President Obama has recently shown us what four more years would be like if he is re-elected. He attacked the Supreme Court over a pending decision on ObamaCare and a finding that the health care mandate is unconstitutional, while as a candidate in the 2008 primary against Hillary Clinton he argued that “using an individual mandate to solve the problem of the uninsured would be like trying to cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home.” He solicited President Medvedev of Russia to carry a message to Putin to give him space until after his election, presumably the space is so he can deceive voters - the clingers, i.e., boobs - in his country and get re-elected first. And he inserted himself into a highly charged case involving   the death of Trayvon Martin, suggesting that “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon,” speaking before    the facts are known and the investigation is completed. He injected emotion into a situation that called for presidential leadership, a leadership that asks for sympathy for loss but also calls for calm and patience while the facts are uncovered and a reasoned decision is reached, a leadership that recognizes the presumption of innocence and aims to protect the right of all persons to a fair trial.

Niall Ferguson offers a thoughtful review of the arguments about “income inequality” and a review of a new book by Charles Murray setting out the causes of the problem and a conservative solution.

Niall Ferguson looks at both sides of the income inequality in America argument in a timely column “Rich America, Poor America”. Professor Ferguson reviews favorably a new book by Charles Murray, “Coming Apart”, a book that looks at the evidence about “Poor America” and points to the roots of our current predicament.  It is a column that warrants reading in its entirety coming as it does from a man of sober judgment about a new book by a man of judgment so sober.  Bottom line: Professor Ferguson calls the new Murray book: “by far the best available analysis of modern American inequality – and a much needed antidote to the campaign for a European America.”

Professor Ferguson quotes Disraeli, noting that conservatives were not always neglectful of income disparity and the consequences on civil society. He says that today there is at least one conservative, Charles Murray, who has accepted the premise of progressives that there is an income equality problem in America. Unlike lefties like Paul Krugman who prescribe more spending on welfare, school, social ills, etc., however, Charles Murray in his new book “Coming Apart” explains that the divide is a result of a decline in the traditional four pillars that guided America—family, work, local community, and faith. [See “Happiness of the People” by Dr. Murray where he develops his argument against the European model of government advocated by President Obama and other progressives, explaining that such a path leads away from happiness and ignores the Constitutional imperative that government create an “opportunity for happiness” for each American.] 

Murray says, “In poor America, all four [traditional pillars] are in a state of collapse.” He traces the decline in the “lower class” since the New Deal and the Great Society programs in each of these traditional pathways to a happy and fulfilled life, pointing to an increase in divorce and single uneducated mothers; a decline in male industriousness, opting instead for a “new leisure preference”; a greater increase in crime in poorer neighborhoods; and a decline in religiosity. Professor Murray explains that while some of these declines are present in the “cognitive elites”  (the top 5%), they are a much greater problem in poorer communities, resulting in an “atrophy of bonds of civil society” and less “social capital.”

Professor Ferguson then looks at Murray’s “conservative solution” to the problem of economic inequality:

Scrapping the failing programs of the ‘30s and ‘60s before they bankrupt America. Ensure that everyone has a basic income. Then simplify the tax code to restore the incentives that used to exist for everyone to work hard. Finally, end the state monopolies in public education to launch a new era of school choice and competition.

Professor Ferguson isn’t sure we can return to the halcyon days described and dreamed of by Professor Murray, but as the father of a newborn, he argues that it is time to “tackle the inequality issue head on.” He closes with a request that Mitt Romney read “Coming Apart” before his campaign comes apart.”

The Mechanisms of Control Already Exist for an Autocratic Agenda of Enhanced Executive Authority, Setting up a Potential Constitutional Crisis in an Obama Second Term.

President Obama is stretching executive-branch powers and pushing them beyond constitutional limits according to Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel in “The New Authoritarianism”. America is on notice say the authors of the potential for a constitutional crisis in a second Obama term. They point to the President’s extra-constitutional recess appointments this month when Congress was not in recess and to statements made by the President.

