Union thug Richard Trumka and his buddy Barack I’ve come under some fire from a few union lackeys over my Labor Day post — teamsters who have contacted me to tell me how misguided my closing lines actually are. You see, in describing unions as having a long history of hatred and violence toward non-union members like me, I’m accused of being “unfair.”
Well, I wonder.
Via Michelle Malkin, who has been indefatigable on this subject:
Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?
A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”
In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the shit out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation (pdf), the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”
Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka’s violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles and fists.
And now, Trumka is spearheading a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote campaign by far-left groups — publicized in the revolutionary Marxist People’s World — to “energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.”
Take those as literal fighting words. The bloody consequences of compulsory unionism cannot be ignored.
Also, according to the FBI, “four of the last eight Teamsters presidents have been criminally indicted and since FY 2001, racketeering investigations have yielded more than 2,000 indictments and awarded more than $3 billion in fines and restitution. In past union elections, Hoffa’s team was caught laundering union funds for electioneering and for campaign polling on dues-payers’ dime.”
AFSCME, UFCW, and SEIU corner Republican Congressman and shout: “Fuck you!” “Shame!”
Union thugs in front of Verizon Vice President Bill Foshay’s private home yelling: “We’re here to fight, Bill!”
Union thug to Jewish guy: “Bad Jew!”
Union thug to Fox News reporter: “I hate you because it makes me feel good.”
Union thug in Ohio: “The tea party is a bunch of dick-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country…. You’re fucking hypocrites.”
And in Denver, racist SEIU supporters taunt gay black entrepreneur Leland Robinson, who had the nerve to (correctly) criticize teacher’s unions at a Capitol rally: “Get behind that fence where you belong! Do you have any children? That you claim?”
President Obama’s been taking a lot of flak lately for not having a plan. First it was about Libya, but now — even more importantly because, as we know, all politics is local (until it’s not) — about the budget.
The latest White House porte-parole Jay Carney has consequently been taking all kinds of in-coming himself about “where’s the President’s budget plan,” “why doesn’t he have a plan,” etc.
Well, the reason for the latter is simple: because he can’t. The minute the president evinces a budget plan, the game is up. No liberal budget will stand up to scrutiny. There is no money left for deficit spending in our aging society. The welfare state is kaput. It’s gone — probably for generations to come.
Of course, there’s always that canard about taxing the rich. That will save things. But the truth is even if you tax the rich at 100%, it barely sets back our entitlement crisis a year or two, while virtually bankrupting the few job creators who remain.
So no wonder Obama doesn’t have a plan. What would it be?
The Democratic Party, as we have known it for the past 70 years, is now in its last days.
Yes, the House Republicans may raise the debt ceiling for a mix of spending cuts and revenue raisers. Yes, Barack Obama may win the 2012 presidential contest. Yes, bureaucrats and judges will continue to impose new and costly regulations on the economy.
But it doesn’t matter. The long-term trends are almost all bad news for the left wing of the party.
This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies.
Miniter’s right. As an ex-lib, it almost makes me feel sorry for liberals. But I’m not because too many of them are still playing ostrich. One lib friend just sent me an email — I’m still somehow on her list — trumpeting a 1954 (!) quote from Eisenhower: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”
I guess the implication here is that’s what Republicans are trying to do, when, especially in the case of Social Security, they are the only ones making a serious effort to save it (see Paul Ryan). But liberals must preserve their delusions — and actually not read the small print, in Ryan’s proposal or anybody else’s. After all, they are people with no plans. Why should anybody else have them?
Whether people recognize it or not is beside the point: the welfare state is doomed by definition because in order to have the wealth to redistribute, one must first have someone producing that wealth, which (in turn) requires capital — as in capitalism — and that pool will pretty quickly dry up, especially when you vilify and punish the producers.
Rick Santelli, who is largely credited with starting the tea part back in the old days before the tea party had lost its teeth, is something of a hero.
Here’s his unforgettable — and inarguable — salvo against Barack Obama’s explicit call to “fundamentally change America”:
Now he has this:
RICK SANTELLI: You don’t compromise on principles.
STEVE LIESMAN: So, Rick — you’re ready to see the United States —
Santelli: — Bring it on! Bring it on! Bring it on! Our fearless leader [GE CEO Jeff] Immelt, was on talking about what he perceived as an impediment to creating better jobs and he talked about regulation. Is he against Dodd-Frank?
Liesman: I’m talking about paying our bills, Rick.
