Shepherds and Sheep

By Thomas Sowell

John Stuart Mill’s classic essay “On Liberty” gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people’s decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing “that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.”

Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that “people make a lot of mistakes.” Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging.
What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the Left.
Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.
Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?
Think about the First World War, from which nations on both sides ended up worse off than before after an unprecedented carnage that killed substantial fractions of whole younger generations and left millions starving amid the rubble of war.
Think about the Holocaust, and about other government slaughters of even more millions of innocent men, women, and children under Communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.
Even in the United States, government policies in the 1930s led to crops being plowed under, thousands of little pigs being slaughtered and buried, and milk being poured down sewers, at a time when many Americans were suffering from hunger and diseases caused by malnutrition.
The Great Depression of the 1930s, in which millions of people were plunged into poverty in even the most prosperous nations, was needlessly prolonged by government policies now recognized in retrospect as foolish and irresponsible.
One of the key differences between mistakes that we make in our own lives and mistakes made by governments is that bad consequences force us to correct our own mistakes. But government officials cannot admit to making a mistake without jeopardizing their careers.
Can you imagine a president of the United States saying to the mothers of America, “I am sorry your sons were killed in a war I never should have gotten us into”?
What is even more relevant to Professor Sunstein’s desire to have our betters tell us how to live our lives is that so many oppressive and even catastrophic government policies were cheered on by the intelligentsia.
Back in the 1930s, for example, totalitarianism was considered to be “the wave of the future” by much of the intelligentsia, not only in the totalitarian countries themselves but in democratic nations as well.
The Soviet Union was being praised to the skies by such literary luminaries as George Bernard Shaw in Britain and Edmund Wilson in America, while literally millions of people were being systematically starved to death by Stalin and masses of others were being shipped off to slave-labor camps.
Even Hitler and Mussolini had their supporters or apologists among intellectuals in the Western democracies, including at one time Lincoln Steffens and W. E. B. Du Bois.
An even larger array of the intellectual elite in the 1930s opposed the efforts of Western democracies to respond to Hitler’s massive military buildup with offsetting military-defense buildups to deter Hitler or to defend themselves if deterrence failed.
“Disarmament” was the mantra of the day among the intelligentsia, often garnished with the suggestion that the Western democracies should “set an example” for other nations — as if Nazi Germany or imperial Japan was likely to follow their example.
Too many among today’s intellectual elite see themselves as our shepherds and us as their sheep. Tragically, too many of us are apparently willing to be sheep in exchange for being taken care of, being relieved of the burdens of adult responsibility, and being supplied with “free” stuff paid for by others.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

End of Article  
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If you found this article useful and enlightening, please consider my published book which contains other insight and understanding on problems and solutions facing our country.

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*****

Baseline Budgeting (Congress' Dirty Trick)

