As I pondered the direction our government had taken over the previous year, I looked at the definition of socialism by typing “define: socialism” into Google. The first definition presented was from Princeton’s wordnet and read as follows: “a political theory advocating state ownership of industry.” The definition feels woefully lacking.

Ownership denotes control, and the state is certainly getting into the business of controlling industry. Our government has exerted control over enterprise via legislative fiat more over the last year than at any other time since FDR’s power-grab during the Great Depression. From the thousands of pages of ObamaCare to the thousands of pages of the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” bill, government power is firmly entrenched in business, and it is expanding. The more regulations the state adds, the more control it exerts.

Can a business be considered a free enterprise when there are thousands of pages of rules that dictate its every move, from how much it can pay employees to how much profit it can make? Is a business free when the rule of law is not honored and the state can summarily declare that some contracts are valid and will be honored while others are and will not? Can stockholders or owners say that they run a company when the state makes such important decisions and keeps most of the profits?

Since the Gulf oil spill was voted the top story of 2010, let’s take a look at the petroleum industry. Several left-wing pundits opined that it was a lack of regulation that caused the disaster. That seems odd considering the amount of government red tape involved in the process of getting oil out of the ground and to market.

Big oil has long been the favorite whipping boy of grandstanding, self-righteous politicians. The petroleum industry can’t drill, refine, or sell without the government deeply involved in every aspect of the business. A petroleum company’s pain begins with the search and acquisition of raw crude oil. If a company wants to drill, it has to get permits from the government. This has become a painful process. After the recent Gulf oil spill, it has become longer and even more arduous. The Gulf of Mexico, one of the few places left to drill legally, has been essentially made off-limits via the permitting process. Where to drill isn’t dictated by science, economics, or even common sense. Drilling in the United States is dictated by the state.

If a company is lucky enough to get the oil out of the ground, it then runs into the next problem: refining. Thanks to lawsuits and over-regulation, the last new refinery built in the United States was built in Garyville, Louisiana, when Carter was president. At that time, the United States used 6,978,000 barrels of gasoline per day. By 2007 the U.S. was consuming 9,286,000 barrels per day. In that same period of time, gasoline has gone from a fairly standardized product used in all states to a very complex product that requires very precise reformulations to meet the ever-expanding set of government rules. This patchwork of state and federal regulation is so varied that some call the process of creating gasoline “creating boutique fuels.”

So while demand for refining capacity has continuously increased, our production capacity has barely been able to grow enough to meet demand. Most refineries are running at nearly 100 percent capacity around the clock. This is why small disruptions cause massive price swings.

Leftists continue to make spurious claims that neither regulation nor lawsuits have prevented the building of a single refinery. Such groups like to point to the Arizona Clean Fuels refinery that the EPA permitted in 2004 after years of work. Ironically, no shovel has moved a single piece of earth in the building of the refinery, which was supposed to be online in 2010. The legal and regulatory battle has brought us more than six years into the future without any danger of a new refinery being built.

Once a company has cleared all of the hurdles of getting the oil out of the ground and turning it into a product for market, the tax man comes. For every gallon of gasoline, the government collects between 30 to 50 cents in taxes (18 to the feds, on average 22 to the states, and, quite often, 2 to 5 cents to a local municipality). In 2007, Exxon made $40 billion in profit, but it paid $100 billion in taxes and royalties. In other words, government made 2.5 times more from Exxon’s oil production than Exxon and its shareholders did.

Who needs state ownership when the government can make 2.5 times more profit from an enterprise than the enterprise makes itself? Since the company is allowed to make a profit, it doesn’t fit the strict definition of socialism. Instead, we have a system of over-regulation that gives a large amount of control over and profit from a business to the state, while allowing the company to keep some share of profit for itself. I call this system regulationism. People who believe in over-regulation and state control of businesses are regulationists.

Regulationism often brings disastrous results. In some cases, monopolies are granted by the state; in others, competitors aren’t allowed to compete. The costs of air travel and phone service, for example, were once astronomical. Thankfully the Reagan revolution helped tear down the regulationism in place. If the regulations from the ’70s were still in place, we wouldn’t have cheap air travel, ubiquitous cell phones, or a host of other advances that a competitive marketplace offers.

The goals of regulationism and socialism are the same: control over a company or business. The end result of regulationism and socialism is also the same: a lifeless economy filled with uncompetitive businesses. November’s election wasn’t just a rejection of a political party or a fight over personal taxes; it was also the rejection of regulationism.

In the next election, President Obama should have two labels to avoid: socialist and regulationist. Being in either camp is equally poisonous in American politics.

HT: American Thinker

That’s the personal catechism of Obama and his gang. Or, to put it more honestly, “Your property is theft. My property is untouchable.”

Gimme that Air Force One. Gimme that trillion-dollar slush fund. Gimme that vacation in Spain at taxpayer expense. It’s mine! The Clintons even took the White House silverware, remember?

Some people have a monstrous appetite for power and privilege, but they always claim to do what they do from compassion for the little people. Kim Jong-Il in North Korea is starving his people from love of the people. He’s got a Stalinist propaganda apparatus and real concentration camps to make sure that the people actually go along with that. North Korea has the only permanent diet plan in the world that actually works. Has anybody told Michelle?

But forget Stalinism. In the European Union, the power class are so locked in that they don’t bother with real elections anymore. The “elected” EU Parliament makes no real laws, and the real lawmakers are not elected. It’s a big socialist front, a bureaucratic coup d’état.

It was Newsweek magazine that recently proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now.” The readers didn’t seem to go for that, actually, and Newsweek has just been sold for $1.00.

Which kind of tells the story.

Newsweek elevated Evan Thomas to its top ranks. Mr. Thomas is the grandson of Norman Thomas, the longtime capo di capi of the Democratic Socialists of America. The acorn has not fallen far from the oak, either. Which means that the WaPoCo drove Newsweek into the ground by appointing a socialist to run it — on the assumption, I suppose, that Americans could be forced to love being robbed of the fruits of their labor. What Newsweek meant by We Are All Socialists Now was that Obama got elected, and we’re takin’ over.

