life views. Back on […]

Richard Dawkins comments on Tim Tebow pro-life commercial. I am sad today because Susan G. Komen reversed their decision and will continue to supports Planned Parenthood which the USA’s largest abortion provider. The Arkansas Times Blog reported that the leader of Susan G. Komen apologized and explained that Planned Parenthood would be receiving funds from […]

Obama, Garry Smith, Jesus, the Republicans and Abortion (Part 1)

This is going to take two posts to cover. Jason Tolbert hit the nail on the head in his recent post: It seems Democratic Rep. Garry Smith of El Dorado stepped into a bit of a mess this week when speaking to the newly formed Union County Democratic Club. Perhaps he wasn’t aware that intrepid […]

Does human life begin at birth or conception?

On the Arkansas Times blog in the comment section the person using username “Hackett” asserted: Life begins when the fetus is viable outside the womb, prior to that it is parasitical and lives at the discretion of the host. I responded with this post today: It seems to me the real argument lies in the […]

Answering pro-abortion questions

Richard Dawkins comments on Tim Tebow pro-life commercial. _________________________ On the Arkansas Times Blog, a person with the username “November” posted: You dont have the “choice” to kill and innocent child in the womb. No one gave the child a trial before killing it. The child is innocent, and the U S Constitution says you […]

Prolife March in Little Rock has 20 to 1 ratio more than abortion march of previous day

PHOTO BY STATON BREIDENTHAL Marchers arrive at the state Capitol on Sunday after beginning the Arkansas March for Life in downtown Little Rock As in the past, the pr0-life March in Little Rock had at least twenty times the people in attendance that the pr0-abortion march did the previous day. In fact, last year Channel […]

Loretta Ross’ son: A case for pro-life position

Superbowl commercial with Tim Tebow and Mom. In Little Rock on January 21, 2012 in front of 100 pro-choice advocates met next to the Capitol to hear Loretta Ross speak. In that talk she pointed out something about her own experience. (Below is from another speech in which she recounts some of the same details.) […]

A man of pro-life convictions: Bernard Nathanson (part4)

ABORTION – THE SILENT SCREAM 1 / Extended, High-Resolution Version (with permission from APF). Republished with Permission from Roy Tidwell of American Portrait Films as long as the following credits are shown: VHS/DVDs Available American Portrait Films Call 1-800-736-4567 http://www.amport.com The Hand of God-Selected Quotes from Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., Unjust laws exist. Shall we […]

Dr. William F. Harrison : “I would have advised her to have an abortion…Now, years later, that baby is grown and about to finish her doctorate..”

Superbowl commercial with Tim Tebow and Mom. I used to write letters to the editor a whole lot back in the 1990′s.  I am pro-life and many times my letters would discuss current political debates, and I got to know several names of people that would often write in response letters to my published letters. […]

We can befriend those who are considering abortion

Development of the Unborn Baby.  Prolife Video There are people all around you who have been affected by humanism. Abortion is one of the results of humanism. Nevertheless, we can befriend those who are considering abortion and speak into their lives with love and truth. There may be those who say hateful things to us […]

Norma McCorvey is now pro-life

“Jane Roe” or Roe v Wade is now a prolife Christian. She’s recently done a commercial about it. Around 1993 my wife Jill and I peacefully walked the streets of Little Rock with  Rev Flip Benham who was working with Operation Rescue at the time. We held pro-life signs up and heard some moving stories […]

Prolife quotes

Bill O’Reilly Interviews Jehmu Greene About Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad about Tim Tebow I got these quotes from someone off the internet that lives in England. The funny thing is the video is put to music and the song they picked won a grammy for an Arkansas band that lives in Little Rock. Here is […]

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Prolife | Comments (0)

Top football stadiums in the country (Part 15)

July 6, 2012 – 12:02 am

Arkansas vs Texas (TEXASS/TEXAS$) Prank Call

Here is a list of the top football stadiums in the country.

Power Ranking All 124 College Football Stadiums  

By Alex Callos

(Featured Columnist) on April 19, 2012 

When it comes to college football stadiums, for some teams, it is simply not fair. Home-field advantage is a big thing in college football, and some teams have it way more than others.

There are 124 FBS college football teams, and when it comes to the stadiums they play in, they are obviously not all created equal.

There is a monumental difference from the top teams on the list to the bottom teams on the list. Either way, here it is: a complete ranking of the college football stadiums 1-124.