And to further support their argument they point to comments by supporters around Mr. Obama and other progressives who believe they are an “ideological vanguard” and members of a special clerisy—similar say the authors to clerics of the middle ages—whose goal is government control over everything. These “New Authoritarians”—some reflecting positively on the Chinese model, others urging the President to take even more authority—are not, say Siegel and Kotkin, your traditional liberals: “Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class.” They are a committed group with a religious fervor, a group ignoring the record setting results of the 2010 election, a group pushing forward with their policies despite the political reality because “the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth.”

Today’s progressives call for “positive progress” and for “good government” over self government. They believe Americans are too stupid (“a nation of dodos”) to be left to govern themselves. Expressing the view years ago of our current clerisy, Herbert Croly said: “The average American is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.” 

“A victorious Obama administration” says Kotkin and Siegel “could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model.” The mechanisms of control already exist. Mr. Obama with his czars, expanded regulatory agencies, and executive power, is poised in a second term to lead America where a majority does not want to go. If the President is re-elected watch out for an “autocratic agenda of enhanced executive authority” because we are all but poised to leap into an uncharted world, a world with a large but ignored majority, a world where that majority is considered incapable of taking care of itself, a world where Progressives will plan our lives for us and exercise total control. Such leadership would potentially set up a constitutional crises—a situation that could lead to “a road full of dangers, weakness…to the boundaries of the world, and the Cimmerian land of darkness and whirlwinds.” 

·       Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars has to be generated somewhere — and nearly half the electricity generated in this country is generated by burning coal.

·       If you don’t like growing older, don’t worry about it. You may not be growing older much longer.

·       What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.

·       Of all the arguments for giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, the most foolish is the argument that we can’t find and expel all of them. There is not a law on the books that someone has not violated, including laws against murder, and we certainly have not found and prosecuted all the violators — whether murderers or traffic-law violators. But do we then legalize all the illegalities we haven’t been able to detect and prosecute?

The game of poker was in the news a few weeks ago when President Obama reportedly told House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: “Eric, don’t call my bluff!”

Speaking of poker, I was about 9 years old when I first started playing with neighborhood boys.  We sat on my folks’ carpet floor, a carpet covered with pennies and played for hours. Years later during college summers, I sat around a table with co-workers and we played for $20 limit bets. In one game, car keys went into the pot. It was a big difference in risk, but the potential reward was there.

Mr. Boehner, like a modern Sisyphus rolling his rock to the top of the mountain without making progress, is battling for pennies. Instead of haggling for ephemeral spending cuts over ten years—an impossible political mountain to climb—House Speaker John Boehner should change the stakes in the debt ceiling negotiations by pushing for a meaningful long term change in the budgeting process. He should push for structural budget reform: forget fighting over cuts in the rate of growth under the 1974 Baseline Budget rules, rules that assume government is going in the right direction and future increases are built-in. Under those rules even the Paul Ryan budget added trillions of new spending to the nation’s debt. Instead, he should promise to advance a clean debt-ceiling bill without any future spending cuts from the current budget in return for future budgets based on “zero based budgeting.” “Zero based budgeting” as explained in Wikipedia, “requires that all spending must be re-justified each year or it will be eliminated from the budget regardless of previous spending levels.”

After all, how many Americans in financial trouble assume that next year they can spend an additional 7%, or so, just because the calendar turned to a new year? Families and businesses know that if they are in debt and current out-go exceeds income, they can’t spend more next year than they did this year. It is time for the political class to follow the same rules as any American family watching their pennies.

This has created a system which today’s Congressional Budget Office would score a freeze on all government spending as a $9 trillion cut, even though there’s no reduction in spending at all.

The root of the dilemma we face’ says Herman “is not political or fiscal, but moral. Until Congress overturns an accounting system that deliberately distorts empirical reality, we will never escape the corruption it entails — or the catastrophe that’s coming.