Evan Thomas knew perfectly well who Obama was. But he forgot to tell his readers before the election. Then he celebrated with his headline We Are All Socialists Now! and his readers said, Whatever, baby!

Now Newsweek is a nonprofit, albeit involuntarily.

Which is fine, as long as Newsweek can get enough leftist billionaires to pay the high salaries its propaganda artists demand. Or maybe Obama will find a few billion bucks for those obedient JournoLists? You can bet they are trying to figure out how. They have to, because without their propaganda apparatus, they are gone.

Ever since that triumphalist Newsweek headline, the Democrats have been trying to boogie away from self-proclaimed socialism, but they can’t. Reality gets in the way.

Affirmative action is racial socialism. ObamaCare is the worst kind of medical socialism. One point three trillion additional dollars of deficit spending over one year is socialist socialism. If it smells like it, by golly, it probably is.

Newsweek is all but out of business, but Obama and his gang believe that ordinary people still shouldn’t be allowed to decide where their money goes. Which is why you pay for PBS, NPR, and the National Endowment for Offending All Religions Except Islam. It is America’s official leftist Ministry of Propaganda, something any self-respecting tyranny has had for the last six thousand years, ever since the imperial powers of Sumer, Egypt, and Beijing.

Egypt had its priesthood to propagandize for the Pharaohs and to all make the lowly slaves worship the State. The Left calls itself Progressive, but it’s just a throwback to ancient times. The Left is as Retro as Retro gets.

So the question of theft and property turns out to be — surprise, surprise! — a question of Us versus Them. Deep in his bones, Obama knows with Pharaoh-like certainty that it’s Us, the victim groups from Harvard Law, who deserve all the goodies they can extort; which is what the IRS does, after all.

Still, a lot of Americans think they own the fruits of their labor.

Property is theft.

Socialism is theft.

Who wins that one?

That’s the struggle today. The next few elections will decide. That means you, buster! Stay home come election time, and Obama wins. Forever.

HT: American Thinker

Vladimir Lenin had a much simpler time of it. Following the October Revolution, he swiftly nationalized nearly all industry, commerce, and agriculture in the Soviet Union. Those who opposed the takeovers, such as those millions of small landowners known as the kulaks, were executed or sent to die in Siberia.

American leftists are far more civilized. Rather than send landowners and stockowners to Siberia, they simply raise federal and state taxes to combined marginal rates of 60% and subject the rest to estate taxes after the owner dies. If the owner fails to pay up, he is marched off to prison. Meanwhile, corporations are subject to another form of control: the tyranny of activists on government agencies that view the private sector as the means of social change.

The August 25 vote by the Security and Exchange Commission to allow large shareholders access to proxy nominations for board members is a perfect example. In effect, the new regulation encourages environmentalist and human rights groups, as well as institutional investors, labor unions, and hedge funds, to nominate their own representatives for corporate boards. If elected, many of these board members would promote activist agendas that conflict with the interests of the stockholders. Instead of voting to maximize profits, such representatives would support narrow ideological goals. How would it be possible for a representative of a coalition of Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups to serve on the board of Chevron or Massey Energy? Such a representative would probably not be aligned with shareholder interests.

Perhaps this is the intention of the SEC in passing the proxy ruling. After all, liberal Democrats have been trying for decades to seize the profits of the more successful American corporations. The Carter “windfall profits tax” was just one such attempt. The long-running Clinton-era lawsuit against Microsoft was another. In 2007, Hillary Clinton famously screeched that she’d “like to seize the profits of Exxon Mobil” and redistribute them to alternative energy companies. Now not even Google is safe.

Proxy reform is just one among scores of anti-business initiatives being carried out by unelected bureaucrats within government agencies. Thousands of other changes are buried in the fine print of the recently passed health care and financial regulation acts. By design, none of these policy changes have received an adequate public airing.

One example is an obscure rule appended to the financial regulation bill passed in July. With no discussion or public comment, Democrats slipped in a requirement that energy and mining companies disclose payments to foreign countries for oil or mineral rights. This requirement puts American companies at a disadvantage to others because it hampers their ability to bid competitively on foreign leases.

Most of the world’s large, undeveloped oil fields are controlled by the governments of developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. There is fierce competition between American oil companies and those of China, as well as those of Europe, India, and Latin America, for these prized lease rights. Why would Congress pass a law that puts our companies at a disadvantage when they negotiate for drilling rights? There is only one answer: the Democratic Congress does not really care about the success of American corporations. Or if it does care, it cares only about bringing them to heel.

It is not just energy companies that are the target of Washington’s activists. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission won a consent decree forcing Intel to pay a billion dollars in fines and potentially hampering that company’s competitiveness in the global technology market. Like Exxon and Massey Energy, Intel is one of America’s most successful corporations. That may well be the reason it was targeted by the left.

The irony is that even as the Obama administration has unleashed activist regulators on American corporations, that same administration is grumbling that corporations are not doing enough to spur economic growth. It’s like cutting someone’s throat and complaining when they don’t speak up.

The truth is that the current administration is not really interested in creating jobs, nor is it interested in promoting economic growth or the corporate profits upon which growth depends. The Obama administration is dominated by leftist ideologues whose obsession is regulation of the private sector. The ideologues who now manage the EPA, FTC, FCC, and SEC are guided by a single purpose: to establish state control of the entire U.S. economy, and to do so at whatever cost to the American people. In order to achieve this goal, they are willing to accept a 17% real unemployment rate as the “new normal.” They are willing to see foreign competitors, China in particular, overtake American leadership in the technology, health care, and energy sectors. They are not just willing to accept the decline of American power, but they are intent on bringing it about.

For those who fantasize about “one world” living in “harmony with nature,” the crippling of American business may seem like a good plan. In place of spacious suburban homes, they advocate densely packed urban dwellings. In place of cars and SUVs, they promote biking or walking. Instead of treating diseases with new drugs and surgical procedures, they endorse second-generation generics or just letting patients die. Instead of defending ourselves with modern weapons, they speak of negotiating with our enemies, as if North Korea or Iran has shown a genuine interest in negotiation. This, in essence, is the left’s vision of America in the 21st century.