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I remember like yesterday the great games that Arkansas and Texas used to have. Here is an article from ESPN from 2003 that goes back over some of the great games in that series.

AUSTIN — In its heyday, no rivalry was better than Texas vs. Arkansas.

It was a regular showdown on the third Saturday in October, one week after UT played Oklahoma.

It was about the grudge between border states, with Southwest Conference supremacy usually at stake. It took on national significance from 1960-70 as eight games featured at least one team ranked in the Top 10.

It was Ken Hatfield’s punt return for a touchdown that sent Arkansas to an undefeated season and a claim for a national title in 1964, one year after Texas won its first championship.

It was “The Big Shootout” of ’69, when President Nixon watched the No. 1 Longhorns beat the No. 2 Razorbacks 15-14 and declared them national champions.

It was the sideline battle of wits between coaches Darrell Royal and Frank Broyles, close friends who announced after the ’76 game that they were both retiring.

And then it came to and end.

Arkansas bolted the old Southwest Conference for the SEC after the 1991 season and the Hogs and Horns haven’t met during the regular season since.

Until now, when Arkansas (1-0) travels to Austin on Saturday to face No. 6 Texas (1-0).

“It’s good for these two programs,” said James Street, the UT quarterback in 1968 and ’69. “It’s good for football.”

^——=

Taken as a whole, the rivalry is lopsided. The Longhorns won the first meeting in 1894, Arkansas won the last in the 2000 Cotton Bowl, and the Longhorns hold the all-time lead of 54-20.

But what makes it so special is the handful of memorable plays, the overlapping excellence in the era of Royal and Broyles and the rivalry that’s typical between bordering states.

For Arkansas, the only SWC school not in Texas, there was always the feeling of wanting to take down its big, cocky neighbor — even though its roster was peppered with natives of the Lone Star State.

“Arkansas pride and insecurity both played a role,” said Terry Frei, author of the book “Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming — Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie’s Last Stand” about the 1969 season and “The Big Shootout.”

“Here we were, this outpost in northwest Arkansas,” said Bill Montgomery, a Dallas-area native who was the Razorbacks’ quarterback 1968-70. “It was a great source of pride for the state.”

In 1961, No. 3 Texas rolled to a 33-7 victory over No. 10 Arkansas. The Longhorns were No. 1 when they beat the seventh-ranked Razorbacks 7-3 a year later, spurred by a goal-line stand in the third quarter.

Arkansas won 14-13 in ’64 behind Hatfield’s electrifying punt return. The play is still diagramed in detail in the school’s media guide.

It was Texas’ only loss that year and Royal went into the Arkansas locker room to warn the Razorbacks that if they lost later in the season, the Longhorns would be waiting.

Arkansas didn’t give up another point in the next five games and finished the regular season 10-0, but was ranked second to Alabama in the final wire-service polls, which did not include bowl games. The Football Writers Association did, however, and they crowned the Razorbacks as national champions after they beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl and Texas knocked off ‘Bama in the Orange Bowl.

When they met again in ’65, third-ranked Arkansas beat top-ranked Texas 27-24 with Razorbacks quarterback Jon Brittenum scoring the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Those back-to-back losses still stand out to Royal as much as his 167 wins and two undisputed national titles.

“I always think about the ones that got away,” he said.

THE game was played in Fayetteville in 1969 amid swirling changes on the field and throughout society.

The Longhorns, about to become the last all-white national champions, had perfected their run-based Wishbone offense. The military had started a new lottery system in which low numbers meant get ready for the unpopular war in Vietnam, a conflict that drew protesters everywhere, including a small demonstration within view of the stadium on game day.

Anticipating a blockbuster end to college football’s centennial celebration, the game was moved from its usual midseason matchup to Dec. 6, making it the only game in the country that day. It was the perfect move as Texas came in ranked No. 1 and Arkansas was No. 2.

President Nixon, an avid football fan, flew in via helicopter to watch. The Rev. Billy Graham gave the invocation.

“That same Watergate crowd, we had them all there,” Royal said. “How much bigger can it get?”

Arkansas led 7-0 at halftime, then stretched it to 14-0 in the third quarter. Street made it 14-8 with a 42-yard touchdown run and a 2-point conversion

Then came the play Texas fans remember as fondly as Arkansas fans recall Hatfield’s weaving run. On a fourth-and-3, Royal stunned even Street by calling for “53 veer pass,” a play that had rarely worked all season.

Street told tight end Randy Peschel to get enough yards for a first down. “But if you can get behind him, run like hell,” he said. They connected for 44 yards to set up Jim Bertlesen’s winning touchdown.