Santelli: You know what, we should pay our bills. We should pay our bills. But the other amount, the 42-cents of every dollar we don’t have let Congress figure out they made the obligations.
Liesman: The trouble is, there is a time and a place for this conversation and debate.
Santelli: Now is the time!
Liesman: It’s not when the credit card bill is due.
Santelli: This is the place. We’re here. If not now, when?! If not now, when? If not now, when?!
In North Carolina yesterday, meeting with the Council on Jobs and Competiveness, Barack Obama was questioned about the fact that government bureaucracy invariably delays projects and even oftentimes puts a stop to them altogether, to which Obama jokingly replied:
“Shovel-ready was not as — uh — shovel-ready as we expected.”
This clever remark got some pretty good laughs, and I, for one, find it very amusing indeed that these left-wing elitist, among whom Barack Obama is top of the heap, regard their deadly economic philosophy as a kind of joke, which I suppose in one sense it actually is: a complete joke, as a matter of fact, a joke of staggering proportions, a joke about as funny as a cry for help — a joke, in short, that’s nearly as laughable as Obama’s boast that he now “has a better plane” than three years ago, and that he now travels “with a bigger entourage,” while the rest of us pay the price for it.
I imagine, though, that the people who have been out of work for months on end are not laughing nearly as hard as Obama and his clownish administration.
Recall also Barack Obama telling us that his so-called Stimulus had to be passed before it was read because “it would provide for hundreds of thousands of shovel-ready projects that will bring our unemployment rate below 8 percent.”
And yet $821 billion later: “Unemployment is now 25 percent higher than when [Obama] took office, the deficit is 35 percent higher, and gas prices have more than doubled”(source).
Moreover:
“Obama’s stimulus included $28 billion in new highway money, which he said would ‘create or save’ 150,000 jobs by the end of 2010. These are the quintessential ‘shovel-ready’ jobs that Obama jokes turned out to be not so shovel ready.”
A new study by economists Timothy Conley of the University of Western Ontario and Bill Dupor of Ohio State found that despite the influx of all that federal money, highway construction jobs actually plunged by nearly 70,000 between 2008 and 2010.
As these authors explain, many states simply took the free federal money and shifted their own highway funds to meet other needs. Examples:
Texas got $700 million in highway stimulus funds last year, but spent $560 million less on its roads in 2010 than it did in 2009.
New York’s highway spending was basically unchanged between 2009 and 2010, despite getting $522 million more in federal highway bucks.
Michigan boosted its highway spending just $17.4 million, far below the $189 million extra the feds handed the state for highway improvements.
When others, like yours truly, were telling you that MORE government spending on “shovel-ready” projects were not going to be the way to save this nation and grow our economy, you passed the gargantuan bill, continued to pass other bills (like ObamaCare) that increased the size of government and then refused to do anything to actually tackle our entitlement crisis.
According to government figures: When you add up all of the money that we owe in order to cover our future liabilities in entitlements, our country is now in worse financial shape than Greece. Greece! While Obama has nearly doubled our debt to $14.3 trillion, that doesn’t even compare to the $50 trillion that we owe when you include Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Funniest of all, though — at least in my opinion — is the fact that Barack Obama was voted into power by people who, like Obama himself, have no understanding of economics whatsoever but chose him simply because it was the hip trendy thing to do.
The following photos were captured by Zombie on May 5, 2011, at the May Day rally in downtown Los Angeles. This event was co-sponsored by the SEIU — a gigantic socialist labor organization that Barack Obama is famously fond of:
Barack Obama:
Everybody: There’s not a presidential candidate, a gubernatorial candidate, a congressional candidate, who won’t tell ya, that they’re pro-union, when they’re looking for their endorsements. They’ll all say, ‘Oh we love SEIU.’ But the question you gotta ask yourself is, do they have it in their gut, do they have a track record of standing alongside you on picket lines? Do they have a track record of going after the companies that aren’t letting you organize? Do they have a track record of voting the right way? But also helping you organize to build more and more power?
And some of you know I come from an organizing background, so — I’ve been working with the SEIU before I was elected to anything. When I was a community organizer, SEIU Local 880 and myself we organized people, to make sure that healthcare workers had basic rights; we organized voter registration drives, that’s how we built political power on the South Side of Chicago….and now the time has come for us to do it all across this country, and then we’ll paint the nation purple, with SEIU!
I would not be a United States Senator had it not been for the support of your brothers and sisters in Illinois. Those folks, they supported me early, they supported me often. I’ve got my purple windbreaker from my campaign in 2004.
