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

University faculties are often ignorant of the fact of entrepreneurial value creation. One such faculty member is the influential human rights scholar Judith Blau, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Through her membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Human Rights Coalition she defines the human rights agenda for the world’s largest and most prestigious scientific association. Through her leadership of Sociologists Without Borders she promotes an activist “public sociology” agenda internationally. She has published dozens of articles and more than a dozen books, and she has served on numerous professional committees, advisory boards, editorial boards, etc.

And yet, in a 2006 interview, she could dismiss the role of entrepreneurs.

I don’t use the word “entrepreneurs,” at least not anymore. It does not go with the global predicaments we face today, which, in my view, require collective solidarities and collective action.

This is consistent with her Marxist orientation (she was Chair Elect of the Marxist section of the American Sociology Association in 2007-2008) and her Marxist economics, which she articulated in her major book on economics, Social Contracts and Economic Markets, in 1993:

… in purely economic terms, the entrepreneur owns the capital, the means of production, and hires workers to produce commodities or services to make a profit. … The potential for profit is created by workers: Specifically, surplus value is, put simply, the difference between what workers are paid for their work and what the work is worth — as products or services — in the market [1].

According to Blau, an entrepreneur is merely someone who owns capital and hires workers, and any profit is, in essence, stolen from the workers. Her ignorance makes her a superb case study of an influential scholar, writing frequently on economic issues, who is clueless regarding the role of entrepreneurial value creation.

Israel Kirzner identified the entrepreneur as the economic agent who is “alert to opportunity” and who acts on that opportunity. An entrepreneur is someone who recognizes that there are economic goods or services that are currently undervalued, and he or she then takes action, in the hopes of realizing a profit, by means of selling the undervalued goods or services at their market price. Kirzner thus identifies “profit” as the entrepreneurial reward for being alert to opportunity. It is analytically distinct from returns on capital investment received by the owners of the capital or managerial salaries received by managers of the enterprise (though one individual might simultaneously play the roles of entrepreneur, investor, and manager).

But even Kirzner’s “arbitrage” theory of entrepreneurship undervalues the entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs do not merely buy low and sell high; they actively create new value in the process of identifying undervalued goods and services and discovering new ways to combine them in order to create more value. Leonard Shoen, the creator of U-Haul, realized that gas stations across the U.S. had empty parking spaces on which they would be happy to park his trailers and thereby provide themselves with an additional revenue stream. Sam Wyly made his first fortune by realizing that many users who needed computer processing power could not afford their own mainframe, so he bought up mainframe time and sold it as time-sharing. In each case, the “arbitrage” interpretation of their entrepreneurial story fails to do full justice to the combination of vision, development of new systems, marketing and sales savvy, and sheer chutzpah in creating something out of nothing. Ex post, such arbitrage opportunities may sound obvious; ex ante, each new endeavor is challenging, risky, and requires tremendous talent and commitment to pull off (thus the entirely justified Randian notion of entrepreneur as hero).

An entrepreneur is an individual who sees opportunities that are invisible to others. Entrepreneurs create value because they identify situations in which some goods or services are undervalued and apply their life’s energy to creating a reality which does not yet exist, with no guarantee of either financial or reputational reward. More than half of all new firms fail within four years in the U.S.[2]. Most entrepreneurs are losers, at least the first time.