The left cannot understand why the American people do not share their vision of national decline. Those who resist ObamaCare are labeled “obstructionists.” Those who resist Islamification are called “racists.” Those who question global warming are called “deniers,” as if opposition to the fiction of man-made global warming were somehow akin to denial of the historical fact of the Holocaust. The left believes that its own agenda — the eradication of private property and the destruction of America as a global superpower — is a moral crusade of overwhelming importance. This is why individuals such as Nancy Pelosi become practically apoplectic (“Are you serious?” she responded, when asked about the constitutionality of ObamaCare) when their behavior is questioned.

For conservatives, there is only one rational response to the current assault on American liberty. That is to remove all leftists from office and to guard against their return. Every American needs to understand that the left is not simply attempting to “reform” our institutions: it is swiftly transforming America from a capitalist democracy into a Marxist totalitarian state. Only a complete repudiation at the polls will stop them.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published many books and articles on American culture and politics.

HT: American Thinker

John Galt is the mysterious hero lurking in the background in Ayn Rand’s infamous novel, Atlas Shrugged. He is the industrialist who went into hiding and led a strike of producers fed up with the physical and moral encroachment from a government of moral supremacists who rationalized theft with childish notions of fairness but no conception of the actual production of wealth. That synopsis should also explain why Atlas Shrugged, first published in 1957, is having a very strong resurgence in popularity.

I meet with two different groups of independent business owners focused in the southeast and their perception of current business conditions is almost unanimous. They are angry. They face conflicting and unclear regulations, and a near certainty of increasing taxes . They are impatient. Many are not profitable and are unable and unwilling to tolerate customers who cannot pay, employees who do not think, banks without judgment, and a government that despises their efforts to create wealth and jobs.

Unlike John Galt, they have not abandoned their factories and homes and headed to Colorado, but they have reduced expenses, laid off workers, and rejected growth because of the added risk. They have conserved cash because banks are not willing to lend and government is too willing to take.

Elected official have won their positions from the popular vote, but they have neglected the other votes.

We vote with our wallets. We do not want to buy what they want to sell. We will not invest if taxes on investment returns are too high. We will not start and expand businesses if you tax and regulate them into money losers.

We vote with our feet. We leave high tax states and moves to low tax states. Company close plants in unreceptive countries and move to receptive countries. We exit highly regulated industries and move capital into businesses with more certainty and flexibility.

But we also vote with our hearts. With government pay double that of the private sector, with a torrent of legislation killing small businesses, with crony capitalism replacing main street capitalism, and with an endless and clear stream of propaganda from the bully pulpit, the message is clear- the private sector is for suckers. Starting businesses, creating new products, jobs, and funding schools, hospitals and the arts are all good things and our government is making it increasingly harder to accomplish. This is why corporations are sitting on top of trillions of dollars in cash. Because of the insanity currently posing as legislation and policy, their hearts are not in it.

They have ‘gone Galt’. They have dropped out of the producer ranks, not totally like Ayn Rand’s hero, but in parts. They work less, retire early, and conserve resources because they do not trust their government.

I found John Galt in the mirror and I found John Galts sharing their fears and frustrations around the tables at meeting rooms and restaurants. They are dropping out in whatever little ways they can.

I’ll bet you found him too.

HT: American Thinker

President Ronald Reagan

From the archived pages of Imprimis, the monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College, President Ronald Reagan reminds us that economic freedom is an absolute necessity not only for political freedom, but for all freedom. That freedom must be fought for and protected in every generation. That the business community must join this fight and not remain passive.

“It all comes down to this basic premise: if you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom and in fact all freedom. Freedom is something that cannot be passed on genetically. It is never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it. Once freedom is gone, it’s gone for a long, long time. Already, too many of us, particularly those in business and industry, have chosen to switch rather than fight.”

President Reagan clearly understood that government action is the biggest threat to our economic freedom and personal freedom. He correctly identified the government as the problem, not the solution:

“During the presidential campaign last year, there was a great deal of talk about the seeming inability of our economic system to solve the problems of unemployment and inflation. Issues such as taxes and government power and costs were discussed, but always these things were discussed in the context of what government intended to do about it. May I suggest for your consideration that government has already done too much about it? That indeed, government, by going outside its proper province, has caused many if not most of the problems that vex us. How much are we to blame for what has happened?

Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. Unfortunately, government as an institution always tends to increase in size and power, and so government attempted to provide the answers.”

Ronald Reagan’s timeless wisdom can be for us a beacon of hope and inspiration in the troubled economic and political times we now face. The Great Communicator took on the establishment and persevered in the face of massive opposition from the liberals and the mainstream media. Despite being belittled, insulted, and demonized, President Reagan stood his ground, acted on his conservative principles, and made good on his promises to restore America’s greatness. His vision and leadership rescued the country from disaster and history proved him right.

More than three decades ago President Reagan concluded his speech with an ominous warning and call to action. It is as appropriate and relevant today as it was in 1978:

Will we, before it is too late, use the vitality and the magic of the marketplace to save this way of life, or will we one day face our children, and our children’s children when they ask us where we were and what we were doing on the day that freedom was lost?

Will enough Americans still heed President Reagan’s call? Will more of today’s business leaders join this fight? Will we preserve our economic, political, and personal freedoms for the sake of this and future generations?

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and Chris Banescu.com

Nor is the problem confined to Milwaukee. As the sewage migrates southward toward Chicago, it impacts the shores of three Wisconsin counties and two in northern Illinois. The threat of E. coli results in the closure of beaches and other recreational activities, and the sights and smells do little for the tourist trade.

So, given the scope of this environmental and health hazard, occurring on a fairly regular basis, how do the Obama administration and the city and state Democratic machine choose to utilize Wisconsin’s allotment of borrowed federal funds?

On a “high-speed” rail link between Milwaukee and Madison, of course.

