For the first 150 years our federal government lived on about 4% of our GDP (except in wartime) but now federal spending has risen to over 24%. We need to lower spending now and not raise taxes. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough taxes, but it is that we spend too much.
We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting people back to work. Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in? Some of the greatest churches in the world are in your hometown of Chicago. D.L. Moody pastored there for many years too.
Today, the food stamps program is one of the largest and the fastest growing of the roughly 80 welfare programs funded by the federal government. Since 2000, spending has nearly quadrupled, with much of the growth taking place over the last four years. Since President Obama came to office, food stamps spending doubled from roughly $39 billion in 2008 to an estimated $85 billion in 2012.
As Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley explain, part of the recent growth is due to policies that make it easier for individuals to enroll in food stamps. “Application loopholes that permit food stamp recipients to bypass income and asset tests” boost participation rates. The program “discourages work, rewards idleness, and promotes long-term dependence.”
Removing work requirements from the few welfare programs that contain them seems to be the Obama Administration’s method of operation. President Obama’s 2009 stimulus suspended the food stamps work requirement through September 2010, and his next two budgets attempted to maintain the suspension. Then, on July 12 his Administration announced it would begin waiving the work requirements that were the heart of the successful 1996 welfare reform law.
Personal responsibility and work are key American principles. Food stamps and other welfare programs should promote these principles by requiring all able-bodied recipients to work, prepare for work, or at least look for a job in order to receive assistance.
__________
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
Reagan inherited a sluggish economy like President Obama did but he cut taxes and regulations and got the economy growing. President Obama has done neither of those and he nows claims the economy is doing fine like these cartoons show.
P.S. If Obama actually wants to fix the economy, I suggest he watch this video tutorial so he can learn that the private sector is suffering because too many resources are being diverted to unproductive uses by the public sector.
Max Brantley is wrong about Tom Cotton’s accusation concerning the rise of welfare spending under President Obama. Actually welfare spending has been increasing for the last 12 years and Obama did nothing during his first four years to slow down the rate of increase of welfare spending. Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation has noted: […]
I have put up lots of cartoons 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. I think Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog was right to point out on 2-6-13 that Hillary […]
I thought it was great when the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton put in welfare reform but now that has been done away with and no one has to work anymore it seems. In fact, over 40% of the USA is now on the government dole. What is going to happen when that figure gets over […]
Again we have another shooting and the gun control bloggers are out again calling for more laws. I have written about this subject below and on May 23, 2012, I even got a letter back from President Obama on the subject. Now some very interesting statistics below and a cartoon follows. (Since this just hit the […]
watch?v=llQUrko0Gqw] The federal government spends about 10% on roads and public goods but with the other money in the budget a lot of harm is done including excessive regulations on business. That makes Obama’s comment the other day look very silly. A Funny Look at Obama’s You-Didn’t-Build-That Comment July 28, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I made […]
I have written a lot about this in the past and sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh. Laughing at Obama’s Bumbling Class Warfare Agenda July 13, 2012 by Dan Mitchell We know that President Obama’s class-warfare agenda is bad economic policy. We know high tax rates undermine competitiveness. And we know tax increases […]
Dan Mitchell Discussing Dishonest Budget Numbers with John Stossel Uploaded by danmitchellcato on Feb 11, 2012 No description available. ______________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has shown before how excessive spending at the federal level has increased in recent years. A Humorous Look at Obama’s Screwy Budget Math May 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve […]
Sometimes it is so crazy that you just have to laugh a little. The European Mess, Captured by a Cartoon June 22, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The self-inflicted economic crisis in Europe has generated some good humor, as you can see from these cartoons by Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay. But for pure laughter, I don’t […]
Another great cartoon on President Obama’s efforts to create jobs!!! A Simple Lesson about Job Creation for Barack Obama December 7, 2011 by Dan Mitchell Even though leftist economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that unemployment insurance benefits are a recipe for more joblessness, the White House is arguing that Congress should […]
Dan Mitchell hits the nail on the head and sometimes it gets so sad that you just have to laugh at it like Conan does. In order to correct this mess we got to get people off of government support and get them in the private market place!!!! Chuck Asay’s New Cartoon Nicely Captures Mentality […]
Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell is right about Greece and the fate of socialism: Two Pictures that Perfectly Capture the Rise and Fall of the Welfare State July 15, 2011 by Dan Mitchell In my speeches, especially when talking about the fiscal crisis in Europe (or the future fiscal crisis in America), I often warn that […]
John Stossel report “Myth: Gun Control Reduces Crime Sheriff Tommy Robinson tried what he called “Robinson roulette” from 1980 to 1984 in Central Arkansas where he would put some of his men in some stores in the back room with guns and the number of robberies in stores sank. I got this from Dan Mitchell’s […]
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. Amusing Gun Control Picture – Circa 1999 April 3, 2010 by Dan Mitchell Dug this gem out […]
We got to cut spending and stop raising the debt ceiling!!! When Governments Cut Spending Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011 Do governments ever cut spending? According to Dr. Stephen Davies, there are historical examples of government spending cuts in Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and America. In these cases, despite popular belief, the government spending […]
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. On 2-6-13 the Arkansas Times Blogger “Sound Policy” suggested, “All churches that wish to allow concealed […]
Gun Free Zones???? Stalin and gun control On 1-31-13 ”Arkie” on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: “Remember that the biggest gun control advocate was Hitler and every other tyrant that every lived.” Except that under Hitler, Germany liberalized its gun control laws. __________ After reading the link from Wikipedia that Arkie provided then I responded: […]
On 1-31-13 I posted on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: I like the poster of the lady holding the rifle and next to her are these words: I am compensating for being smaller and weaker than more violent criminals. __________ Then I gave a link to this poster below: On 1-31-13 also I posted […]
For the first 150 years our federal government lived on about 4% of our GDP (except in wartime) but now federal spending has risen to over 24%. We need to lower spending now and not raise taxes. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough taxes, but it is that we spend too much.
Many people want to believe in Unicorns, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot. I think those people are rational and reasonable compared to the folks in Washington that spend their days dreaming of “bipartisan” and “balanced” plans to fix the budget mess.
Here are the two things you should understand. First, you need to grab your Washingtonese-to-English dictionary so you can learn that “bipartisan” and “balanced” are almost always code words for “higher taxes.” Second, budget deals with higher taxes (as the New York Times accidentally admitted) don’t “fix” anything.
The Simpson-Bowles budget plan is a good example of why taxpayers should be quite skeptical. Put together by a former Republican Senator from Wyoming and Bill Clinton’s former Chief of Staff as part of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission, the Simpson-Bowles proposal is viewed by the inside-the-beltway crowd as fiscal Nirvana.
The Simpson-Bowles commission offered a reasonable, responsible, comprehensive and bipartisan solution that won the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans on the commission. Most importantly, it would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade — enough to put the debt on a clear downward path relative to the economy.
Gee, sounds nice, but let’s look at the details, all of which can be seen by downloading their report.
A main problem is that Simpson and Bowles misdiagnose the problem. I think it’s fair to say that their focus, as they explicitly state in their report, is to “…stabilize and then reduce the national debt.” But as I explain in this video, the real problem is a federal government that is too big and spending too much. Red ink is just a symptom of that problem.
Moreover, the report even includes Keynesian policy, stating that “…budget cuts should start gradually so they don’t interfere with the ongoing economic recovery.”
But let’s set aside rhetorical sins and grade the plan.
Restraining Spending: C+
The plan does impose some restraint on the budget, but the plan – even after being in place for 10 years – assumes that the federal government should grow by about $1.5 trillion and consume nearly 22 percent of economic output. This is far above the 18.2 percent of GDP when Clinton left office, which should be the minimum target for policymakers.
But the components of the plan make me think they won’t even achieve the plan’s anemic targets.
Eliminating Departments and Programs: D
The Simpson-Bowles plan does not call for shutting down a single program, agency, or department. Not even cesspools of waste and inefficiency such as the Department of Education or Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Reforming Entitlements: C-
There are real change in the plan, but they’re the wrong kind of changes. Instead of the structural reforms to Medicare and Medicaid contained in the Ryan budget, the Simpson-Bowles report basically calls for price fixing and means testing – policies that have a track record of ineffectiveness.
Reducing Bureaucratic Bloat: B
In terms of controlling spending, this is the part of the report that is most admirable. It calls for a three-year freeze on excessive compensation and urges reductions in bureaucratic bloat – albeit only through attrition.