My wife, Magatte Wade, is a Senegalese entrepreneur whose first company, Adina World Beverages, began by selling an organic hibiscus beverage that was traditional to Senegal. When she created her company, the hibiscus industry in Senegal was dying as the Senegalese were switching from hibiscus to Coke and Fanta. Meanwhile, Senegalese hibiscus was not competitive in international markets; Chinese hibiscus, for instance, was half the price and of much higher quality. Magatte recognized, however, that with the right branding and marketing, she could sell an organic hibiscus beverage to U.S. customers in the “cultural creative” demographic because they care about the social and environmental conditions under which products are produced. But in order to create her company, she first had to spend months convincing potential investors to invest in her enterprise (again, Blau’s notion that the entrepreneur is simply the person with the capital is often false). Once she had raised the first round of financing, she had to spend numerous trips to Senegal training the women’s co-ops to grow high-quality organic hibiscus, and then she had to spend several years flying around the U.S. selling her products to Whole Foods Markets, Wegmans, and other high-end retailers. Meanwhile, she and her partners went through all of the usual business nightmares of management problems, employee problems, production problems, marketing problems, etc. Anyone who has actually created a new enterprise knows that it is often a matter of nonstop problem-solving in a frenzy of work, with the constant risk that it will all collapse at any point in time. It is not mere price arbitrage, less alone is it simply a matter of exploiting the “surplus value” created by workers.

At this point, Adina is growing successfully, and if Magatte’s shares become liquid (no guarantee of that), she may become wealthy and thereby exacerbate the inequalities of wealth with which Blau and other academics are often so obsessed. In the meantime, Magatte is starting a second company, for which she is again raising capital, through which she hopes to create even more and better jobs in Africa.

There are 500,000 aid workers in Africa who have not brought prosperity to the continent, nor will they. All nations that have become prosperous have done so by means of entrepreneurial value creation. Rather than 500,000 aid workers, Africa needs a million entrepreneurs, half of whom may succeed. The ones who succeed by means of creating value that hitherto had not existed will, in many cases, become rich and thereby “exacerbate” inequality in Africa, just as the rise of entrepreneurial capitalism in China and India have created a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs and “exacerbated” inequality in those places.

The entire academic focus on inequality is an atavistic throwback to the time when we lived in a tribe of 150 and if you got more of today’s kill, then I got less. Our biology is geared to zero-sum interactions in which we must each struggle with the other to get our share. But entrepreneurial capitalism is a stunning example of a non-zero-sum game. All of the wealth created since 1800 was created out of the minds of human beings. Almost everyone on earth is better off now than their ancestors were two hundred years ago.

When Blau writes, in 2006, “It was not uncommon not so long ago for social scientists to speak of ‘progress.’ We are now wiser” [3], I wonder what planet she is living on. Once one understands the phenomenon of entrepreneurial value creation, then the world becomes an optimistic world of abundance for all, rather than a grim world of fighting and struggle. As the poet Frederick Turner has noted, the best solution for all of our problems is to “Make Everybody Rich.” Since Adam Smith, we have known more or less how to do so: Let entrepreneurs, through the system of natural liberty, create value. Once Blau understands this, she will be part of the solution, and no longer part of the problem.

Michael Strong is the CEO and Chief Visionary Officer of Freedom Lights Our World, a non-profit devoted to entrepreneurial solutions to world problems, and the lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

HT: American Thinker

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Geithner, erstwhile cheerleader for the Obama economic team, announces that unemployment rates could rise “for a couple of months.” “Of course we want to do what we can,” says Geithner, but what we’re doing is just not working.

Still, “large parts of the private sector continue to strengthen,” Geithner wrote in the New York Times on August 3. Maybe Geithner wasn’t looking at the same data as the Federal Reserve, which one week later reported that the economy was weakening. Not only that, but the Fed backed up its opinion with a commitment to new monetary stimulus. Come to think of it, Geithner’s boss was not hesitant to sign a $26-billion stimulus bill designed to bail out teachers’ unions and state Medicaid programs. If Geithner is so sure the economy is expanding, why is he supporting another stimulus bill?

The truth is that Geithner knows, as does every reputable economist out there, that the U.S. economy is not recovering as it should following the severe recession of 2008-2009. The Obama economic policies are just not working, and no one in the administration seems to have a clue about what to do.

