The Legacy of the Blame America First Bunch

American exceptionalism has been a target of liberals in America for decades. They have eschewed the whole idea ever since the 1960’s and the rise of the hippy generation. That is the generation that spawned our president, Barack Obama and others who came under the spell of such as Saul Alinsky in Chicago. These days, there are many in our country who carry a burden of guilt feelings about supposed social errors America has committed. They would prefer to call attention to America’s mistakes than to promote the good things that America has done.

America has been a beacon of security in a very unstable world. Nancy and I have seen how very beneficial the presence of American soldiers has been in stabilizing volatile situations in Africa. We have all seen the benefits of promoting free enterprise and entrepreneurism in the economies of many countries. America has been exemplary in its demonstration of the rule of law in a society. We have shown the world that a stable government does not need to change by shooting the political leader. Our economy has shown how to produce goods and services leading to the highest standard of living in the world.

Some would say, however, that these demonstrated benefits of the American way of life have come accompanied by an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. Those are the ones who would denigrate the American ideal.

Mr. Obama has made it clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. He has shown this by his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street and capitalism, in general. He would give up the whole idea of American exceptionalism.

That policy should make the liberals happy, but they should realize that the Obama administration is mediocritizing the United States in the view of the rest of the world. If this keeps up, nobody will come to us for support and encouragement in a difficult world. His policy of downgrading the United States will not make the world a better and more secure place for the peoples to live.

Ludicrous Conclusion by Scientist

I have lately read a very interesting book by Ward and Brownlee entitled “Rare Earth.” The book is about the origins and life of the Earth. In it, the authors posit their belief that the factors that allow life of complex animals (including humankind) on Earth are so rare as to be practically impossible to reproduce elsewhere in the universe. They believe that very primitive life forms, such as bacteria and certain other one-celled organisms can probably live on other planets in the universe. However, they are convinced that complex life cannot exist on other planets in the universe. So far, so good. I can buy all that reasoning.

After describing all the complexity of animal and humankind development and all the factors that have allowed life to evolve on earth, the authors come to an astounding conclusion. They conclude that life so complex and of such a high order could not possibly have come about by means of an intelligent creator! !) They believe that all this interwoven and extremely complex world of ours must have come about by means of random chance and natural selection. It is unbelievable to me that such sophisticated and obviously skillful observers as these two could come to such a conclusion. I think the logical conclusion that would explain all this interactive complexity we see on the Earth would have had to arise as a result of a super-intelligent being. (Guess Who)

The authors point out that scientists have still not been able to synthesize a molecule of RNA or DNA. I would not be surprised to see, some day, that biochemists have finally synthesized that molecule; but of one thing I am sure: If scientists ever do accomplish this task, it will not be done as a matter of chance or “natural selection.” It will be accomplished by means of intelligence.

Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics

This blog post is largely excerpted from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal of 24 August 2011 written by Robert Barro, an Economics professor at Harvard.

John Maynard Keynes was an economist of the 1930’s who propounded the theory that if the national economy begins to flag and recession is in the offing, the Federal Government should pump more and more dollars into the system. This supposedly will stimulate the economy and cause the recession to go away. To Keynes, it mattered not if the government had the money in the bank to spend on things in the economy. All the government had to do in such a situation was to print more money and spend it. He thought that by adding or subtracting dollar bills from the system, the government could control the economy and prevent radical swings from recession on the one hand and inflation on the other. He thought that the wealth of the government did not depend on how much gold it had in the bank; it depended only upon the strength of the general economy.

This economic philosophy has governed the fiscal decisions of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal government since Franklin Roosevelt to the present, and it is very much alive and well in the present administration.

The present government has posited that it is necessary to transfer wealth to the people, in such things as food stamps, believing that this transfer of money will cause the people to use the influx of money to consume more and thereby stimulate food producers to make more food and hire more people, thereby increasing per capita income and stopping the recession.

“Regular economics” denies that this effect is a true conclusion of the matter. “Regular economists” believe that food stamps and other perks from the government only serve to motivate less work effort because the incentive to work is less if the government will just give the money away.

The problem with Keynesian economics is that there is no evidence that it works. Actually, we know something specific and concrete about the effect of one such transfer of deficit-sourced money. In 2009, the government raised the unemployment eligibility to 99 weeks—a significant increase from the previous eligibility period. After that, the long term unemployed (more than 26 weeks) jumped to over 44%. This pattern suggests that the dramatically longer unemployment insurance eligibility period adversely affected the labor market. The message people received was, “If they are going to give away the money, why should I work for it?”

I think the Obama Administration should rework their thinking about stimulus and transfer money. It is not working.

Where Are the Millionaires Who Are Paying the Taxes?

We hear a lot, these days, about the desirability of taxing the wealthy and leaving the lower income brackets out of the tax increase. But we need to also think about the little problem we have of paying for the activities of the government.

In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers who paid $178 billion in taxes; that was a decline of 39% in the number of millionaires. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 took a drop of 42%.

The millionaires who are left still pay a mountain of tax. Those who make $1 million accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims do not pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax.

Government has discovered that the easiest way to produce income equality is to destroy trillions of dollars of wealth owned by a small proportion of the population. However, those destroyed dollars are taken out of the investment pool of the country leaving everyone out of luck. Those dollars would otherwise be useful to increase jobs. Everyone loses, but the rich lose relatively more than the poor and the middle class. By that measure, if few others, Obamanomics has been a raging success.