The 'Balanced Approach' Is an Unbalanced Lie

By Joe Herring
As the Republicans in Congress struggle to find relevance in a world that ignores sanity, those of us who yet retain a grasp on our faculties must be careful to not lose our way.  While we are understandably stunned by the grasping nature of so many of our countrymen who voted for fantasy over future, the fact remains that this ship carries us all, and absent our involvement, said ship will founder on the shoals of ignorance, sooner rather than later.
The first battle in the coming war will be fought over the "fiscal cliff," which is a dramatic way of describing the agreement Congress and the president struck in order to avoid the last iteration of the bill-collectors' arrival at our national door.  Should both sides be unable to live up to the promises they made the last time, then a pre-determined set of spending cuts and tax increases are slated to become law.
Whether you accept the economic danger our nation faces should we step off the edge of this rhetorical precipice, the fact remains: we aren't arguing on an equal footing.  The terms of the debate are predicated on a fundamental lie.  The terms generally understood to mean one thing by the citizen make for something entirely different to the politician.
One such term is "spending cut."  Clearly, we citizens would assume this to be a reduction in dollars spent this year, relative to dollars spent last year.  That is not the case.  In Washington, they use a wondrous accounting method known as "baseline" budgeting.  The money spent in the previous year becomes the baseline for the next year, and so on.
If extra money was spent last year, then that is now part of the budget baseline.  Case in point: the stimulus bill totaling more than $1.2 trillion.  This was an egregious abuse of the public's money, but it wasn't an isolated incident.  Due to the miracle of baseline budgeting, we have spent that money again and again and again, during each year of Obama's presidency.  This is the primary reason why Harry Reid won't allow a budget bill.  It will cut off the spigot. 
Surprised?  Don't be.  This is the reality we face, and ignoring the depth of corruption involved serves only to further enable these politicians' perfidy.  Now, in this lame-duck session of Congress, we are faced again with a budgetary fight.  Not an actual budget mind you, but rather another faux-budget in the form of a continuing resolution to maintain spending in order to keep the government open for business.
In the absence of a budget, appropriations must be reauthorized through congressional action.  This is done with a continuing resolution, which essentially is an agreement that we will "continue" to do all the things we've been doing, along with as many plums for ourselves as we can squeeze in under the radar.  Clearly, there is nothing frugal about this activity; it is the opposite of that, and both sides in Washington know this, yet they pride themselves on their ability to play these games with our tax dollars.
The phrase you're going to hear a lot in the coming weeks is "balanced approach" -- that is, a balance between new revenue (taxes) and cuts in spending to achieve deficit reduction.  It is a bald-faced lie, and it is repeated by too many folks on the Republican side of the aisle, along with all but a handful of Democrats.
"It sounds right, though," you might say.  "It sounds fair."  It might be, if first, it weren't based on a purposeful misrepresentation of reality...and if our government were in fact revenue-starved.  But the reality is that our federal government is receiving more tax dollars now than at any time in history.  Even adjusted for inflation, Washington is raking in vast fortunes in comparison to the sums they had while winning both World Wars and presiding over the greatest economic expansion in the history of any nation, at any time.
So where's the lie?  On the spending side, of course.  The spending cuts offered in the balanced approach are not real cuts.  They are Washington cuts, which are actually just decreases in hoped-for increases.  If the administration wishes to spend baseline plus 15%, and agrees to spend only baseline plus 5%, everyone takes credit for a 33% cut in spending.  Since the baseline assumes an increase each year automatically, any decrease in the "assumed" increase is counted as a "cut."  Obviously it isn't a cut at all, but rather a healthy increase -- but who's counting?  Certainly not the media.
On the other side of the ledger, however, the tax increases are figured just as we mundane citizens might expect.  They are increases in taxes paid by we, the people.  They are very real.  So when President Obama and the socialist left (along with collaborating RINOs) claim to offer ten dollars in spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase, know that the only thing real in that equation is the tax increase.  The "cuts" are a chimera.
I suggest we offer a compromise.  We will match the other side dollar for dollar in spending cuts and tax increases as long as we use the same formula to calculate them both.  Mitt Romney campaigned on an across-the-board tax cut of 20%.  Lets agree to a tax cut of 10% and then require the left to match our 50% increase in taxes with a 50% decrease in spending.  What will change?  Not a damn thing, but perhaps, finally, it will force our politicians to debate in real terms, using real numbers with real meaning.  It will at least be entertaining to watch the left twist themselves into knots trying to explain why their spending cuts are real but our tax increases are not.
What about the fiscal cliff?  How will we save ourselves?  Considering that the government has been grown by at least 40% in just the last four years alone, a ten-percent haircut will not be disastrous; it will only seem that way to the vested interests that thrive by growing government.  It is time to expose the lie -- no matter which side is telling it.
After all, it is a financial impossibility to have spent roughly four trillion more in the last four years than the previous four and credibly claim that there is no room in the budget for the comparatively modest cuts on the other side of the fiscal cliff.  Were it not for the tax increases that are part and parcel of the deal, I would say jump.
How we frame this debate will have a great deal to do with how successful we are in winning it.  Our Republican leadership are desperately looking for a way to prove themselves relevant in a startlingly different world.  Might I suggest we begin by being the party that slays the baseline budgeting beast?  Some good advice for the Republican leadership: when all else fails, try honesty.  (Better yet, try honesty first.)

