Read the full article at:
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
WSJ: Immigrants and the GOP
The GOP's Presidential election defeat is opening up a debate in the party, with more than a few voices saying they are willing to rethink their views on immigration. This is good news, which means it's also a good moment to address some of the frequent claims from the anti-immigration right that simply aren't true, especially about Hispanics.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
What Do Young People Believe?
One of the most remarkable impressions of election night was seeing, in places like Times Square and the Obama campaign stadium in Chicago, crowds of young people, cheering, laughing, dancing, crying with joy over the result. Since these are the people who will have to live with the consequences of this election the longest, it is worth asking: what is it exactly that they are cheering? What do they believe?
Read the full article at Front Page Magazine.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Reflections on Elections
Why Obama Won
The GOP's Epic Senate Fail
Economy: Post-Election Firings and Layoffs Surge
What Does the Election Mean for Obamacare?
Business Rejects Obamacare Elections, as it is often said, have consequences. As a result of the president’s reelection, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will be fully implemented. Unsurprisingly, several businesses are looking for ways to avoid the costs associated with the law. Just as unsurprisingly, American leftists consider such efforts to keep one’s business profitable–or solvent–unseemly.
The Meaning of Yesterday's Defeat
Vote Data Show Changing Nation
The Tea Party Got It Right, Mitt Got It Wrong
After Election, GOP Openness to Immigration
The young voters who celebrated Obama's victory don't know that they are voting against their own interest, because although many may have advanced degrees, they are substantially uneducated.
By Gary Aminoff, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County
The GOP's Epic Senate Fail
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, lead by establishment Republicans hostile to the grassroots and to the Tea Party, promoted a slate of mediocre candidates.
By Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal
Economy: Post-Election Firings and Layoffs Surge
The victory by Barack Obama on election night has resulted in a huge wave of firings and layoffs all over America. A large number of businesses seem to have suddenly shifted into panic mode. The number of layoff announcements that we have seen in the last 48 hours has been absolutely shocking.
By Michael Snyder for Market Daily News
What Does the Election Mean for Obamacare?
The bad news is that many of the health care law’s serious effects were delayed until after the election. Ten of its 18 new tax hikes have yet to kick in. And there is still so much about the law that we don’t even know.
By Nina Owcharenko for The Heritage Foundation
Business Rejects Obamacare Elections, as it is often said, have consequences. As a result of the president’s reelection, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will be fully implemented. Unsurprisingly, several businesses are looking for ways to avoid the costs associated with the law. Just as unsurprisingly, American leftists consider such efforts to keep one’s business profitable–or solvent–unseemly.
By Arnold Ahlert for Front Page Magazine
The Meaning of Yesterday's Defeat
America is a deeply divided country with a center-left plurality. This plurality includes a vast number of citizens who describe themselves as moderates, but whose views on the issues are identical or similar to those that have historically been deemed liberal.
By John Hinderaker for Powerline Blog
¡Estimados Republicanos!
The GOP's immigration and Hispanic debacles.
The Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook
Vote Data Show Changing Nation
President Barack Obama's election victory exposed tectonic demographic shifts in American society that are reordering the U.S. political landscape.
The 2012 presidential election likely will be remembered as marking the end of long-standing coalitions, as voters regroup in cultural, ethnic and economic patterns that challenge both parties—but especially Republicans.
By Neil King Jr.
The Tea Party Got It Right, Mitt Got It Wrong
Mitt Romney won the primaries because he was electable. But, as it turned out, he really wasn’t electable after all. Not when the chief criteria of electability is having no opinion, no point of view and no reason to run for office except to win. Not when the chief criteria of being a Republican presidential nominee is being able to convince people that you’re hardly a Republican at all.
By Daniel Greenfield
After Election, GOP Openness to Immigration
The need to overhaul immigration laws has emerged as a rare area of agreement among leaders in both parties. The president wants to reward one of the voting blocs that helped him secure a second term, and Republicans are eager to make inroads with a constituency that seems to be moving away from them.
By Patrick O'Connor for the Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Why ObamaCare Will Fail
The failures of Medicare, Medicaid and socialized health care systems around the world are not accidents, rounding errors or bad luck of unanticipated complications. Rather, they are the inevitable, predicable result of forceful interference in the voluntary cooperation of free citizens. Obamacare will fail for the same reason that the Soviet Union failed: command-and-control economies cannot function rationally.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
'Hating Breitbart' movie opens
Andrew Breitbart reported the stories that the so-called mainstream media refused to touch because they did not fit the liberal-socialist-progressive agenda. He took no prisoners defending the smaller government and fiscal responsibility movement known as the Tea Party against scurrilous lies, echoed in the mainstream media, that the movement was a closet racist white supremacist club.
The movie 'Hating Breitbart' documents his one man war for truth up until his untimely death earlier this year. In theatres now. Go see it.
Resources:
The movie 'Hating Breitbart' documents his one man war for truth up until his untimely death earlier this year. In theatres now. Go see it.
