My name is Everette Hatcher III. I am a businessman in Little Rock and have been living in Bryant since 1993. My wife Jill and I have four kids (Rett 24, Hunter 22, Murphey 16, and Wilson 14).
The Honorable Bill Cassidy of Louisiana United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Bill Cassidy,
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article belowthat said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
Gun Control explained Merry Christmas from the 2nd Amendment Buy a Shotgun Joe Biden Lying AR-15 Make your own Gun Free Zone PRK Arms on CBS 47 news, Fresno Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment! Penn and Teller – Gun Control and Columbine Somebody Picked the Wrong Girl 5 Facts About Guns, Schools, […]
The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) 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 […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
This past article below from Dan Mitchell tells the story of Ronald Reagan’s successful strategy against inflation. I had a front row seat since I got to read the book and see the film FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman in 1980 who Reagan agreed with on this issue and I have included below the episode on inflation!
He also restored America’s national defenses and reoriented foreign policy, both of which led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, a stupendous achievement that makes Reagan worthy of Mount Rushmore.
But he also has another great achievement, one that doesn’t receive nearly the level of appreciation that it deserves. President Reagan demolished the economic cancer of inflation.
Even Paul Krugman has acknowledged that reining in double-digit inflation was a major positive achievement. Because of his anti-Reagan bias, though, he wants to deny the Gipper any credit.
Robert Samuelson, in a column for the Washington Post, corrects the historical record.
Krugman recently wrote acolumnarguing that the decline of double-digit inflation in the 1980s was the decade’s big economic event, not the cuts in tax rates usually touted by conservatives. Actually, I agree with Krugman on this. But then he asserted that Ronald Reagan had almost nothing to do with it. That’s historically incorrect. Reagan was crucial. …Krugman’s error is so glaring.
Samuelson first provides the historical context.
For those too young to remember, here’s background. From 1960 to 1980, inflation — the general rise of retail prices —marched relentlessly upward. It went from 1.4 percent in 1960 to 5.9 percent in 1969 to 13.3 percent in 1979. The higher it rose, the more unpopular it became. …Worse, government seemed powerless to defeat it. Presidents deployed complex wage and price controls and guidelines. They didn’t work. The Federal Reserve — custodian of credit policies — veered between easy money and tight money, striving both to subdue inflation and to maintain “full employment” (taken as a 4 percent to 5 percent unemployment rate). It achieved neither. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, there werefour recessions. Inflation became a monster, destabilizing the economy.
The column then explains that there was a dramatic turnaround in the early 1980s, as Fed Chairman Paul Volcker adopted a tight-money policy and inflation was squeezed out of the system much faster than almost anybody thought was possible.
But Krugman wants his readers to think that Reagan played no role in this dramatic and positive development.
Samuelson says this is nonsense. Vanquishing inflation would have been impossible without Reagan’s involvement.
What Reagan provided was political protection. The Fed’s previous failures to stifle inflation reflected its unwillingness to maintain tight-money policies long enough… Successive presidents preferred a different approach: the wage-price policies built on the pleasing (but unrealistic) premise that these could quell inflation without jeopardizing full employment. Reagan rejected this futile path. As the gruesome social costs of Volcker’s policies mounted — the monthly unemployment rate would ultimately rise to a post-World War II high of10.8 percent— Reagan’s approval ratings plunged. In May 1981, they were at 68 percent; by January 1983, 35 percent. Still, he supported the Fed. …It’s doubtful that any other plausible presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, would have been so forbearing.
What’s the bottom line?
What Volcker and Reagan accomplished was an economic and political triumph. Economically, ending double-digit inflation set the stage for a quarter-century of near-automatic expansion… Politically, Reagan and Volcker showed that leaders can take actions that, though initially painful and unpopular, served the country’s long-term interests. …There was no explicit bargain between them. They had what I’ve called a “compact of conviction.”
By the way, Krugman then put forth a rather lame response to Samuelson, including the rather amazing claim that “[t]he 1980s were a triumph of Keynesian economics.”
As preached and practiced since the 1960s, Keynesian economics promised to stabilize the economy at levels of low inflation and high employment. By the early 1980s, this vision was in tatters, and many economists were fatalistic about controlling high inflation. Maybe it could be contained. It couldn’t be eliminated, because the social costs (high unemployment, lost output) would be too great. …This was a clever rationale for tolerating high inflation, and the Volcker-Reagan monetary onslaught demolished it. High inflation was not an intrinsic condition of wealthy democracies. It was the product of bad economic policies. This was the 1980s’ true lesson, not the contrived triumph of Keynesianism.
If anything, Samuelson is being too kind.
One of the key tenets of Keynesian economics is that there’s a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment (the so-called Phillips Curve).
Yet in the 1970s we had rising inflation and rising unemployment.
While in the 1980s, we had falling inflation and falling unemployment.
But if you’re Paul Krugman and you already have a very long list of mistakes (see here, here, here, here,here,here,here, here, andherefor a few examples), then why not go for the gold and try to give Keynes credit for the supply-side boom of the 1980s
P.S. Since today’s topic is Reagan, it’s a good opportunity to share my favorite poll of the past five years.
P.P.S. Here are some great videos of Reagan in action. And here’s one more if you need another Reagan fix.
Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE “How to cure inflation” Transcript and Video (60 Minutes)
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.“If we could just stop the printing presses, we would stop inflation,” Milton Friedman says in “How to Cure Inflation” from the Free To Choose series. Now as then, there is only one cause of inflation, and that is when governments print too much money. Milton explains why it is that politicians like inflation, and why wage and price controls are not solutions to the problem.
http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=9While many people have a fairly good grasp of what inflation is, few really understand its fundamental cause. There are many popular scapegoats: labor unions, big business, spendthrift consumers, greed, and international forces. Dr. Friedman explains that the actual cause is a government that has exclusive control of the money supply. Friedman says that the solution to inflation is well known among those who have the power to stop it: simply slow down the rate at which new money is printed. But government is one of the primary beneficiaries of inflation. By inflating the currency, tax revenues rise as families are pushed into higher income tax brackets. Thus, inflation transfers wealth and resources from the private to the public sector. In short, inflation is attractive to government because it is a way of increasing taxes without having to pass new legislation to raise tax rates. Inflation is in fact taxation without representation. Wage and price controls are not the cure for inflation because they treat only the symptom (rising prices) and not the disease (monetary expansion). History records that such controls do not work; instead, they have perverse effects on both prices and economic growth and undermine the fundamental productivity of the economy. There is only one cure for inflation: slow the printing presses. But the cure produces the painful side effects of a temporary increase in unemployment and reduced economic growth. It takes considerable political courage to undergo the cure. Friedman cites the example of Japan, which successfully underwent the cure in the mid-seventies but took five years to squeeze inflation out of the system. Inflation is a social disease that has the potential for destroying a free society if it is unchecked. Prolonged inflation undermines belief in the basic equity of the free market system because it tends to destroy the link between effort and reward. And it tears the social fabric because it divides society into winners and losers and sets group against group.(Taxation without representation: Getting knocked up to higher tax brackets because of inflation pt 1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dTWDNKH3c
Volume 9 – How to Cure Inflation
Transcript:
Friedman: The Sierra Nevada’s in California 10,000 feet above sea level, in the winter temperatures drop to 40 below zero, in the summer the place bakes in the thin mountain air. In this unlikely spot the town of Body sprang up. In its day Body was filled with prostitutes, drunkards and gamblers part of a colorful history of the American West.
A century ago, this was a town of 10,000 people. What brought them here? Gold. If this were real gold, people would be scrambling for it. The series of gold strikes throughout the West brought people from all over the world, all kinds of people. They came here for one purpose and one purpose only, to strike it rich, quick. But in the process, they built towns, cities, in places where nobody would otherwise have dreamed of building a city. Gold built these cities and when the gold was exhausted, the cities collapsed and became ghost towns. Many of the people who came here ended up the way they began, broke and unhappy. But a few struck it rich. For them, gold was real wealth. But was it for the world as a whole. People couldn’t eat the gold, they couldn’t wear the gold, they couldn’t live in houses made of gold. Because there was more gold, they had to pay a little more gold to buy goods and services. The prices of things in terms of gold went up.
At tremendous cost, at sacrifice of lives, people dug gold out of the bowels of the earth. What happened to that gold? Eventually, at long last, it was transported to distant places only to be buried again under the ground. This time in the vaults of banks throughout the world. There is hardly anything that hasn’t been used for money; rock salt in Ethiopia, brass rings in West Africa, Calgary shells in Uganda, even a toy cannon. Anything can be used as money. Crocodile money in Malaysia, absurd isn’t it?
That beleaguered minority of the population that still smokes may recognize this stuff as the raw material from which their cigarettes are made. But in the early days of the colonies, long before the U.S. was established, this was money. It was the common money of Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. It was used for all sorts of things. The legislature voted that it could be used legally to pay taxes. It was used to buy food, clothing and housing. Indeed, one of the most interesting sites was to see the husky young fellows at that time, lug 100 pounds of it down to the docks to pay the costs of the passage of the beauteous young ladies who had come over from England to be their brides.