As for Geithner, he thinks that Americans haven’t been taxed enough. In an August 4 speech, Geithner suggested that the tax cuts that began during the Reagan administration and continued through the presidency of George W. Bush actually slowed the growth of the economy. Geithner is perhaps the only economist in the universe to believe that employment rates did not increase during the period from 1983 to 2008, following reductions in marginal rates, capital gains, and other taxes during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II administrations. The Secretary is apparently incapable of reading a line chart, or of comprehending that the percentage of Americans employed rose from 57% in 1983 to 63% in 2008.

Geithner, of course, is saying these things only to defend the president. It is the president who plans to raise taxes on the rich, as he likes to call everyone earning more than $200,000 — even those who reinvest that money in small businesses and create new jobs. Somehow the president believes that robbing small businesses of every dime of profit is going to kick-start the economy. Once again, just about every economist except Paul Krugman disagrees with him. As Sen. Mitch McConnell pointed out on Aug. 4, the tax increases scheduled for Jan. 1, 2011 “will have a devastating impact” on the economy.

If the President really thinks that raising taxes will promote growth, why not raise taxes on everyone? More taxes, more growth. Why not let government take everything, as it already has, almost, in California and New York? If higher taxes produce jobs, where are the jobs in California and New York? Why were more new jobs created in low-tax Texas in 2009 than in the other 49 states combined?

Maybe it’s just that the Democrats have a different definition of “jobs” from most people’s. For Democrats, a job is not a job unless it’s “green.” A job need not be real — it can be “created or saved” or bought with stimulus spending. For Nancy Pelosi, collecting unemployment benefits is a job in itself. And for Tim Geithner, raising taxes on some is the precondition for putting others back to work.

The fact is that Obama’s economic policies have always been laughable. The $862-billion stimulus spending of 2009 distributed massive funding to welfare recipients, alternative energy boondoggles, environmental regulation enforcement, unionized education, and public service workers. But the spending bonanza was never intended to create jobs. It was designed to buy votes, as was the latest stimulus bill signed by the president on August 10.

Meanwhile, the economy overall has lost six million jobs since the recession began, most of them since the inauguration of Barack Obama; 14.6 million Americans are now out of work. Millions of ordinary Americans have been sacrificed so that the Democratic Party can retain the votes of welfare recipients, teachers, public service unions, and environmentalists — and what’s more important, the campaign contributions of unions, environmental groups, and trial lawyers.

If the president really wished to create jobs, he could do so in several ways. He could reduce marginal tax rates across the board, thereby returning billions of dollars to their rightful owners. He could cut capital gain, dividend, and interest taxes, thus increasing business investment and spurring expansion. He could promote tort reform and eliminate unnecessary environmental regulation. Most importantly, he could lower taxes on businesses and corporations.

Obama has done none of these things. The only “solution” he has proposed is raising taxes and distributing more stimulus funds to his key constituencies.

There are 14.6 million unemployed, and the president’s solution is to raise taxes so as to distribute more taxpayer money to his political supporters. Apparently Obama is so callous or so blind that he cannot comprehend what it means for 14.6 million families to lose a breadwinner. Everything that he has done, and that he continues to do, serves only his own interest. He appears to be ruthlessly intent on a single objective: securing his political base in advance of the 2012 election. No matter if fourteen or twenty or fifty million Americans go hungry.

HT: American Thinker

If there was ever any question what Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, thought about America, the latest audio clip uncovered by Pamela Geller on her Atlas Shrugs blog should remove any doubt.  In the 2005 lecture the “moderate” imam said this about our country:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations.”

The “half-million Iraqi children died because of US sanctions” lie was also a favorite of both Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein who both used it in their hate-America propaganda.  This whopper of a myth was first dreamed up by Saddam Hussein era Iraqi officials, in order to smear America and sway world opinion against the sanctions imposed on Saddam to stop him from expanding his “biological, chemical, nuclear, and missile-based weapons systems.”

A detailed expose done by Reason magazine back 2002 debunked this lie and explained the origin of this myth.  The article documented the deeply flawed studies that gave birth to this falsehood and the lack of objective and independent data to backup the outrageous claims.