End of Article  
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If you found this article useful and enlightening, please consider my published book which contains other insight and understanding on problems and solutions facing our country.

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Understanding Baseline Budgeting

By Dan Lipka

The United States of America, for the first time since the great depression, finds itself holding a debt that has surpassed GDP. This calamity has emerged as a result of wasteful spending along with bloated entitlements. The wasteful spending has been facilitated by the intentional construction of language norms that understate the true nature of spending increases. This is known as baseline budgeting.
Baseline budgeting uses phrases like “cuts” and “increases” in ways that easily deceive the average American voter. A voter unaware of the existence of baseline budgeting may interpret a 10% cut to Department X’s budget of $100 billion as indicating that the budget will be reduced to $90 billion. This is WRONG! Because Department X was scheduled to have its budget increase by 10% to $110 billion, a 10% cut is coming out of not the full budget but rather the increase. In this scenario, a 10% cut reduces Department X to $109 billion – a cut of only $1 billion! Based on the system shown here, the public can be misled the public with their manipulation of formal budget language.
Some questions naturally arise: when and why was baseline budgeting implemented? Baseline Budgeting was established with the passing of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. It was implemented because Congress wanted to bypass its annual debate over how much (if at all) to increase each department’s budget. Baseline Budgeting included yearly increases to compensate for the population growth that was occurring, and in 1980, inflation was included in the justification for spending increases. However, until 1985, the spending increases had to be confirmed annually by Congress. The Deficit Control Act automated the spending increases to each department based on projections by the Office of the Budget and Management.
My intention is not to state abandoning baseline budgeting as necessary to achieve a balanced budget; however, if baseline budgeting is going to be exist, the public needs to understand the nature of it. Those who understand baseline budgeting are more empowered to fight excessive spending. Finally, I encourage anyone who understands baseline budgeting to educate others and all to understand political budget language in the context of baseline budgeting.

Baseline Budgeting Baloney

Defense Spending Hasn’t Been Cut by $600 Billion

By Tad DeHaven

2/11/2013

 

Beltway politicians like to pretend that smaller spending increases amount to spending “cuts.” As Dan Mitchell has pointed out numerous times (see here for one example), that’s baseline budgeting baloney. Now that the 2011 Budget Control Act’s spending caps are in place, politicians are making an even more ridiculous claim: the so-called “cuts” have already occurred.
The caps apply to spending over ten fiscal years – the last year being 2021. We are obviously not in the year 2021, so it’s impossible for the so-called “cuts” to have already been implemented. Yet here are two examples from a recent Politico article where politicians suggest that to be the case:

“There are people that think we need to cut more,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) acknowledged in an interview. McKeon said he’s been pushing back against budget hawks in the GOP conference by pointing to the nearly $600 billion in spending cuts that the Pentagon has already absorbed in recent years — and that’s before sequestration would even begin.
…
“I think there’s spending that can be taken out of all departments,” said freshman Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.). “And I’ve talked to people from the Pentagon. There’s just areas that, yeah, we can pull back a little more, even though they did their $470 billion already. They said it hurt, but we possibly could.”

I’ll cut Rep. Yoho a little slack because the article indicates that he’s open to cutting defense. Rep. McKeon, on the other hand, deserves no such leniency. (Why McKeon said $600 billion and Yoho $470 billion I have no idea.)
The following chart illustrates why it is ridiculous to act as if smaller future increases in projected spending amount to realized spending cuts. The chart shows the Congressional Budget Office’s August 2001 baseline estimate of defense spending from 2002 to 2011 versus the actual outlays:

The combined difference turned out to be $1.8 trillion.
But, you might respond, those estimates were published a month before the attack on September 11th, 2001, so of course they turned out to be way off!
And that’s my point. With the exception of Keynesian economists, no one can predict the future. All it will take is another major terrorist attack or another war and it’s adios spending caps. I would argue that such unfortunate scenarios are a distinct possibility given the Beltway crowd’s love for empire, but I’ll leave that topic to Cato’s foreign policy experts.