And so, we’ve just got, what, four more days? Four more days of knocking on some doors. Four more days of working the precinct. Four more days of making sure all your co-workers are caucusing. SEIU, I am glad you are with me, let’s together change the country! SEIU! SEIU! SEIU! SEIU! SEIU!”
Obama's "friend and mentor" Jeremia Wright“[My grandmother] is a typical white person.”
— Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama, 2008
Now that the American military has at long last killed Osama bin Laden, Obama’s sagging approval ratings have jumped some six points. Obama is riding pretty high, and so I think it’s important to remind folks once again who this fellow really is and what he represents: a liar and a race-obsessed socialist.
Obama in his own words:
“Just because you possess an individual right doesn’t mean local governments can’t constrain the exercise of that right” (Barack Obama, 2008, Philadelphia primary).
“I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites” (Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father, pg xiv).
“That’s just how white folks will do you. It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know that they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn” (Barack Obama, Ibid, pg. 80).
“Questions of competition, decisions forced by a market economy and majoritarian rule; issues of power. It was this unyielding reality-that whites were not only phantoms to be expunged from our dreams but were an active and varied fact of our everyday lives-that finally explained how nationalism could thrive as an emotion and flounder as a program” (Barack Obama, Ibid, Pg 202).
Here is Barack Obama’s admission that he’s not only a socialist, but a socialist of the black-nationalist variety:
Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people’s brutal experience in this country, served as the ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despair. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them. Rid them from your mind and find your true power liberated. Rise up, ye mighty race! … In a sense, then, Rafiq was right when he insisted that, deep down, all blacks were potential nationalists. The anger was there, bottled up and often turned inward. And as I thought about Ruby and her blue eyes, the teenagers calling each other ‘nigger’ and worse, I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage toward whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyalty above all else, was a politics inadequate to the the task.
It was a painful thought to consider, as painful now as it had been years ago. It contradicted the morality my mother had taught me, a morality of subtle distinctions — between individuals of goodwill and those wished me ill, between active malice and ignorance or indifference. I had a personal stake in that moral framework; I’d discovered that I couldn’t escape it if I tried…. And yet perhaps it was a framework that blacks in this country could no longer afford; perhaps it weakened black resolve, encouraged confusion within the ranks. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and for many blacks, time were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence…. If nationalism could deliver. As it turned out, questions of effectiveness, and not sentiment, caused most of my quarrels with Rafiq (Barack Obama, Ibid, Pg. 198-201, boldface mine).
Obama has also famously told us that Reverend Jeremiah Wright — the racist anti-American pastor whose church Obama attended for twenty years — was not only his pastor but also his “friend and mentor” and like a “member of the family.” Jeremiah Wright’s church, Obama once said, “helps me keep my moral compass straight and define my priorities.”
No signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law? (Obama Lies to Keep Czars).
No “boots” on the ground Libya. “Anyone that has worked with the AC-130 gunship can tell you, you need spotters to let aircraft know where the targets are. Usually it is Special Forces, Rangers etc trained for this mission” (it’s CIA Agents in Libya on the ground).
“Reform will also rein in the abuse and excess that nearly brought down our financial system. It will finally bring transparency to the kinds of complex, risky transactions that helped trigger the financial crisis (Obama Lies About Financial Reform Bill).
After adding more to America’s national debt in his first 19 months than all presidents from Washington through Reagan combined, Barack Obama on Wednesday, April 14th, 2011, in a nationally televised speech, said the following:
“This is my vision for America: A vision where we live within our means while still investing in our future”
He was not, I presume, referring to his jaw-droppingly profligate “stimulus package,” which he forced upon us before anyone had actually read what was inside the package — a partial listing of which runs something like this:
• $44 million for construction, repair and improvements at US Department of Agriculture facilities
• $209 million for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities
• $245 million for maintaining and modernizing the IT system of the Farm Service Agency
• $175 million to buy and restore floodplain easements for flood prevention
• $50 million for “Watershed Rehab”
• $1.1 billion for rural community facilities direct loans
• $2 billion for rural business and industry guaranteed loans
• $2.7 billion for rural water and waste dispoal direct loans
• $22.1 billion for rural housing insurance fund loans
• $2.8 billion for loans to spur rural broadband
• $150 million for emergency food assistance
• $50 million for regional economic development commissions
• $1 billion for “Periodic Censuses and Programs”
• $350 million for State Broadband Data and Development Grants
• $1.8 billion for Rural Broadband Deployment Grants
• $1 billion for Rural Wireless Deployment Grants
• $650 million for Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program
• $100 million for “Scientific and Technical Research and Services” at the National Institute of Standards And Technology
• $30 million for necessary expenses of the “Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership”
• $300 million for a competitive construction grant program for research science buildings
• $400 million for “habitat restoration and mitigation activities” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• $600 million for “accelerating satellite development and acquisition”
• $140 million for “climate data modeling”
• $3 billion for state and local law enforcement grants
• $1 billion for “Community Oriented Policing Services”
• $250 million for “accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey.”