“The idea that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children (or 1 million, or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source) took root in 1995 and 1996, on the basis of two transparently flawed studies, one inexplicable doubling of the studies’ statistics, and a non-denial on 60 Minutes.

In August 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health a questionnaire on child mortality and asked them to conduct a survey in the capital city of Baghdad. On the basis of this five-day, 693-household, Iraq-controlled study, the FAO announced in November that “child mortality had increased nearly five fold” since the pre-sanctions era. As embargo critic Richard Garfield, a public health specialist at Columbia University, wrote in his own comprehensive 1999 survey of under-5 deaths in Iraq, “The 1995 study’s conclusions were subsequently withdrawn by the authors….Notwithstanding the retraction of the original data, their estimate of more than 500,000 excess child deaths due to the embargo is still often repeated by sanctions critics.”

In March 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its own report on the humanitarian crisis. It reprinted figures — provided solely by the Iraqi Ministry of Health — showing that a total of 186,000 children under the age of 5 died between 1990 and 1994 in the 15 Saddam-governed provinces. According to these government figures, the number of deaths jumped nearly 500 percent, from 8,903 in 1990 to 52,905 in 1994.”

Building on the old adage that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” the “moderate” backer of the Ground Zero mosque has just provided us with important insights on just how objective, balanced, and moderate his views are. Let’s hope that America is paying attention.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog

If she had, she would have seen that President Obama’s lack of cojones extends far beyond border security — it extends to our national security more broadly. President Obama, simply put, has no cojones when it comes to defending and protecting this nation from threats at home and abroad. His leadership style is more waxed chest and eyebrow trim than alpha male; he’s our first metrosexual president, an elitist who believes that sweet-talking and willful blindness to the nature of our enemies are a recipe for a success.

Being President of the United States is not an episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” where subtle commentary and snarky remarks produce results. It’s more like an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” where there are good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys need a roundhouse kick to the face. But President Obama is busy watching Bravo.

Nowhere is Obama’s lack of metaphoric testosterone clearer than in his tack with the Ground Zero mosque issue. Obama said that the mosque should be built because this is a simple “freedom of religion” issue, which of course is false — the mosque can be built anywhere, just not on the secular holy site that is Ground Zero. Obama’s bizarre argument is equivalent to stating that it would be a “freedom of speech” issue if the KKK wanted to build a grand headquarters on the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr. In both cases, the principles of freedom of religion/speech are not risked by utilizing basic common sense.

The real issue here is the one Obama did not address: the responsibility of Islamism for the 9/11 attacks, and the association between the Muslims backing the Ground Zero mosque and Islamist ideology. Obama doesn’t believe Islamism is responsible for 9/11; in Dreams From My Father, he instead blames terrorism on economic imbalances (a Marxist and eunuch-ian response to the most devastating attack on American soil in history). And so for him, this is an easy decision — by simply eliding the larger issue, he can turn this into a case of xenophobia by anti-Ground Zero mosque Americans.

It’s not happenstance that Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque is the most politically convenient for him; if he acknowledged the nature of our enemies, he’d have to rethink his entire foreign policy framework. He’d have to recognize that precipitous pullouts in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t merely politically problematic, but also highly dangerous; he’d have to admit that the Muslims in the Middle East aren’t interested in making peace with the Jews in Israel; he’d have to see that the problem of Islamism isn’t merely a class or race problem, but a philosophical problem that crosses all borders. In short, he’d have to wake up to the fact that Islamism is a real threat at home and abroad.

But that wouldn’t go along with his blithe — dare we say feminine? — attitude toward our enemies, who he believes are tortured souls longing for American apologetics rather than cruel and brutal bastards bent on imposition of Shariah. In fact, Obama does Muslims a disservice by associating the imperialistic Islamism of the Ground Zero mosque — and yes, it is imperialistic — with Islam everywhere. There is a reason that Hamas has endorsed the Ground Zero mosque, and there is a reason the founder of the Ground Zero mosque refuses to disown terror against Israelis, and there is a reason he blames America for the attacks on 9/11. It’s because he’s a representative of an ideology that is political as much as it is religious, an ideology that seeks to overthrow the U.S. government and replace it with a barbaric tyranny. That Islamism should not be protected by the First Amendment in the first place.