Tad DeHaven

Tad DeHaven is a budget analyst at the Cato Institute. Previously he was a deputy director of the Indiana Office of Management and Budget. DeHaven also worked as a budget policy advisor to Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK).

The Budget Baseline Con

How Washington fools the public about spending 'cuts.'

If the fiscal cliff talks make Lindsay Lohan look like a productive member of society, perhaps it's because President Obama and John Boehner are playing by the dysfunctional Beltway rules. The rules work if you like bigger government, but Republicans need a new strategy, which starts by exposing the rigged game of "baseline budgeting."
Both the White House and House Republicans are pretending that their goal is "reducing the deficit," which they suggest means making real spending choices. They are talking about a "$4 trillion plan," or something, regardless of how that number is reached.

Editorial board member Steve Moore on Republican options in the fiscal cliff negotiations. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Here's the reality: Those numbers have no real meaning because they are conjured in the wilderness of mirrors that is the federal budget process. Since 1974, Capitol Hill's "baseline" has automatically increased spending every year according to Congressional Budget Office projections, which means before anyone has submitted a budget or cast a single vote. Tax and spending changes are then measured off that inflated baseline, not in absolute terms.
The most absurd current example is Mr. Obama's claim that his "$4 trillion" plan reduces the deficit by about $800 billion over 10 years by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those "savings," as he calls them, are measured against a White House budget office spending baseline that is fictional. Those wars are already being unwound and everyone knows the money will never be spent. But they are called "savings" to gull the public and make the deficit reduction add up to a large-sounding $4 trillion.

Getty Images

President Barack Obama

The baseline scam also exists in many states, and no less a Democrat than New York Governor Andrew Cuomo denounced it in 2011 as a "sham" and "deceptive." He wrote in the New York Post that state spending was "dictated by hundreds of rates and formulas that are marbleized throughout New York State laws that govern different programs—formulas that have been built into the law over decades, without regard to fiscal realities, performance or accountability." Then he proceeded to continue baseline budgeting.
In Washington, Democrats designed this system to make it easier to defend annual spending increases and to portray any reduction in the baseline as a spending "cut." Chris Wallace called Timothy Geithner on this "gimmick" on "Fox News Sunday" this week, only to have the Treasury Secretary insist it's real.
Republicans used to object to this game, but in recent years they seem to have given up. In an October 2010 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, House Speaker Boehner proposed that "we ought to start at square one" and rewrite the 1974 budget act. But he then dropped the idea, and in the current debate the GOP is putting itself at a major disadvantage by negotiating off the phony baseline. In a press release Tuesday, his own office advertised the need for "spending cuts" that aren't even cuts.
If Republicans really want to slow the growth in spending, they need to stop playing by Beltway rules and start explaining to America why Mr. Obama keeps saying he's cutting spending even as spending and deficits keep going up and up and up.

A version of this article appeared December 4, 2012, on page A18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Budget Baseline Con.

EPA Corruption and Scandal

By Jim O'Sullivan

The EPA and Ms. Lisa Jackson, its chief, have committed extensive violations of law that should receive in-depth scrutiny from Congress, law enforcement and the American people.  Yes the Obama administration has yet another serious scandal on their hands.  The scandal features a fantasy administrator, 'Richard Windsor', and 'his' email account.  The account was established and used by Ms. Jackson to camouflage controversial EPA processes, discussions, decisions and accountability.  To date the known evidence suggests violations of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), mail and wire fraud laws.  Additionally it surfaces another example of the Obama administration's epidemic chicanery with the law, Congress and the Constitution and another failure to keep faith with the American people. 
Upon closer inspection the EPA like the GSA and other Obama administration agencies, demonstrates a lack of managerial/administrative control.  It also exhibited a culture of obfuscation, malfeasance and corruption that did not blossom overnight.  And like other Obama scandals, the mainstream media has again decided to cover it with their much practiced three monkey act.
For perspective a little recent history is in order.  Lisa Jackson, who is departing the EPA, stated in November of 2011 that,

"...What EPA's role is to do is to level the playing field so that pollution costs are not exported to the population but rather companies have to look at pollution potential of any fuel or any process or any plant or utility when their making investment decisions." 