Controlling the Tax Burden and Reforming the Tax Code: C-
The best policy, needless to say, is getting rid of the corrupt tax system and replacing it with a simple and fair flat tax. That obviously wasn’t what Simpson and Bowles decided to propose, but the flat tax is a benchmark that allows us to judge the components of their plan.
They basically get two policies right and two policies wrong. If they were major league baseball players, a .500 average would make them superstars. In Dan Mitchell’s policy world, they’re below average.
Lowering Tax Rates: A-
This is the best feature of all the revenue provisions. The Simpson-Bowles report proposes a top tax rate of between 23 percent-28 percent, significantly below the current top rate of 35 percent (and well below the 39.6 percent top rate that is part of President Obama’s class-warfare proposal). The corporate tax rate also would be reduced.
Reducing Double Taxation: D
The plan would increase the double taxation of dividends and capital gains. The U.S. already has a very anti-competitive system and this would be a step in the wrong direction (though ameliorated by a lower corporate tax rate).
Limiting the Tax Burden: D-
The plan assumes that laws should be changed to increase the federal tax burden to 21 percent of GDP from the long-run average of 18 percent of economic output. That’s unfortunate, but it’s even worse than it seems since the tax burden already is scheduled to rise to record levels because of what’s called “real bracket creep.” The Simpson-Bowles tax hikes would be an additional burden on taxpayers.
Eliminating Corrupt Loopholes: B
The good news is that some deductions are curtailed and a few are eliminated. The best components are the repeal of the deduction for state and local income and property taxes. So no more indirect preferences that reward profligate states such as California and Illinois. The healthcare exclusion also is capped, which would be a nice step on the long – but important – task of dealing with the third-party payer crisis in the healthcare sector.
I’m not a fan of the Simpson-Bowles plan, but I do give them credit. They decided to focus on the wrong variable and they have some bad policies, but at least it’s a real proposal.
It’s not anywhere close to the Ryan budget, but it’s a heck of a lot better than what the Senate Democrats have produced (nothing) and what the President has proposed (kicking the can down the road).
Other nations, such as New Zealand and Canada, got great results when imposing multi-year periods of fiscal restraint. Certainly it’s not asking too much to expect American lawmakers to exercise similar levels of prudence?
___________
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
Gun control does not make since unless you suspend your reasoning ability. There are so many examples that show how silly gun control is. Since you are from Chicago and have seen how much gun control laws have failed there, you should know this best of all.
Well, there seems to be a never-ending supply of good material supporting the Second Amendment. Let’s start with this set of dueling signs. You may notice a common theme between the thinking of the guy on the right and the thinking of the guy who owns this vehicle.
What’s the opposite of a gun-free zone? Well, it’s a place that thugs and crazies avoid when deciding to go on a killing spree.
Last but not least, ask yourself what you would prefer if one of your kids was trapped in a building with a nutcase. I’ll take the option on the top of this image.
P.S. I was disappointed but not surprised by Obama’s rabid response and Romney’s milquetoast response to the question about “assault weapons” in the last debate. John Lott is the go-to guy on that issue, as you can from this analysis.
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
Again we have another shooting and the gun control bloggers are out again calling for more laws. I have written about this subject below and on May 23, 2012, I even got a letter back from President Obama on the subject. Now some very interesting statistics below and a cartoon follows. (Since this just hit the […]
“Feedback Friday” Letter to White House generated form letter response June 22, 2012(part B) on Healthcare (part 11) This letter from President Obama was a response to a letter I wrote that was both emailed and mailed to President Obama and the emailed version included this video below: Below are the subjects that President Obama or his […]
The Colorado tragedy has got a lot of people talking about gun control again. Here are some facts for you from Dan Mitchell’s blog. Assault Weapons: Facts vs. Fiction July 28, 2012 by Dan Mitchell It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that John Lott has changed the national debate on gun control. His rigorous […]
John Stossel report “Myth: Gun Control Reduces Crime Sadly another mass murder happened last night. This time it was at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Colorado. Over 50 people were shot by a gunman and many died as the Arkansas Times reported. This will start the gun control debate again and […]
John Stossel report “Myth: Gun Control Reduces Crime 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 […]
Published on Apr 19, 2012 by NRAVideos Cam Edwards talks to Katie Pavlich from Townhall about her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up – NRA News – April 18, 2012. _______________ Scribecast: Katie Pavlich on the Scandal of Operation Fast and Furious Rob Bluey April 28, 2012 at […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on May 23, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. Great post […]
I really like this post by Dan Mitchell: Will You Be Able to Protect Your Family if Politicians Destabilize Society? December 5, 2011 by Dan Mitchell About a week ago, I wrote that people in western nations need the freedom to own guns just in case there are riots, chaos, and social disarray when welfare states […]
Great post from Dan Mitchell: The Best Poster I’ve Ever Seen on Gun Control, Without Rival April 19, 2010 by Dan Mitchell This image really captures the essence of the issue. Share this with your statist friends and maybe they’ll begin to understand.