Now you know how money is. There’s a tendency for it to grow, for more and more of it to be produced and that’s what happened with this tobacco. As more tobacco was produced, there was more money. And as always when there’s more money, prices went up. Inflation. Indeed, at the very end of the process, prices were 40 times as high in terms of tobacco as they had been at the beginning of the process. And as always when inflation occurs, people complained. And as always, the legislature tried to do something. And as always, to very little avail. They prohibited certain classes of people from growing tobacco. They tried to reduce the total amount of tobacco grown, they required people to destroy part of their tobacco. But it did no good. Finally, many people took it into their own hands and they went around destroying other people’s tobacco fields. That was too much. Then they passed a law making it a capital offense, punishable by death, to destroy somebody else’s tobacco. Grecian’s Law, one of the oldest laws in economics, was well illustrated. That law says that cheap money drives out dear money and so it was with tobacco. Anybody who had a debt to pay, of course, tried to pay it in the worst quality of tobacco he had. He saved the good tobacco to sell overseas for hard money. The result was that bad money drove out good money.
Finally, almost a century after they had started using tobacco as money, they established warehouses in which tobacco was deposited in barrels, certified by an inspector according to his views as to it’s quality and quantity. And they issued warehouse certificates which people gave from one to another to pay for the bills that they accumulated.
These pieces of green printed paper are today’s counterparts of those tobacco certificates. Except that they bear no relation to any commodity. In this program I want to take you to Britain to see how inflation weakens the social fabric of society. Then to Tokyo, where the Japanese have the courage to cure inflation. To Berlin, where there is a lesson to be learned from the West Germans and how so called cures are often worse than the disease. And to Washington where our government keeps these machines working overtime. And I am going to show you how inflation can be cured.
The fact is that most people enjoy the early stages of the inflationary process. Britain, in the swinging 60’s, there was plenty of money around, business was brisk, jobs were plentiful and prices had not yet taken off. Everybody seemed happy at first. But by the early 70’s, as the good times rolled along, prices started to rise more and more rapidly. Soon, some of these people are going to lose their jobs. The party was coming to an end.
The story is much the same in the U.S. Only the process started a little later. We’ve had one inflationary party after another. Yet we still can’t seem to avoid them. How come?
Before every election our representatives would like to make us think we are getting a tax break. When they are able to do it, while at the same time actually raising our taxes because of a bit of magic they have in their kit bag. That magic is inflation. They reduced the tax rates but the taxes we have to pay go up because we are automatically shoved into higher brackets by the effective inflation. A neat trick. Taxation without representation.
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Pt 2 Many a political leader has been tempted to turn to wage and price controls despite their repeated failure in practice. On this subject they never seem to learn. But some lessons may be learned. That happened to British P
Bob Crawford: The more I work, it seems like the more they take off me. I know if I work an extra day or two extra days, what they take in federal income tax alone is almost doubled because apparently it puts you in a higher income tax bracket and it takes more off you.
Friedman: Bob Crawford lives with his wife and three children in a suburb of Pittsburgh. They’re a fairly average American family.
Mrs. Crawford: Don’t slam the door Daphne. Okay. Alright. What are you doing? Making your favorite dish.
Friedman: We went to the Crawford’s home after he had spent a couple of days working out his federal and state income taxes for the year. For our benefit, he tried to estimate all the other taxes he had paid as well. In the end, though, he didn’t discover much that would surprise anybody.
Bob Crawford: Inflation is going up, everything is getting more expensive. No matter what you do, as soon as you walk out of the house, everything went up. Your gas bills keep going up, electric bills, your gasoline, you can name a thousand things that are going up. Everything is going sky high. Your food. My wife goes to the grocery store. We used to live on say, $60 or $50 every two weeks just for our basic food. Now it’s $80 or $90 every two weeks. Things are just going out of sight as far as expense to live on. Like I say it’s getting tough. It seems like every month it gets worse and worse. And I don’t know where it’s going to end. At the end of the day that I spend nearly $6,000 of my earnings on taxes. That leaves me with a total of $12,000 to live on. It might seem like a lot of money, but five, six years ago I was earning $12,000.
Friedman: How does taxation without representation really effect how much the Crawford family has left to spend after it’s paid its income taxes. Well in 1972 Bob Crawford earned $12,000. Some of that income was not subject to income tax. After paying income tax on the rest he had this much left to spend. Six years later he was earning $18,000 a year. By 1978 the amount free from tax was larger. But he was now in a higher tax bracket so his taxes went up by a larger percentage than his income. However, those dollars weren’t worth anything like as much. Even his wages, let alone his income after taxes, hadn’t kept up with inflation. His buying power was lower than before. That is taxation without representation in practice.
Unnamed Individual: We have with us today you brothers that are sitting here today that were with us on that committee and I’d like to tell you….
Friedman: There are many traditional scapegoats blamed for inflation. How often have you heard inflation blamed on labor unions for pushing up wages. Workers, of course, don’t agree.
Unnamed Individual: But fellows this is not true. This is subterfuge. This is a myth. Your wage rates are not creating inflation.
Friedman: And he’s right. Higher wages are mostly a result of inflation rather than a cause of it. Indeed, the impression that unions cause inflation arises partly because union wages are slow to react to inflation and then there is pressure to catch up.
Worker: On a day to day basis, try to represent our own numbers. But that in fact is not the case. Not only can we not play catch up, we can’t even maintain a wage rate commensurate with the cost of living that’s gone up in this country.
Friedman: Another scapegoat for inflation is the cost of goods coming from abroad. Inflation, we’re told, is imported. Higher prices abroad driving up prices at home. It’s another way government can blame someone else for inflation. But this argument, too, is wrong. The prices of imports and the countries from which they come are not in terms of dollars, they are in terms of lira or yen or other foreign currencies. What happens to their prices in dollars depends on exchange rates which in turn reflect inflation in the United States.
Since 1973 some governments have had a field day blaming the Arabs for inflation. But if high oil prices were the cause of inflation, how is it that inflation has been less here in Germany, a country that must import every drop of oil and gas that it uses on the roads and in industry, then for example it is in the U.S. which produces half of its own oil. Japan has no oil of its own at all. Yet at the very time the Arabs were quadrupling oil prices, the Japanese people were bringing inflation down from 30 to less than 5% a year. The fallacy is to confuse particular prices like the price of oil, with prices in general. Back at home, President Nixon understood this.
Nixon: “Now here’s what I will not do. I will not take this nation down the road of wage and price controls however politically expedient that may seem. The pros of rationing may seem like an easy way out, but they are really an easy way in for more trouble. To the explosion that follows when you try to clamp a lid on a rising head of steam without turning down the fire under the pot, wage and price controls only postpone the day of reckoning. And in so doing, they rob every American of a very important part of his freedom.
Friedman: Now listen to this:
Nixon: “The time has come for decisive action. Action that will break the vicious circle of spiraling prices and costs. I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days. In addition, I call upon corporations to extend the wage price freeze to all dividends.”
Friedman: Many a political leader has been tempted to turn to wage and price controls despite their repeated failure in practice. On this subject they never seem to learn. But some lessons may be learned. That happened to British Prime Minister James Callahan who finally discovered that a very different economic myth was wrong. He told the Labor Party Conference about it in 1976.
James Callahan: “We used to think that you could use, spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candor that option no longer exists. It only works on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. That’s the history of the last 20 years.”
Friedman: Well, it’s one thing to say it. One reason why inflation does so much harm is because it effects different groups differently. Some benefit and of course they attribute that to their own cleverness. Some are hurt, but of course they attribute that to the evil actions of other people. And the whole problem is made far worse by the false cures which government adopts, particularly wage and price control.
The garbage collectors in London felt justifiably aggrieved because their wages had not been permitted to keep pace with the cost of living. They struck, hurting not the people who impose the controls, but their friends and neighbors who had to live with mounting piles of rat infested garbage. Hospital attendants felt justifiably aggrieved because their wages had not been permitted to keep up with the cost of living. They struck, hurting not the people who impose the controls, but cancer patients who were turned out of hospital beds. The attendants behaved as a group in a way they never would have behaved as individuals. One group is set against another group. The social fabric of society is torn apart inflicting scars that it will take decades to heal and all to no avail because wage and price controls, far from being a cure for inflation, only make inflation worse.
Within the memory of most of our political leaders, there’s one vivid example of how economic ruin can be magnified by controls. And the classic demonstration of what to do when it happens.
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(Wage and Price Controls don’t work)
Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.
That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it. To drink too much and to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later.
Pt 3
Germany, 1945, a devastated country. A nation defeated in war. The new governing body was the Allied Control Commission, representing the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. They imposed strict controls on practically every aspect of life including wages and prices. Along with the effects of war, the results were tragic. The basic economic order of the country began to collapse. Money lost its value. People reverted to primitive barter where they used cameras, fountain pens, cigarettes, whiskey as money. That was less than 40 years ago.
This is Germany as we know it today. Transformed into a place a lot of people would like to live in. How did they achieve their miraculous recovery? What did they know that we don’t know?
Early one Sunday morning, it was June 20, 1948, the German Minister of Economics, Ludwig Earhardt, a professional economist, simultaneously introduced a new currency, today’s Deutsche Mark, and in one fell swoop, abolished almost all controls on prices and wages. Why did he do it on a Sunday morning? It wasn’t as you might suppose because the Stock Markets were closed on that day, it was, as he loved to confess, because the offices of the American, the British, and the French occupation authorities were closed that day. He was sure that if he had done it when they open they would have countermanded the order. It worked like a charm. Within days, the shops were full of goods. Within months, the German economy was humming along at full steam. Economists weren’t surprised at the results, after all, that’s what a price system is for. But to the rest of the world it seemed an economic miracle that a defeated and devastated country could in little more than a decade become the strongest economy on the continent of Europe.