Resources:
Saturday, October 27, 2012
America's Medical Society defends Free Markets in Health Care
Here is another invaluable resource in the fight against a massive government takeover that attacks the wrong problems, harms more than it solves, and makes us all bankrupt subjects of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and czars.
Dr. Adam F. Dorin, M.D., MBA and Founder/CEO of America's Medical Society writes in the Washington Times:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Dr. Adam F. Dorin, M.D., MBA and Founder/CEO of America's Medical Society writes in the Washington Times:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Monday, October 01, 2012
Howard Hyde Speaking October 2 at SFVRC
Howard Hyde will be presenting October 2 at 7PM to the San Fernando Valley Republican Club (Gary Aminoff, President), which meets at Galpin Ford, Roscoe Blvd near the 405 in Van Nuys.
The topic is 'Republican Priorities, Strategies and the Hispanic Vote 2012'.
Here are a few related past articles:
The topic is 'Republican Priorities, Strategies and the Hispanic Vote 2012'.
Here are a few related past articles:
- Hispanic Voters, Immigration and the Republican Party
The Hard Right and Extreme Left both need to give way to the Sober Center
- Republicans and the Immigration Trap
The next elections are too important to sacrifice over illegal gardeners.
- Environmental Hoaxes and Immigration
Human beings living under liberty and the rule of law are the ultimate resource.
- Illegal Immigration, 1806 -2006
The Homestead Act of 1862 demonstrates how law can eventually catch up with reality.
- Answering the Critics of Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Advocates of immigration reform must take seriously the arguments of critics, explain why these arguments are incorrect and, if necessary, adapt legislation to address the concerns raised.
By Stuart Anderson
- Lost in Translation: GOP Struggles With Hispanics
The Hispanic Vote polls at 63% for Obama, 28% for Romney
By Neil King Jr.
- Alabama's Immigration Miss
Arizona-style anti-illegal immigration laws are backfiring.
By Jason Riley
- Scholarly studies on Immigration
The overriding impact of immigrants is to strengthen and enrich American culture, increase the total output of the economy, and raise the standard of living of American citizens.
The Cato Institute
- Is Immigration Good For America?
Today, the demise of limited government has altered the relation between the individual and the state. People, including immigrants, are much more dependent on the state. In this institutional setting, what are the implications for immigration?
The Cato Journal
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Congressman Mike Rogers on Obamacare
Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan speaks eloquently on the destruction wrought by Obamacare. See the video here:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Inconvenient Truth about Medical Care Supply and Demand
It offends the refined sensibilities of many high-minded people that crude law of the jungle should have any place in the sacred and transcendent fields of health, education, art and so on. But the laws of chemistry certainly apply to drugs and their effect on the body, so there is no rational reason to expect that economic laws shouldn’t apply to the organization and administration of health care too. If more people are clamoring for services that fewer people are providing, either the price of that service will go up or the availability will go down; a shortage, with queues, waiting lists, black markets and other forms of rationing will ensue (see: Canada and the UK).
That’s the law of Supply and Demand, and it’s real, it is of the fundamental nature of human action in society, and it is not subject to repeal via political legislation.
It also explains what is wrong with the health care market in the United States and elsewhere.
The practice of medicine involves a whole lot of math and science (something which our public school pupils and public government politicians are woefully deficient in) but at its core it is an art: an art of human and social interaction among doctor, family and patient; the whole patient, not just the pancreas; the patient’s family history, not just today’s symptoms; the patient’s personality type, psychological profile, relationships, work, nutrition, exercise, sleep and drug habits, not just ink bubbles on a chart. Only a highly trained and experienced doctor or nurse or other provider who is free to practice his/her craft without third-party interference can provide the most effective care.
When we need care badly, we want the best practitioners of the art caring for us and are willing to mobilize our resources to get them. And in the freest nation in the history of the world, there has never been greater quality care nor greater access to it by the most common of citizens.
Yet the government-sanctioned system for regulating healthcare services completely undermines this. In the bureaucratic calculus, a bypass operation is a bypass operation is a bypass operation, whether performed by a first-year intern or a 30-year world-renowned veteran. It has a code in the system and a price that Medicare is willing to reimburse, no more, no less, no qualifiers, no accounting for skill, experience, dexterity or judgment (above all no allowance or toleration for judgment!), no exceptions.
If all there were to medicine was the correct generic, commodity cookie-cutter treatment for the matching defined disease or condition, then no doctors would be required; only kindergarten-variety bureaucrats trained to put the square pegs into the square holes and the triangular pegs into the triangular holes.
Do I exaggerate? A physician who treats a patient according to his or her professional judgment differently from what the government-sanctioned protocol produced by the ‘embedded clinical decision supports’ (the computer that tells the doctor what to do) say (s)he should faces denial of reimbursement, second-guessing of his/her decision or worse. It is happening today with Medicare billings and pharmaceutical prescriptions, and it will explode tenfold when the Medicare model is applied to the entire population.