The stimulus program did not help, but getting government out of the way would!!!! Take a look at this great article that goes over several examples through history.
The great Ronald Reagan famously said (and I am paraphrasing, since I do not remember the exact phrase) that the most dangerous words in the English language were “I am from Washington and I am here to help you.”
Those are very wise words, especially when we think of the damage politicians have done because of their impulse to “do something” when the economy stumbles. The problem is not that there is nothing that needs to be fixed. The problem is that the crowd in Washington is far more likely to make things worse rather than better.
And who better to explain this than Thomas Sowell.
Sowell starts his most recent column by explaining that politicians who want to “do something” almost always want to expand the burden of government spending, but he notes that this approach has meant deeper recessions and more economic suffering. And he cites Warren Harding as an example of a President who rejected the notion that bigger government was some sort of economic elixir.
…you might think that the economy requires government intervention to revive and create jobs. It is Beltway dogma that the government has to “do something.” History tells a different story. For the first 150 years of this country’s existence, the federal government felt no great need to “do something” when the economy turned down. Over that long span of time, the economic downturns were neither as deep nor as long lasting as they have been since the federal government decided that it had to “do something” in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which set a new precedent. One of the last of the “do nothing” presidents was Warren G. Harding. In 1921, under President Harding, unemployment hit 11.7 percent — higher than it has been under President Obama. Harding did nothing to get the economy stimulated. Far from spending more money to try to “jump start” the economy, President Harding actually reduced government spending.
Can we learn any lessons from Harding’s anti-Keynesian approach? Assuming we want more growth and less unemployment, the answer is yes (and we can also learn the lesson that Hoover was a moronic statist from the very beginning).
President Harding deliberately rejected the urging of his own Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, to intervene. The 11.7 percent unemployment rate in 1921 fell to 6.7 percent in 1922, and then to 2.4 percent in 1923. It is hard to think of any government intervention in the economy that produced such a sharp and swift reduction in unemployment as was produced by just staying out of the way and letting the economy rebound on its own. Bill Clinton loudly proclaimed to the delegates to the Democratic National Convention that no president could have gotten us out of the recession in just one term. But history shows that the economy rebounded out of a worse unemployment situation in just two years under Harding, who simply let the market revive on its own, as it had done before, time and time again for more than a century.
Allow me to actually quibble with what Sowell wrote. Harding didn’t “let the market revive on its own.” He helped the economy grow faster by shrinking the federal budget. As Jim Powell explained in National Review, “Federal spending was cut from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921 and $3.2 billion in 1922.”
That’s a stunning statistic, akin to cutting more than $1.5 trillion from today’s bloated federal budget.
Something similar happened under Ronald Reagan. Unemployment peaked at 9.7 percent early in the Reagan administration. Like Harding and earlier presidents, Reagan did nothing, despite outraged outcries in the media. The economy once again revived on its own. Three years later, unemployment was down to 7.2 percent — and it kept on falling, as the country experienced twenty years of economic growth with low inflation and low unemployment. The Obama party line is that all the bad things are due to what he inherited from Bush, and the few signs of recovery are due to Obama’s policies beginning to pay off. But, if the economy has been rebounding on its own for more than 150 years, the question is why it has been so slow to recover under the Obama administration.
By the way, Sowell also could have mentioned what happened in the United States immediately after World War II. The Keynesians were predicting a return to depression because of big reductions in government spending and the demobilization of millions of troops. But as Richard Vedder and Jason Taylor explained for the Cato Institute, the economy quickly adjusted and rebounded precisely because politicians didn’t revive the New Deal (and, as you can see from this video, President Reagan understood this bit of economic history).