In a sense this city, West Berlin, is something of a unique economic test tube. Set as it is deep in Communist East Germany. Two fundamentally different economic systems collide here in Europe. Ours and theirs, separated by political philosophies, definitions of freedom and a steel and concrete wall.
To digress from inflation, economic freedom does not stand alone. It is part of a wider order. I wanted to show you how much difference it makes by letting you see how the people live on the other side of that Berlin Wall. But the East German authorities wouldn’t let us. The people over there speak the same language as the people over here. They have the same culture. They have the same for bearers. They are the same people. Yet you don’t need me to tell you how differently they live. There is one simple explanation. The political system over there cannot tolerate economic freedom. The political system over here could not exist without it.
But political freedom cannot be preserved unless inflation is kept in bounds. That’s the responsibility of government which has a monopoly over places like this. The reason we have inflation in the United States or for that matter anywhere in the world is because these pieces of paper and the accompanying book entry or their counterparts in other nations are growing more rapidly than the quantity of goods and services produced. The truth is inflation is made in one place and in one place only. Here in Washington. This is the only place were there are presses like this that turn out these pieces of paper we call money. This is the place where the power resides to determine how rapidly the amount of money shall increase.
What happened to all that noise? That’s what would happen to inflation if we stop letting the amount of money grow so rapidly. This is not a new idea. It’s not a new cure. It’s not a new problem. It’s happened over and over again in history. Sometimes inflation has been cured this way on purpose. Sometimes it’s happened by accident. During the Civil War the North, late in the Civil War, overran the place in the South where the printing presses were sitting up, where the pieces of paper were being turned out. Prior to that point, the South had a very rapid inflation. If my memory serves me right, something like 4% a month. It took the Confederacy something over two weeks to find a new place where they could set up their printing presses and start them going again. During that two week period, inflation came to a halt. After the two week period, when the presses started running again, inflation started up again. It’s that clear, that straightforward. More recently, there’s another dramatic example of the only effective way to deal with rampant inflation.
In 1973, Japanese housewives going to market were faced with an unpleasant fact. The cash in their purses seemed to be losing its value. Prices were starting to sore as the awful story of inflation began to unfold once again. The Japanese government knew what to do. What’s more, they were prepared to do it. When it was all over, economists were able to record precisely what had happened. In 1971 the quantity of money started to grow more rapidly. As always happens, inflation wasn’t affected for a time. But by late 1972 it started to respond. In early 73 the government reacted. It started to cut monetary growth. But inflation continued to soar for a time. The delayed reaction made 1973 a very tough year of recession. Inflation tumbled only when the government demonstrated its determination to keep monetary growth in check. It took five years to squeeze inflation out of the system. Japan attained relative stability. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid the difficult road the Japanese had to follow before they could have both low inflation and a healthy economy. First they had to live through a recession until slow monetary growth had its delayed effect on inflation.
Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.
That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it. To drink too much and to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. That’s why it’s so hard to persist with the cure. In the United States, four times in the 20 years after 1957, we undertook the cure. But each time we lacked the will to continue. As a result, we had all the bad effects and none of the good effects. Japan on the other hand, by sticking to a policy of slowing down the printing presses for five years, was by 1978 able to reap all the benefits, low inflation and a recovering economy. But there is nothing special about Japan. Every country that has had the courage to persist in a policy of slow monetary growth has been able to cure inflation and at the same time achieve a healthy economy.
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Pt 4
The job of the Federal Reserve is not to run government spending; it’s not to run government taxation. The job of the Federal Reserve is to control the money supply and I believe, frankly, I have always believed as you know, that these are excuses and not reasons for the performance.
DISCUSSION
Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Congressman Clarence J. Brown; William M. Martin, Chairman of Federal Reserve 1951_1970; Beryl W. Sprinkel, Executive Vice President, Harris Bank, Chicago; Otmar Emminger, President, Ieutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt West Germany
MCKENZIE: And here at the Harper Library of the University of Chicago, our distinguished guests have their own ideas, too. So, lets join them now.
BROWN: If you could control the money supply, you can certainly cut back or control the rate of inflation. I’d have to say that that prescription is a little bit easier to write than it is to fill. I think there are some other ways to do it and I would relate the money supply __ I think inflation is a measure of the relationship between money and the goods and services that money is meant to cover. And so if you can stimulate the goods, the production of goods and services, it’s helpful. It’s a little tougher to control the money supply, although I think it can be done, than just saying that you should control it, because we’ve got the growth of credit cards, which is a form of money; created, in effect, by the free enterprise system. It isn’t all just printed in Washington, but that may sound too defensive. I think he was right in saying that the inflation is Washington based.
MCKENZIE: Mr. Martin, nobody has been in the firing line longer than you, 17 years head of the Fed. Could you briefly comment on that and we’ll go around the group.
MARTIN: I want to say 19 years.
(Laughter)
MARTIN: I wouldn’t be out here if it weren’t for Milton Friedman, today. He came down and gave us advice from time to time.
FRIEDMAN: You’ve never taken it.
(Laughter)
MCKENZIE: He’s going to do some interviewing later, I warn you.
MARTIN: And I’m rather glad we didn’t take it __
(Laughter)
MARTIN: __ all the time.
SPRINKEL: In your 19 years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bill, the average growth in the money supply was 3.1 percent per year. The inflation rate was 2.2 percent. Since you left, the money supply has exactly doubled. The inflation rate is average over 7 percent, and, of course, in recent times the money supply has been growing in double-digit territory as has our inflation rate.
EMMINGER: May I, first of all, confirm two facts which have been so vividly brought out in the film of Professor Friedman; namely, that at the basis of the relatively good performance of Western Germany were really two events. One, the establishment of a new sound money which we try to preserve sound afterwards. And, secondly, the jump overnight into a free market economy without any controls over prices and wages. These are the two fundamental facts. We have tried to preserve monetary stability by just trying to follow this prescription of Professor Friedman; namely, monetary discipline. Keeping monetary growth relatively moderate. I must, however, warn you it’s not so easy as it looks. If you just say, governments have to have the courage to persist in that course.
FRIEDMAN: Nobody does disagree with the proposition that excessive growth in money supply is an essential element in the inflationary process and that the real problem is not what to do, but how to have the courage and the will to do it. And I want to go and start, if I may, on that subject; because I think that’s what we ought to explore. Why is it we haven’t had the courage and don’t, and under what circumstances will we? And I want to start with Bill Martin because his experience is a very interesting experience. His 19 years was divided into different periods. In the first period, that average that Beryl Sprinkel spoke about, averaged two very different periods. An early period of very slow growth and slow inflation; a later period of what at the time was regarded as creeping inflation __ now we’d be delighted to get back to it. People don’t remember that at the time that Mr. Nixon introduced price and wage controls in 1971 to control an outrageous inflation, the rate of inflation was four-and-a-half percent per year. Today we’d regard that as a major achievement; but the part of the period when you were Chairman, was a period when the inflation rate was starting to creep up and money growth rate was also creeping up. Now if I go from your period, you were eloquent in your statements to the public, to the press, to everyone, about the evils of inflation, and about the determination on the Federal Reserve not to be the architect of inflation. Your successor, Arthur Burns, was just as eloquent. Made exactly the same kinds of statements as effectively, and again over and over again said the Federal Reserve will not be the architect of inflation. His successor, Mr. G. William Miller, made the same speeches, and the same statements, and the same protestations. His successor, Paul Volcker, he is making the same statements. Now my question to you is: Why is it that there has been such a striking difference between the excellent pronouncements of all Chairmen of the Fed, therefore it’s not personal on you. You have a lot of company, unfortunately for the country. Why is it that there has been such a wide diversion between the excellent pronouncements on the one hand and what I regard as a very poor performance on the other?
MARTIN: Because monetary policy is not the only element. Fiscal policy is equally important.
FRIEDMAN: You’re shifting the buck to the Treasury.
MARTIN: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: To the Congress. We’ll get to Mr. Brown, don’t worry.
MARTIN: Yeah, that’s right.
(Laughter)
MARTIN: The relationship of fiscal policy to monetary policy is one of the important things.
MCKENZIE: Would you remind us, the general audience, when you say “fiscal policy”, what you mean in distinction to “monetary policy”?
MARTIN: Well, taxation.
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
MARTIN: The raising revenue.
FRIEDMAN: And spending.
MARTIN: And spending.
FRIEDMAN: And deficits.
MARTIN: And deficits, yes, exactly. And I think that you have to realize that when I’ve talked for a long time about the independence of the Federal Reserve. That’s independence within the government, not independence of the government. And I’ve worked consistently with the Treasury to try to see that the government is financed. Now this gets back to spending. The government says they’re gonna spend a certain amount, and then it turns out they don’t spend that amount. It doubles.
FRIEDMAN: The job of the Federal Reserve is not to run government spending; it’s not to run government taxation. The job of the Federal Reserve is to control the money supply and I believe, frankly, I have always believed as you know, that these are excuses and not reasons for the performance.
MARTIN: Well that’s where you and I differ, because I think we would be irresponsible if we didn’t take into account the needs and what the government is saying and doing. I think if we just went on our own, irresponsibly, I say it on this, because I was in the Treasury before I came to this __
FRIEDMAN: I know. I know.
MARTIN: __ go to the Fed; and I know the other side of the picture. I think we’d be rightly condemned by the American people and by the electorate.
FRIEDMAN: Every central bank in this world, including the German Central Bank, including the Federal Reserve System, has the technical capacity to make the money supply do over a period of two or three or four months, not daily, but over a period, has the technical capacity to control it.