Obama, as he has repeatedly informed us, was born and raised at least for part of his life a Muslim. He knows and thinks beautiful the call of the muezzin, he has said. That makes his ignorance of Islamism less pathetic than it is purposeful — purposeful and cojone-less. As our president, Obama must protect us from totalitarian ideologies. This is by far the most significant responsibility in his job description. He refused that responsibility this week.

We need a leader, not a womyn’s studies professor. Strike that — womyn’s studies professors are, by and large, twice as masculine as our current president. I would suggest that President Obama “cowboy up,” even though we already know what he thinks of cowboys. Unfortunately, his EZ-Bake Oven, Polly Pocket politics play right into the hands of our enemies.

HT: American Thinker

– The Congressional Budget Office says the 2010 federal deficit will be in excess of $1.3 trillion, as in $1,000,000,000,000+. (BTW, the next level we’ll be talking about out of Washington is quadrillion, which has fifteen 0’s.)

– Despite Vice President Joe Biden’s April boast that administration stimulus spending would spur the economy to add a half-million jobs a month by now, initial unemployment claims jumped a half-million last week, the worst since last November, as national unemployment remains at 9.5% and the economy sheds 131,000 more jobs.

– But the economy’s going great at the Democratic National Committee, which reports collecting $11.5 million from donors in July on top of the $53.8 million already taken in from various sources this year. The president just devoted three workdays across five states to rake in several more millions for his party.

– But before leaving for his ninth presidential vacation, 10 days at a secluded estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama devoted four minutes in the White House driveway to a special statement on the latest disappointing jobs numbers. (Full text, as usual, can be read on the jump, along with a brief reaction from the Republican National Committee chairman.)

No questions allowed because the president didn’t want to explain why despite the administration’s announced Recovery Summer Program, the jobs numbers have started going backward again after 19 months of promises and $787 billion in alleged stimulation spending. Because, faced with the uncertainty of the economy and the certainty of new taxes after Nov. 2, employers are holding back on hiring.

According to the president, he’s been “adamant” with Congress for months now about a new jobs bill to help small businesses. Obama says this really good bill is stalled in the Senate, where so much administration legislation has been crammed through so effectively by Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid’s been so good at it, in fact, that he’s now running for his political life in a reelection campaign back in Nevada where unemployment is 14.3% and Obama’s legislation is not so popular.

Reid’s up against a conservative Republican. So, that means Harry Reid must be a Democrat, just like Obama, and just like 59% of the Senate’s votes.

The very same party that has controlled both houses of Congress since the 2006 election and really controlled them both since the 2008 hopey-changey balloting.

So, facing the growing grim possibility of a GOP surge on Nov. 2, is this maybe the start of buddy-bickering within the Democratic huddle? Vulnerable people pointing the proverbial political finger of blame at someone else? That’s ridiculous, of course.

HT: Los Angeles Times

America’s economic situation needs an emergency heart transplant, but Obama and the Democrats keep offering band-aids instead. We need a major change in government economic, tax, and fiscal policies not more government bailouts. Yet the president is doing nothing to reverse the enormous uncertainty fostered by his own administration’s aggressive anti-business and pro high-tax initiatives and rhetoric.

In the latest indication that our president has no clue why businesses are struggling and unwilling to hire, Obama is trying to force through another $30 billion government bailout program to “help banks boost lending to small businesses.” Unfortunately, it’s not the lack of available funds that are stopping businesses from expanding and generating new jobs. It’s the massive economic uncertainty and instability created by misguided government mandates (especially the oppressive regulations of ObamaCare), coupled with the massive tax increases coming in January 2011, that have spooked companies and forced them into defensive economic positions.

