Monthly Archives: January 2012

News

Eric Metaxas endorses Rick Santorum, urges Gingrich and Perry to drop out

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Everyone knows Eric Metaxas – he is the author of great biographies of William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Wall Street Journal is talking about something Eric said on Sunday.

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry should drop out of the race before South Carolina’s Saturday primary, prominent conservative author Eric Metaxas said at a Sunday prayer breakfast.

Mr. Metaxas said he was optimistic some of the candidates competing for the state’s conservative voters would take themselves out of contention to allow South Carolinians to coalesce around an alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“It’s more likely that some of these wonderful men that are running will hear God’s voice and get out of the race before Saturday for the good of this country,” Mr. Metaxas, who has endorsed former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum,  said Sunday at a weekend gathering of the South Carolina Republican Party – a day after Mr. Santorum picked up strong support from conservative Christian groups. To be effective, the candidates must drop out before next Saturday’s contest, he said.

“This is the last exit before the bridge,” Mr. Metaxas said in an interview later. “They’ve been dividing the vote and so if they don’t do this now, they will harm the country because they can’t hang on to the bitter end.” Other presidential hopefuls, Texas Rep.Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, are less relevant, Mr. Metaxas said.

Mr. Santorum, who spoke at the breakfast after Mr. Metaxas, did not  explicitly urge other candidates to drop out, but appealed to voters to gather behind him, regardless of his perceived shot at seizing the White House.

“Will the people of South Carolina vote their conscience or will they let people…. tell you who’s the one you should choose because we have to win?” he asked.

Across the pond, Tim Stanley of the UK Telegraph is suggesting something similar.

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Commentary

Wall Street Journal: Rick Santorum is a supply-sider for the working man

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Just to refresh everyone, a proponent of supply-side economics is someone who believes that economic growth is driven more by innovation and entrepreneurship, and less by consumer spending and government stimulus spending. Supply-siders are all about creating wealth – by letting creative people have the money invent something valuable that consumers will want to buy – like an iPhone or a Kindle. Demand-siders are all about redistributing wealth – by having the government take from one group of people to give it to another group of people – like a Solyndra loan or a Chevy Volt subsidy.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal article about Rick Santorum, and where he fits on the scale.

Excerpt on his economic plan for businesses:

‘I’m someone who believes that making things creates wealth,” says Rick Santorum. It is primary day in New Hampshire, and the former Pennsylvania senator and current presidential candidate is describing his plan to slash corporate tax rates. To encourage companies to make things, he would completely eliminate the federal income tax on manufacturers. For all other businesses, the rate would be cut in half, to 17.5% from 35%.

[…]I ask if his corporate tax plan opens him up to criticism that he and President Obama are both favoring particular sectors of the economy, with Mr. Santorum picking manufacturing while Mr. Obama anoints green energy. “Oh, green energy is not a sector, I mean, come on. It’s like a half-dozen companies,” says Mr. Santorum.

Does this mean the Obama policy would be more legitimate if the president were favoring a larger group of Solyndras?

“He’s talking about handing out tax-free grants and loans,” says Mr. Santorum, who adds that his own plan “is a conservative approach. It’s supply-side. It’s cutting rates. Why are we cutting the corporate rate to 17.5% and making it simple? . . . Because we think it’s what’s necessary to grow the economy. . . . So if what’s necessary to grow the economy in one sector of the economy is different from another, then why should we have the same tax rate?” He argues that manufacturing has been hit particularly hard by the costs of regulation and litigation.

That’s pro-growth – we’re all going to have multiple job offers if he executes this plan – back to 4% unemployment like under Bush.

But what about his economic plan for taxpayers?

Mr. Santorum also believes that making babies creates wealth. It’s very difficult to grow an economy with a shrinking population, he says, pointing to the “demographic winter in Europe” as a cause of that region’s troubles. To help avoid that fate in the U.S., he wants to triple the per-child tax credit and also cut individual tax rates.

[…]On the personal tax side, rewarding child-rearing is consistent with the pro-life views of Mr. Santorum, who has seven children. But the case he makes seems to echo the analysis of some Wall Street economists, who view population growth as a critical advantage the United States will enjoy over China and the euro zone.

Mr. Santorum argues that the cost of Europe’s massive welfare states made it too expensive for young people to have families. He notes that with plummeting birth rates, many European countries have resorted to “baby bonuses” to try to reverse the tide, but the demographic picture remains bleak, while the costs of entitlement programs have exploded.

“Who are benefits promised to, overwhelmingly? Well, they’re promised to older people. And if you have a society like Europe that is upside down where there are a lot more older people than younger people, you have economic calamity,” he says. Asked if giving generous per-child credits will result in an even larger number of households exempt from the income tax and therefore amenable to more spending, he says his plan will drive growth and that, in turn, will bring more people on to the tax rolls. Elimination of deductions might also keep some people paying income taxes. He aims to balance overall taxes and spending at 18% of GDP. Spending has soared to 24% in the Obama era.