• $50 million for repairs to NASA facilities from storm damage
• $300 million for “Major Research Insrumentation program” (science)
• $200 million for “academic research facilities modernization”
• $100 million for “Education and Human Resources”
• $400 million for “Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction”
• $4.5 billion to make military facilities more energy efficient
• $1.5 billion for Army Operation and Maintenance fund
• $624 million for Navy Operation and Maintenance
• $128 million for Marine Corps Operation and Maintenance
• $1.23 billion for Air Force Operation and Maintenance
• $454 million to “Defense Health Program”
• $110 million for Army Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $62 million for Navy Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $45 million for Marine Corps Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $14 million for Air Force Reserve Operation and Maintenance
• $302 million for National Guard Operation and Maintenance
• $29 million for Air National Guard Operation and Maintenance
• $350 million for military energy research and development programs
• $2 billion for Army Corps of Engineers “Construction”
• $250 million for “Mississippi River and Tributaries”
• $2.2 billion for Army Corps “Operation and Maintenance”
• $25 million for an Army Corps “Regulatory Program”
• $126 million for Interior Department “water reclamation and reuse projects”
• $80 million for “rural water projects”
• $18.5 billion for “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy” research in the Department of Energy. That money includes:
• $2 billion for development of advanced batteries
• $800 million of that is for biomass research and $400 million for geothermal technologies
• $1 billion in grants to “institutional entities for energy sustainability and efficiency”
• $6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
• $3.5 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants
• $3.4 billion for state energy programs
• $200 million for expenses to implement energy independence programs
• $300 million for expenses to implement Energy efficient appliance rebate programs including the Energy Star program
• $400 million for expenses to implement Alternative Fuel Vehicle and Infrastructure Grants to States and Local Governments
• $1 billion for expenses necessary for advanced battery manufacturing
• $4.5 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity grid
• $1 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program
• $2.4 billion to demonstrate “carbon capture and sequestration technologies”
• $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Science)
• $500 million for “Defense Environmental Cleanup”
• $1 billion for construction and repair of border facilities and land ports of entry
• $6 billion for energy efficiency projects on government buildings
• $600 million to buy and lease government plug-in and alternative fuel vehicles
• $426 million in small business loans
• $100 million for “non-intrusive detection technology to be deployed at sea ports of entry
• $150 million for repair and construction at land border ports of entry
• $500 million for explosive detection systems for aviation security
• $150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges
• $200 million for FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter program
• $325 million for Interior Department road, bridge and trail repair projects
• $300 million for road and bridge work in Wildlife Refuges and Fish Hatcheries
• $1.7 billion for “critical deferred maintenance” in the National Park System
• $200 million to revitalize the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
• $100 million for National Park Service Centennial Challenge programs
• $200 million for repair of U.S. Geological Survey facilities
• $500 million for repair and replacement of schools, jails, roads, bridges, housing and more for Bureau of Indian Affairs
• $800 million for Superfund programs
• $200 million for leaking underground storage tank cleanup
• $8.4 billion in “State and Tribal Assistance Grants”
• $650 million in “Capital Improvement and Maintenance” at the Agriculture Dept.
• $850 million for “Wildland Fire Management”
• $550 million for Indian Health facilities
• $150 million for deferred maintenance at the Smithsonian museums
• $50 million in grants to fund “arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn” through the National Endowment for the Arts
• $1.2 billion in grants to states for youth summer jobs programs and other activities
• $1 billion for states in dislocated worker employment and training activities
• $500 million for the dislocated workers assistance national reserve
• $80 million for the enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations related to infrastructure and unemployment insurance investments
• $300 million for “construction, rehabilitation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers”
• $250 million for public health centers
• $1 billion for renovation and repair of health centers
• $600 million for nurse, physician and dentist training
• $462 million for renovation work at the Centers for Disease Control
• $1.5 billion for “National Center for Research Resources”
• $500 million for “Buildlings and Facilties” at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington, D.C.