A few months ago, Steve Wynn, the American entrepreneur and casino resort/real-estate developer, warned that our government’s own unpredictable and irresponsible policies had created a “frightening” business climate in America and brought about an atmosphere of uncertainty for everyone.

“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.”

Since 2006, under the “leadership” of the Democrat controlled Congress we have witnessed the unthinkable, communist China now has lower corporate rates (25%), more stable regulatory policies, and a more business-friendly economic environment than the “free-market” United States. Even the communists understand how capitalism works and what governments must do to help stimulate economic activity and encourage private sector job creation.

Meanwhile our own ivory-tower president, who has never started a company or created one private sector job in his life, continues to deny reality and blame the Republicans for refusing to go along with more socialist “solutions” and endless government bailouts; “A partisan minority in the Senate has been standing in the way of giving our small business people a simple up or down vote on this bill,” said the president. “Small business owners… don’t have time for political games.”

Ironically, it is the very “political games” and hundreds of billions of dollars in government “stimulus” programs, forced through by Obama and the Democrats, that have scared small businesses and negatively influenced economic activity, while simultaneously increasing economic risks and fiscal instability.

Small businesses, responsible for approximately two-thirds of all new jobs in the United States, are not expanding and hiring because they are frightened by what the government has done and promises to continue doing. Offering them more bank loans will do little to persuade them to ignore reality and endanger their positions. Unless and until President Obama and Congress address the threats of higher taxes, militant and oppressive government regulations, and increasing levels of deficit spending, no amount of easy money and government bailouts will ever motivate businesses to expand in the increasingly unstable and turbulent economic waters of America. They are seeing the mounting risks all around us and are correctly refusing to budge.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and Chris Banescu.com

Once — long ago — when I used to respond to leftist e-mails about my articles, I knew from the first few words of their e-mails what sort of people they were: angry, arrogant, and nasty.

Their e-mails always began with insults and went downhill from there. These people, who had never met me and who had only read one of my articles, had determined that whatever bile or venom they could fling on me was acceptable. These leftists had the manners of Nazis, their Siamese twins ideologically. I would respond, always, politely — much to their chagrin sometimes. I would also ask them, civilly, if there were any facts which I could present which would change their minds. In every single case, no facts, however well-documented, could sway their mind, which was marinated in noxious misology.

Conservatives have criticized my articles more often than leftists, but their critiques almost never have personal attacks. They discuss legislative votes, public statements, and philosophies of government and society. Conservatives are civil, even when they strongly disagree with me. Other conservatives, I am sure, encounter the same difference in manners between leftists and conservatives. Why is this so? I think for three reasons:

First, most conservatives are religious. They may be Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, but within them burns real, living faith. Courtesy, kindness, and respect are ineradicably intertwined in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Treating people as you would like to be treated, among countless other rules the Blessed Creator has enjoined us to follow, simply prohibits the sort of savagery which pockmarks leftism.

Second, conservatives believe in markets. We usually — and carelessly — think of markets only in terms of the hurly-burly of financial markets of Wall Street. Yet we see the virtue and vitality of markets more clearly in the quiet sidewalks of Maple Street. Markets transcend money and economics. Treating our neighbors decently, treating strangers decently, watching our language when around children, ladies, or the elderly — these and countless other signal “transactions” in the marketplace of human interactions largely determine what sort of life we will lead.

The left dislikes all forms of markets and believes instead in coercion — the officious bureaucrat, the obnoxious teacher or professor, the monopolistic leftist media stalking the Palin family, the “comedians” and “entertainers” whose purpose for existence seems to be spiteful mockery of America and its culture — these people trust force and pressure more than liberty and choice.