Under Obamacare, the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) may deny medicine, devices or treatments to Medicare patients that its ‘comparative effectiveness analysis’ algorithm deems unsatisfactory; that is, too costly (it’s about the cost to the agency, not the effectiveness to the patient). This is government ownership of your life.
It’s time to pull the plug on Obamacare.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
That’s the law of Supply and Demand, and it’s real, it is of the fundamental nature of human action in society, and it is not subject to repeal via political legislation.
It also explains what is wrong with the health care market in the United States and elsewhere.
The practice of medicine involves a whole lot of math and science (something which our public school pupils and public government politicians are woefully deficient in) but at its core it is an art: an art of human and social interaction among doctor, family and patient; the whole patient, not just the pancreas; the patient’s family history, not just today’s symptoms; the patient’s personality type, psychological profile, relationships, work, nutrition, exercise, sleep and drug habits, not just ink bubbles on a chart. Only a highly trained and experienced doctor or nurse or other provider who is free to practice his/her craft without third-party interference can provide the most effective care.
When we need care badly, we want the best practitioners of the art caring for us and are willing to mobilize our resources to get them. And in the freest nation in the history of the world, there has never been greater quality care nor greater access to it by the most common of citizens.
Yet the government-sanctioned system for regulating healthcare services completely undermines this. In the bureaucratic calculus, a bypass operation is a bypass operation is a bypass operation, whether performed by a first-year intern or a 30-year world-renowned veteran. It has a code in the system and a price that Medicare is willing to reimburse, no more, no less, no qualifiers, no accounting for skill, experience, dexterity or judgment (above all no allowance or toleration for judgment!), no exceptions.
If all there were to medicine was the correct generic, commodity cookie-cutter treatment for the matching defined disease or condition, then no doctors would be required; only kindergarten-variety bureaucrats trained to put the square pegs into the square holes and the triangular pegs into the triangular holes.
Do I exaggerate? A physician who treats a patient according to his or her professional judgment differently from what the government-sanctioned protocol produced by the ‘embedded clinical decision supports’ (the computer that tells the doctor what to do) say (s)he should faces denial of reimbursement, second-guessing of his/her decision or worse. It is happening today with Medicare billings and pharmaceutical prescriptions, and it will explode tenfold when the Medicare model is applied to the entire population.
Under Obamacare, the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) may deny medicine, devices or treatments to Medicare patients that its ‘comparative effectiveness analysis’ algorithm deems unsatisfactory; that is, too costly (it’s about the cost to the agency, not the effectiveness to the patient). This is government ownership of your life.
It’s time to pull the plug on Obamacare.
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Catholic Priest issues strong invocation against socialism
A catholic priest addressing the 2012 Colorado Republican State Assembly and Convention assails socialism for taking away, not just rights, but responsibilities of free people.
For a man representing an institution that has seemed all too willing to go along with the Democrat-party big government social welfare agenda, Fr. Andrew is a breath of fresh air.
Click below.
For a man representing an institution that has seemed all too willing to go along with the Democrat-party big government social welfare agenda, Fr. Andrew is a breath of fresh air.
Click below.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Milton Friedman on Socialized Medicine
With your Obamacare debate, get some wisdom from one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. We've been warned for decades. When will we learn?
Check out these videos and more:
Check out these videos and more:
A Time For Choosing, again
The more things change...
The particulars of political campaign issues change from cycle to cycle, but fundamental principles endure. In truth, there is nothing new under the sun.
As we contemplate the issues of the 2012 election, a speech from 1964 is as true today as it was then.
On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan, a former actor and Democrat (not yet Governor of California), addressed the Republican National Convention. It was his first nationally televised appearance.
Watch it and think: How few particulars of the speech would have to be changed to fit the present day, and how many of our problems today stem from not listening to him then.
The particulars of political campaign issues change from cycle to cycle, but fundamental principles endure. In truth, there is nothing new under the sun.
As we contemplate the issues of the 2012 election, a speech from 1964 is as true today as it was then.
On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan, a former actor and Democrat (not yet Governor of California), addressed the Republican National Convention. It was his first nationally televised appearance.
Watch it and think: How few particulars of the speech would have to be changed to fit the present day, and how many of our problems today stem from not listening to him then.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Obamacare is in Critical Condition on National Review Online
National Review Online has an in-depth blog dedicated to health care policy. Highly recommended.
Click below:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Click below:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Obamacare on Video
For our readers who prefer video, here are a few top selections on Obamacare:
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
- WSJ: Does the ObamaCare repeal vote matter?
243-176: More members of the House voted to repeal than had originally voted to pass, with 10 Democrats crossing over.