(Several people talking at once.)
FRIEDMAN: I cannot explain the kind of excessive money creation that has occurred, in terms of the technical incapacity of the Federal Reserve System or of the German Central Bank, or of the Bank of England, or any other central bank in the world.
EMMINGER: I wouldn’t say technically we are incapable of doing that, although we have never succeeded in controlling the money supply month that way. But I would say we can, technically, control it half yearly, from one half-year period to the next and that would be sufficient __
FRIEDMAN: That would be sufficient.
EMMINGER: __ for controlling inflation. But however I __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: It doesn’t move.
FRIEDMAN: I’m an economic scientist, and I’m trying to observe phenomena, and I observe that every Federal Reserve Chairman says one thing and does another. I don’t mean he does, the system does.
MCKENZIE: Yeah. How different is your setup in Germany? You’ve heard this problem of governments getting committed to spending and the Fed having, one way or the other, to accommodate itself to it. Now what’s your position on this very interesting problem?
EMMINGER: We are very independent of the government, from the government, but, on the other hand, we are an advisor of the government. Also on the budget deficits and they would not easily go before Parliament with a deficit which much of it is openly criticized and disapproved by the same bank. Why because we have a tradition in our country that we can also publicly criticize the government on his account. And second, as if happened in our case too, the government goes beyond what is tolerable for the sake of moral equilibrium. We have let it come through in the capital markets. That is to say they have enough interest rates that has drawn public criticism and that has had some effect on their attitude.
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Pt 5
I think that is a very important point that Dr. Emminger just made because there is not a one-to-one relationship between government deficits and what happens to the money supply at all. The pressure on the Federal Reserve comes indirectly. It comes because large government deficits, if they are financed in the general capital market, will drive up interest rates and then we have the right patents in Congress and their successors pressuring the Federal Reserve to enter in and finance the deficit by printing money as a way of supposedly holding down interest rates. Now before I turn to Mr. Brown and ask him that, I just want to make one point which is very important. The Federal Reserve’s activities in trying to hold down interest rates have put us in a position where we have the highest interest rates in history. It’s another example of how, of the difference between the announced intentions of a policy, and the actual results. But now I want to come to Clarence Brown and ask him, shift the buck to him, and put him on the hot seat for a bit. The government spending has been going up rapidly, Republican administration or Democratic administration. This is a nonpartisan issue, it doesn’t matter. Government deficits have been going up rapidly. Republican administration or Democratic administration. Why is it that here again you have the difference between pronouncements and performance? There is no Congressman, no Senator, who will come out and say, “I am in favor of inflation.” There is not a single one who will say, “I am in favor of big deficits.” They’ll all say we want to balance the budget, we want to hold down spending, we want an economical government. How do you explain the difference between performance and talk on the side of Congress?
BROWN:
FRIEDMAN: I think that is a very important point that Dr. Emminger just made because there is not a one-to-one relationship between government deficits and what happens to the money supply at all. The pressure on the Federal Reserve comes indirectly. It comes because large government deficits, if they are financed in the general capital market, will drive up interest rates and then we have the right patents in Congress and their successors pressuring the Federal Reserve to enter in and finance the deficit by printing money as a way of supposedly holding down interest rates. Now before I turn to Mr. Brown and ask him that, I just want to make one point which is very important. The Federal Reserve’s activities in trying to hold down interest rates have put us in a position where we have the highest interest rates in history. It’s another example of how, of the difference between the announced intentions of a policy, and the actual results. But now I want to come to Clarence Brown and ask him, shift the buck to him, and put him on the hot seat for a bit. The government spending has been going up rapidly, Republican administration or Democratic administration. This is a nonpartisan issue, it doesn’t matter. Government deficits have been going up rapidly. Republican administration or Democratic administration. Why is it that here again you have the difference between pronouncements and performance? There is no Congressman, no Senator, who will come out and say, “I am in favor of inflation.” There is not a single one who will say, “I am in favor of big deficits.” They’ll all say we want to balance the budget, we want to hold down spending, we want an economical government. How do you explain the difference between performance and talk on the side of Congress?
BROWN: Well, first I think we have to make one point. I’m not so much with the government as I am against it.
FRIEDMAN: I understand.
BROWN: As you know, I’m a minority member of Congress.
FRIEDMAN: Again, I’m not __ I’m not directing this at you personally.
BROWN: I understand, of course; and while the administrations, as you’ve mentioned, Republican and Democratic administrations, have both been responsible for increases in spending, at least in terms of their recommendations. It is the Congress and only the Congress that appropriates the funds and determines what the taxes are. The President has no authority to do that and so one must lay it at the feet of the U.S. Congress. Now, I guess we’d have to concede that it’s a little bit more fun to give away things than it is to withhold them. And this is the reason that the Congress responds to a general public that says, “I want you to cut everybody else’s program but the one in which I am most particularly interested. Save money, but incidentally, my wife is taking care of the orphanages and so lets try to help the orphanages,” or whatever it is. Let me try to make a point, if I can, however, on what I think is a new spirit moving within the Congress and that is that inflation, as a national affliction, is beginning to have an impact on the political psychology of many Americans. Now the Germans, the Japanese and others have had this terrific postwar inflation. The Germans have been through it twice, after World War I and World War II, and it’s a part of their national psyche. But we are affected in this country by the depression. Our whole tax structure is built on the depression. The idea of the tax structure in the past has been to get the money out of the mattress where it went after the banks failed in this country and jobs were lost, and out of the woodshed or the tin box in the back yard, get it out of there and put it into circulation. Get it moving, get things going. And one of the ways to do that was to encourage inflation. Because if you held on to it, the money would depreciate; and the other way was to tax it away from people and let the government spend it. Now there’s a reaction to that and people are beginning to say, “Wait just a minute. We’re not afflicted as much as we were by depression. We’re now afflicted by inflation, and we’d like for you to get it under control.” Now you can do that in another way and that without reducing the money supply radically. I think the Joint Economic Committee has recommended that we do it gradually. But the way that you can do it is to reduce taxes and the impact of government, that is the weight of government and increase private savings so that the private savings can finance some of the debt that you have.
FRIEDMAN: There is no way you can do it without reducing, in my opinion, the rate of monetary growth. And I, recognizing the facts, even though they ought not to be that way, I wonder whether you can reduce the rate of monetary growth unless Congress actually does reduce government spending as well as government taxes.
BROWN: The problem is that every time we use demand management, we get into a kind of an iron maiden kind of situation. We twist this way and one of the spikes grabs us here, so we twist that way and a spike over here gets us. And every recession has had higher basic unemployment rates than the previous recession in the last several years and every inflation has had higher inflation. We’ve got to get that tilt out of the society.
MCKENZIE: Wouldn’t it be fair to say, though, that a fundamental difference is the Germans are more deeply fearful of a return to inflation, having had the horrifying experience between the wars, especially. We tend to be more afraid of recession turning into depression.
EMMINGER: I think there is something in it and in particular in Germany the government would have to fear very much in their electoral prospects if they went into such an election period with a high inflation rate. But there is another important difference.
MARTIN: We fear unemployment more than inflation it seems.
EMMINGER: You fear unemployment, but unemployment is feared with us, too, but inflation is just as much feared. But there is another difference; namely, once you have got into that escalating inflation, every time the base, the plateau is higher, it’s extremely difficult to get out of it. You must avoid getting into that, now that’s very cheap advice from me because you are now.
(Laughing)
EMMINGER: But we had, for the last fifteen, twenty years, always studied foreign experiences, and told ourselves we never must get into this vicious circle. Once you are in, it takes a long time to get out of it. That is what I am preaching now, that we should avoid at all costs to get again into this vicious circle as we had it already in ’73_’74. It took us, also, four years to get out of it, although we were only at eight percent inflation. Four years to get down to three percent. So you __
MCKENZIE: Those were __ yes.
EMMINGER: You have, I think, the question of whether you can do if in a gradualist way over many, many years, or whether you don’t need a sort of shock treatment.
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her we go into a period of still higher unemployment later on and have it to do all over again. That’s the only choice we face. And when the public at large recognizes that, they will then elect people to Congress, and a President to office who is committed to less government spending and to less government printing of money and until that happens we will not cure inflation
Pt 6
SPRINKEL: The film said it took the Japanese _ what _ four years?
FRIEDMAN: Five years.
SPRINKEL: Five years. But one of my greatest concerns is that we haven’t suffered enough yet. Most of the nations that have finally got their inflations __
BROWN: Bad election speech.
SPRINKEL: __ well, I’m not running for office, Clarence.
(Laughter)
SPRINKEL: Most countries that finally got their inflation under control had 20, 30 percent or worse inflation. Germany had much worse and the public supports them. We live in a Democracy, and we’re getting constituencies that gain from inflation. You look at people that own real estate, they’ve done very well.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
SPRINKEL: And how can we get there without going through even more pain, and I doubt that we will.
FRIEDMAN: If you ask who are the constituencies that have benefited most from inflation there are no doubt, it is the homeowners.
SPRINKEL: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: But it’s also the __ it’s also the Congressmen who have been able to vote higher spending without having to vote higher taxes. They have in fact __
BROWN: That’s right.
FRIEDMAN: __ Congress has in fact voted for inflation. But you have never had a Congressman on record to that effect. It’s the government civil servants who have their own salaries are indexed and tied to inflation. They have a retirement benefit, a retirement pension that’s tied to inflation. They qualify, a large fraction of them, for Social Security as well, which is tied to inflation. So that the beneficial __
BROWN: Labor contracts that are indexed and many pricing things that are tied to it.