Third, conservatives believe in truth. Leftists like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Mussolini, Howard Dean, and Al Gore believe that ideology is truth. There is no point in really looking beyond ideology, and any facts which contradict their ideological reality must be false. So the real “progressives” (those who believe that the human condition can be improved through thoughtful and honest reflection) are invariably conservatives. Our problem with global warming, for example, is that it is a lie. Our problem with socialism is that it always fails and creates human misery. Our problem with leftism is that it is, more or less openly, based upon an utter absence of scruples, with honesty the first casualty.

Those who seek truth behave entirely differently from those who seek to crush truth. We listen to the left because we want to hear what they have to say. Most of us can state the arguments of the left better than Howard Dean or Barack Obama could ever recapitulate conservative positions. When the left has a point, as with the corruption of Nixon, we agree with them (Nixon resigned when Republican leaders, including Goldwater, told him he must — in stark contrast to Clinton when caught in a web of outlandish lies and perjury). Those who truly want the free flow of information do not invent “speech codes” for college campuses and do not try to create a climate in which the political or ideological impact of each word must be weighed before spoken. Conservatives, then, are like true Americans — plain-talking, really listening, open-minded, but independent-thinking people.

All of this means that conservatives want a civil society. So we behave decently. We believe that God connects us to every single human being, including leftists, so our reality has no Juden and no Kulaks, only fellow creatures of a loving God. We believe that the panorama of free markets enriches all human lives. And we grasp our finite knowledge, so the search for truth is serious and lifelong, which means we listen as well as speak. Civility is the mark of grownups seeking goodness. That is why conservatives are naturally, happily polite and respectful.

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

In what can only be described as a partisan, pro-Obama puff piece, The New York Times has now proclaimed on its Economix Blog that tax increases are the best way to “stimulate” our economy and help America reach “fiscal sustainability”:

The single biggest step our government could take this year to address the structural deficit would be to let the tax cuts expire. And a credible commitment to long-term fiscal sustainability should reduce interest rates today, helping to stimulate the economy.

Adopting the leftist fiction that Americans keeping more of their money is socially irresponsible and somehow cutting taxes “cost” the government, the authors warn that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are too costly. They want to shame you into compliance. You see it’s not your money, it’s their money! It will be your fault if the government doesn’t collect the additional $2.3 trillion of your income it’s entitled to receive. It will be your fault when the national debt grows ever larger by 2018:

What do matter are taxes and entitlements. Therefore, the coming battle over the Bush tax cuts is of real importance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, extending the Bush tax cuts would add $2.3 trillion to the total 2018 debt.

Feigning objectivity, the writers briefly flirt with a one sentence counter-argument questioning the wisdom of increasing taxes while unemployment is still at an all time high. However, the sense of “balance” quickly dissipates as Americans are again faulted for the audacity to save their money, and therefore failing to stimulate the economy:

Critics say that this amounts to increasing taxes at a time of high unemployment, and that instead the tax cuts should be extended as a stimulus measure. This overlooks the fact that tax cuts are an inefficient form of stimulus, because many people choose to save their additional income instead of spending it.

The pièce de résistance however, is at the end of the blog article. Here the authors completely leave behind any semblance of economic and common sense and logic, and head for the hills of fantasy land. In this fictional world massive tax increases will “immediately” encourage growth and increased employment:

If the goal is to encourage growth and employment immediately, it would be better to let the tax cuts expire and dedicate some of the increased revenue to real stimulus programs.

Apparently the multi-trillion dollars government “stimulus” programs already passed with little economic benefit are not “real” enough for The New York Times. There’s still more work to be done with the additional $2.3 trillion of our money they must confiscate in order to “help” us.

Back in the real world, Ronald Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts in the 1980s stand as a testament to true and effective economic and fiscal policies. His relentless pursuit of economic reforms and lower taxes lead to the “largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs,” while federal revenues doubled, increasing from $517 billion in 1980 to over $1 trillion in 1990. President Reagan proved what all sensible economists and logical individuals already know, that cutting taxes inevitably leads to economic growth and increased prosperity, which in turn creates jobs and provides the government with more revenues.