- Townhall Comedy: Chief Justice Roberts Offered a Job as the Conservative Commentator on MSNBC
- American Association of Physicians and Surgeons: Why ObamaCare must be repealed
How it can happen and what are the real answers. See also: http://aapsonline.org
- FoxNews: ObamaCare and the Road to Serfdom
John Stossel interviews Dr. Lee Hieb
- The Hill: GOP Rep. Gingrey: Health law like 'Boss Hogg'
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) compared the 2010 healthcare law to Boss Hogg, the crooked commissioner of the fictional Hazzard County, Ga., in the 1970s TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard."
- The Cato Institute: The Supreme Court's Obamacare Ruling: What Happens Next?
More Health care reform resources on the Obamacare page.
Sunday, July 08, 2012
Obamacare's Next Battle: November 2012
In November 2009 HHCapitalism.com published 121 Reasons to Reject Obama-Reid-PelosiCare. Many battles have been fought and lost since then, but this war is not over. With John Robert's tortured reasoning that defies common sense and insults the intelligence of non-law degree-holding Americans, citizens now know that their institutions cannot protect them from political power brokers unless they participate fully and excercize their constitutional rights (while they still have them) at the voting booth and in talking to their friends, neighbors, families and co-workers.
Candidates for office, campaign managers, activists and any citizen who wants to be thoroughy informed on this most critical issue may start here:
Candidates for office, campaign managers, activists and any citizen who wants to be thoroughy informed on this most critical issue may start here:
- CNN: Health care ruling can help Romney
William Bennett writes What the country thought was a debate over federal regulation of interstate trade has been transformed by Roberts into a debate over Congress' power to shape decisions through taxation.
- WSJ: A Strategy to Undo ObamaCare
Keith Hennessey writes: To push through key parts of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats used the 'reconciliation' process. A Republican president, House and Senate can use reconciliation to repeal them.
- The Cato Institute: Rarely Has Such a Smart Judge Written Such a Bad Opinion
John Robert's gain comes at the cost of Americans' liberties.
- WSJ: Romney's Tax Confusion
The candidate's response on the ObamaCare mandate reveals larger campaign problems.
- American Spectator: Time for One More Flip-Flop
Mitt Romney should admit his mandate was a mistake.
- The Hill: Fifteen governors reject or leaning against expanded Medicaid program
Elise Viebeck writes of a blow to President Obama’s promise of broader insurance coverage.
- WSJ: ObamaCare's Lost Tribe: Doctors
Daniel Henninger: The practice of medicine is the Obama health-care law's biggest loser.
- Townhall.com: IRS Gets Ready for Obamacare Implementation
Lorum Ipsum
- Washington Examiner: Odds long to undo health care law
Senator Mitch McConnell says it's hard to unravel something of the magnitude of the 2,700-page health care law.
- WSJ: What Hath the Supreme Court Wrought?
Letters to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal
- Times247.com: On Obamacare's 'silver lining' — there is none
Mark J. Fitzgibbons says the constitutional rule of law lost.
- National Review: Pfizer’s Political CEO
Without the clout in the pharmaceutical world of Jeff Kindler, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might never have passed. But the deal he cut ended up hurting his industry.
- Kaiser Heath News: Supreme Court
A compendium of articles relevant to this topic.
- AP/Washington Post: Beware the claims
Nothing in the law ensures that people happy with their policies now can keep them.
- The Cato Institute/National Review: The States Resist Obamacare
Michael D. Tanner writes that One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare was its 7–2 decision striking down the Obama administration’s attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid.
- Mises.org: Hospital of Cards
How did we get here?
- The Cato Institute: A Strange Constitutional Win
Who would have thought we could win our Commerce Clause challenge while the Affordable Care Act is upheld?
- Mises.org: Government Medical "Insurance"
We've been warned for decades about the encroachment of government power into medicine.
- The Cato Institute: ObamaCare's Now a Bigger Mess
Last week's Supreme Court ruling actually added another layer of cost, complexity and political contentiousness to the bill.
- Times247: Mandate seen pushing church out of health care
Many Catholics are wondering whether their religious freedoms will survive.
- The Cato Institute: Why the Obamacare Ruling Matters
Much of the political Left remains mystified by the health-care law’s continued unpopularity.
- Mises.org: The Devilish Principles of Hillarycare
Remember the Democrat's 1993 attempt? Ignore history and unchanging principles at your peril.
- WSJ: A Vast New Taxing Power
The Chief Justice's ObamaCare ruling is far from the check on Congress of right-left myth.
Monday, September 12, 2011
LearnLiberty.org: Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism
If you won't believe me, will you believe a Harvard professor?
Click the link below for an excellent short video.
LearnLiberty.org: Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism
Click the link below for an excellent short video.
LearnLiberty.org: Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Remembering 9/11: Capitalism under attack
Capitalism is not the same thing as large-scale heavy industry or tall, glorious skyscrapers. It is the everyday voluntary cooperation of free people in the marketplace; trade among friends, neighbors, suppliers and customers from the neighborhood to the world. Yet only capitalism in its most avanced form could produce the United States of America as we know it and everything that it has built, including one of capitalism's greatest testaments: the World Trade Center.