Madison is located roughly 80 miles due west of Milwaukee and is easily accessed via Interstate 94. Outside the city, the speed limit is 65 mph, and barring construction or an accident, the drive is easy. Bus service is also available between the two cities and the major communities in between. A rail link was abandoned decades ago for want of ridership.

Despite the fact that a majority of the public is against the project, Governor Jim Doyle (D) and the Obama administration insist on proceeding. Stating that the project would create “more than 5,500 construction and engineering jobs,” Doyle immediately went abroad and arranged for the purchase of the locomotives and cars in Spain. The Spanish company has committed to renovating an old plant in Milwaukee for some of the work, but the bulk of the work, and the profits, will go to Spain. Obviously, the jobs created would evaporate once the work is done, and the taxpayers would be left with ongoing operating and maintenance costs for a railroad that few will use. Like Amtrak, which runs regular service between Milwaukee and Chicago as well as to Minneapolis/St. Paul, every ride would have to be heavily subsidized.

The taxpayers of Wisconsin, among the most taxed in the country, have been vocal in their opposition. The response to this from Federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is to say, “High-speed rail is coming to Wisconsin — there’s no stopping it.” Governor Doyle, whose administration and policies have been responsible for the loss of tens of thousands of Wisconsin jobs and the departure of many of the largest companies (as this is written, Milwaukee’s Harley-Davidson is considering moving its manufacturing facilities out-of-state), has decided not to run for reelection — for obvious reasons. Whether this project goes through or not, his legacy will be an expensive one.

What is happening in Wisconsin is demonstrative of a mentality that has infected government at both the national and state levels: a failure to set correct priorities and an inability to readjust those priorities in view of more serious and immediate needs. Refusing to secure the southern border, even in the face of increased drug trafficking and violence in Mexico; the inability of the administration to associate the Islamofascist movement with the threat of foreign and domestic terror, even as more incidents occur; and the insistence on passing health care and other legislation that is clearly opposed to the wishes of the majority are disastrous choices from the start. Refusal to modify or abandon them, even as their effects become obvious, is irrational at best and malevolent at worst.

In the private sector, there is a keen awareness of correct priorities and the need for the flexibility to alter them as circumstances change. It cannot be otherwise. Businesses exist to provide goods and services, and the final arbiter of their success or failure is the marketplace. No matter the product, they must be alert to changes in tastes, style, technology, society, or competition that would render their present offering vulnerable, and they must be prepared to modify, augment, or supplant it as needed. To refuse to do so begets failure, and in this day and age, the increased “speed of life” can bring that about quickly and with finality.

Within the past half-century, a number of factors have contributed to the growing isolation of government at every level from the pragmatic realities of business and the life of the average citizen. As campaign costs have risen, political office has increasingly become the province of individuals of great wealth, and money, whether inherited or acquired, tends to insulate its possessors from many of life’s realities — especially the economic ones. Once elected, an incumbent can forge links with lobbyists, PACs, wealthy ideologues, unions, and other sources of funds to greatly boost reelection chances. This has resulted in a larger population of multi-term politicians more beholden to their bankrollers than their constituents. Government has also become attractive to academics, who are frequently more used to the world of ideas and theories than practical realities. David Halberstam’s 1972 book, The Best and the Brightest, is an instructive discourse on how some of the leading academic minds of a generation helped enmesh the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the mire of Vietnam and, once in, evolved a strategy of failure. Its lessons have not been learned by the current administration, and it is significant that fewer than 10% of the present advisory and administrative staff derive from the business community.

Many of the candidates who will be running in the fall in opposition to current policies at both the state and federal level have come from the private sector. In both substance and style, they resonate with an electorate disillusioned by and disgusted with ideologies, social engineering, impractical solutions, and, in one case at least, expensive and unnecessary railroad trains.

As for Milwaukee, there has been no plan to fix or change the sewer system, and the homeowners whose basements were inundated or have collapsed have been told by FEMA that, as of now, aid is possible only when the flood reaches the first floor. One thing is for sure: The next time the city experiences heavy rains, it will happen again, and billions of gallons of sewage will spew into Lake Michigan. There is an ironic footnote: This may be the first time that the eco-fixated Democrats should have put money down the sewer and failed to do so.

HT: American Thinker

An insufficient number of Republican leaders provide a message that appeals to a broad enough public. The Tea Party defines itself as in favor of more limited government, but the progressives are slandering it as a racist movement. Given the media’s acquiescence in the budding collective tyranny of the progressives’ New Regime, the opposition message is distorted, muffled, and too often unclear. The challenge for those of us who want America to continue as a nation of free people, with a free and robust economy, is to get across to people in the progressives’ targeted constituencies the idea that they are being and will continue to be exploited.

The self-styled progressive Democrats are oblivious to a multitude of personal liberties protected by the Constitution. Their core tactic is to say they seek only the ideal of “equality.” They then twist the ideal to put themselves in the position to define “equality,” regardless of the Constitution and the individual rights and immunities from government it preserves. Behind that fiendishly misleading banner, they would impose on us stifling uniformity and strict government control that will degrade all of our futures, whether we are rich or poor. They are willing to ditch the liberty of all for their government enforced visions. In so doing, they have warped the American and classic “liberal” concept of equality — namely, individual equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

The abuse of personal liberties that the New Regime is initiating threatens all Americans, of all colors, creeds, sexual orientations, and religious persuasions. Importantly, however, part of the power base of the New Regime comes from people who have been induced to see their personal liberties as threatened by Republicans, Tea Partiers, other self-styled conservatives, and capitalism. These are people caught up and motivated to vote as a group based on gay rights and other sexual preference issues, racial and ethnic discrimination issues, age, poverty, and abortion-related issues.

Most people in the special constituency groups miss the cynicism behind this elitist effort to acquire power in exchange for favors. To African-Americans, the false message is that there are jobs ahead in the new, government-directed economic future. To Latinos, it is to stick with us while we wink at immigration and cut you in on the swag. To the elderly, overtly, it is that we care about you, while covertly it is that we control your health care and income, so you had better cooperate. And to the poor and members of unions, it is the falsehood that government creates jobs. Each of these pitches is based on economic fantasies and denigration of traditional values of hard work, education, self-reliance, and honesty. In reality, they are making the individuals within each of these constituencies into modern-day serfs. Republicans and Tea Party candidates need to show members of these targeted groups that they will lose their individual self-respect and future of true personal freedom as Americans if they continue to follow the progressive design. They will only gain a new master: Big Government.