FRIEDMAN: But the one thing that isn’t tied to inflation and here I want to come back and ask why Congress has been so __ so bad in this area, is our taxes. It has been impossible to get Congress to index the tax system so that you don’t have the present effect where every one percent increase in inflation pushes people up into higher brackets and forces them to pay higher taxes.
BROWN: Well, as you know, I’m an advocate of that.
FRIEDMAN: I know you are.
MCKENZIE: Some countries do that, of course.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, of course.
MCKENZIE: Canada does that. Indexes the __
BROWN: And I went up to Canada on a little weekend seminar program on indexing and came back an advocate of indexing because I found out that the people who are delighted with indexing are the taxpayers.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
BROWN: Because as the inflation rate goes up their tax level either maintains at the same level or goes down. The people who are least __ well, the people who are very unhappy with it are the people who have to plan government spending because it is reducing the amount of money that the government has rather than watching it go up by ten or twelve billion. You get a little dividend to spend in this country, the bureaucrats do every year, but the politicians are unhappy with it too, as Dr. Friedman points out because, you see, politicians don’t get to vote a tax reduction, it happens automatically.
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
BROWN: And so you can’t go back and in a praiseworthy way tell your constituents that I am for you, I voted a tax reduction. And I think we ought to be able to index the tax system so that tax reduction is automatic, rather than have what we’ve had in the past, and that is an automatic increase in the taxes. And the politicians say, “Well, we’re sorry about inflation, but __”.
FRIEDMAN: You’re right and I want to __ I want to go and make a very different point. I sit here and berate you and you as government officials, and so on, but I understand very well that the real culprits are not the politicians, are not the central bankers, but it’s I and my fellow citizens. I always say to people when I talk about this, “If you want to know who’s responsible for inflation, look in the mirror.” It’s not because of the way you spend you money. Inflation doesn’t arise because you got consumers who are spendthrifts; they’ve always been spendthrifts. It doesn’t arise because you’ve got businessmen who are greedy. They’ve always been greedy. Inflation arises because we as citizens have been asking you as politicians to perform an impossible task. We’ve been asking you to spend somebody else’s money on us, but not to spend our money on anybody else.
BROWN: You don’t want us to cut back those dollars for education, right?
FRIEDMAN: Right. And, therefore, __ well, no, I do.
MCKENZIE: We’ve already had a program on that.
FRIEDMAN: We’ve already had a program on that and there’s no viewer of these programs who will be in any doubt about my position on that. But the public at large has not and this is where we come to the political will that Dr. Emminger quite properly talked about. It is __ everybody talks against inflation, but what he means is that he wants the prices of the things he sells to go up and the prices of the things he buys to go down. But, sooner or later, we come to the point where it will be politically profitable to end inflation. This is the point that __
SPRINKEL: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: __ I think you were making.
SPRINKEL: The suffering idea.
FRIEDMAN: Where do you think the __ you know, what do you think the rate of inflation has to be and judged by the experience of other countries before we will be in that position and when do you think that will happen?
SPRINKEL: Well, the evidence says it’s got to be over 20 percent. Now you would think we could learn from others rather than have to repeat mistakes.
FRIEDMAN: Apparently nobody can learn from history.
SPRINKEL: But at the present time we’re going toward higher and not lower inflation.
MCKENZIE: You said earlier, if you want to see who causes inflation look in the mirror.
FRIEDMAN: Right.
MCKENZIE: Now, for everybody watching and taking part in this, there must be some moral to that. What does need __ what has to be the change of attitude of the man in the mirror you’re looking at before we can effectively implement what you call a tough policy that takes courage?
FRIEDMAN: I think that the man in the mirror has to come to recognize that inflation is the most destructive disease known to modern society. There is nothing which will destroy a society so thoroughly and so fully as letting inflation run riot. He must come to recognize that he doesn’t have any good choices. That there are no easy answers. That once you get in this situation where the economy is sick of this insidious disease, there’s gonna be no miracle drug which will enable them to be well tomorrow. That the only choices he has, do I go through a tough period for four or five years of relatively high unemployment, relatively low growth or do I try to push it off by taking some more of the hair of the dog that bit me and get around it now at the cost of still higher unemployment, as Clarence Brown said, later on. The only choice this country faces, is whether we have temporary unemployment for a short period, as a side effect of curling inflation or whether we go into a period of still higher unemployment later on and have it to do all over again. That’s the only choice we face. And when the public at large recognizes that, they will then elect people to Congress, and a President to office who is committed to less government spending and to less government printing of money and until that happens we will not cure inflation.
____________________________________
FRIEDMAN: And therefore the crucial thing is to cut down total government spending from the point of view of inflation. From the point of view of productivity, some of the other measures you were talking about are far more important.
BROWN
Pt 7
BROWN: But, Dr. Friedman, let me __
(Applause)
BROWN: Let me differ with you to this extent. I think it is important that at the time you are trying to get inflation out of the economy that you also give the man in the street, the common man, the opportunity to have a little bit more of his own resources to spend. And if you can reduce his taxes at that time and then reduce government in that process, you give him his money to spend rather than having to yield up all that money to government. If you cut his taxes in a way to encourage it, to putting that money into savings, you can encourage the additional savings in a private sense to finance the debt that you have to carry, and you can also encourage the stimulation of growth in the society, that is the investment into the capital improvements of modernization of plant, make the U.S. more competitive with other countries. And we can try to do it without as much painful unemployment as we can get by with. Don’t you think that has some merit?
FRIEDMAN: The only way __ I am all in favor, as you know, of cutting government spending. I am all in favor of getting rid of the counterproductive government regulation that reduces productivity and disrupts investment. But __
BROWN: And we do that, we can cut taxes some, can we not?
FRIEDMAN: We should __ taxes __ but you are introducing a confusion that has confused the American people. And that is the confusion between spending and taxes. The real tax on the American people is not what you label taxes. It’s total spending. If Congress spends fifty billion dollars more than it takes in, if government spends fifty billion dollars, who do you suppose pays that fifty billion dollars?
BROWN: Of course, of course.
FRIEDMAN: The Arab Sheiks aren’t paying it. Santa Claus isn’t paying it. The Tooth Fairy isn’t paying it. You and I as taxpayers are paying it indirectly through hidden taxation.
MCKENZIE: Your view __
FRIEDMAN: And therefore the crucial thing is to cut down total government spending from the point of view of inflation. From the point of view of productivity, some of the other measures you were talking about are far more important.
BROWN: But if you concede that inflation and taxes are both part and parcel of the same thing, and if you cut spending __
FRIEDMAN: They’re not part and parcel of the same thing.
BROWN: If you cut spending you __ well, but, you take the money from them in one way or another. The average citizen.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
BROWN: To finance the growth of government.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
BROWN: So if you cut back the size of government, you can cut both their inflation and their taxes.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
BROWN: If you __
FRIEDMAN: I am all in favor of that.
BROWN: All right.
FRIEDMAN: All I am saying is don’t kid yourself into thinking that there is some painless way to do it. There just is not.
BROWN: One other way is productivity. If you can __ if you can increase production, then the impact of inflation is less because you have more goods chasing __
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely, but you have to have a sense of proportion. From the point of view of the real income of the American people, nothing is more important than increasing productivity. But from the point of view of inflation, it’s a bit actor. It would be a miracle if we could raise our productivity from three to five percent a year, that would reduce inflation by two percent.
BROWN: No question, it won’t happen overnight, but it’s part of the __ it’s part of a long range squeezing out of inflation.
FRIEDMAN: There is only one way to ease the __ in my opinion there is only one way to ease the pains of curing inflation and that way is not available. That way is to make it credible to the American people that you are really going to follow the policy you say you’re going to follow. Unfortunately I don’t see any way we can do that.
(Several people talking at once.)
EMMINGER: Professor Friedman, that’s exactly the point which I wanted to illustrate by our own experience. We also had to squeeze out inflation and there was a painful time of one-and-a-half years, but after that we had a continuous lowering of the inflation rate with a slow upward movement in the economy since 1975. Year by year inflation went down and we had a moderate growth rate which has led us now to full employment.
FRIEDMAN: That’s what __
EMMINGER: So you can shorten this period by just this credibility and by a consensus you must have, also with the trade unions, with the whole population that they acknowledge that policy and also play their part in it. Then the pains will be much less.
SPRINKEL: You see in our case, expectations are that inflation’s going to get worse because it always has. This means we must disappoint in a very painful way those expectations and it’s likely to take longer, at least the first time around. Now our real problem has not been that we haven’t tried. We have tried and brought inflation down. Our real problem was, we didn’t stick to it. And then you have it all to do over.
BROWN: Well I would __ I would concede that psychology plays a great, perhaps even the major part, but I do believe that if you have private savings stimulated by your tax system, rather than discouraged by your tax system, you can finance some of that public debt by private savings rather than by inflation and the result will be to ease to some degree the paint of that heavy unemployment that you seem to suggest is the only way to deal with the problem.
FRIEDMAN: The talk is fine, but the problem is that it’s used to evade the key issue: How do you make it credible to the public that you are really going to stick to a policy? Four times we’ve tried it and four times we’ve stopped before we’ve run the course.