It is no random chance therefore that the fascist islamists chose to vent their rage on the twin towers. They represent everything that a backward, tribal, intolerant and ignorant mindset could hate: individual liberty, tolerance of differences, freedom of religion, interest understood as an exchange of different money values across time, equality of the sexes, private property and rule of law in the Western tradition.
The terrorists hate us for who and what we are. Capitalism works and offers hope to millions who flock to the shores of capitalist nations. Communism, fascism and fundamentalist islamic Sharia law offer only physical and mental prisons, torture chambers, privations and death to all but the most privileged elite.
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
It is no random chance therefore that the fascist islamists chose to vent their rage on the twin towers. They represent everything that a backward, tribal, intolerant and ignorant mindset could hate: individual liberty, tolerance of differences, freedom of religion, interest understood as an exchange of different money values across time, equality of the sexes, private property and rule of law in the Western tradition.
The terrorists hate us for who and what we are. Capitalism works and offers hope to millions who flock to the shores of capitalist nations. Communism, fascism and fundamentalist islamic Sharia law offer only physical and mental prisons, torture chambers, privations and death to all but the most privileged elite.
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Top Articles
- Remembering 9/11: Capitalism under attack
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
- Nothing To Do About Jobs
The one thing the government hasn't tried for at least 3 years is to get out of the way.
- Hispanic Voters, Immigration and the Republican Party
The Hard Right and Extreme Left both need to give way to the Sober Center
- A Well-Deserved Defeat for Leftism
The Left cannot admit that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.
- It's the Over-regulation, Stupid!
God help you if you don't do with your money what the Left thinks you ought.
- The Left’s Secret Debating Weapon: Shallowness
While the conservative assembles focused logic and facts, the Leftist sprays vacuous clichés in all directions.
- Is There Hope for Califrancia?
The Left kept California in 2010, so they own the bankruptcy.
- Republicans and the Immigration Trap
The next elections are too important to sacrifice over illegal gardeners.
- Environmental Hoaxes and Immigration
Human beings living under liberty and the rule of law are the ultimate resource.
- 121 Reasons to Reject Obama-Reid-PelosiCare
It's Unnecessary, it's destructive and it won't work.
- Bozo Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace committee humiliated the president. Does he know it?
- Public Billionaires vs. Private Millionaires
Why do politicians who command billions want us to envy and resent people who earn 1/20,000th as much?
- Illegal Immigration, 1806 -2006
The Homestead Act of 1862 demonstrates how law can eventually catch up with reality.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Nothing To Do About Jobs
The one thing the government hasn't tried for at least 3 years is to get out of the way.
Now that President Obama’s hope-and-change green job-creating juggernaut has flatlined (with 0% job growth in August and downward revisions for prior months), a reasonable question to ask is, what can governments do now?
The answer is that perhaps they can do the one thing they haven’t tried in at least 3 years, if not more: nothing. That is, governments can minimize their footprint on the economy, lighten regulations, cut tax rates (permanently), stop threatening ‘millionaires and billionaires’, banks, oil companies, non-union workers and the private sector in general and basically get out of the way of the people who would otherwise be creating the jobs.
For the fact is, governments and politicians, no matter how wise or worthy, don’t create jobs, on net balance. Even big, established business corporations don’t do it; they’ve lost almost 3 million net jobs in the US over the past decade.
Real job creation is the role of startup entrepreneurs: businessmen and women, investors and speculators with an assist from venture capitalists and private insurance companies. That’s right, the people most reviled on the Left as undeserving rich, racist polluting exploiters are in fact the ones from whom all prosperity flows (prosperity that has to be created before it may be distributed). The pudding is that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Waters & Co. are at the top of their game in crushing and suppressing these fatcat scum of the Earth, and the logical and inevitable outcome has come to pass, among which the worst spike in black teen unemployment in a generation: 47%.
Entrepreneurs put together business projects on their own account, without subsidies, privileges or prejudice, hoping to enjoy profits (which arrive years or decades after everyone else, including workers, have been paid) but having no guarantee against losses for failing to provide the optimum mix of high-quality low-priced products and services and well-compensated JOBS most urgently needed in the marketplace. When they fail, entrepreneurs lose their own money, not yours and mine, and they don’t indenture our grandchildren.
All the undue laws, regulations, taxes, red tape, lawsuits, threats, monetary manipulations and hostility toward profits that governments slap on the private sector, can only have the effect of raising the cost and risk of hiring people to prohibitive heights, resulting in the unemployment that we are suffering.
By ‘undue’ is meant those interventions which do not derive from governments’ legitimate role of preventing and punishing murder, robbery, theft, fraud, assault, rape, persecution and/or conspiracy. Does it really take tens of thousands of pages of laws, hundreds of agencies and 8 million unionized public-sector employees to do that?