Republicans and Tea Partiers must clearly avow that we owe each other respect for our individuality and freedom to choose. Our liberty under law depends on this. Ronald Reagan himself, in explaining the core meaning of America to the Chinese in 1984, said,

We believe in the dignity of each man, woman, and child. Our entire system is founded on an appreciation of the special genius of each individual, and of his special right to make his own decisions and lead his own life[i].

Many Americans within the targeted constituencies understand the need for fiscal responsibility, strong defense, respect for the rule of law, and a lean and limited federal government. Even though they may not be “traditional” in their lifestyle, they can vote Republican or Tea Party without fear of losing their dignity or right to choose if their liberty is respected. Similarly, even poor people will vote for an economy that can grow and provide opportunity or competitive health costs instead of one that is bound to fail.

On race relations, Republicans — and their party principles that declared slavery unacceptable — should have the upper hand. Until handouts became the tools of Democrat vote-getting, African-Americans voted mostly Republican. To this day, Republicans speak to each other — black, brown, yellow, and white alike — in terms of government providing fair opportunity to succeed to individuals. We need to do a more vigorous job of that, denouncing the plantation politics of the big-city Democrats that have put poor blacks into dependency and fear for their daily safety on the city streets. Plainer and more outspoken rededication of the Republicans to civil rights will start attracting thoughtful black voters. Add to that a hard-nosed effort to end the tolerance of gangs and violence in the inner cities. Demand freedom for all to have and choose a quality education and couple with it creative efforts to reduce the “underclass” and unemployed by serious job training, and a surprising number of people of color will start voting Republican to end their dependency status.

A broader point is that in some respects, civil rights regarding race have a common foundation with privacy and property rights: the right to be respected and “pursue happiness” as an individual. While one’s race is not a choice, outlawing race discrimination is not sufficient to prevent government from indiscriminate interference in everyone’s life. It is essential to a free people that individual choices in a variety of subjects be kept free and given meaningful room.

We cannot risk imposing our moral choices on someone through government without risking the imposition of choices by a tyrannical majority upon ourselves. It is dangerous for a conservative, a liberal, or any other American not to insist on a zone of private liberty from the United States or other government.

Too many conservatives have unwittingly developed a serious blind spot regarding the importance of personal liberty in the Constitution. Personal space and freedom is essential to liberty in modern society. The Founders believed this fervently. A zone of freedom from government intrusion enables each of us to enjoy our individual versions of the pursuit of happiness. Whether they involve use and sale of property, rights of contract, decisions of lifestyle, sex partner and residence, choice of friends and physicians, pursuit of learning or career, or many other choices we make, our personal right to decide for ourselves must be protected in order for our nation to remain the great free land that it is.

Indifference to these unspecified but preserved rights by the progressives should alarm every thinking American. These “natural rights” are fundamental. James Wilson, one of the key Founders, said that “there are very few who understand the whole of these rights … nor can you find … complete enumeration[ii]. In 1798, a Supreme Court Justice wrote that “there are certain vital principles in our free republican governments which will determine and overrule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power … to take away that security of personal liberty, for the protection whereof the government was established” (Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386, 388). Ensuring the preservation of these rights by the Bill of Rights was a condition to the adoption of the Constitution by most of the thirteen original states.

In a nation of over 300 million, I would much rather let some many thousands make a poor moral choice themselves than cede to government the role of imposing its will on intimate questions. If we have unalienable rights, they include the right to make mistakes, provided public health and safety are not threatened.

In short, Republican and Tea Party candidates need to retune their message so that individual rights and freedoms are as prominent and important to preserve as market freedom and property rights. By doing that, they will recover an important part of their heritage. They will also get through to more thinking Democrats and independents among the special constituencies the progressive ruling class rewards and manipulates. After making their dedication to an individual’s zone of freedom clear, they can then more effectively ask questions like: Do you really trust the government to look after you? Is dependency the kind of future you seek for your children? Don’t you want to exercise your personal freedom in a safe community and a successful economy?

HT: American Thinker

People are asking, “Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?”

Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency.

Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There’s no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.

Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.

Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He’s diminishing America from within — so far, successfully.

He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design.

He is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most “consequential” president ever.

The Wall Street Journal’s steadfast Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote that Barack Obama is “an alien in the White House.”

His bullying and offenses against the economy and job creation are so outrageous that CEOs in the Business Roundtable finally mustered the courage to call him “anti-business.” Veteran Democrat Sen. Max Baucus blurted out that Obama is engineering the biggest government-forced “redistribution of income” in history.

Fear and uncertainty stalk the land. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says America’s financial future is “unusually uncertain.”

A Wall Street “fear gauge” based on predicted market volatility is flashing long-term panic. New data on the federal budget confirm that record-setting deficits in the $1.4 trillion range are now endemic.

Obama is building an imperium of public debt and crushing taxes, contrary to George Washington’s wise farewell admonition: “cherish public credit … use it as sparingly as possible … avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt … bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not … inconvenient and unpleasant … .”

Opinion polls suggest that in the November mid-term elections, voters will replace the present Democratic majority in Congress with opposition Republicans — but that will not necessarily stop Obama.

A President Obama intent on achieving his transformative goals despite the disagreement of the American people has powerful weapons within reach. In one hand, he will have a veto pen to stop a new Republican Congress from repealing ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank takeover of banks.

In the other, he will have a fistful of executive orders, regulations and Obama-made fiats that have the force of law.

Under ObamaCare, he can issue new rules and regulations so insidiously powerful in their effect that higher-priced, lower-quality and rationed health care will quickly become ingrained, leaving a permanent stain.