After all, if Mr. Boehner is going to play poker with President Obama and “call his bluff” then the stakes should be worthy of the risk.

In Standing by Words, Wendell Berry explains how language plays a role in the health of individuals and their communities. A cause and effect relationship exists, he argues, between the disintegration of individuals and communities and the increasing disintegration of language, language that is “either meaningless or destructive of meaning.” For a statement to be meaningful, it must be both complete and comprehensible.  Berry says it must contain “language that can be understood, stood by, and acted on.” For a statement to be understood—that is complete and comprehensible by itself—“the community must know what it is.” For Berry, truth-telling and accountability are all important, and words require precision, restraint, and discipline.

Mr. Berry provides examples of what he means by “truth-telling”, first providing examples of some who are less than “truth tellers.”

R. Buckminster Fuller is described by Berry as a technological romantic and identified as a “modern” thinker; he is a man focused on dreams of what technology might do, creating a future “global village”, a life in the future which cannot be questioned because it doesn’t exist. And since it doesn’t exist, notes Berry, he cannot be expected to stand by his words, because his words have no meaning.

For those that are not “truth-tellers,” Berry says language is about manipulating words: using words to secure power, to achieve a particular purpose, to advance their own self-interest above the greater good. And for all of them, Berry says, there is no sense of the great chain of being or the value of community or of staying in one place and making a stand. Instead, in each of these cases, it is all about a “world of words.”

Mr. Berry also offers contrasting examples of truth-tellers including: Shakespeare’s King Lear, because, unlike Shelley, Lear provides context for his words; Milton because he reminds us of Genesis; and Faulkner because he reminds us of Milton and Genesis. And all three, says Berry, work “toward the definition of personal place and condition, responsibility and action”, reminding us of “the human place in creation.”

If truth is the only reliable standard and if users of language need to be held accountable, then the practical use of religion, says Berry, keeps any accounting of language in a larger context and “forces the accountant to reckon with mystery”. It is only when we have religion, Berry argues, that we can consider the unsolvable, the Mystery X—an understanding that some questions cannot be answered because some things are unknowable. And “all answers must be worked out”, says Berry, “within a limit of humility and restraint, so that the initiative to act would always imply a knowing acceptance of accountability for the results” – a willingness to use only language that can be understood, stood by, and acted upon.

Berry makes the case for a community that places science “under the rule of the old concern for propriety, correct proportion, proper scale…an external standard of quality”, a world rooted in the present with a respect for the past, and a world focused on love, the love of pledging to take a stand that provides for someone else’s future rather than our own.

President Obama fetes Chinese President Hu Jintao with a State dinner at the White House, including entertainment by a Chinese pianist playing a propaganda song “My Motherland” – music a half-billion Chinese connect to an anti-American movie about the Korean War, a 1956 movie that celebrated killing Americans and calling them “Jackals”.

China and our “mountain of debt” were two items mentioned, during his State of the Union address, by the President. About our debt he said: “Now, the final step—a critical step – in winning the future is to make sure we aren't buried under a mountain of debt.” Never one to be humiliated—even when it might have been intended—President Obama gave a special “shout-out” to China.His kudos to China drew a strong rebuke from … “the Donald”. Trump is so upset about how we are being ridiculed by the Chinese behind our backs that he just might run for President. Could it be that he wants to meet Mr. Obama in a Presidential debate and say: “You’re fired!”

Why do the Chinese feel about us as they do? Since they are our bankers, holding “nearly half the $2.37 trillion stock of Treasury debt held by 'foreign official' owners,” could they think they own us? Is there a way to put Chinese arrogance back in the bottle and more favorably allocate our national debt?  

Two headlines report Social Security in critical condition: Social Security now seen to run permanent deficits... and $45 Billion in red for '11... Is there a way to “fire our Chinese bankers” and solve the social security problem?