Entrepreneurship doesn’t need to take direction from government in order to do the right thing for the economy. Whether the subject is food, clothing, shelter, minerals, energy, clean air, medicine, university faculty parking spaces or JOBS, the same entrepreneurial cycle pattern emerges: Scarcity leads to rising market prices, which signal entrepreneurial opportunity; there’s money to be made (‘there’s gold in them thar hills!’). Investors and speculators advance their own savings to fund research and development to invent new ways to extract and produce more, to drill deeper under the ocean floor using only one tower where five had been required before, to design new industrial and technological processes, to genetically engineer seeds that multiply crop yields, to discover new life-prolonging and enhancing miracle drugs, etc. Many entrepreneurs fail, at their own expense (not the taxpayer’s) but others succeed, and the result is profits for them and abundant products and services at prices for you and I that are lower than before the ‘crisis’ that started the cycle.
The only force capable of stopping this virtuous cycle is… force: Prohibiting the market to function; controlling wages and/or prices so that signals and information about the true relative abundance and scarcity do not get transmitted properly; awarding contracts and employment positions based on political favoritism, nepotism or ethnic preferences rather than objective competence and qualifications; forbiding an aerospace company from opening a new plant in a right-to-work state because it doesn’t please the Big Labor bosses; barring the exploitation of available resources (EPA); destroying the U.S. IPO market via Sarbanes-Oxley; forcing taxpayers to prop up firms that have failed; failing to enforce the rule of law consistently and fairly; bringing criminal charges against oil companies over the death of a few birds while giving the windmill industry a free slaughter pass; paying people increasingly generous benefits for not working, out of the pockets of those that are; wasting taxpayer money on ‘bridges to nowhere’ on the ludicrous principle that government spending somehow multiplies economic benefits above what that same money would accomplish in private hands from which it was taken…and on and on. Instead of being the custodian of individual liberty and private property rights, government has metastasized into a giant job-killing machine.
The great economic revolutions that began in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and were carried forward in the United States in the 19th and 20th , were the result of liberty, of government permitting it to happen, not interfering, not doing what most governments to this day still do, which is to stomp on and crush any force or individual that competes with their power and status. The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner the jobs engine will be revived.
To quote Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Magazine: “Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little sub sector of the American economy. They are the whole game”. Or Tim Kane of the Kaufman Foundation: “When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Government has a whole lot of nothing to do about it. May it get started right away.
Now that President Obama’s hope-and-change green job-creating juggernaut has flatlined (with 0% job growth in August and downward revisions for prior months), a reasonable question to ask is, what can governments do now?
The answer is that perhaps they can do the one thing they haven’t tried in at least 3 years, if not more: nothing. That is, governments can minimize their footprint on the economy, lighten regulations, cut tax rates (permanently), stop threatening ‘millionaires and billionaires’, banks, oil companies, non-union workers and the private sector in general and basically get out of the way of the people who would otherwise be creating the jobs.
For the fact is, governments and politicians, no matter how wise or worthy, don’t create jobs, on net balance. Even big, established business corporations don’t do it; they’ve lost almost 3 million net jobs in the US over the past decade.
Real job creation is the role of startup entrepreneurs: businessmen and women, investors and speculators with an assist from venture capitalists and private insurance companies. That’s right, the people most reviled on the Left as undeserving rich, racist polluting exploiters are in fact the ones from whom all prosperity flows (prosperity that has to be created before it may be distributed). The pudding is that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Waters & Co. are at the top of their game in crushing and suppressing these fatcat scum of the Earth, and the logical and inevitable outcome has come to pass, among which the worst spike in black teen unemployment in a generation: 47%.
Entrepreneurs put together business projects on their own account, without subsidies, privileges or prejudice, hoping to enjoy profits (which arrive years or decades after everyone else, including workers, have been paid) but having no guarantee against losses for failing to provide the optimum mix of high-quality low-priced products and services and well-compensated JOBS most urgently needed in the marketplace. When they fail, entrepreneurs lose their own money, not yours and mine, and they don’t indenture our grandchildren.
All the undue laws, regulations, taxes, red tape, lawsuits, threats, monetary manipulations and hostility toward profits that governments slap on the private sector, can only have the effect of raising the cost and risk of hiring people to prohibitive heights, resulting in the unemployment that we are suffering.
By ‘undue’ is meant those interventions which do not derive from governments’ legitimate role of preventing and punishing murder, robbery, theft, fraud, assault, rape, persecution and/or conspiracy. Does it really take tens of thousands of pages of laws, hundreds of agencies and 8 million unionized public-sector employees to do that?
Entrepreneurship doesn’t need to take direction from government in order to do the right thing for the economy. Whether the subject is food, clothing, shelter, minerals, energy, clean air, medicine, university faculty parking spaces or JOBS, the same entrepreneurial cycle pattern emerges: Scarcity leads to rising market prices, which signal entrepreneurial opportunity; there’s money to be made (‘there’s gold in them thar hills!’). Investors and speculators advance their own savings to fund research and development to invent new ways to extract and produce more, to drill deeper under the ocean floor using only one tower where five had been required before, to design new industrial and technological processes, to genetically engineer seeds that multiply crop yields, to discover new life-prolonging and enhancing miracle drugs, etc. Many entrepreneurs fail, at their own expense (not the taxpayer’s) but others succeed, and the result is profits for them and abundant products and services at prices for you and I that are lower than before the ‘crisis’ that started the cycle.