Under Dodd-Frank, he and his agents will control all credit and financial transactions, rewarding friends and punishing opponents, discriminating on the basis of race, gender and political affiliation. Credit and liquidity may be choked by bureaucracy and politics — and the economy will suffer.

He and the EPA may try to impose by “regulatory” fiats many parts of the cap-and-trade and other climate legislation that failed in the Congress.

And by executive orders and the in terrorem effect of an industrywide “boot on the neck” policy, he can continue to diminish energy production in the United States.

By the trick of letting current-law tax rates “expire,” he can impose a $3.5 trillion 10-year tax increase that damages job-creating capital investment in an economy struggling to recover. And by failing to enforce the law and leaving America’s borders open, he can continue to repopulate America with unfortunate illegals whose skill and education levels are low and whose political attitudes are often not congenial to American-style democracy.

A wounded rampaging president can do much damage — and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that may be.

The overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured — Chicago-style.

HT: IBD

Aliza Davidovit

6/30/2010 – Aliza Davidovit –

The other day I incidentally drove by the Apple store in Manhattan and was really amused and disheartened by the long line of thousands of people waiting to pick up their iphone 4Gs. As this country is falling apart, it becomes evermore clear to me why: We are still living in La La Land. I questioned when the last time was New Yorkers formed such a queue to protest a government wrongdoing and lined up outside their congressman’s door.

Undoubtedly, these hoarders of high-tech phones have seen a news flash or two and are aware that times are no good and are spiraling quickly downward. So why don’t they get it? Why don’t they realize that they are standing in the “wrong” line? And it dawned on me: It’s because we are a society and a generation reared on Hollywood endings. Things will be OK; things will work out; America will bounce back.

But, my dear readers, as the president and his administration proceed to fundamentally transform America as he promised, the floor under our feet, the one we were hoping to bounce back from, is being shattered. There is a dark deep abyss beneath, an unknown that those not blinded by the happy-ending syndrome believe is a socialist agenda at best, one that will destroy the United States of America.

Please tell me, if the president doesn’t believe in exceptionalism for our country, which succeeded in being great because of its freedoms and unparalleled system, why does he believe in personal exceptionalism? Why did he rise to the top and become a president and not remain a community organizer? Is he the only one allowed to reach for the top, to be exceptional, while the rest of us peons have to wait until he and his mammoth and ever-growing government doles us out what they think we deserve?

We all know the numbers. The stimulus and bailouts, punishing the rich and businesses with higher tax burdens, the universal health-care bill and cap-and-trade are all means of overtaxing the system and redistributing the wealth. In addition to the unsustainable stress on our economy, let’s not pretend redistribution is governmental philanthropy – it is plain-outgovernment theft. If it is my body that’s in the gym every morning at 6 a.m., is it fair that you should be accruing the muscles that I’m working so hard for?

The second step after controlling the purse strings is controlling the masses, which then leaves little surprise that this administration is so accommodating to illegal immigrants, even criminal ones. There is power in numbers.

Sometimes I wonder if Obama is trying so hard to implode the system that maybe, just maybe, there will never be a 2012 election. Maybe a revolution is already in place, but it is starting from the top down instead of by the people.

Yes, this country, the leader of the free world, has gone through deep crises in the past, but the one factor that gave us optimism and hope was the integrity of the structure, i.e., our Constitution and the certainty that this was a democratic and capitalistic country that was respected by its allies and respected them in turn. Even our fallings and failings were surefooted because America would always be America. Don’t count on that anymore.

My friends, as you show off your new iPhones with more applications than you could ever use in a lifetime, I urge you to tune into its built-in alarm clock and WAKE UP. The challenges we now face are unprecedented. I cannot help but think of the biblical story of Pinchas, where one sole man saw the threat to his nation and alone took action to save the day. Of course, I’m not calling for violence, but I am calling for action. Are you doing all you can do, my fellow Americans, to save this great nation? Which line are you standing in? Are you a lawyer? A writer? A speaker? A singer?

Whatever you are, take the talent God gave you and use it to fight to save this great country right now before it’s too late and they lay the yellow tape around the map of America to demarcate the greatest crime scene and slaughtering of liberty the world has ever known.

HT: WND

Steve Wynn

6/27/2010 – Chris Banescu -

In a recent interview, Steve Wynn, the successful American casino resort and real-estate developer, made some shocking observations about the unstable and aggressively anti-business atmosphere in America perpetuated by our own government. In his interview with CNBC, Steve expressed the nightmarish situation that US companies face due to the arbitrary, punitive, and misguided manner in which legislators in Washington, DC continue to endlessly tax and regulate businesses in America, while our economy continues to suffer and deteriorate.

In a criticism clearly directed at President Obama and the Democrats, Mr. Wynn focused on the key reason why America is now less stable and less business-friendly than even China: our own incompetent government in Washington! He explained how China now offers more political stability, more opportunities, and much more business-friendly environment than the United States:

[at 1:23 in video ]
Interviewer:
“What about the regulation and government oversight of working there [Macau, China] as opposed to here?”

Steve Wynn:
“Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington. That’s where we get surprises every day. That’s where taxes are changed every five minutes. That’s where you don’t know that to expect tomorrow. To compare political stability and predictability in China to Washington is like comparing Mount Everest to an anthill.

Macau and China is stable, Washington is not!

Is there a businessman or a media person in America that isn’t frightened about the next crazy idea that is coming from Washington. The financial institutions, the cars, the businessmen, the taxes, the health care, everything is Coo Coo. And God knows what’s next?

Steve Wynn also explains that the unpredictable and irresponsible manner in which our government is acting had created a “frightening” business climate in America and helped created an atmosphere of uncertainty for everyone. “The politicians are ruining us“, said Steve. He goes on to warn that “It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop!”

So when you ask me today about predictability and uncertainty in China compared to Washington, I take China. Washington is unpredictable these days. Washington is… No one in the business community from one coast to the other has any idea what’s next. And what’s even worse, the people that do business with us that buy our bonds in other countries don’t even know what’s next. The uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody. And it’s delaying the recovery.