Sowell also explains how FDR made a bad situation worse in the 1930s.
A great myth has grown up that President Franklin D. Roosevelt saved the American economy with his interventions during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But a 2004 economic study concluded that government interventions had prolonged the Great Depression by several years. Obama is repeating policies that failed under FDR.
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
You are the one that people will hold responsible for the economy not growing fast enough. Don’t you agree with these two following statements?
If you lower taxes on the job creators then you will get more businesses starting up and more jobs created. If you raise taxes on the job creators then guess what you get? The answer is France.
Ayn Rand’s famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, tells the story of what happens when society’s most productive people go on strike because they don’t want to subsidize the looters and moochers.
I won’t give away the plot, but one interesting twist in the story is when government officials realize that they need some people to produce. Otherwise, as the former President of Brazil acknowledged in real life, there’s nothing to redistribute.
As French President François Hollande outlined new taxes and spending cuts while promoting reforms to turn the economy around – word leaked out that France’s wealthiest man, Bernard Arnault, was heading for Belgium in a rumored tax dodge. At first, the timing could not appear to have been worse for the national morale and Mr. Hollande. …he will hit those with direct salaries over 1 million euros ($1.3 million) with a 75 percent tax. The French have not forgotten the national shame when British Prime Minister David Cameron told the world from Mexico in early summer that London was “rolling out the red carpet” for wealthy French seeking tax havens. Yet, instead, in a national spasm of pique, France spent all day making accusations of “traitor” and “ingrate” at the rich guy – Mr. Arnault, worth $41 billion. …The anti-Arnault frenzy spurred far-left guru Jean-Luc Mélenchon to call him a “parasite,” and far-right darling Marianne Le Pen to proclaim “scandalous” what appears to be a financial exile. A screaming headline in Libération – “Get Lost You Rich Idiot”… Hollande yesterday said the fashion tycoon, who also left France for the US during the last Socialist government of François Mitterand, “should have measured what it means to apply for citizenship to another country. In this period, we need to appeal to patriotism.”
What is remarkable, though, is the way French politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens (presumably of the moocher variety) have viciously attacked Mr. Arnault.
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
I wish Romney had reworded his comment on the 47%. It is true that our country is getting too dependent on the government, but it could have been handled differently. I don’t think he meant it like you said he did either!!!
Mitt Romney is catching a lot of flak for his surreptitiously recorded remarks about 47 percent of voters automatically being in the Obama column because they don’t pay federal income tax and thus see themselves as beneficiaries of big government.
To augment on those remarks, here’s where Romney was wrong.
Yes, we have almost half of households not paying federal income tax, and I recognize that there’s a risk on an unhealthy political dynamic if people begin to think they get government for free, but those people are not necessarily looking for freebies from government. Far from it. Many of them have private sector jobs and believe in self reliance and individual responsibility. Or they’re students, retirees, or others who don’t happen to have enough income to pay taxes, but definitely don’t see themselves as wards of the state.
If Romney wanted to be more accurate, he should have cited the share of households receiving goodies from the government. That number also is approaching 50 percent and it probably is much more correlated with the group of people in the country who see the state as a means of living off their fellow citizens. But even that correlation is likely to be very imprecise since some government beneficiaries – such as Social Security recipients – spent their lives in the private sector and are taking benefits simply because they had no choice but to participate in the system.
Moreover, there are some people who pay tax and don’t receive programmatic benefits, yet are part of the proverbial moocher class. Many government bureaucrats obviously would be on that list, as would some union members, trial lawyers, etc.
However, even though Romney picked the wrong statistic and overstated the implications, he indirectly stumbled on a key issue. As seen in both BIS and OECD data, the U.S. is at risk of Greek-style fiscal chaos at some point in the not-too-distant future because of a rising burden of government spending.
I have no idea what share of the population today actually is part of the dependency class that Mitt Romney inarticulately described, but I don’t think I’m going out on limb to say that it has grown during the Bush-Obama years and it will continue to expand.
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
When I was became interested in public policy, I thought Jimmy Carter was the epitome of a bad President. But as I began to learn economics, I realized that Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson also were terrible and belong in the Hall of Fame of bad Presidents.