The only force capable of stopping this virtuous cycle is… force: Prohibiting the market to function; controlling wages and/or prices so that signals and information about the true relative abundance and scarcity do not get transmitted properly; awarding contracts and employment positions based on political favoritism, nepotism or ethnic preferences rather than objective competence and qualifications; forbiding an aerospace company from opening a new plant in a right-to-work state because it doesn’t please the Big Labor bosses; barring the exploitation of available resources (EPA); destroying the U.S. IPO market via Sarbanes-Oxley; forcing taxpayers to prop up firms that have failed; failing to enforce the rule of law consistently and fairly; bringing criminal charges against oil companies over the death of a few birds while giving the windmill industry a free slaughter pass; paying people increasingly generous benefits for not working, out of the pockets of those that are; wasting taxpayer money on ‘bridges to nowhere’ on the ludicrous principle that government spending somehow multiplies economic benefits above what that same money would accomplish in private hands from which it was taken…and on and on. Instead of being the custodian of individual liberty and private property rights, government has metastasized into a giant job-killing machine.
The great economic revolutions that began in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and were carried forward in the United States in the 19th and 20th , were the result of liberty, of government permitting it to happen, not interfering, not doing what most governments to this day still do, which is to stomp on and crush any force or individual that competes with their power and status. The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner the jobs engine will be revived.
To quote Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Magazine: “Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little sub sector of the American economy. They are the whole game”. Or Tim Kane of the Kaufman Foundation: “When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Government has a whole lot of nothing to do about it. May it get started right away.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Hispanic Voters, Immigration and the Republican Party
The Hard Right and Extreme Left both need to give way to the Sober Center
Two of the most miserable groups on the American political scene, especially in my beloved California, are Republicans on the one hand and Hispanic immigrants on the other; Republicans because in spite of the Tea Party wave sweeping the nation they face nearly insurmountable challenges (bordering on impotence and irrelevancy in California), and Hispanic immigrants because they can’t get their legal status normalized despite the power of their supposed friends in Washington DC. Caught in the crossfire are Hispanic American citizen voters and libertarian-minded Republicans who want the Tea Party movement to succeed in rolling back bloated government, ObamaCare, public employee union privileges and the rest, but favor a (classical-) liberal free-market approach to immigration policy.
There can be little room for compromise on restoring limited, constitutional government, low taxes, sane regulation, fiscal responsibility and with them renewed job growth and economic strength. But the immigration issue is one where the extremes must be reined in towards the center, for their own good and for the good of the country.
To the Republicans it must be repeated: There are 20 million Hispanic voters (US citizens, not talking about illegal aliens) in the US, and Hispanics are the single fastest-growing sector of the population, up 43 percent in the last decade. Republicans can’t win elections without gaining the hearts and minds of a substantial percentage of this diverse population. They will continue to fail if they appear hostile to Hispanic voters’ cousins.
Even so, to the undocumented immigrant population it must be told: You won’t succeed without Republican support at the national level. Notice that you got nowhere – and late – with Democrats when they had all the power in 2009 and 2010. Fortunately the most compelling arguments in favor of legal normalization are those that spring from the principles of free markets, limited government, individual responsibility, work ethic, familiy values, free trade and capitalism. These are (or should be) guiding principles of the Republican party. If you can embrace these and discard the false promises of socialistic welfare policies offered by the Democrats (the effects of which after all are what you fled from in Latin America) then you will find allies and solutions.
Unfortunately, much of the self-appointed political activist immigration reform movement elite are out for power for themselves first and tend to lean hard Left. For that reason, Republicans must make their appeals and outreach directly to the people at large rather than wasting too much effort trying to make nice with adversarial power brokers.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration may have blundered fatally by ramming the government takeover of healthcare down the throats of the American people before they (the Democrats) had shored up support of the Hispanic voting bloc. Imagine if they had poured half as much energy into pushing the Dream Act or some other sweeping immigration reform in 2009. After the smoke from that battle had cleared, unlike healthcare the political body count likely would have emerged as a net gain for Democrats, who would then still have ammunition to spare to pass ObamaCare in 2010 with greater support left over for its defense in the aftermath. Instead they gave the flesh-and-blood people they had shed so many crocodile tears for the short stick while pouring all of their energy into a largely abstract goal of comprehensive health care ‘reform’ first. They ticked off not only their enemies but also their supposed friends.