We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused and foolish government that is living up to the prediction of Alexis de Tocqueville who in 1909 said: “The American system of democracy will prevail until that moment when the politicians discover that they can bribe the electorate with their own money.” And boy it’s in full bloom today. So extreme that it would probably have an end unto itself. The public is frightened.

This Tea Party business is all about fear. There is a sense in the land of discomfort. There is a sense of fear that the politicians are ruining us. And the people are right.

It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop!”

View more of the interview script on the Chris Banescu website.

Thomas Sowell

6/21/2010 – Thomas Sowell –

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. “Useful idiots” was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP’s oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be “a government of laws and not of men.”

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without “due process of law.”

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in constitutional government.

And, without constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will always be a “crisis” — which, as the president’s chief of staff has said, cannot be allowed to “go to waste” as an opportunity to expand the government’s power.

That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power, much less to the particular issues.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country’s wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard’s restrictions on the printing of money.

At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law “for the relief of the German people.”

That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.

If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.

The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP’s money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed “czars” controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.

Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power — vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom — are the “useful idiots” of our time. But useful to whom?

HT: IBD

Story was renamed and re-published under a more appropriate title. Read the entire article on the Chris Banescu website. (re-printed with permission)

Ken Connor

4/30/2010 – Ken Connor -
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” Alexis de Tocqueville

In his treatise, The Christian Manifesto, published in 1981, Francis Schaeffer suggests that the gradual shift away from a Judeo-Christian (or at least a Creationist) worldview towards a materialistic view of reality has broad sociological and governmental implications for western society. His is an interesting thesis to ponder in light of a recent article in USA Today discussing religion and the Millennial Generation.

The article cites a recent survey conducted by Lifeway Christian Resources, which reveals that Millennials (defined as Americans born approximately between 1980 and 1995) are distancing themselves from traditional religious forms in favor of a personally-defined, nebulous kind of “spirituality.” These individuals are less likely to pray, they don’t read the Bible, and they don’t go to church. Among the 65% who identify themselves as Christian, “many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only. . . . Most are just indifferent.” Theological indifference may seem like no big deal in an age where moral relativism and the cult of the individual reign, but it’s worth considering Schaeffer’s argument that – whether we realize it or not – our understanding of religion and its role in society has a direct impact on our politics.

As the Founding Fathers laid the foundations for the unprecedented political experiment known as the United States of America, this relationship was foremost in their minds. The Judeo-Christian understanding of man as a fallen and sinful creature is reflected in James Madison’s famous observation that “if men were angels, government wouldn’t be necessary.” The recognition of our innate dignity as creatures created in God’s own image is reflected in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. America’s political tradition rests squarely upon this conception of human nature: We are fallen, yet still bear the mark of our divine inheritance. Our Constitution, consequently, addresses the human need for a robust rule of law while respecting the liberty and dignity of the individual. As Schaeffer rightly observed, a society’s predominant worldview shapes its form/freedom balance: It shapes the form of government the citizens adopt and the freedoms they enjoy.

The problem is, fewer and fewer Americans recognize this fact, either because we are unwilling or unable to conceive of a reality in which we are not in ultimate control. If anything, we regard the move from religion to “spirituality” as one more step up the ladder of progress – a natural evolution from the silly superstitions of our ancestors to a more enlightened understanding of reality in which everyone is his own god. Ideas, however, have consequences, and the consequences of denying God may well prove detrimental to the future of the American experiment.

When we decide as a society that God doesn’t exist, all we are left with to account for what we are and why we exist is the idea that we are nothing more than an accident of nature. This denial of purpose and design in Creation goes hand in hand with a denial of absolute Truth and, subsequently, the embrace of moral relativism. Such a view of man and of the nature of truth is completely at odds with the Founders’ views.

A view of man that denies our divine origins gives us little reason to respect our fellow men or to strive for virtue and justice in society. Furthermore, it threatens our human dignity and undercuts our claim to those “unalienable rights” we so cherish as Americans. As each of us withdraws deeper and deeper into our own individually-crafted bubbles of “spirituality,” we are finding ourselves less and less able to reach even a basic societal consensus on questions of justice and morality. The result? We end up with a legal system that defends the due process rights of convicted felons and would-be terrorists while denying those same rights to the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly.

The one entity that does not object to a God-less society, however, is government – which may explain why the promotion of atheism has been central to some of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes. A government seeking absolute authority over its citizens, after all, is not well served by competition with God. When we refuse to embrace both the blessings and the responsibilities of our divine inheritance, the power-hungry politicians and entrenched bureaucrats that manage the modern welfare state are more than happy to step in and do it for us – for a price that often comes in the form of higher taxes, less liberty, and less protection for the weak and vulnerable.

As our own government senses its power and authority growing stronger in direct proportion to our increasing religious apathy, social irresponsibility, and historical ignorance, we can be sure that it will do what it can to prevent the American people from reversing the tide. The Obama Administration’s response to the Tea Party movement is a perfect example.

Americans must decide the future they want for their country. If we wish to preserve the unique tradition begun by our Founders, we must rediscover the importance of religion and put God back in the foreground of our social and political consciousness.

Posted by express permission of the author.

Ken Connor founded the Center for a Just Society in 2005 with Colin Stewart and Genevieve Wood. He serves as the organization’s Chairman and one of its principal spokesmen.

Dale McAlpine, a British Baptist street preacher, was arrested and jailed on April 20 by a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) for allegedly saying homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible.

McAlpine was publicly handing out pamphlets on the Ten Commandments with a church member when a passerby initiated a debate about his faith. When the exchange was over the woman was approached by the PCSO who spoke with her briefly, at which point the officer informed McAlpine that a complaint had been made for his use of homophobic language.

Allegedly the PCSO then identified himself as a homosexual and the liaison officer for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community and Cumbria police, to which McAlpine allegedly replied: “It’s still a sin.”

In a classic intimidation tactic of embarrassing overkill, three regular uniformed police officers arrived to back up the PCSO during the exchange with the unarmed preacher. The four officers allege that since McAlpine’s remarks could be overheard by others, it was necessary to charge and arrest him with using abusive or insulting language outlawed by the Public Order Act, an Act that prohibits unreasonable use of abusive language likely to cause distress.