Simply translated Ms. Jackson makes clear that her job and the EPA's are to hurt companies/industries that produce energy counter to the wishes of the Obama administration (and the left's agenda).  Ms. Jackson also demonstrates a very low economic IQ, since higher costs incurred by energy companies will be passed to end users/consumers.
Coupling her statement with President Obama's pronouncement of a year ago, i.e. "Where Congress is not willing to act, we're going to go ahead and do it ourselves"... exposes his strategy to "legislate" by regulation and executive order (with Jackson and the heads of other agencies helping).  Although Obama indicated it would be "nice" to work with Congress, his intentions are to evade the two centuries-old legislative process of the Constitution and impose his will on all Americans.  The EPA under Jackson has become a key bludgeon in this political and ideological power grab and has used illegal methods in the effort.
President Obama's inaugural speech noted the environment may receive emphasis during his second term.  Obama opined that Americans have an obligation to posterity to "respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations".  Obama immediately followed with a pitch for sustainable energy, e.g. wind, solar and bio (and more crony capitalism?).  Remember this is the man that promoted cap and trade legislation early in his initial term when the economy was "nearing a depression."  
An administration's ability to regulate in the extreme and by executive action has evolved slowly over the past 70 years, gaining momentum after the Reagan years.  The Congress and our courts have ceded appreciable power to the Executive branch and government agencies by enacting laws with little oversight and that rely heavily on internal agency inspectors such as the EPA's Inspector General.  Further the courts have exhibited discomfort in reining in other government branches unless egregious actions are uncovered.  The Supreme Court's twisted logic/argument to find ObamaCare constitutional demonstrates the discomfort.
Now due to a whistleblower and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Christopher Horner's investigative work a federal court (U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) has ruled that the EPA must turn over 12,000 "Richard Windsor" emails in four 3,000 email batches.  The first group of emails released totaled a mere 2,100 and not one was from "Richard Windsor."  In a cover letter Ms. Jackson insisted that she only used one government account for EPA business even though this directly contradicted her earlier admission that she used "Richard Windsor" for internal EPA discussions.  The release makes clear that the EPA and Jackson have taken to the foxholes and a full denial/stonewalling mode is now in effect.  Thus the Competitive Enterprise Institute has brought another action against the EPA in the Appeals Court to force immediate release.
Remember, the EPA has an impact on every American with a tsunami of regulation that is both costly and arguably infringing on our constitutional rights.  Moreover the agency has presided over an attempt to bankrupt the coal industry, close coal burning plants, and drive up to cost of motor fuels -- negatively impacting job creation, the economic recovery and America's energy security.  The estimated costs of EPA regulations range from $353 billion (Competitive Enterprise Institute) to $460 billion (The American Action Forum) and are growing like a malignant cancer.   These costs represent from 20% to 26% of the total cost of US regulations, estimated at $1.75 trillion, and are cited in a World Economic Forum report as a key reason for a sluggish recovery and daunting unemployment.  For comparison, these costs are appreciably higher than Health and Human Services regulatory costs estimated at $184.8 billion (the 2nd highest).   
The EPA under Jackson's ideological direction has taken a leadership position in exploding these costs.  EPA costs have essentially four components; direct, myriad enforcement costs, permit action reviews and other non-rule making costs.  Yet the EPA in its cost-benefit analyses insists that the benefits of its actions are at worst three dollars in benefits to one in costs.  President Obama has stated on the stump that some regulations show returns of benefits to costs at a ratio of 25 to 1.  The EPA's analyses essentially only deal with direct costs; not the others noted.  Moreover many of the assumptions used in the analyses are ludicrous and defy common sense (see).  Credible sources outside of government emphatically disagree and posit that the EPA almost always under estimates costs and dramatically over estimates benefits...with the true net seldom being a positive.
Recently the EPA has ruled -- without that power being granted by Congress -- that automobile maker fleet mileage standards must rise to 54 miles per gallon (adding costs per vehicle of $2,100 to $3,000)...that run-off rain water is a pollutant (vacated by the D.C. Federal Appeals Court)...that lands could not be sold if certain wastes were present theoretically to prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year (about 3 cases every 5 years)costing  $194 to $219 million annually. 
Further "sue and settle", a scam, has become a common tool of the EPA's to impose oppressive mandates on targeted businesses with incalculable costs.  To implement the scam, the EPA has an environmental or advocacy group file a suit claiming the federal government has failed to satisfy some EPA regulatory requirement.  The EPA can choose to defend itself or settle the suit.  The "solution" is to put in place a "court ordered regulation" requested by the advocacy group...neat, relatively fast and illegal.     
But more shockingly the EPA doles out hundreds of millions of dollars every year to certain organizations.  The funds are awarded with no notice, accountability or competition according to the Government Accountability Office.  The monies almost always go to favored entities that in some instances have used the funds for non-environmental purposes.
 In sum the EPA, in particular, has severely reduced our nation's competitiveness as measured by the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom.  The index places the U.S. behind nations like Chile and Denmark and in tenth place worldwide.   
The EPA's record of sleaziness, its disregard for transparency, its lack of basic integrity, its fraudulent estimation of costs/benefits and now its attempt to defy and evade a Federal Court order (and by extension FOIA, mail and wire fraud laws) combines both inbred corruption and serious scandal.  Together these faults suggest that it may be time to dismantle the agency. 
Other federal agencies, not just the EPA, have exhibited this general penchant for ignoring Congress, the courts, the law and the American people. This systemic and widespread disregard suggests the approval of a higher governmental authority...the office of the President.