Afterward, Nixon greeted Royal in the locker room with a plaque proclaiming Texas the national champion.

“He was going around shaking everybody’s hand and somebody yells `Thank you Mr. President!” Street said. “He says, `No, you boys deserve it.’ The guy shouts back `I’m thanking you for my high lottery number!”‘

Nixon also visited the subdued Arkansas locker room.

“The president reminded us he knew all too well the taste of defeat,” said Bill Montgomery, the Arkansas quarterback that day. “He could identify with what we were feeling. It was quite touching.”

The rivalry remained intense, then turned bittersweet once Arkansas bolted the dying SWC four years before it collapsed. In their finale meeting as conference foes, the Hogs won 14-13.

Nostalgic feelings were stirred before the 2000 Cotton Bowl meeting. Razorbacks coach Houston Nutt added an edge to it by flashing an upside down Hook ’em Horns hand gesture following his team’s 27-6 romp.

As for the in-season renewal of the rivalry, Texas coach Mack Brown began lobbying for it soon after arriving in Austin before the 1998 season.

He thought it would be good for season-ticket sales, a nice excuse to celebrate Royal and Broyles, “and it would honor the history of college football,”Brown said.

Broyles said Arkansas wanted four games. Texas would give them only two.

The second comes next year in Fayetteville, 35 years after “The Big Shootout.”

This story is from ESPN.com’s automated news wire. Wire index

18. Doak Campbell Stadium: Florida State Seminoles

Florida-state-university-football-2008-season-fan-fill-doak-campbell-with-black-fs-f-2008-00050lg_display_image

There are few things in college football more distinct and noticeable than the incessant Florida State Seminole chant.

Doak Campbell Stadium has been home to the Seminoles since it opened in 1950, and to that chant as well.

It seats 84,300 and is one of the best stadiums as far as the ACC is concerned.

Also known as Bobby Bowden Field, perhaps one of the highlights is when Chief Osceola rides out on Renegade before he throws a flaming spear into the middle of the field.

 

17. Spartan Stadium: Michigan State Spartans

Michigan_state_spartan_stadium_aerial_photo_mi13_large_display_image

Spartan Stadium is old and large. It opened in 1923 and seats 75,005 fans. All of which are certain to be screaming throughout.

It actually looks larger than it is and is much louder than many people would imagine 75,000 people could be.

The marching band is excellent here and is one of the reasons why the atmosphere here is so great. The student section is loud, and the bleacher seats are the typical metal that are not comfortable, but it doesn’t really matter.

 

16. Darrell Royal Texas Memorial Stadium

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The Texas Longhorns have the sixth-largest stadium in college football with a capacity of 100,119. It was built in 1924 and has undergone many renovations over the years.

Texas has been dominant at home since the stadium opened and has won nearly 80 percent of their home games during that time.

There is so much tradition and history at Texas that going to a game is certain to give just about anybody chills.

Bevo is a mainstay here and is as well-known as just about anybody in the state of Texas.

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

Cartoons on Obama’s budget math

July 5, 2012 – 10:30 am

Dan Mitchell Discussing Dishonest Budget Numbers with John Stossel

Uploaded by on Feb 11, 2012

No description available.

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has shown before how excessive spending at the federal level has increased in recent years.

I’ve been quite involved in the debate over which Presidents were big spenders.

I started with an analytical post that crunched the data from the Office of Management and Budget, and I showed that Obama was only a fiscal conservative if you ignored the budget impact of the TARP bailout.

I then augmented that analysis with a second post showing in more detail that Obama deserves a bad grade because of spending on social welfare programs.

Last but not least, my most recent post stated that Bush also was a big spender and I cited Jonah Goldberg’s excellent column suggesting that Romney should admit that Republicans bear some blame for the fiscal mess in Washington.

So we’ve been entirely too serious about this topic. Time for some cartoons! We’ll start with this gem from Eric Allie.

Now let’s look at a good one from Lisa Benson. The dirt being swept under the carpet is TARP, of course.

I think that’s the first cartoon I’ve used from Mr. Allie, but I have shared Ms. Benson’s work before. You can find some of my favorites here, here, here and here.

P.S. Getting back to the serious issue, much of the debate over Obama’s spending record revolves around TARP, but there’s also some discussion of how to divvy up blame for spending in Bush’s last fiscal year (FY2009, which began October 1, 2008). You can find some of my analysis on that issue here and here.