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: There we leave the matter for tonight, and next week’s concluding program in this series is not to be missed.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 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 […]
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Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) 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. […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
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The Honorable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Lindsey Graham,
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article belowthat said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
Gun Control explained Merry Christmas from the 2nd Amendment Buy a Shotgun Joe Biden Lying AR-15 Make your own Gun Free Zone PRK Arms on CBS 47 news, Fresno Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment! Penn and Teller – Gun Control and Columbine Somebody Picked the Wrong Girl 5 Facts About Guns, Schools, […]
The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) 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 […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
There are some people who make excuses for their anger. They say, “It just runs in my family.” They are like a loaded shotgun with a hair trigger. Anytime they are jostled, they blast away. Then they say, “Oh, well, my anger only lasts a little while.” Well, so do tornadoes, but look at what damage they can cause!
Let’s see what the Bible, particularly the book of Proverbs has to say about being quick to get angry:
* “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression. The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass” (Proverbs 19:11-12).
* “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife” (Proverbs 15:18).
* “Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbor hath put thee to shame” (Proverbs 25:8).
When you are quick to get angry, you can lose so much — your job, friends, children, wife, health, testimony — there is nothing more debilitating to your Christian testimony than for you to fly off the handle.
Confess Our Anger If we repress our anger rather than confess it, our anger can do all kinds of damage. You may say that you’re not angry but your stomach will keep the score. So, the first thing you must do to control your anger is to confess it to the Lord. Tell Him, “There’s something moving in me I don’t like. And I need You to take control of me and prevent me from acting uncontrollably or unrighteously.”
Someone has well said that if you repress anger it is like lighting a wastebasket, putting it in a closet, and closing the door. It may burn itself out or it may burn the house down. If you want to get control, the very first thing you need to do is open the closet door and say. “There it is, Lord. It’s in there. Put out the fire.”
Consider Our Anger When you take a step back from your anger and begin to seek understanding from the Lord, He will show you the answer. It is so important to analyze the source of your anger, so you don’t go off half-cocked. Psalm 4:4 says, “Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.”
God promises He will show us the way if we will seek Him. “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with Mine eye” (Psalm 32:8). And don’t look around at the world to see how they are handling it, look to God. Romans 12:2 says, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Control Your Anger Now, you’re ready to work on controlling your anger. You say, “I can’t control it.” Oh, yes you can. One day you may be having one of those discussions that can be heard about two blocks away and suddenly the phone rings. One of you stomps over to the phone, jerks it off its base, and says, “Hellooooo.” Now, don’t tell me you can’t turn it on and off. You can! Proverbs 29:11 says, “A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.” Fools spout off anything and everything, but a wise man can choose to control his tongue.
There it is, confess, consider, and control. Now, I don’t guarantee that you will no longer struggle with anger, but if you can get down these basics, you are well on your way. For further study, you may want to look at ordering one of the following sermons at the LWF bookstore (http://www.lwf.org), which target residual affects of anger, including bitterness, an unforgiving spirit, and more:
2027 The Blight of Bitterness Heb. 12:14
1272 How to Turn Bitterness into Blessings II Kings 2:19
1425 Forgiveness Matt. 18:21-35
1694 The Freedom of Forgiveness Matt. 6:9-15
If you feel you have an anger issue that needs immediate professional attention, we recommend that you contact one of the following national Christian counseling referral agencies:
Rapha Christian Counseling 1-800-383-4673 New Life Counseling 1-800-NEW-LIFE (639-5433) American Association Of Christian Counselors 1-800-5-COUNSEL
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Tagged Gene Bartow, John Wooden | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
The Honorable Richard Burr of North Carolina United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Richard Burr,
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article belowthat said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
Gun Control explained Merry Christmas from the 2nd Amendment Buy a Shotgun Joe Biden Lying AR-15 Make your own Gun Free Zone PRK Arms on CBS 47 news, Fresno Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment! Penn and Teller – Gun Control and Columbine Somebody Picked the Wrong Girl 5 Facts About Guns, Schools, […]
The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) 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 […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
During the Q&A session, I was asked to specify the ideal amount of government spending. I addressed that issue in an April interview while visiting Spain.
You’ll notice that I didn’t give a specific number in the above video. Just like I didn’t give a specific number to the audience in Uganda.
That’s because there is not an exact answer. The only thing we can definitively state is that government in most nations should be far smaller than it is today.
This is illustrated by the “Rahn Curve,” which I discussed both in the interview and in my speech today.
What is the Rahn Curve? Here’s some of what I wrote back in 2015.
…it shows the non-linear relationship between the size of government and economic performance. Simply stated, some government spending presumably enables growth by creating the conditions (such as rule of law and property rights) for commerce. But as politicians learn to buy votes and enhance their power by engaging in redistribution, then government spending is associated with weaker economic performance because of perverse incentives and widespread misallocation of resources.
And here’s a visual depiction of the Rahn Curve. The upward-sloping part of the curve shows that spending on genuine public goods is associated with more prosperity. But once government budgets exceed a certain level, additional spending means weaker economic performance.
In the above graph, I show that growth is maximized when government consumes about 15 percent-20 percent of economic output.
But I actually think prosperity would be maximized if government was a smaller burden, perhaps about 5 percent-10 percent of GDP.
In 2017, I explained the appropriate role of government in a libertarian society. My analysis was based on my “minarchist” views, which imply government only spends money for national defense and rule of law.
By contrast, my anarcho-capitalist friends would say we don’t need any government.
Meanwhile, moderate libertarians (or conservative Republicans) might be amenable to having state and local governments play a role in education and infrastructure.
The bottom line is that I think growth would be maximized if government consumes – at most – 10 percent of economic output (which was the size of government in the 1800s when the Western world became rich).
P.S. Here’s my response to a critic from the left.
P.P.S. Interestingly, some normally left-leaning international bureaucracies have acknowledged you get more prosperity with smaller government. Check out the analysis from the IMF, ECB, World Bank, and OECD.Thanks
Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve
Free-market economics meets free-market policies at The Heritage Foundation’s Tenth Anniversary dinner in 1983. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose with President Ronald Reagan and Heritage President Ed Feulner.
Since the passing of Milton Friedman who was my favorite economist, I have been reading the works of Daniel Mitchell and he quotes Milton Friedman a lot, and you can reach Dan’s website here.
Mitchell in February 2011.
Wikipedia noted concerning Dan:
Mitchell’s career as an economist began in the United States Senate, working for Oregon Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. He also served on the transition team of President-Elect Bush and Vice President-Elect Quayle in 1988. In 1990, he began work at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Mitchell worked on tax policy issues and began advocating for income tax reform.[1]
In 2007, Mitchell left the Heritage Foundation, and joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow. Mitchell continues to work in tax policy, and deals with issues such as the flat tax and international tax competition.[2]
In addition to his Cato Institute responsibilities, Mitchell co-founded the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, an organization formed to protect international tax competition.[1]
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:
Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.
Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).
That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.
Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.
People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.
So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:
WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.
A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.
Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.
Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.
And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.
The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.
Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.
Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:
In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).
Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”
And what happened?
“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.
Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).
Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.
FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.
It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.
Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.
So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:
We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.
So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:
“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”
So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering,“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.
________
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
________
The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring
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Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve 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 […]
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The Honorable Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Pat Toomey,
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article belowthat said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
Gun Control explained Merry Christmas from the 2nd Amendment Buy a Shotgun Joe Biden Lying AR-15 Make your own Gun Free Zone PRK Arms on CBS 47 news, Fresno Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment! Penn and Teller – Gun Control and Columbine Somebody Picked the Wrong Girl 5 Facts About Guns, Schools, […]
The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) 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 […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
Video of the Capitol riot is shown on a screen during the second hearing held by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on June 13, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images)
Both omissions by the Jan. 6 barkers are just the latest examples of a flagrant, two-tiered justice system that treats conservatives—especially anyone supporting Trump—as second-class citizens.
There were many troubling conflicts of interest at Michael Sussman’s D.C. Beltway swamp trial venue. A reported 3 of the 12 jurors were Hillary Clinton donors, and as Open Secrets reports, just 1.6% of U.S. adult women and 2% of men have given $200 or more in political donations. In other words, only the most truly committed believers put dollars behind their political ideology.
Given the District of Columbia has a much higher per capita of donors because of its professional political class, sure it might have been a little harder to find a non-Clinton donor, but given the hyperpartisan nature of the attacks lobbed by the Clinton campaign, these donations should have been grounds for jury dismissal.
In another instance of the DOJ’s double standards, former President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, faced no repercussions after Congress held him in contempt for refusing to comply with its Fast and Furious investigation. Meanwhile, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro was put in leg irons during an ambush arrest at the airport for the same charge of contempt.
And let’s not forget the 51 former “intelligence” officials who wrote an open letter calling the Hunter Biden laptop story (verified by even leftist media outlets like The New York Times) Russian disinformation. They’ve faced no professional sanctions, no stripping of security clearances, even though they refuse to apologize.
Obama’s Internal Revenue Service, thanks to bureaucrat Lois Lerner, targeted conservative nonprofit groups for harassment. This led to cleanup—a rare government remedy—by the Trump administration, which settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 400 conservative nonprofit groups claiming they’d been discriminated against.
A repeated line by the left is that conservatives are a threat to democracy because they erode “democratic norms.” With norms like this ongoing pattern of botched justice, it’s no wonder the right has finally started to revolt and ask for equal protection under the law.
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Open letter to President Obama (Part 644)
(Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.)