The Decline of America

By Victor Davis Hanson.

Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?

Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, when historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs, and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure — and who gets the most of both — more often than poverty and exhaustion, cause civilization to implode.
One recurring theme seems consistent in Athenian literature on the eve of the city’s takeover by Macedon: social squabbling over slicing up a shrinking pie. Athenian speeches from that era make frequent reference to lawsuits over property and inheritance, evading taxes, and fudging eligibility for the dole. After the end of the Roman Republic, reactionary Latin literature — from the likes of Juvenal, Petronius, Suetonius, and Tacitus — pointed to “bread and circuses,” as well as excessive wealth, corruption, and top-heavy government.
For Gibbon and later French scholars, “Byzantine” became a pejorative description of a top-heavy Greek bureaucracy that could not tax enough vanishing producers to sustain a growing number of bureaucrats. In antiquity, inflating the currency by turning out cheap bronze coins was often the favored way to pay off public debts, while the law became fluid to address popular demands rather than to protect time-honored justice.
After the end of World War II, most of today’s powerhouses — China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Taiwan — were either in ruins or still pre-industrial. Only the United States and Great Britain had sophisticated economies that survived the destruction of the war. Both were poised to resupply a devastated world with new ships, cars, machinery, and communications.
In comparison with those of Frankfurt, the factories of 1945 Liverpool had survived mostly intact. Yet Britain missed out on the postwar German economic miracles, in part because after the deprivations of the war, the war-weary British turned to class warfare and nationalized their main industries, which soon became uncompetitive.
The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel or to maintain adequate defense. Americans have never had safer workplaces or more sophisticated medical care — and never have so many been on disability.
King Xerxes’ huge Persian force of 250,000 sailors and soldiers could not defeat a rather poor Greece in 480 b.c. Yet a century and a half later, a much smaller invading force from the north under Philip II of Macedon overwhelmed the far more prosperous Greek descendants of the victors of Salamis.
For hundreds of years, the outmanned legions of the tiny and poor Roman Republic survived foreign invasions. Yet centuries later, tribal Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns overran the huge Mediterranean-wide Roman Empire.
Given our unsustainable national debt — nearly $17 trillion and climbing — America is said to be in decline, although we face no devastating plague, nuclear holocaust, or shortage of oil or food.
Americans have never led such affluent material lives — at least as measured by access to cell phones, big-screen TVs, cheap jet travel, and fast food. Obesity rather than malnutrition is the greater threat to national health. Flash mobs go after electronics stores, not food markets. Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts, and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, smallpox, and malaria.
If Martians looked at the small houses, one-car families, and primitive consumer goods of the 1950s, they would have thought the postwar United States, despite a balanced budget in 1956, was impoverished in comparison with an indebted contemporary America where consumers jostle for each new version of the iPhone.
By any historical marker, the future of Americans has never been brighter. The United States has it all: undreamed-of new finds of natural gas and oil, the world’s preeminent food production, continual technological wizardry, strong demographic growth, a superb military, and constitutional stability.
Yet we don’t talk confidently about capitalizing and expanding on our natural and inherited wealth. Instead, Americans bicker over entitlement spoils as the nation continues to pile up trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Enforced equality, rather than liberty, is the new national creed. The medicine of cutting back on government goodies seems far worse than the disease of borrowing trillions from the unborn to pay for them.
In August 1945, Hiroshima was in shambles, while Detroit was among the most innovative and wealthiest cities in the world. Contemporary Hiroshima now resembles a prosperous Detroit of 1945; parts of Detroit look like they were bombed decades ago.
History has shown that a government’s redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector’s creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals will appear in the spring from Bloomsbury Books. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Liberalism Versus Blacks