• $700 million for “comparative effectiveness research” on prescription drugs
• $1 billion for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
• $2 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants for states
• $1 billion for Head Start programs
• $1.1 billion for Early Head Start programs
• $100 million for Social Security research programs
• $200 million for “Aging Services Programs”
• $2 billion for “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology”
• $430 million for public health/social services emergency funds
• $2.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control for a variety of programs
• $5.5 billion in targeted education grants
• $5.5 billion in “education finance incentive grants”
• $2 billion in “school improvement grants”
• $13.6 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
• $250 million for statewide education data systems
• $14 billion for school modernization, renovation and repair
• $160 million for AmeriCorps grants
• $400 million for the construction and costs to establish a new “National Computer Center” for the Social Security Administration
• $500 million to improve processing of disability and retirement claims
• $920 million for Army housing and child development centers
• $350 million for Navy and Marine Corps housing and child development centers
• $280 million in Air Force housing and child development centers
• $3.75 billion in military hospital and surgery center construction
• $140 million in Army National Guard construction projects
• $70 million in Air National Guard construction projects
• $100 million in Army Reserve construction projects
• $30 million in Navy Reserve construction projects
• $60 million in Air Force Reserve construction projects
• $950 million for VA
It’s hard to believe that a mere two months ago, in his February budget, Obama was still denying that America even faced a fiscal crisis, and yet today (April 14th) he not only admitted it: he attempted to describe it. About which, Yuval Levin said this:
It is certainly unorthodox for a president to renounce his own budget two months after proposing it, but that is just what the president did—implicitly dismissing even the goals set out by his budget in its own terms (let alone its potential to achieve them, as measured by the Congressional Budget Office) as totally inadequate. In that sense, the only immediate practical implication of the speech is that it throws the 2012 budget process into disarray (Yuval Levin, “The President’s Speech”).
So banal and so full of easy platitudes was Obama’s speech that one hardly faults Joe Biden for falling asleep:
Obama did at least make one true statement:
“There will be those who vigorously disagree with my approach.”
Yes!
He continued:
“Some will argue, we should not even consider ever, ever raising taxes even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It’s just an article of faith to them.”
An article of faith, or a working knowledge of economics?
Because make no mistake: the only real article of faith before us here is Obama’s blind belief that a country can tax-and-spend its way to prosperity.
Every now and then, a politician goofs and reveals more than he or she intended, providing a window into the true motives or beliefs. Michigan’s John Dingell claiming that Obamacare is a peachy way to “control the people,” and President Obama saying that America is a world super power “whether we like it or not” are recent examples.
Reader, do the world a favor and send this son-of-a-bitch Deval Patrick a message. Here is his contact form.
Well, just recently the following article appeared in Investors Business Daily. I reproduce it here in full because America is currently under the thumb of people like this:
The Internet is a large-scale version of the “Committees of Correspondence” that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington’s failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.
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.
• Christian, an attorney, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration.
• Robbins, an economist, served at the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration.
Please remember: the revolution will not be televised, but it will be broadcast live right here. Stay tuned.
FDRFranklin Delano Roosevelt is, along with Abraham Lincoln, one of Barack Obama’s heroes, as Barack Obama is among the first to point out. Accordingly, Obama is pursuing a number of the same disastrous economic policies that Franklin Roosevelt pursued, which policies only served to keep the United States depressed for years.
Yes, the truth about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which people on both sides of the political spectrum hate to hear, is that he not only did not bring this country out of the Great Depression: he prolonged it for well over a decade.
By the time FDR’s reign of destruction was through, the United States was still in a deep depression, and the interventionist precedents he established, which served only to keep the country depressed, haunts America to this very day.
Never again, until Barack, has an American president so brazenly and so consistently demonstrated this lack of regard for individual human beings; and never since Barack has a president stomped so savagely upon the unalienable right to life and property.
Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.
It was not until 1947, when wartime controls and government spending finally ended and free markets were at last allowed to operate somewhat freely – i.e. without the stranglehold of the federal government – that this country at last began to emerge from its eighteen-year depression.
That depression was much exacerbated by the interventionist Herbert Hoover, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt took interventionism to a whole new level.
Quoting FDR’s own economic adviser, Rexford Tugwell:
“The ideas embodied in the New Deal Legislation were a compilation of those which had come to maturity under Herbert Hoover’s aegis. We all of us owed much to Hoover” (Rexford Tugwell, 1946).