Luckily, we don’t have to go that far back in history for a lesson on economics and taxes. One has to look no further than the tax-dogging behavior of former Senator John Kerry, owner of a $7 million yacht, to realize that higher taxes always negatively influence economic activity, motivate individuals to avoid paying those taxes, and ultimately lead to reduced state revenues.

If that’s not convincing enough, maybe The New York Times can look to communist China for a clue on how to stimulate an economy and increase government revenues. While American companies now face an average combined income tax rate (federal + state taxes) of approximately 39.3% corporations in China pay only a 25% tax rate as of January 2008. The communists realized the dangers of the economic crisis spreading across the world and quickly moved to lower taxes to help their businesses and people. Our own Congress however, has done nothing about tax rates, choosing instead to let current rates increase on their own come January 1, 2011. If Obama and the Democrats allow this to happen, we will witness the once unthinkable: the “free-market” United States will tax its businesses and corporations at 46.2%, almost double the rate of communist China at 25%; even before ObamaCare’s new Medicare levy of 3.8% kicks in 2013, raising the marginal rates to 50%.

If The New York Times can’t learn this simple lesson from the actions of a quintessential limousine liberal or by looking at communist China, then no evidence will suffice to wake them up to reality.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and Chris Banescu.com

President Obama has pledged more of your money to protect the unions and secure their vote. The administration demanded and got $26 billion taxpayer dollars to spare 300,000 teachers and other public workers from the unemployment lines.

The hundreds of billions of taxpayer money already spent by Obama and the Democrats since 2009 to pay off their union supporters was apparently not enough. Despite giving $100 billion in new funding to the Department of Education (DOE), courtesy of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, in addition to the $25 billion bailout that saved the GM and Chrysler auto union workers, more is needed to thank them for their continuing support and unquestioning loyalty.

The Senate passed the $26 billion bailout measure last week and the House approved it on Tuesday with overwhelming Democrat support. Obama is expected to sign it quickly. The additional spending is partially paid for by reducing food stamps benefits to the poor.

The $26,000,000,000 required to protect 300,000 union jobs, works out to roughly $86,666 per job. This is an amazingly generous payoff to union workers, considering the average $56,100 yearly salaries of Americans working in the private sector.

Meanwhile the US economy continues to slow down, with the “official” unemployment rate holding steady at 9.5% and the underemployment rate (which includes part-time workers and those who have given up looking for a job) hovering around 17%.

More misery and uncertainty is in store for 15 million unemployed Americans. But government employees and union workers are experiencing unprecedented prosperity and job security under the protection of Obama’s socialist policies.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and at Chris Banescu.com

Image from: frugal-cafe.com

Tito Guirao-Aguilar

8/5/2010 – Dave Gibson -

Police in Williamsburg, Va., have arrested a juvenile, whose name is being withheld due to his age for repeatedly raping a 6-year-old girl. His arrest comes after two others, Tito Guirao-Aguilar, 39, and Samuel Eli Jacobo-Guirao, 20, were apprehended for victimizing the girl.

Guirao-Aguilar has been charged with three counts of aggravated sexual battery of a person under the age of 13, and Jacobo-Guirao is charged with one count of rape of a person under the age of 13 and two counts of aggravated sexual battery of a person under 13.

Both men are being held in the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail without bond. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also placed a hold on them.

The most popular tourist destination in the state, Williamsburg has a growing crime problem attributable to its illegal alien population, who are largely employed by the hotel and restaurant industry.

On June 10, Williamsburg police arrested illegal alien Raul Vasquez-Garcia, 33, in front of the same apartment complex where he allegedly shot a man, a week earlier.

On the night of June 4, police arrived at the Village of Woodshire apartments on Merrimac Trail, they found a man suffering from two gunshot wounds. According to police, the man and Vasquez-Garcia had been arguing over a woman.

The victim was taken to a local hospital, where he recovered from his wounds and has since been released.

Vasquez-Garcia is charged with attempted murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and assault.

HT: Examiner.com