This is a blunder upon which Republicans can and must capitalize. The Republican share of the Hispanic vote rose again in 2010 to 38% (in congressional races) from its low of ~20% in 2008. The question is whether Republicans can maintain the momentum or if they will do what they have been too good at in the past, which is to alienate people with emotional rants foaming at the mouth against illegal aliens, providing ample fuel for the Democat-Academia-Media machine to exploit.
Republicans opposed to compromise on immigration restrictions, border enforcement, amnesty etc. need to consider priorities. This country has serious problems, which were NOT caused by immigrants. Cap and Tax, Card Check, profligate ‘stimulus’ waste, too-big-to-fail bailouts, public employee union Ponzi-scheme pension liabilities and out-of-control administrative agencies like the EPA are greater threats than gardeners and house cleaners. The violence associated with narcotraffic is not an immigration issue; it is the radioactive fallout of the prohibition of substances that Americans demand and support with their dollars at a rate three times greater per capita than the nearest rival country. ObamaCare threatens to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government and the citizen in ways not seen since the Constitution was ratified.
These are the priority battles that must be fought without taking prisoners. Immigration calls for moderation and a sober, dispassionate look at the economic and social impact.
Two of the most miserable groups on the American political scene, especially in my beloved California, are Republicans on the one hand and Hispanic immigrants on the other; Republicans because in spite of the Tea Party wave sweeping the nation they face nearly insurmountable challenges (bordering on impotence and irrelevancy in California), and Hispanic immigrants because they can’t get their legal status normalized despite the power of their supposed friends in Washington DC. Caught in the crossfire are Hispanic American citizen voters and libertarian-minded Republicans who want the Tea Party movement to succeed in rolling back bloated government, ObamaCare, public employee union privileges and the rest, but favor a (classical-) liberal free-market approach to immigration policy.
There can be little room for compromise on restoring limited, constitutional government, low taxes, sane regulation, fiscal responsibility and with them renewed job growth and economic strength. But the immigration issue is one where the extremes must be reined in towards the center, for their own good and for the good of the country.
To the Republicans it must be repeated: There are 20 million Hispanic voters (US citizens, not talking about illegal aliens) in the US, and Hispanics are the single fastest-growing sector of the population, up 43 percent in the last decade. Republicans can’t win elections without gaining the hearts and minds of a substantial percentage of this diverse population. They will continue to fail if they appear hostile to Hispanic voters’ cousins.
Even so, to the undocumented immigrant population it must be told: You won’t succeed without Republican support at the national level. Notice that you got nowhere – and late – with Democrats when they had all the power in 2009 and 2010. Fortunately the most compelling arguments in favor of legal normalization are those that spring from the principles of free markets, limited government, individual responsibility, work ethic, familiy values, free trade and capitalism. These are (or should be) guiding principles of the Republican party. If you can embrace these and discard the false promises of socialistic welfare policies offered by the Democrats (the effects of which after all are what you fled from in Latin America) then you will find allies and solutions.
Unfortunately, much of the self-appointed political activist immigration reform movement elite are out for power for themselves first and tend to lean hard Left. For that reason, Republicans must make their appeals and outreach directly to the people at large rather than wasting too much effort trying to make nice with adversarial power brokers.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration may have blundered fatally by ramming the government takeover of healthcare down the throats of the American people before they (the Democrats) had shored up support of the Hispanic voting bloc. Imagine if they had poured half as much energy into pushing the Dream Act or some other sweeping immigration reform in 2009. After the smoke from that battle had cleared, unlike healthcare the political body count likely would have emerged as a net gain for Democrats, who would then still have ammunition to spare to pass ObamaCare in 2010 with greater support left over for its defense in the aftermath. Instead they gave the flesh-and-blood people they had shed so many crocodile tears for the short stick while pouring all of their energy into a largely abstract goal of comprehensive health care ‘reform’ first. They ticked off not only their enemies but also their supposed friends.
This is a blunder upon which Republicans can and must capitalize. The Republican share of the Hispanic vote rose again in 2010 to 38% (in congressional races) from its low of ~20% in 2008. The question is whether Republicans can maintain the momentum or if they will do what they have been too good at in the past, which is to alienate people with emotional rants foaming at the mouth against illegal aliens, providing ample fuel for the Democat-Academia-Media machine to exploit.
Republicans opposed to compromise on immigration restrictions, border enforcement, amnesty etc. need to consider priorities. This country has serious problems, which were NOT caused by immigrants. Cap and Tax, Card Check, profligate ‘stimulus’ waste, too-big-to-fail bailouts, public employee union Ponzi-scheme pension liabilities and out-of-control administrative agencies like the EPA are greater threats than gardeners and house cleaners. The violence associated with narcotraffic is not an immigration issue; it is the radioactive fallout of the prohibition of substances that Americans demand and support with their dollars at a rate three times greater per capita than the nearest rival country. ObamaCare threatens to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government and the citizen in ways not seen since the Constitution was ratified.
These are the priority battles that must be fought without taking prisoners. Immigration calls for moderation and a sober, dispassionate look at the economic and social impact.
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