President George W. Bush warned us about the crisis we faced with Social Security, but Democrats rejected his idea of personal accounts, arguing that investing in the stock market was a “risky scheme.” But if President Obama wanted to lead, he could have a “Nixon to China” moment. He could lead his party in strengthening Social Security by allowing Americans to be America’s bankers: Every employee paying into Social Security should be able to allocate some percentage of his account to the purchase of Treasury bonds, replacing and reducing the amount held by foreign countries. What would it take to reduce the percentage of debt held by China and other countries whose loans influence our foreign policy: How long will we continue to turn a blind eye to China’s human rights violations, China’s piracy of our patents, China’s duplicitous foreign policy towards North Korea and Iran?

Mr. Obama could lead his party, while addressing all of his State of the Union concerns about Social Security reform, with a “solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations”: Allow Americans to buy U.S. Treasuries for their Social Security account and tell our foreign bankers: “You’re fired”!  President Obama would get Republican support.  And since Treasuries are not as risky as common stock, he could overcome Democrat arguments used against President Bush.

It would be a win-win: We could create real lockboxes, taking away the temptation for Congress to spend future Social Security funds; we could allow Americans to invest in America, giving American’s more control over our future; we could pay off foreign borrowers who are adversely impacting our foreign policy because we are so indebted to them.

Does President Obama really want to get the policy right, as he said? Does he really care more about doing the right thing than getting re-elected, as he said? Is he really open to good ideas that would address our “unsustainable debt,” as he said? This is his chance to lead or as the President might say: “This is his moment.” Is he is up to the challenge?

A House Republican majority waits in the on-deck circle ready to take their turn at bat in the leadership role in January 2011. They intend to lead off with cuts in spending. Eric Cantor, the new Majority Leader, even has a web site—“You Cut”—that allows readers to vote on proposed spending cuts and then the House votes on the number one choice. But the new majority needs to make other changes besides spending cuts if they are to solve America’s economic problems: rising debt, slowing GDP growth, and declining competitiveness in the world. One suggestion for Republican leaders—identify past Congressional mistakes and root out legislative unintended consequences; by unintended consequences I mean legislation that harms our economy or creates a moral hazard, rewarding unacceptable conduct. Such unintended consequences lead to lower productivity and a lower standard of living.

During the 111^th Congress, Democrats passed some legislation even though, remarkably, no witnesses were called, no hearings were held, no amendments were allowed, no one read the bill. Could such a Congress do everything right, legislating without any unintended consequences, when it passed the most laws since the 1960’s? Has Congress really improved that much since LBJ’s Great Society legislation subsidized unwed pregnancy and destroyed black families? Did Democrats in the 111^th Congress learn anything about solving problems correctly after seeing the effects in 1991 of the wrong-headed luxury boat tax, a tax threatening 600,000 jobs and driving the boat industry aground?

Two recent reports further illustrate some of the harmful effects from Congressional action when Congress fails to thoroughly study a problem, fails to competently think through an effective solution, or fails to properly exercise the necessary self-discipline over itself, acting instinctively and yielding to the urge to just do something.  

First, John Stossel covered the bases (John Stossel - Top 10 Politicians' Promises Gone Wrong) with ten disasters arising from the unintended consequences of Congressional legislation, including these three: Obamacare forces insurance companies to restrict coverage or go out of business; corn ethanol subsidies lead to lower air quality and less corn for food, injuring those least able to feed themselves; and Title IX designed to promote sports for women in college actually adversely impacts male athletes, forcing schools—based on a strict bureaucratic formula—to eliminate nationally ranked teams, even those participating in Olympic sports, in order to reduce the number of athletic scholarships for men so they won’t exceed the number of scholarships for women. 