One of FDR’s first acts as President was to close down all banks, a maneuver he hoped would prevent scared depositors from withdrawing their savings.
What this maneuver actually did, however, was intensify the public’s panic. It didn’t improve banking at all, nor did it help in any way with the Great Depression.
Unemployment rates over the course of the Great Depression looked like this:
FDR averaged 17.7 percent unemployment, which is staggering: to be more precise, FDR’s unemployment average was more than five times the 1929 level.
Many FDR apologists like to cite the 1933 to 1940 drop in unemployment as the greatest drop, percentage-wise, in the unemployment rate ever by an American President. Of course, what this fails to take into account, among a litany of other things, is the fact that centralized banking, as opposed to privatized, through the artificial manipulation of interest rates, caused the problems to begin with, and the subsequent interventions, first by Herbert Hoover and then by FDR, exploded those problems astronomically, as testified by the unprecedented unemployment rates that decade saw: in other words, 14 percent unemployment, is, by any legitimate standard, ghastly, and only a lunatic or a fool would call it “a success.”
Quoting economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, who used statistical models to evaluate the results of FDR’s New Deal:
“The Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impacts of New Deal programs.”
As Ludwig von Mises correctly noted, in the absence of government intervention, unemployment is always voluntary. Yet over ten million Americans were unemployed in 1938.
Compare that to the eight million in 1931.
Fact: not until FDR conscripted millions of men and sent them off to war did unemployment levels truly come down to manageable levels. Which, however, was hardly the end of the Great Depression; for unemployment, as everyone knows, is only one of several components. Thus:
In terms of aggregate production, statistics show no recovery until after World War II ended, when the size of government was at long last reduced.
The gross national product (GNP) didn’t recover to 1929 levels until 1940.
Personal consumption was 8 percent lower in 1940 than in 1929.
Net private investment, the backbone of a healthy economy, from 1930 to 1940 was negative $3.1 billion, a breathtaking figure.
Because of FDR’s mind-spinning interventionist policies, European nations came out of the Great Depression years ahead of America.
FDR believed that the Great Depression was caused by low wages. That was his fatal flaw. Because, in fact, the truth was the diametric opposite, as we now know: low wages (and prices) were caused by the depression.
And yet based upon this stupendous misunderstanding of basic economics, FDR proceeded to mandate wage and price controls, which thus kept the American people in a state of poverty for well over a decade.
When prices and wages are forced by government, the demand for labor is necessarily reduced. Why? Because in order to stay in business, businesses must turn a profit; so that when wages and prices are forced, businesses must adjust their employment and spending accordingly, or they run out of money. They must therefore cut back on workforce, and they must decrease output. In this way, forced wages create unemployment. You see, not even FDR can subvert economic law.
This is the most basic cause and effect process you can imagine: employers simply cannot pay out money that they don’t have.
Production and production alone generates wealth. That’s another crux, and FDR’s interventionist policies crippled production.
By means of the National Industrial Relations Act (NIRA), FDR’s First New Deal sought to turn United States agriculture, and other industries, into a massive government cartel.
It was at this time also that FDR began restricting production, so that unemployment began increasing.
The NIRA failed spectacularly, but in the process, it gave birth to another disaster: the National Recovery Administration (NRA).
The NRA was bureaucratic up to the gills, and, among other things, it required every businessperson to sign a pledge to observe FDR’s job-destroying minimum-wage laws, his maximum-hour laws, and his prohibitions on “child labor” (i.e. teenage labor), and so on.
Prices were therefore not permitted to rise above or fall below “costs of production,” regardless of consumer demand.
Quoting historian John T. Flynn:
[Code-enforcement police] roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books at the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night (John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, 2007).
Countless people across America were arrested and sentenced to jail or prison for invented crimes like “pressing suits of clothes for thirty-five cents when the Tailors’ Code fixed the price at forty cents” (Ibid).
FDR also made the private ownership of gold illegal.
He nationalized gold stocks.
He created an abortion called the Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA), which implemented a government cartel on agriculture markets, and which quite literally paid millions and millions of dollars to farmers for slaughtering their livestock and burning their fields, while the rest of the country starved.
Under the AAA, one sugar refining business was paid $1 million to not refine sugar.
He made null and void all existing contracts that promised to pay in gold, which was an act of pure and simple theft, and which in any case did not inflate prices, as was his whole intention in making gold illegal in the first place.
In 1935, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Roosevelt’s NRA and AAA were unconstitutional.