This blog post was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 17 August 2011, page A14.

Are American Cities Headed For London?

We have all been appalled at the happenings in London and other British cities lately—riots by young hoodlums with no respect for working people or personal property. They have shown no regard for law and order; and they have not demonstrated any kind of work ethic that would have demonstrated their desire to earn a living. They have been largely young, unemployed people who live off government and social service handouts and bask in a very lenient justice system that lets them off easy when apprehended for miscreant behavior.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron has said, “There is something terribly wrong with our young people.” The London Daily Mail comments, “The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values, or aspirations….Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community….Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its future.”

Contributing causes for all this disorder are several in British society: First, is a failing educational system that leaves out basic training in educational subjects. The average Pole who immigrates to England speaks better English than these young rioters after being in the country only six months. Secondly, England is importing foreigners to fill service industries at an overwhelming rate. It is said that one can hardly find any restaurants or hotels with young Brits doing the service work—only foreigners work in such jobs. Social charges on labor and the minimum wage are so high that no employer can extract from the young unemployed Briton anything like the value of what it costs to employ him.

Does any of this sound familiar to American ears? Do any of these social ills pervade our inner cities?

Nancy and I have lately been attempting to teach reading skills and Bible truths to a group of inner city minority group youngsters in Cleveland, OH. Even though the curriculum has been very well thought out and the staff has been skilled at teaching, the results are abominable. These youngsters are so disruptive, ignorant, disrespectful, and parentally deprived, that it has been all but impossible to impart useful information into their minds. They remind us of little time bombs just waiting for some British-type riot to break out so they can participate.

America is needful of a renewal of her biblical work ethic. We need the moral fiber that can only be imparted by sound religious values. We need to return to our ethical, Christian, roots. Only when our people resolve within ourselves to address the social problems of our country in a meaningful way can we ever hope to avoid a quick trip to London!

The Economy In the View of an Ordinary Citizen

The country is awash in news and numbers about the national debt and the run-away spending habits of our government. I am not expert in fiscal affairs; but some things seem clear to me, which I would like to share with you.

We are all aware that the government has agreed among the various legislators to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. This is supposed to be accompanied by extensive cuts in federal government spending. (Who believes that?) In the past, we have seen the national debt rising by $3.95 billion every day since 9/28/07.

Now, a bond rating agency, Standard and Poor, has downgraded the value of our federal government’s promises to pay back its loans (bonds) to a AA+ rating. This means that S&P believes the government is becoming unable to pay back its loans.

We are told by our leaders that the answer to our financial problems is more spending “to stimulate the economy” and higher taxes to raise the money for the spending. Fortunately for us, there is an exact model for this kind of fiscal policy right in front of us. In 1997, Japan experienced the same problem as the United States is experiencing now; and they followed the same policy decisions as those being promoted by our leaders. The result for Japan was a horrendous double dip where its GDP contracted for five quarters and its banking system went down with it. As a result, the deficit, instead of contracting, increased by a whopping 68%! It took Japan ten years to climb out of this policy mistake. If Washington fails to learn from the Japanese mistake and stays the course along the August 2nd agreement toward fiscal consolidation when its private sector is still deleveraging, the probability of the US economy falling into double dip is not insignificant.

Right now, our national debt rests at $42,026 for every man, woman, and child in our country.

The President is urging us to disbelieve the predictions of Standard and Poor. He is still claiming that his old Keynesian policies of tax and spend are the answer to our debt problems. I would ask you: Whom do you believe the most, Standard and Poor or the federal government? Whom do you think has the most financial expertise? Well…I don’t think I, personally, have much doubt about the answer to those questions. The feds have lost credibility in my mind.

The administration is telling us that the whole problem is due to mistakes made by the Bush administration. But, I ask you, “Who was in charge of the money situation of this country when the excess spending took a marked increase?” The spending of the Obama Administration makes President Bush look like a tight wad.

As we look at this dismal situation, we should ask ourselves what we can do about it. THERE IS AN ELECTION COMING UP.

Teachers’ Union Fights Parents’ Rights

The American Federation of Teachers, the teacher’s union, recently posted on its web site an internal document bragging about how it successfully undermines parental power in education.

In 2010, California voters passed into law a right of parents to hold petition drives to force reform in failing public schools. Under California law, a 51% majority of parents can shake up a failing school’s administration or invite a charter operator to take over a school. This law is commonly referred to as the “parent trigger.” The merit and utility of this law became obvious; and earlier this year parents in the state of Connecticut tried to institute an identical measure for the parents of that state.

AFT published the name of their effort on their web site—it was called “How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger.” AFT began an intensive lobbying campaign to defeat the measure; and they succeeded by use of the subterfuge which they called “engaging the opposition.” They called together groups of legislators who were particularly vulnerable to union pressures and created a system of “school governance councils” to mediate the school problems instead of granting petition rights to parent groups. Interestingly, their conferences did not include any parent groups interested in promoting the petition process.

The AFT document on the web bragged that the name of the councils is “a misnomer: they are advisory and do not have true governing authority.”

It is obvious that the AFT does not want parental interference in their teaching and indoctrination activities in the public schools—never mind the quality of the education they are handing out.

Many are sympathetic with teachers because teachers are thought to be so underpaid. But according to the Department of Education statistics for 2007-2008, the average public school teacher brought in over $53,000 plus health insurance and retirement benefits. The Census Bureau reports that for 2008, the mean household income in the United States was $52,000.