By Thomas Sowell

1/15/2013

 

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?San Francisco is a classic example of a city unexcelled in its liberalism. But the black population of San Francisco today is less than half of what it was back in 1970, even though the city's total population has grown.
Severe restrictions on building housing in San Francisco have driven rents and home prices so high that blacks and other people with low or moderate incomes have been driven out of the city. The same thing has happened in a number of other California communities dominated by liberals.
Liberals try to show their concern for the poor by raising the level of minimum wage laws. Yet they show no interest in hard evidence that minimum wage laws create disastrous levels of unemployment among young blacks in this country, as such laws created high unemployment rates among young people in general in European countries.
The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.
Liberals have pushed affirmative action, supposedly for the benefit of blacks and other minorities. But two recent factual studies show that affirmative action in college admissions has led to black students with every qualification for success being artificially turned into failures by being mismatched with colleges for the sake of racial body count.
The two most recent books that show this with hard facts are "Mismatch" by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., and "Wounds That Will Not Heal" by Russell K. Nieli. My own book "Affirmative Action Around the World" shows the same thing with different evidence.
In all these cases, and many others, liberals take positions that make them look good and feel good -- and show very little interest in the actual consequences for others, even when liberal policies are leaving havoc in their wake.
The current liberal crusade for more so-called "gun control" laws is more of the same. Factual studies over the years, both in the United States and in other countries, repeatedly show that "gun control" laws do not in fact reduce crimes committed with guns.
Cities with some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation have murder rates far above the national average. In the middle of the 20th century, New York had far more restrictive gun control laws than London, but London had far less gun crime. Yet gun crimes in London skyrocketed after severe gun control laws were imposed over the next several decades.
Although gun control is not usually considered a racial issue, a wholly disproportionate number of Americans killed by guns are black. But here, as elsewhere, liberals' devotion to their ideology greatly exceeds their concern about what actually happens to flesh and blood human beings as a result of their ideology.
One of the most polarizing and counterproductive liberal crusades of the 20th century has been the decades-long busing crusade to send black children to predominantly white schools. The idea behind this goes back to the pronouncement by Chief Justice Earl Warren that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
Yet within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this pronouncement was made was an all-black high school that had scored higher than two-thirds of the city's white high schools taking the same test -- way back in 1899! But who cares about facts, when you are on a liberal crusade that makes you feel morally superior?
To challenge government-imposed racial segregation and discrimination is one thing. But to claim that blacks get a better education if they sit next to whites in school is something very different. And it is something that goes counter to the facts.
Many liberal ideas about race sound plausible, and it is understandable that these ideas might have been attractive 50 years ago. What is not understandable is how so many liberals can blindly ignore 50 years of evidence to the contrary since then.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