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
If you take a group of Democrats who are also unionized government employees, and put them in charge of policing political speech, it doesn’t matter how professional and well-intentioned they are. The result will be much like the debacle in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. …there’s no reason to even posit evil intent by the IRS officials who formulated, approved or executed the inappropriate guidelines for picking groups to scrutinize most closely. …The public servants figuring out which groups qualified for 501(c)4 “social welfare” non-profit status were mostly Democrats surrounded by mostly Democrats. …In the 2012 election, every donation traceable to this office went to President Obama or liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown. This is an environment where even those trying to be fair could develop a disproportionate distrust of the Tea Party. One IRS worker — a member of NTEU and contributor to its PAC, which gives 96 percent of its money to Democratic candidates — explained it this way: “The reason NTEU mostly supports Democratic candidates for office is because Democratic candidates are mostly more supportive of civil servants/government employees.”
Tim concludes with a wise observation.
As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.
The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. …the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties. The blame falls squarely on Congress, not the IRS.
…the denizens of Capitol Hill also have created a tax code marked by outrageous complexity, special interest electioneering, and systematic social engineering. Legislators have intentionally created avenues for tax avoidance to win votes, and then complained about widespread tax avoidance to win votes.
So what’s the answer?
The most obvious response to the scandal — beyond punishing anyone who violated the law — is tax reform. Implement a flat tax and you’d still have an IRS, but the income tax would be less complex, there would be fewer “preferences” for the agency to police, and rates would be lower, leaving taxpayers with less incentive for aggressive tax avoidance. …Failing to address the broader underlying factors also would merely set the stage for a repeat performance in some form a few years hence. …More fundamentally, government, and especially the national government, should do less. Efficient social engineering may be slightly better than inefficient social engineering, but no social engineering would be far better.
But here’s the challenge. We know the solution, but it will be almost impossible to implement good policy unless we figure out some way to restrain the spending side of the fiscal ledger.
___________________________
At the risk of over-simplifying, we will never get tax reform unless we figure out how to implement entitlement reform.
Here’s another Foden cartoon, which I like because it has the same theme asthis Jerry Holbert cartoon, showing big government as a destructive and malicious force.
_____________
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
We know the IRS commissioner wasn’t telling the truth in March 2012, when he testified: “There’s absolutely no targeting.”However, Lois Lerner knew different when she misled people with those words. Two important points made by Noonan in the Wall Street Journal in the article below: First, only conservative groups were targeted in this scandal by […]
Ohio Liberty Coalition versus the I.R.S. (Tom Zawistowski) Published on May 20, 2013 The Ohio Liberty Coalition was among tea party groups that received special scrutiny from the I.R.S. Tom Zawistowski says his story is not unique. He argues the kinds of questions the I.R.S. asked his group amounts to little more than “opposition research.” Video […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning […]
We got to lower the size of government so we don’t have these abuses like this in the IRS. Cartoonists v. the IRS May 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Call me perverse, but I’m enjoying this IRS scandal. It’s good to see them suffer a tiny fraction of the agony they impose on the American people. I’ve already […]
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 http://www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, […]
Is the irs out of control? Here is the link from cato: MAY 22, 2013 8:47AM Can You Vague That Up for Me? By TREVOR BURRUS SHARE As the IRS scandal thickens, targeted groups are coming out to describe their ordeals in dealing with that most-reviled of government agencies. The Ohio Liberty Coalition was one of […]
Get Ready to Be Reamed May 17, 2013 by Dan Mitchell With so many scandals percolating, there are lots of good cartoons being produced. But I think this Chip Bok gem deserves special praise. It manages to weave together both the costly Obamacare boondoggle with the reprehensible politicization of the IRS. So BOHICA, my friends. If […]
You want to talk about irony then look at President Obama’s speech a few days ago when he joked about a potential audit of Ohio St by the IRS then a few days later the IRS scandal breaks!!!! The I.R.S. Abusing Americans Is Nothing New Published on May 15, 2013 The I.R.S. targeting of tea party […]
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 http://www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, […]
We could put in a flat tax and it would enable us to cut billions out of the IRS budget!!!! May 14, 2013 2:34PM IRS Budget Soars By Chris Edwards Share The revelations of IRS officials targeting conservative and libertarian groups suggest that now is a good time for lawmakers to review a broad range […]
After reading all your views on being a conservative, I was surprised to read your name in this article belowthat said you made a way for Democrats to put in more gun control that doesn’t work! Chicago has lots of gun control but compare them to the results in Houston! Which has more deaths by gun violence?
Thank you for your time and thank for opposing abortion. I really appreciate your pro-life stance!
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002 everettehatcher@gmail.com
Joe Biden’s publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We’ll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It’s not complicated.
In fact, it’s such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren’t already doing that. Who doesn’t want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn’t they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don’t. Who would? So naturally, you’re for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it’s the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don’t like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It’s called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we’ve done things in America for more than 200 years, and it’s exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn’t come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn’t like your politics. It doesn’t matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can’t happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don’t like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don’t need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don’t care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He’s done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. “It’s an emergency. We don’t have time for due process!”
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They’ve declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here’s the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What’s the reasoning? Well, here’s one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I’m not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they’re concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that’s the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term “sensible.” Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. “It’s sensible gun safety regulation.” So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi’s language and he’s doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is “concerned about the politics” of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you’re not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can’t have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they’re beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida’s experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a “significant danger” based on “any relevant evidence.” Huh? That’s it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people’s guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can’t you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can’t you take their homes? Why can’t you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have “vastly higher” odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it “better safe than sorry approach” to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with “stipulations.” If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that’s a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don’t need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it’s unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It’s a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it’s also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state’s red flag law. “Basically, it’s all over the place,” Simon admitted. “You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it’s 38 filed.”
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don’t like someone, if you don’t like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody’s home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: “Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws.” Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here’s the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you’re going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can’t pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can’t go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on ” Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?” It’s not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
“These rights pre-exist government.” Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro’s house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they’re pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it’s not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that’s not happening and that’s why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER:I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b——- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s—.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that’s just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what’s happening in our city. What you’re looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you’re out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you’re disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon’s office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon’s habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven’t the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren’t designed to punish the politically loyal. And that’s why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who’s okay with that or what’s happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn’t worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner’s office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.So, what are they ignoring? Well, let’s see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it’s getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you’re actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don’t need to guess because they’re telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He’s more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That’s just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it’s a lie. There’s no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It’s ridiculous. It’s an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That’s not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn’t like.
Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
Gun control arguments just don’t make any sense, but President Obama still supports gun control. Laughing at Obama’s Belly Flop on Gun Control April 23, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve shared serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel. I also posted testimonials from gun experts and an honest liberal. […]
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The United Nations is full of gun control nuts. The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive April 15, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten […]
Sometimes you just have to look at the facts!!! An Inside Look at Left-Wing Social Science Gun Research March 20, 2013 by Dan Mitchell In a presumably futile effort to change their minds by learning how they think, I periodically try to figure out the left-wing mind. Why, for instance, do some people believe in Keynesian […]
I do love Michael Moore’s movie “Canadian Bacon” and I have blogged about it before. However, I am not a big Michael Moore fan. Take a look at this excellent article by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute on Moore’s latest stupid claim. March 15, 2013 3:50PM Some Pictures for Michael Moore By Trevor Burrus […]
(This letter was mailed before October 1, 2012) 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 […]
Great yardsign on gun control from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Here’s a quiz. What do you do after seeing this sign? Letter to Senator Cruz on constitutional issues in federal gun control proposals David Kopel • February 11, 2013 2:25 pm On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human […]
The rear of the Bath School after the May 18, 1927 bombing. Wikimedia Commons ___________ I have put up lots of cartoons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Did […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. There is no doubt that Hitler took away guns from those he wanted to persecute and […]
As Social Security runs out of money, current retirees have benefits cut at an average loss of $4,400 per year. (Photo illustration: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images)
Our Social Security program is running dry. Policymakers have no plan to fix it, and generations of Americans have been duped into believing it’s a good deal.
Social Security was established to prevent older Americans from living in poverty once they’re unable to work, but the program’s unchecked expansions have made that outcome anything but secure for current and future workers.
The Social Security Board of Trustees reports that the program will run out of money in 2034. That means anyone 55 or younger today won’t receive a single full benefit, and most current retirees will be subject to 23% benefit cuts—an average loss of $4,400 per year.
Preventing benefit cuts would require an immediate payroll tax increase, from 12.4% to 15.8%. That amounts to $2,300 more per year, and $10,800 in total Social Security taxes, for the median household with $68,000 in earnings. It’s also a far cry from the program’s original promise that Social Security would never take more than 6% from workers’ paychecks.
Even as Social Security’s shortfalls continued to rise, the U.S. financial outlook seriously deteriorated over just the past two years.
Policymakers must act now, and Congress has a choice.
It can make Social Security bigger—increasing taxes and increasing benefits for everyone—or make it smaller and better targeted.
The Social Security 2100 Act proposed the former route. At The Heritage Foundation, Drew Gonshorowski and I analyzed the proposal and found it would leave all income groups worse off. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Polling finds strong agreement—more than 80% of Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike—that a more targeted program could solve Social Security’s financial shortfalls and increase incomes and opportunities for all Americans.
The current system gives workers a raw deal. Every dollar they pay into Social Security goes immediately out the door to fund current benefits, never getting a chance to earn a positive rate of return.
In contrast, my Heritage colleagues and I found that the average worker would have three times more retirement income if they were able to keep and invest their Social Security taxes. Even the lowest-income workers would have 40% more retirement income.