Second, government regulation is driving vaccine manufacturers out of business. “The drug makers are in a bind” say Josh Bloom and Gilbert Ross in New Vaccines, Stat! “— and public health is in danger.” “If the resistance problem jumps ahead of the discovery process, we may again find ourselves with no reliable weapon against infection.” The unintended consequences of this regulation are troublesome—a shrinking number of vaccine manufacturers, less research and development, and fewer treatment options. And all of these consequences are coming together just “[a]s drug-resistant bacteria are on the rampage worldwide,” resulting “in a most precarious situation”.

There could be any number of bills and regulations with unintended consequences that need to be fixed, bills that have stifled business, reduced jobs, or rewarded wrongful conduct. If Republicans decide to act, what should they do? House Republicans—if they want to show a seriousness of purpose—could attack these existing legislative problems by creating a government committee charged with singling out and fixing legislative unintended consequences. Also, they could adopt the “YouCut” model allowing voters to vote on the legislative “unintended consequences” that the public wants fixed, such as the alternative minimum tax with the perennial “one-year patches aimed at minimizing the impact of the tax.” Republicans could vote each week in Congress for a top online vote getter, promising to amend or repeal past legislative mistakes. Also, Republicans could insert sunset provisions, limiting the life of a new or revised bill, requiring Congress fix any unintended consequences before renewing or extending legislation. And if Republicans were to embrace such a plan, it could be a confidence boosting change in the way business is done in Washington, D.C., a change that could restore some respect to the Congress.

What about going forward, how should Republicans proceed with new legislation? Republicans need to remember that Congress has frequently responded to problems instinctively, making things worse.“But deciding how to use scarce resources” when responding to an emotionally charged problem says Charles Murray “is not a matter of caring. It is a matter of deciding what works and what doesn’t.”They should never make a situation worse by acting imprudently. And if they should discover that something they did caused unintended consequences, then they should step-up to the plate and move quickly to amend or repeal their failed solution, allowing the market to solve the problem or waiting for more facts before they venture onto the field again. 

Buster is running an on-going thread of ideas, including some that he would like to see in the Republican campaign this fall although they may not technically be about budget cuts.

8-21-2010 - Adopt the ideas in an August 18, 2010, article by Victor Davis Hanson: “With a Whimper or a Bang — or Not at All?”

1. A flat income tax would save trillions through simplification and greater compliance.
2. End academic tenure. It was designed to promote free speech, and ended up ensuring coerced uniformity of thought.
3. Raise the Social Security retirement age; if we live far longer and are healthier, why draw retirement at the same old age?
4. Start encouraging natural gas usage for transportation. It is a clean, abundant transportation fuel that would save us billions in decreased imported oil fees, and would increase jobs. We should build ten nuclear reactors a year, especially if we are to charge hybrid and electric cars.
5. Don’t cut defense. Eighteen-year olds come out four years later better educated and disciplined by the military than most on federal loans who stretch out the undergraduate years to their mid- or late-twenties. America has never regretted being overarmed; in 1860, 1917, 1939, 1950, and 1980, it regretted greatly vast cutbacks in military preparedness.
6. End affirmative action. Given intermarriage and the diversity of races and tribes, it is beginning to look like the racial codes of the Old South. Can someone tell me why the third-generation light skinned half-Mexican-American with a last name of Lopez qualifies and second-generation darker Tarsam Singh does not? An entire class of operators has mastered the system and created a level of cynicism that erodes public confidence.
7. Insist on a national exit test for BA degrees. A simple test of common knowledge would do. When Johnny does not know what the Parthenon is, but thinks Harriet Tubman, not Grant and Sherman, won the Civil war, we are in deep trouble.
8. Provide incentives for clean living. Those who are on federal assistance or Medicare, should receive bonuses for weight control, good blood pressure, and not smoking—either increased benefits or reduced copayments.
9. Build the fence, fine employers who hire illegal aliens, and beef up security. Without an influx of illegal aliens, the pool is static, and the formidable forces of assimilation begin to work while we fight over amnesty, guest workers, remittances, and anchor babies.
10. Freeze federal spending and insist on revenue neutral, pay as you go, new legislation.

