Tag Archives: Business

Videos

Can Michele Bachmann give the mid-term voters what they want?

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Michele Bachmann

Well, this left-wing Washington Post article explains what the mid-term voters voted for when they elected so many Republicans. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Americans’ agenda is simple. In broad terms, they want the government to spur job growth, but not by subsidizing more government jobs with taxpayer dollars. They want Washington to balance the budget and reverse the growing influence of government on daily life. They want the government to encourage success, allow failure, punish those who break the law – and then get out of the way. And above all, they want politicians to follow through on their promises, even if that means tempering those promises in the first place.

They also show clear support for the following five ideas:

  1. Balance the budget as quickly as possible through meaningful spending reductions, a hard spending cap and a constitutional amendment so that it never gets unbalanced again.
  2. Eliminate all earmarks until the budget is balanced, then require a two-thirds vote by Congress for future earmark legislation.
  3. Keep taxes down by requiring supermajorities for increases, and eventually enact tax reform with a simple, low, fair rate that drastically reduces the length of the IRS code.
  4. Create a blue-ribbon task force that engages in a complete, line-by-line forensic audit of federal agencies and programs to end waste and reduce red tape and bureaucracy.
  5. And require Congress to provide specific constitutional authorization for every bill it passes so that the government stays within the boundaries imagined by the founders.

One more thing: Voters want their representatives home in their districts and holding monthly town halls. The worst strategic mistake House Democrats made this year was canceling scores of public meetings, denying their constituents the chance to be heard. Hell hath no fury like a voter silenced, so the voters spoke in unison on Election Day.

I’ve found that each of these policies has at least 60 percent public support, so if you agree with most of them, it means you’re in the American mainstream. It also means that – wait for it – you agree with the tea party.

These points come directly from the tea-party-backed “Contract From America,” a document compiled from and voted on by the various tea party organizations and promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group. This governing agenda is supported not only by conservatives, but also by largely nonideological, anti-political voters in the middle.

Now let’s see what Michele has to say about it:

You can see a much sharper version of the video at Gateway Pundit.

Commentary

Harvard economist says stimulus was designed to reward Democrat constituencies

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EVERYONE  PLEASE GO VOTE TODAY! (NOVEMBER 2nd, 2010)

Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute comments on a new published paper by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, which explains why the stimulus failed to stimulate the economy and to create more jobs.

The paper is here. (PDF)

Excerpt:

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron explains why the $800 billion stimulus package failed in a recent article.

What’s interesting about Dr. Miron’s critique is that he shows how the stimulus was a failure even if you take for granted liberal assumptions about economic policy (such as Keynesian economic theory), since it was so badly designed and executed that it failed to achieve its goals, spending wastefully while failing to revive the economy.  Indeed, the stimulus was so poorly tailored to the economy (and the goal of reducing unemployment) that Miron concludes that it was designed to reward politically connected “constituencies” and special-interest groups, like public-employee unions, rather than being focused on ”economic stimulus.”

Other Harvard economics professors like Robert Barro have also criticized the stimulus package. Barro called it “the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s.”  Former Obama economic advisor Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor who is a big believer in stimulus packages in principle, said that the stimulus designed by Obama and congressional Democrats was “poorly done”

Much stimulus money has been wasted.  It has gone to prisoners and dead people, wasteful welfare spending, abandoned bridges to nowhere, and unnecessary government buildings.  The stimulus subsidized foreign green jobs and wiped out jobs in America’s export sector.

The “’stimulus’ is not the road to economic recovery. It’s the problem, not the solution, writes Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon L. Smith.” Other Nobel Laureates like Gary Becker have also criticized the stimulus package.  200 economists signed a statement publicly opposing the stimulus package in an ad published in the Washington Post and New York Times.

So the stimulus bill was a failure because it was not designed to grow the economy or create jobs.

What was the real purpose of the stimulus bill?

George Mason University professor Veronique de Rugy looked at recovery.org and found that Democrat districts got more stimulus money than Republican districts.

Here’s the first chart:

Stimulus spending by voting district affiliation
Stimulus spending by voting district affiliation

She writes:

…based on my new analysis of the Recovery.org data, Democratic districts are getting 1.8 times more money on average than Republican districts. Using Recovery.gov data, and cleaning it up seriously to be able to use it, we find that Republican districts are getting on average $260.6 million in stimulus awards while democratic districts are getting on average $471.5 million. The average is award per district is $385.9 million.

Interestingly, my data also confirms that the stimulus funds are not allocated based on unemployment rates or even variations in unemployment rates. So basically,  if the administration believes that government spending can create jobs, the allocation of the funds doesn’t show it.

And here’s the second chart showing which government departments got stimulus money.

Stimulus spending by government department
Stimulus spending by government agency

She writes:

Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education (see chart).  Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.

[…]A third of all union jobs are in Education

33 percent of the education industry is unionized

The union boss, Andy Stern, was appointed to be on the president’s debt commission.

The stimulus bill was never about stimulating the economy. It was about rewarding Democrat special interest groups. Remember, people who disagree with Obama are his “enemies”. And that means he isn’t there to govern for all the people equally. He’s there to reward his people. With Your Money.

Commentary

Mark Steyn explains the root cause of America’s massive debt

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Mark Steyn says that the spending and debt is just the symptom of a deeper character issue. (H/T The Way The Ball Bounces)

Excerpt:

And, without serious course correction, America is doomed. It starts with the money. For dominant powers, it always does – from the Roman Empire to the British Empire. “Declinism” is in the air these days, but for us full-time apocalyptics we’re already well past that stage. In the space of one generation, a nation of savers became the world’s largest debtors, and a nation of makers and doers became a cheap service economy.

[…]At the lower end, Americans are educated at a higher cost per capita than any nation except Luxembourg in order to do minimal-skill checkout-line jobs about to be rendered obsolete by technology. At the upper end, America’s elite goes to school till early middle age in order to be credentialed for pseudo-employment as $350 grand-a-year diversity consultants (Michelle Obama) or in one of the many other phony-baloney makework schemes deriving from government micro-regulation of virtually every aspect of endeavor.

[…]As I said, the decline of great powers invariably starts with the money. When government spends on the scale Washington’s got used to, that’s not a spending issue, it’s a moral one. There’s nothing virtuous about “caring” “compassionate” “progressives” being caring and compassionate and progressive with money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born. That’s what “fiscal conservatives” often miss: This isn’t a green-eyeshade issue. Increasing dependency, disincentivizing self-reliance, absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions: The multitrillion-dollar debt catastrophe is not the problem but merely the symptom. It’s not just about balancing the books, but about something more basic and profound.

I think that the problem is that people, even conservatives, have bought into the idea that life is about having fun – having a good time. It’s like there is no way we ought to be, and that there is no respect for doing what it takes to be cautious, frugal and self-reliant. No one is trying to build a life apart from government, anymore. We are all just pursuing pleasurable experiences – and we want someone else to take care of us. We are not studying difficult subjects in school, not taking on difficult jobs, and we aren’t willing to delay gratification. Somehow, we have decided that it is government’s job to equalize life outcomes regardless of our decisions.

This speech by George Will highlights the dangers of dependency on government.