The Peculiar American Left

By Steve McCann

As an immigrant to the United States, and thus a sideline spectator of the panorama that is American society, as well as someone who has spent most of his adult life in the field of international finance dealing with a myriad of countries and nationalities, I have been fascinated by the characteristics of the American left as compared to their counterparts in the rest of the world.  While on the surface there may appear to be similarities, at least on a so-called philosophical basis, there are, however, virtually none when it comes to the motivation and personality quirks of the American left.
In 1904 Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie introduced to the world a play entitled: "Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't  Grow Up".   Similar to the central character in that stage production the American left is primarily made up of those who will not grow up.  However, unlike the central character in the play, far too many on the left are self-centered, willfully ignorant and lazy.
Winston Churchill touched on this subject matter when he said: "If you are not a socialist at 20, you have no heart.  And if you are not a capitalist at 40, you have no brains."   Fortunately, he did not live to see the vast bulk of the so-called progressives, of any age, in America of 2013, who are still in their adolescence.
Among the traits expected of those in their adolescent years is the conviction that they are always right and the rest of the world is wrong -- that they are, in fact, much smarter than those silly and inane adults around them.  However, being part of the in-crowd is really, really important thus they must look for guidance to the cool guys to establish what they are supposed to believe in.  And, as in the fairy tales relayed to them while in childhood, there will always be some monolithic entity that will be there to rescue them and insure joy and happiness.  Therein are the basic personality parameters of the entity known as the modern American left.
Membership in the American left is, thus, easily attained.  All one needs to do is believe and accept the following:   

• a) Those at the top of the pyramid, the self-anointed leaders of the left, claim to always be the smartest and most sophisticated people in any room. Therefore to envision oneself as part of this circle all one has to do is to robotically espouse leftist ideology without having the foggiest idea of what it means or its ultimate outcome.

• b) All the really cool people are on the left since they believe there are no moral absolutes and one can party on having a supposed endless good time. The modern American left is the current in-crowd corralling those mesmerized with celebrity and too lazy to be aware of the world around them.

• c) Government, that great and infallible monolith behind the green curtain, can solve all of mankind's problems. Its primary function is to make certain the people are taken care of and assured of equal outcomes--as long as it is dominated by the leaders of the left--who are equally infallible. Barack Obama's self-proclaimed role as the "messiah" fits in nicely with this tenet.

• d) Those on the right are mean and determined to take away not only the good times but make certain government -- see (c) above -- will not take care of everyone and too many true-believers may actually have to find meaningful work.

• e) It is mandatory, when confronted with an alternative point of view, to throw a tantrum, as one used to do on a school playground, and call conservatives (i.e. adults) any conceivable name or accuse them of anything since the left's cause is just and those on the right are Neanderthals who could never be correct about anything. Actually the country would be far better off if conservatives were made to walk the plank on Captain Hook's pirate ship.

• f) Guilt is the ultimate weapon. (Remember it worked with one's parents) There is always something in the United States to be guilty about and that guilt requires restitution or public humiliation. Besides, just as there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, there is a bottomless pit of wealth in America, but only the government--see (c) above-- can distribute this never ending bounty.

None of these character traits are dominant among the left in the many countries of Europe or elsewhere who have socialist leaning governments or citizenry.  Dependence on government is a common trait but the spoiled child approach to ideology and the opposition is not.  It appears to be the sole preserve of the American left.
Perhaps growing up in a nation that has not experienced any national adversity in over seventy plus years or to live in a country that has enjoyed the greatest period of peace and prosperity in the history of mankind has created this mindset.   Certainly there is a belief among a vast segment of the populace that there will never be truly difficult times as the United States will always remain overwhelmingly prosperous and be able to overcome the foibles of its people and ruling class.  
The reality is the nation cannot survive long-term as long as the current portrait of the United States being governed by a horde of unruly adolescents remains unchanged.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_peculiar_american_left.html#ixzz2Ku3DjqrU
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Back to it.

Now that my initial disappointment and anger has subsided, I will again return to posting information I feel is worth your attention. Please pardon my absence. It was a necessary break from politics. This fight is too important. Things change slowly and we must remember that. It will take time to right this ship but with our combined efforts we will prevail. The avenues of the left always lead to ruin and waste throughout history and this avenue will do the same. Our efforts are hindered by a complicit media and an uninformed and ignorant electorate. We must continue to thwart this.

This U.S. Citizen