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

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 5)

July 5, 2012 – 10:29 am

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5

How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the last 30 plus years. Here is part five which consists of a lively discussion between Friedman and several other interested scholars concerning his film.
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I’m Linda Chavez. Welcome to Free to Choose. Joining Dr. Friedman in a discussion of the power of the market are David Brooks of the Wall Street Journal, and James Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austin.

Friedman: In any event, I am not trying to defend one political party or another. As David says, a major enemy of a free market is a business interest. The business community is a major enemy and the problem in this society is to have the public at large understand the importance of free markets so as to protect themselves against the depredation of the business community with their tariffs, their quotas, their special provisions, and so on. But you cover all of these good things that society is supposed to do, you have to look at how many of them have been perverse in their influences and their effect. You mentioned the FDA and that is a very important case because that’s cost tens of thousands of lives over the course of time.

Brooks: You can start with the AIDS virus where the FDA tries again __ recently there have been reforms but they were very slow, even people who knew they were going to die and were going to die without any drug to try experimental drugs.

Chavez: Let me ask another question.

Galbraith: You have to establish that those experimental drugs would have, in fact, saved their lives.

Brooks: They couldn’t have done worse __ they were going to die.

Chavez: Let me give you another hypothetical. What if you have a social need, say a disease which is very lethal but effects very few people and you don’t have a company who has an interest because it is not going to make very much money, there is not a large market for the good to produce a drug, does the government have any role there to step in and try to stimulate certain social purposes?

Brooks: It’s hard for me to imagine how the government would, in the first place.

Friedman: In any event, you must realize that government isn’t the only recourse. The great period, when were the nonprofit hospitals of the United States founded? Almost all of them were in the 19th century, during the hay day of laissez faire. There are private charitable activities which are essentially the most effective way of handling the kinds of things you have described.

Galbraith: A little bit of faithfulness to history surely would cause you to concede that in 1937, when we inaugurated social security, 1965 when we inaugurated Medicare, we did so because the private charitable systems, the private insurance systems to care for people when they were old and when they were sick were failing in a gross way to meet the needs of the American people. And those programs, which are government programs, have at least had the virtue of extending the access to health care and extending income security when you are old to a very large part of the population that never had it before.

I would argue too that in addition to the regulatory functions and the judicial functions that we certainly agree on, that there is, in a rich society which can afford to take care of people who fell out of the market process, who aren’t lucky or gifted or fortunate in their economic lives, to take care of those people when they are old and when they are sick.

Friedman: What about the extent to which the same society that you described, the same logic you described, makes them poor. What about the minimum wage which prevents many people from getting employment. What about the rent controls which destroy housing in the cities.

Brooks: To switch over, you can point to the minimum wage which everybody agrees increases unemployment among the poor especially, but what about the environment. If you have a simple environmental law __ the reason the West is cleaner than the Eastern Bloc, the main reason is that we are richer. We can afford to do it.

Friedman: The problem, so far as the environment is concerned, the real function of the government is to define the property rights and it is quite clear that if I force you to take bad water for good water, then I ought to pay you. I am not quarreling with that. But if you look at the actual environmental measures that government takes, they often have harmful effects and not positive effects. The new Clean Air Bill that has just been passed, for example, is going to cost an enormous amount of money.

Brooks: Nobody knows how much.

Galbraith: It is in principle, of course, your argument is one which many economists are sympathetic to and I have some sympathy for it, but the technical facts of environmental control are such that it is often very costly to define the property rights in a way in which you can generate a efficiently functioning market. That is why you don’t have a private and organized market. The information cost of those transactions is extremely high. So, in some cases, what you want to have the government do is say, if there is mercury in the water, you find out who is putting it in and . . . . . that is the reasonable way to proceed because the alternative is extremely costly.

Friedman: Let’s look at what the government actually does. In the United States today, the federal government spends an amount of money which is 25% of the national income. State and local governments spend an additional 17% of the national income. That is 42% all together. Now, some of that is doing good, of course. It would be very hard to spend that amount of money. But an enormous amount of that is simply taking money from some and giving it to others and very often taking it from poor, giving it to well-to-do, . . . .

Galbraith: . . . social security in that which is taking money from the payroll tax from working people . . .

Friedman: On the whole, as far as social security is concerned, the people who pay are poorer than the people who benefit.

Chavez: Gentlemen, we are out of time. Thank you for watching Free to Choose. Next week we will be discussing what happens when government enters the marketplace.

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