It’s worth noting also, if only for posterity sake, that the NRA and the AAA were both explicitly modeled after Mussolini’s fascist system, of which FDR was an explicit admirer.
FDR also emulated Mussolini’s propaganda campaign against freedom and free-markets. Under the Second New Deal, Roosevelt’s AAA, which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional, was, however, resurrected under the “soil conservation program.”
It too paid taxpayer money to farmers for not producing.
A number of other programs that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional were simply reenacted by FDR under different names as well.
Many of these unconstitutional programs, also modeled after European fascism, are still in place today.
The Second New Deal, announced on January 4, 1935, introduced a number of new programs, in addition to the renamed old, each one equally unconstitutional, though never, alas, brought before the court.
There was, for instance, the National Labor Relations Act.
There was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which amounted to more job-destroying minimum-wage laws.
There was the Works Progress Administration.
Of course too there was the egregious and now bankrupted Social Security Act, which, among other things, forgot to take into account increasing life expectancies, and so was doomed to fail from the start, a fact which, unfortunately, most Americans don’t realize even today.
Also, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which Herbert Hoover made into law in 1932, was much more stringently enforced under FDR’s authoritarian hand, thereby making it impossible to prosecute against labor union violence, of which the whole history of labor unions is largely composed.
Extortion by unions was under FDR legally permitted, as long as that extortion concerned “the payment of wages by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee” (Congressional Record 78th Congress, first Session, House, 1934).
There were in addition, of course, the interminable taxes imposed upon businesspeople, which taxes siphoned money out of the private sector and increased unemployment, as taxes against entrepreneurs always and inevitably will, since they take away the capital that is normally used to reinvest and thus produce.
Indeed, tax increases (much of which were used to pay FDR’s bureaucrats) were as responsible as anything else for annihilating the American economy.
Quoting FDR’s adviser Harry Hopkins:
“I’ve got four million at work [in federally created jobs], but for God’s sake, don’t ask me what they are doing.”
This same Harry Hopkins again: “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”
Even prior to World War II, government spending under FDR doubled and then some.
Government spending went from $4.6 billion in 1932 to $9.1 billion in 1940.
Over $23 billion in deficits were accumulated.
Current profligacy makes these numbers look comical, and indeed in terms of sheer profligacy, Barack cannot be matched; but one must not fail to take into account the times.
Deficits annually during FDR’s reign averaged 42 percent of the federal budget, a truly incredible figure, especially considering that in 1932 FDR had the nerve to campaign against budget deficits, and he even vociferously denounced them.
The primary purpose of FDR’s preposterous New Deal spending – at least, according to many – was simply to ensure his reelection, because he, like his protégé, was another power-mad politician. Accordingly, he gave free money to hoards and hoards of poor people in exchange for the vote.
What follows is from the Official Report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures, 1938:
• In one Works Progress Administration (WPA) district in Kentucky, 349 WPA employees were put to work preparing forms listing the electoral preferences of every employee on work relief. Many of those who stated that they did not intend to vote for Roosevelt were laid off.
• In another Kentucky WPA district, government workers were required, as a condition of employment, to pledge to vote for the senior senator from Kentucky, who was an FDR supporter. If they refused, they were thrown off the relief rolls.
• Republicans in Kentucky were told that they would have to change party affiliations if they wanted to keep their WPA jobs.
• Letters were sent out to WPA employees in Kentucky instructing them to donate 2 percent of their salaries to the Roosevelt campaign if they wanted to keep their jobs.
• In Pennsylvania, businessmen who leased trucks to the WPA were solicited for $100 campaign contributions.
• As in Kentucky, Pennsylvania WPA workers were told to change their party affiliation if they wanted to keep their jobs. Many people refused and were fired.
• Government employment was increased dramatically right before the elections. In Pennsylvania, “employment cards” were distributed that entitled holders of the cards to “two to four weeks of employment around election time.”
• A Pennsylvania man who had been given a $60.50-per-month white-collar job was transferred to a pick-axe job in a limestone quarry after refusing to change his voter registration from Republican to Democrat.
• Tennessee WPA workers were also instructed to contribute 2 percent of their salaries to the Democratic Party as a condition of employment.
• In one congressional district in Cook County, Illinois, the WPA instructed 450 of its employees to canvass for (Democratic) votes around election time in 1938. The men were all laid off the day after the election.
(Cited in John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, and How Capitalism Saved America, by Thomas Dilorenzo.)