Police took McAlpine’s fingerprints, palm print, a retina scan and a DNA swab, in addition to his cell phone, belt, shoes and other personal property, as is customary during an arrest. He was interviewed and charged under the Public Order Act and released on bail on the condition that he does not preach in public.

Introduced in 1986 to address rioting and hate crime issues, the Public Order Act has recently been cited, instead, in the arrests of people of Christian faith in a number of similar cases in Britain. Christians there have expressed alarm that the Public Order Act is being used to curb religious free speech and expression.

American Christians recognize similar political efforts toward US hate speech and hate crime legislation as simply another path down a similar road. Equally disturbing, religious speech is not the only Christian practice in the cross-hairs in the UK that threatens to further erode American religious freedom. A senior judge ruled Thursday in the UK that Christian beliefs have no place in the law and no right to protection by the courts.

The Law is “Deeply Unprincipled”
A gay couple went to Gary McFarlane, a sex therapist who is also a Christian, for guidance regarding their sexual issues. MacFarlane declined to counsel them based on his deeply held religious conviction that such behavior is morally wrong and that he could therefore take no active part in enabling it without sinning himself. He was fired.

Lord Justice Laws, the judge in the lawsuit brought against McFarlane’s employer who is also reputedly a well-known judicial activist, ruled, in effect, that Christians have no rights. Laws believes and has said that legal protection for views held on religious grounds is “deeply unprincipled.” In the ruling against McFarlane, he said that “[l]aw for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified.

“It is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.” This ruling illustrates the danger of activist judges who impose their views on the voting public by elevating personal and political considerations above existing law, and therefore above the democratic process.

UK law ostensibly provides protection for some religious activity based on religious convictions. Immigration attorney Shabnam Mughal cited religious belief when refusing to remove her full-face Islamic veil in court. Her right to do so, based on religious conviction, was upheld. Cocktail waitress Fata Lemes refused to wear revealing clothing on the job because it offended her Muslim faith and her right to a workplace free of sexual harassment. She also won her case.

The rights of two Christians, however, who were fired for refusing to remove crucifixes while on the job, were not upheld. The two maintained, separately, that bans on crosses were discrimination against Christians while the rights of Muslims in religious dress are routinely upheld. Both lost their cases.

Harry Hammond was convicted in 2002 for holding up a sign saying “Stop immorality. Stop Homosexuality. Stop Lesbianism. Jesus is Lord” while preaching. Stephen Green, a Christian campaigner, was arrested and charged in 2006 for handing out religious leaflets at a Gay Pride festival. Clearly, Christians in the UK are not included in the universal “tolerance” mandate.

What this means in the UK is that homosexual equality/equivalency legislation takes precedence over religious liberty and individual conscience, at least for Christians. And traditionally, where England goes, America inevitably follows.

HT: Catholic Online

4/30/2010 – IBD –

Nowhere has liberalism gone further than in San Francisco. And few, if any, other cities can boast such a well-heeled work force. Is this what “spreading the wealth” is all about?

We have seen the future and it works — for certain people. Take San Francisco municipal workers. The San Francisco Chronicle recently detailed just how overpaid the city’s employees are. Their average yearly salary is $93,000 before benefits. A third of them made more than $100,000 in 2009. A newly retired deputy police chief (not even the city’s top cop) made $516,118.

Now San Francisco is not the inevitable future of America. It does, however, represent one possible path. It’s a promised land of liberalism, both social and fiscal. The city’s tolerance of eccentric and, to some, offensive behavior is famous and longstanding.

Less celebrated in song and story, but just as significant, is its role as a theater for liberal interest-group politics. When it comes to enriching the denizens of the public sector, San Francisco shows the way.

The city’s unions, which are powerful even by California standards, have produced a public-workers’ paradise financed by high taxes on tourists, businesses (San Francisco even has a 1.5% tax on payrolls) and regular folk who choose to live there or who haven’t figured out a way to leave. The city has poor and homeless people just like any other.

It’s hard to see how an aggressive and expensive local government has helped those at the bottom much. It’s much easier to see what the tax-and-spend machine has done for people such as former Deputy Chief Charles Keohane, who earned more than $500,000 in his last year from salary enhanced by banked vacation time, comp time and sick days.

Also in 2009, 28 city employees made more than the mayor, Gavin Newsom, who pulled down a respectable $250,903. Firefighters in San Francisco have a base salary of $102,648, while even lowly payroll clerks start at $54,314.

Liberals have railed since time immemorial about “corporate greed.” If you grant for the sake of argument that something as impersonal as a corporation can feel the very human urge to acquire inordinate wealth, there is surely such a thing as “government greed.”

To put it another way, government can work to enrich its own just as a private company does. The difference is that government is not supposed to be just another money-hungry interest group. It’s supposed to be working directly for the public good.

That’s what even the most self-serving public entity will claim to do. And we’re sure that thousands of San Francisco city workers see themselves as selfless servants of the people.

They are also beneficiaries of a political process that lies at the heart of modern liberal governance. Unions, particularly public-sector unions, leverage their money and membership to stock legislatures, city councils and county boards with friendly faces. Those faces, in turn, lock governments into contracts (particularly where pensions are concerned) that are extremely difficult to break.

One result is on display not just in San Francisco (which is struggling with a $483 million budget shortfall), but also in other cities that have had to cut real services, such as policing, in order to stay solvent. Well-paid employees lose a little but generally not much. Some public-sector workers are being laid off — including perhaps 500 due to get the ax in San Francisco — but private-sector workers generally have it worse in both pay and job security.

Keep the example of San Francisco’s public work force in mind the next time you hear a politician promise to “spread the wealth,” as candidate Barack Obama put it to Joe the Plumber during a 2008 campaign stop.

The rich might still be told to give up their wealth, in classic Robin Hood fashion, but these days Robin Hood and his Merry Men keep the lion’s share.

The poor are, at most, an afterthought.

HT: IBD