Or I guess we should call it a Hall of Shame (you can click on the image to see my selections).
Whatever we call it, I’m now at the point where I realize that Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt are the charter members. Why? Well, because they were the first Presidents to reflect the progressive ideology.
More specifically, they shared the ideology of the progressive movement, which saw a powerful and activist central government as a force for good – a radical departure from the views of America’s Founding Fathers, who hoped that the Constitution would protect people by keeping government very small.
Not surprisingly, Barack Obama is in that “progressive” tradition, even to the point of attacking the views of the Founding Fathers in a recent speech at Ohio State University.
I commented on this issue in this Fox News segment.
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Why Citizens Should Distrust Washington
That short clip only scratches the surface.
For more detail, here are some excerpts from a column by Andrew Napolitano. Like me, he isn’t impressed by the President’s statolatry.
It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority… And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny. Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. …Thomas Jefferson…warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.” …The reason Obama likes government and the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us. …Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and questioned. Government is essentially the negation of liberty.
Napolitano also warns against majoritarianism in his column, which is music to my ears.
Though I’m not sure our battle today is with majoritarianism or the progressive ideology.
Our real challenge is redistributionism. Far too many people think it is okay to use the coercive power of government to obtain unearned benefits. And that’s true whether the benefits are food stamps or bailouts.
Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 16, 2010http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/16/new-video-pork-filled-spending-bill-just-… Despite promises from President Obama last year and again last month that he opposed reckless omnibus spending bills and earmarks, the White House and members of Congress are now supporting a reckless $1.1 trillion spending bill reportedly stuffed with roughly 6,500 earmarks. ________________________ Below you see an […]
Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 16, 2010http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/16/new-video-pork-filled-spending-bill-just-… Despite promises from President Obama last year and again last month that he opposed reckless omnibus spending bills and earmarks, the White House and members of Congress are now supporting a reckless $1.1 trillion spending bill reportedly stuffed with roughly 6,500 earmarks. ________________________ Below you see an […]
President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton attending the Dinner Honoring the Nation’s Governors. 2/22/87. ronald reagan debates walter mondale in 1984 Presidential race second clip Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation wrote an excellent article on Ronald Reagan and the events that transpired during the Reagan administration, and I wanted to share it […]
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN trailer Uploaded on Dec 27, 2007 The Orpheum Film Series will present a special laughs-and-scares double-feature for Halloween, featuring both James Whale’s original 1931 “FRANKENSTEIN” and Mel Brooks’ 1974 send-up, “YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN”. The fun starts at 7pm on Halloween night, October 31! ________________________________ Authentic Frontier Gibberish young frankenstein – deleted scene 4 – […]
Barack Obama would lose badly to Ronald Reagan!!! The Spirit of Reagan Is Still With Us: The Gipper Crushes Obama in Hypothetical Matchup April 13, 2013 by Dan Mitchell Barack Obama has stated that he wants to be like Reagan, at least in the sense of wanting to be a transformational figure. But almost certainly he has […]
I never thought I’d be quoting Chuck Norris about Obama’s tax policy, but he has a nice rant that includes a collection of the President’s more offensive statements.
Sort of akin to the list I put together in this post (which also includes some preposterous statements by Secretary of State Clinton).
Obama claims to support free enterprise, self-reliance and individual initiative, but his actions say otherwise. He has forced on America a federal takeover of health care, increased oppressive regulation of private business and sustained massive government spending, and he has expanded our nation’s welfare rolls by 32 percent. He even attacks corporations while accepting campaign funds from the same ventures he condemns. (Ironically, Obama has accepted nearly $120,000 from Bain Capital executives, is the top recipient of funds from BP, has investments in Chinese companies and through a Cayman Islands trust, and staffed his own Cabinet with wealthy CEOs.) In 2008, Obama famously told Joe the Plumber of his plans to confiscate money from small businesses: “It’s not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you — that they’ve got a chance at success, too. … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” In 2010, he arrogantly remarked, “I do think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” In July, Obama attacked business again, saying, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (As I explained in an earlier column, that “somebody” to whom Obama referred was in fact the federal government.) In other acts of class warfare, the president embraced the anarchist Occupy movement, pitted labor unions that heavily fund his campaign against the private sector and blatantly condemned capitalism. Meanwhile, Obama likes to say his tax increases would affect only “millionaires” and “billionaires,” but the actual hikes would hit couples with incomes of $250,000 or higher.