In the words of historian Stanley High:
“In states like Florida and Kentucky – where the New Deal’s big fight was in the primary elections – the rise of WPA employment has hurried along in order to synchronize with the primaries” (Stanley High, “The WPA: Politicians’ Playground,” Current History, 1939).
In 1969, when all this evidence about New Deal spending came into the light, FDR apologists (i.e. academics) immediately began making excuses and rationalizing FDR’s disgustingly biased spending – for instance, the fact that residents of western states received 60 percent more federal money than residents of southern states. All the excuses these academics have made are factually inaccurate and have been refuted, many times over, by people like Jim F. Couch and William F. Shugart, in their excellent book Political Economy of the New Deal.
Franklin Roosevelt was, to quote one David Gordon, “a vain, intellectually shallow person whose principal interest was to retain at all costs his personal power” – i.e. “total subordination of his country’s welfare to his personal ambition” (David Gordon, “Power Mad,” 1999).
FDR had no grasp of economics, and in fact was really just another garden-variety politician, much like today’s world leaders, but more so.
Here’s an economic axiom which we’ve discussed here before, but which in this day and age is always worth repeating:
If something is economically tenable, it never ever needs to be subsidized.
The latest concretization of this fact comes from none other than the state-run Associated Press:
After a year of crippling delays, President Barack Obama’s $5 billion program to install weather-tight windows and doors has retrofitted a fraction of homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected.
In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs…
…”This is the beginning of the next industrial revolution with the explosion of clean energy investments,” said assistant U.S. Energy Secretary Cathy Zoi. “These are good jobs that are here to stay.”
But after a year, the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes — about 5 percent of the overall goal — and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned, according to the latest available figures.
As the Obama administration promotes a second home energy-savings program — a $6 billion rebate plan — some experts are asking whether that will pay off for homeowners or for the planet.
Under President George W. Bush, who was the Herbert Hoover of his day, appropriated government programs grew from $298 billion to $613 billion.
Under President George W. Bush, Social Security spending went from $406 billion to $662 billion.
Under President George W. Bush, Medicare spending went from $216 billion to $425 billion.
Under under President George W. Bush, Medicaid spending went from $117.9 billion to $259 billion.
Under President George W. Bush, “miscellaneous spending” went from $290 billion to $673 billion.
Under President George W. Bush, net interest dropped from $222.9 billion to $139 billion.
Under President George W. Bush, disaster cost went from $0 billion to $4 billion.
In George W. Bush’s eight years, government spending increased more than 55 percent, largely due to woefully misbegotten wars.
Even when adjusted for inflation in constant dollars, federal expenditures under Bush soared by 29 percent.
During his Presidency, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only increased by 17.3 percent, and over the Bush years, real government spending went up nearly twice as fast as the actual U.S. economy.
The left should therefore be in love with George W. Bush. He, like his father and like Ronald Reagan, was a complete statist.
There’s more:
Under George W. Bush, Washington ran deficits almost every year. Total federal debt doubled and rose from 58 percent to 66 percent of GDP, for a 14 percent increase in taxpayer debt burden (in terms of the Gross Domestic Product).
Here’s a quick rundown:
• Payment for Individuals: $1054.6 billion in the year 2000 to $1397.1 billion in the year 2007.
• Social Security and Railroad Retirement: $410.5 billion in the year 2000 to $487.7 billion in the year 2007.
• Federal Employees Retirement and Insurance: $100.3 billion in the year 2000 to $116.0 billion in the year 2007.
• Unemployment Insurance: 21.1 billion in the year 2000 to 27.1 billion in the year 2007.
• Medical Care: $362.7 billion in the year 2000 to $559.9 billion in the year 2007.
• Student Assistance: $10.9 billion in the year 2000 to $24.9 billion in the year 2007.
• Housing Assistance: $24.1 billion in the year 2000 to $27.0 billion in the year 2007.
• Food and Nutrition Assistance: $32.4 billion in the year 2000 to $46.3 billion in the year 2007.
• Public Assistance and Related Programs: $88.3 billion in 2000 to $103.4 billion in 2007.
• Other Transfers to Individuals: $4.3 billion in 2000 to $4.7 billion in 2007.
Of course, there was also the $700 billion Troubled Relief Assets Program (also known as the TARP bailout), and yet if you think these figures are difficult to fathom and the expenditures over-the-top, I assure you they do not even begin to compare to the massive spending apparatus that Barack Obama has unleashed.
Indeed, next to Barack Obama, George W. Bush’s reckless spending is downright frugal.