8-17-2010 – AEI's Alex J. Pollock and Peter J. Wallison are right about housing finance: They want to privatize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so taxpayers do not have to pay billions for bailouts. The Republican Party should agree with them and promise to cut the cord that connects taxpayers to the housing mortgage business.

8-15-2010 - The House should stop leasing cars for House members at taxpayer expense. The Senate doesn't use taxpayer money to lease cars for Senators. A House cut would be a way to show seriousness, practice shared sacrifice, and gain some credibility--while saving some money.

8-15-2010 – The Heritage Index of Economic Freedom: a blueprint for Republicans in 2010: The Republican party promise to voters in 2010 is that Republicans will move America from 8^th place (and falling) into first or second position in each of the ten categories of the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom and into first or second place overall. Republicans will do what it takes: we will cut, reform, reduce, and clear away troublesome and redundant regulatory hurdles and taxes so entrepreneurs can, in the words of Arthur Brooks in “The Battle”, pursue economic freedom.

Mr. Broden has been President of the Fair Park Friendship Center and Senior Pastor of the Fair Park Bible Fellowship. He is married with three children. He is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary with a Masters of Arts in Bible Studies, and two degrees from the University of Michigan with a Bachelors degree and Masters of Arts in Communication.

His resume includes the following highlights:

  Has worked in the inner city for over 27 years, 

  Executive Director and President of Fair Park Friendship Center for over 22 years

  Served as an Adjunct Professor at the Dallas Baptist University from 1990-1992

  President of the African American Alumni Association Executive Committee

  Founder of Ebony Berean, an organization with a mission to inform African-American Pastors of the “Cultural Wars” 

  Awarded “Champion of the Republican Party” by the NRCC Business Advisory Council Texas

  Served as Republican Precinct Chairman in DeSoto, Texas, 1999-2002

Texas needs proven leaders like Stephen Broden in Congress to turn the Democrat tide of record unemployment, taxes, and debt that threaten our nation’s future. Stephen Broden’s conservative ideals and Republican principles would help restore fiscal sanity in Washington and build a brighter future for our community.

Buster urges you to look over Pastor Broden’s web site and make a donation so Republicans and Conservatives can capture control of the House of Representatives.

Once in a while a report breaks through the routine of a day and you find yourself stopping to think about how easy we have it in America. Such a report is found in Revolutionary Father, Bishop Macram Gassis shepherds the founding of a civilization.

Revolutionary Father is an inspirational profile of Bishop Macram Gassis by Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO. Bishop Gassis is a Catholic spiritual leader in Sudan, but he is helping everyone in need with hospitals, schools and water. Although a Fatwa against his life forces him to plan his activities with care, a pending election in Sudan could help his parishioners if the South separates from the North and a favorable election result could also establish ” a “pro-American, democratic partner” in East Africa.”

Gassis knows well the need for Western support if a viable, independent state in the hotbed of radical Islam and instability that is the Sudan is to be possible. But like any good father, he tells his people not to expect or get too comfortable with “handouts.” He wants to see the Sudanese truly take responsibility for a new country. Knowing human nature, he considers it the only way, ultimately, to change the face of Sudan. And it follows in the tradition of what he’s been doing there for over two decades: fighting for the dignity and rightsof every life in a land that has seen man at his worst. He offers nothing less than truth about authentic liberation.

Because of security and stability concerns, Gassis has had to base many of his operations out of Nairobi. But his service is to Sudanese people, whoever they are, however they pray. “Water,” he tells me, is “not Catholic. It’s not Muslim. It’s water. People need it.” And so he oversees the digging of wells. He calls that his version of the “dialogue” we’re frequently talking about in the West.

Read the rest of the story here – our rules for a hostile work environment seem so pedestrian by comparison.