The final point about disingenuous use of the English language seems trivial, but shouldn’t. We’re so used to politicians lying that we give them a pass for medium-level dishonesty.
President Obama and other politicians are advocating higher taxes, with a particular emphasis on class-warfare taxes targeting the so-called rich. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains why fiscal policy based on hate and envy is fundamentally misguided. For more information please visit our web page: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org.
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Obama’s commencement speech at Ohio State on Sunday would have perplexed the Founders.
Civic education in America took a hit on Sunday when President Obama, giving the commencement address at The Ohio State University, chose citizenship as his theme. The country’s Founders trusted citizens with “awesome authority,” he told the assembled graduates. Really?
Actually, the Founders distrusted us, at least in our collective capacity. That’s why they wrote a Constitution that set clear limits on what we, as citizens, could do through government.
Mr. Obama seems never to appreciate that essential point about the American political order. As with his countless speeches that lead ultimately to an expression of the president’s belief in the unbounded power of government to do good, he began in Columbus with an insight that we can all pretty much embrace, at least in the abstract. Citizenship, Mr. Obama said, is “the idea at the heart of our founding—that as Americans, we are blessed with God-given and inalienable rights, but with those rights come responsibilities—to ourselves, to one another, and to future generations.”
Getty ImagesPresident Obama giving the commencement address to the graduating class of The Ohio State University on Sunday in Columbus, Ohio.
Well enough. But then he took that insight to lengths the Founders would never have imagined. Reading “citizenship” as standing for the many ways we can selflessly “serve our country,” the president said that “sometimes, we see it as a virtue from another time—one that’s slipping from a society that celebrates individual ambition.” And “we sometimes forget the larger bonds we share, as one American family.”
Not for nothing did he invoke the family, that elemental social unit in which we truly are responsible to one another and to future generations—by law, by custom, and, ideally, in our hearts. But only metaphorically is America a family, its members bound by tendrils of intimacy and affection. Realistically, the country is a community of individuals and private institutions, including the family, with their own interests, bound not by mutual love but by the political principles that are set forth in the Constitution, a document that secures and celebrates the freedom to pursue those interests, varied as they might be.
Alas, that is not Mr. Obama’s vision. “The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government,” he went on, “the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone.” And what “big and important things” cannot be done except through government? On the president’s list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans “chose to do these things together,” he added, “because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.”
Notice that twice now Mr. Obama has invoked “individual ambition,” and not as a virtue. For other targets, he next counseled the graduates against the “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works.”
The irony here should not go unnoticed: The opponents that the president disparages are the same folks who tried to save the country from one of the biggest pieces of gum now in the works: Mr. Obama’s own health-care insurance program, which today is filling many of its backers with dread as it moves toward full implementation in a matter of months.
None of that darkens Mr. Obama’s sunny view of collective effort. What does upset him, still, is the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis: “Too many on Wall Street,” he said, “forgot that their obligations don’t end with their shareholders.” No mention of the Federal Reserve, or Fannie Mae, FNMA +7.07%Freddie Mac, FMCC +8.80% the Community Reinvestment Act, or the many other “big and important things” government undertook before the crisis hit, things that explain the disaster far better than any Wall Street greed. None of that fits in Mr. Obama’s morality play. For that matter, neither do the Constitution’s checks and balances. When the president laments that “democracy isn’t working as well as we know it can,” he is not talking about those big, misbegotten public projects but about the Washington gridlock that has frustrated his grander plans.
From George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, presidents sought mostly to administer the laws that enabled citizens to live their own lives, ambitiously or not. It would have been thought impertinent for a president to tell a graduating class that what the country needs is the political will “to harness the ingenuity of your generation, and encourage and inspire the hard work of dedicated citizens . . . to repair the middle class; to give more families a fair shake; to reject a country in which only a lucky few prosper.”
A more inspiring message might have urged graduates not to reject their own country, where for two centuries far more than a lucky few have prospered under limited constitutional government—and even more would today if that form of government were restored.
Mr. Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies.
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There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
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