They would also have something to pass on to their family members. Currently, people with shorter lives—including the 1 in 5 black men who die between the ages of 45 and 64—can end up getting little or nothing from Social Security after paying into the program for decades.
Far better to return Social Security to its original goal of poverty prevention. Taking measures like gradually shifting to a flat benefit, slowly raising the retirement age and indexing it to life expectancy, using a more accurate inflation measure, and eliminating work disincentives would protect and improve Social Security.
The Heritage Foundation’s Social Security model estimates that these changes would make the program solvent and allow for a roughly 20% tax cut. And adding an ownership option would give Americans more control over their own retirement incomes and let them benefit from investment returns.
The Penn Wharton Budget Model projected that a smaller, better-targeted Social Security program like the one outlined above would result in an economy that is 7.3%, or $1.6 trillion, larger than with a bigger Social Security program. That translates into $10,740 more in annual income per household across the U.S.
Each year that policymakers fail to act, the costs and consequences of Social Security’s inevitable reform just become larger. Over just the last 10 years, Social Security’s unfunded obligations more than doubled, to $20.4 trillion—the equivalent of $157,000 per household.
Social Security’s solutions are straightforward, and despite the program’s fiscal imbalances, there are ways to make it better for everyone. By tackling Social Security reform now, policymakers could protect a popular program and reduce the chances of a fiscal crisis. It’s time for policymakers to get serious about getting America’s fiscal house in order.
For more details, I was referring to the latest Trustees Report, published yesterday by the Social Security Administration.
Most people, when that annual report is released, focus on when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money. But since the Trust Fund only contains IOUs, I view that as a largely irrelevant number.
Instead, I immediately look at Table VI.G9, which shows how much revenue is being collected and how much money is being spent every year.
Here is that data displayed in a chart. The left side shows actual fiscal numbers from 1970 to 2021 while the right side shows the projections between 2022 and 2100.
As you can see in the chart, revenues going into the system (the blue line) are growing rapidly.
But you also can see that Social Security spending (the orange line) is expanding even faster.
And when spending grows faster than revenue, one consequences is more red ink.
This next chart shows that annual deficits between now and 2100 will total $56 trillion.
At the risk of understatement, these two charts should be very sobering. Especially since they only show the taxes, spending, and red ink for Social Security.
If we also add the fiscal aggregates for other entitlement programs, it would be abundantly clear why we face a “crisis” and a “train wreck.”
So how do we solve this mess. I’ve written about the needed reforms for Medicare and Medicaid, so let’s focus today on Social Security.
In this episode “How to Stay Free” Friedman makes the statement “What we need is widespread public recognition that the central government should be limited to its basic functions: defending the nation against foreign enemies, preserving order at home, and mediating our disputes. We must come to recognize that voluntary cooperation through the market and in other ways is a far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to the government.”
In this episode Milton Friedman makes the point, “There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs… it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little.”
Pt 5
Lawrence E. Spivak: I know, I believe, I say I know, I think I know, but I’ll say I believe that you felt, you blame the government for the Great Depression of 1929 through 1933 and of course, you had to blame FDR for all he did, but most people feel that he saved this free economy of ours.
Friedman: Given the catastrophe of the Great Depression, there is no doubt in my mind that emergency government measures were necessary. The government had made a mess. Not FDR’s government, it was the government that preceded him. Although it was mainly the Federal Reserve System which really wasn’t subject to election. But once FDR came in he did two very different kinds of things.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Well, had the government made a mess by what it did or but by what it didn’t do.
Friedman: By what it did. By it’s monetary policies which forced and produced a sharp decline in the total quantity of money. It was a mismanagement of the monetary apparatus. If there had been no federal reserve system, in my opinion, there would not have been a Great Depression at that time. But given that the depression had occurred, and it was a catastrophe of almost unimaginable kind, I do not fault at all, indeed on the contrary I commend Roosevelt for some of emergency measures he took. They obviously weren’t of the best, but they were emergency measures and you had an emergency you had to deal with. And the emergency measure such as relief programs, even the WPA which was a make work program, these served a very important function. He also served a very important function by giving people confidence in themselves. His great speech about the only thing we have to fear is fear itself was certainly a very important element in restoring confidence to the public at large. But he went much beyond that, he also started to change, under public pressure, the kind of government system we had. If you go beyond the emergency measures to the, what he regarded as reform measures, things like NRA and AAA, which were declared unconstitutional, but then from there on to the Social Security system, to the …
Lawrence E. Spivak: Take the Social Security System for a minute. The people wanted that, they wanted that protection. They were frightened, they wanted welfare.
Friedman: Not at all.
Lawrence E. Spivak: When you said pressure, who, pressure from whom?
Friedman: Pressure from people who were expressing what they thought the public ought to have. There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs. The demands…….
Lawrence E. Spivak: No demand for welfare with 13 million people …….
Friedman: There was a demand for welfare and assistance I was separating out the emergency measures from the permanent measures. Social Security in the first 10 years of its existence, helped almost no one. It only took in money. Very few people qualified for benefits. It wasn’t an emergency measure. It was a long term measure. And it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little. So that Social Security….
Lawrence E. Spivak: Would you now abolish Social Security?
Friedman: I would not go back on any of the commitments that the government has made. But I would certainly reform Social Security in a way that would end in its ultimate elimination.
Lawrence E. Spivak: If you’re not afraid then of the free market under any circumstances, where cooperation which you find necessary which you believe all to come, fails to come, where competition becomes so fierce and becomes very frequently corrupt and where, all where it becomes stupid. Take for example what’s happening in today’s market, the conglomerates. Which have been seizing up all sorts of, we happen to live in a hotel that’s run by a conglomerate. Why should ITT, for example, run a hotel and how are you going to stop that.
Friedman: Well in the first place, once again,
Lawrence E. Spivak: Without government, without…..
Friedman: Once again, it’s government measures that have promoted the conglomerates. The only major reason we have conglomerates is because they are a very effective way to get around a whole batch of tax legislation. Let me ask a different question. Who is more effected by government regulations, by government controls?
Lawrence E Spivak: I thought I was supposed to ask the questions. But I was warned that you might turn these on me.
Friedman: Well tell me, whose more effected the big fellow who can deal with it or that have a separated department to handle the red tape, or the poor fellow?
Lawrence E. Spivak: The big fellow can always take care of himself under any system.
Friedman: Right, and therefore he’ll want a system which gives the big fellow the least advantage. And the system under which he can get government to help him out, gives him the most advantage, not the least. You say am I afraid of greed, of lack of cooperation. Of course. But we always have to compare the real with the real. What are the real alternatives? And if we look at the record of history, if we go back to the 19th century which everybody always points to as the era of the robber baron who strode around the land and ground the poor under his heel, what do we find? The greatest outpouring of voluntary charitable activity in the history of the world. This University, this University of Chicago is an example. It was founded by contributions by John D. Rockefeller and other people. The colleges and universities throughout the Midwest. If you go back and ask when was the Red Cross founded, when was the Salvation Army founded, when were the Boy Scouts founded, you’ll discover all of that came during the 19th century in the era of unregulated rapacious capitalism.
Lawrence E. Spivak: I’d like to go back for a minute to the question of conglomerates. Granted that what you say that the government policies concentration on central government if you will, or whatever you want to call it, are responsible for the growth of conglomerates. What would we, what should we do about them now? Government try to undue them? Or should anybody try to undue them?
Friedman: No.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Or should you just let them fail?
Friedman: You should let them fail, of course. I am strongly opposed to government bailing any of them out. You should let them fail. The best things you can do in my opinion, are first to have complete free trade so you can have conglomerates in other countries compete with conglomerates in this country. We may have only two or three automobile companies, but there’s Toyota, there’s Volkswagen, competition from abroad is effective. But in the second place…
Lawrence E. Spivak: When do you say complete free trade you mean all over the world?
Friedman: No sir. I mean the U.S. all by itself unilaterally should eliminate all trade barriers. We would be better off if all the countries did the same.
Lawrence E. Spivak: What do you think would happen if we just did it though?
Friedman: I think we’d be very much better off and a lot others would then follow our example. That’s what happened in the 19th Century when Great Britain in 1846 completed removed, unilaterally, all trade barriers so that…..
Lawrence E. Spivak: You don’t think this country would be flooded with goods of all kinds from all over the world, maybe cheaper in that we wouldn’t have great unemployment in this country?
Friedman: What would the people who sold us goods do with their money? They’d get dollars, what would they do with the dollars? Eat them. If they want to send us goods and take dollars in return, we’re delighted to have them. No. That’s not a problem as long as you have a free exchange rate. Because we cannot export without importing, we cannot import without exporting. You would not have a reduction in employment, what you’d have would be a different pattern of employment. You’d have more employment in export industries and less employment in those industries that compete with import. But go back to conglomerates, Larry for a moment. I just want to ask a very different kind of a question. Conglomerates are not very attractive, I would much rather have a lot of small enterprises. But there’s all the difference in the world between a private conglomerate and a government conglomerate. In general, the government conglomerate can get money from you without your agreeing to give it to him. You and I pay for Amtrak and for the postal deficit whether we use the services of Amtrak or the postal deficit or not. I don’t pay your conglomerate unless I rent one of their apartments. I get something for my money. So bad as private conglomerates are, they’re less bad than one of the alternatives.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 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 […]
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I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
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“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
There were many troubling conflicts of interest at Michael Sussman’s D.C. Beltway swamp trial venue. A 
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