In a still-crowded field of non-Romneys trying to compete for the Republican nomination, Mr. Santorum could emerge in the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary as the man who can bring together the old Reagan coalition. A champion of cultural conservatives with a blue-collar background, he is also making the case for deep cuts in federal spending. His credibility on this last issue derives from the political price he paid for being an early promoter of entitlement reform.

And what about his plan for entitlement reform?

To prevent an economic calamity on this side of the Atlantic, he also proposes to cut $5 trillion from federal spending in five years. He calls the plan advanced by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan “a good starting point,” but he notes that few of the spending cuts happen in the first decade of the plan. Also, Mr. Santorum says that he wants to reform Social Security, not just Medicare and Medicaid. “I like the Ryan plan on the Medicare side. I don’t like waiting 10 years. I don’t like waiting 10 years on anything. I’ve also talked about Social Security.”

Has he ever, going back at least to the 1990s. Says Mr. Santorum, “Some guy just walked up to me at the [New Hampshire campaign] headquarters with a picture of me standing at the presidential podium in Kansas City, Missouri, in April 1998 when I went with Bill Clinton to talk about Social Security reform. I was the Republican lead on the issue,” he recounts, a dangerous proposition for someone representing Pennsylvania, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country. “And I won re-election after that, I might add.”

But after winning that 2000 election—his second Senate victory and his fourth straight win in Democratic territory—Mr. Santorum aggressively backed President George W. Bush’s call for allowing younger workers to own personal accounts.

It’s much easier to contemplate marriage when you 1) have multiple job offers and 2) you are keeping more of what you earn and 3) children are less of a burden on your income and 4) the government is not going to bankrupt those children with out of control entitlements. Marriage-minded men who want to start families will love this plan. It is a signal to men to start working, start marrying and start having children. Men think about these things, you know – losing our jobs, whether our children will be better off than we were, and so on. Santorum gets it – he has a pro-marriage, pro-family economic plan.

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News

Typical working UK mother spends 19 minutes per day with her children

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This is a re-post of a story I posted during the Christmas holidays, and I wanted to make sure everyone saw it.

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

According to the Office of National Statistics, a typical working mother spends as little as  19 minutes a day with her children; working fathers even less.

Time-neglect is what child psychologists call it, and they are studying its effect in middle-class families with increasing concern.

‘We are seeing some of the most privileged and yet in some ways the most neglected children in history,’ says child psychologist Dr Richard House, from the University of Roehampton.

We have some of the longest working hours in Europe and the recession is piling pressure on parents to be the last to leave the office. The guilt parents feel about this has consequences for when they are with their children.

‘Parents are reluctant to say “No” when they need to. They try to compensate by lavishing gifts on them. Neither is good for children’s well-being and healthy development,’ says Dr House.

His warnings follow a Unicef report that admonished British parents for trapping their children in a ‘cycle of compulsive consumerism’ by showering them with toys and designer labels rather than time.

[…]Unicef’s research also shows that what children actually want is more stable family time, as do many of the parents struggling to provide for them.

More than two-thirds of mothers work, and no one would want to see the progress women have made in the workplace reversed.

No one except the husbands and the children, but who cares about them?

More:

Historian Rebecca Fraser, mother of three daughters and author of A People’s History Of Britain, says that while nostalgia for the Fifties is understandable, the progress of women in education makes a return to that model unlikely.

‘In 1951, only one quarter of the tiny British student population (5 per cent of adults) were women, while in 2011 more than half the student population are female,’ she says.

‘With so many attending university, it is probably inevitable that most women are going to continue to want a career.’

[…]Child-care experts warn that time-neglect by high-achievers  can have serious consequences on their children.

Professor Suniya Luthar, a world expert in the welfare of children from affluent homes, has just completed research that shows the numbers of teenagers with significant mental health issues can be up to three times higher among those from high-achieving and prosperous families.

‘Traditionally, the view is that these children have it all, but the pressures on them are immense,’ says Professor Luthar.

‘The solution for any parent is to spend time with them.’

They also need clear boundaries, she says, something that ‘uber-working’ parents often are less able to enforce.

Every decision a woman makes has to be based on the plan for a marriage, family and children. Ideologies like feminism and socialism are incompatible with marriage and family. What is the use of a woman crying crocodile tears over her voluntary neglect of her own children when every decision she made prior to marriage and after marriage is based on an anti-family, pro-government worldview?

When a woman votes for government to tax her future family, regulate her husband’s employer, and restrict the family to purchasing  government services only (day care, public schools), then she must not complain when she is forced into the workplace and her child is handed to strangers to raise. That is the end result of being taken in by fashionable ideologies. When you oppose low taxes and small government, you oppose keeping money in the family. And that means that the wife will work, and the children will be raised by strangers. Women who vote for socialism, environmentalism, feminism, etc. are forcing themselves away from their future children.

Think before you act – don’t act on feelings and intuitions. If you want a marriage and a family, then vote accordingly.