Barack Obama

Without government, there would be no change: Wichita Mayor

by Bob Weeks on May 13, 2013

It’s worse than President Obama saying “You didn’t build that.” Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer tells us you can’t build that — not without government guidance and intervention, anyway.

City of Wichita logo When President Barack Obama told business owners “You didn’t build that,” it set off a bit of a revolt. Those who worked hard to build businesses didn’t like to hear the president dismiss their efforts.

Underlying this episode is a serious question: What should be the role of government in the economy? Should government’s role be strictly limited, according to the Constitution? Or should government take an activist role in managing, regulating, subsidizing, and penalizing in order to get the results politicians and bureaucrats desire?

Historian Burton W. Folsom has concluded that it is the private sector — free people, not government — that drives innovation: “Time and again, experience has shown that while private enterprise, carried on in an environment of open competition, delivers the best products and services at the best price, government intervention stifles initiative, subsidizes inefficiency, and raises costs.”

But some don’t agree. They promote government management and intervention into the economy. Whatever their motivation might be, however it was they formed their belief, they believe that without government oversight of the economy, things won’t happen.

But in Wichita, it’s even worse. Without government, it is claimed that not only would we stop growing, economic progress would revert to a previous century.

Mayor Carl Brewer made these claims in a 2008 meeting of the Wichita City Council.

In his remarks (transcript and video below), Brewer said “if government had not played some kind of role in guiding and identifying how the city was going to grow, how any city was going to grow, I’d be afraid of what that would be. Because we would still be in covered wagons and horses. There would be no change.”

When I heard him say that, I thought he’s just using rhetorical flair to emphasize a point. But later on he said this about those who advocate for economic freedom instead of government planning and control: “… then tomorrow we’ll be saying we don’t want more technology, and then the following day we’ll be saying we don’t want public safety, and it won’t take us very long to get back to where we were at back when the city first settled.”

Brewer’s remarks are worse than “You didn’t build that.” The mayor of Wichita is telling us you can’t build that — not without government guidance and intervention, anyway.

Many people in Wichita, including the mayor and most on the city council and county commission, believe that the public-private partnership is the way to drive innovation and get things done. It’s really a shame that this attitude is taking hold in Wichita, a city which has such a proud tradition of entrepreneurship. The names that Wichitans are rightly proud of — Lloyd Stearman, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, W.C. Coleman, Albert Alexander Hyde, Dan and Frank Carney, and Fred C. Koch — these people worked and built businesses without the benefit of public-private partnerships and government subsidy.

This tradition of entrepreneurship is disappearing, replaced by the public-private partnership and programs like Visioneering Wichita, sustainable communities, Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, Regional Economic Area Partnership (REAP), and rampant cronyism. Although when given a chance, voters are rejecting cronyism.

We don’t have long before the entrepreneurial spirit in Wichita is totally subservient to government. What can we do to return power to the people instead of surrendering it to government?

Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, August 12, 2008:

“You know, I think that a lot of individuals have a lot of views and opinions about philosophy as to, whether or not, what role the city government should play inside of a community or city. But it’s always interesting to hear various different individuals’ philosophy or their view as to what that role is, and whether or not government or policy makers should have any type of input whatsoever.

“I would be afraid, because I’ve had an opportunity to hear some of the views, and under the models of what individuals’ logic and thinking is, if government had not played some kind of role in guiding and identifying how the city was going to grow, how any city was going to grow, I’d be afraid of what that would be. Because we would still be in covered wagons and horses. There would be no change.

“Because the stance is let’s not do anything. Just don’t do anything. Hands off. Just let it happen. So if society, if technology, and everything just goes off and leaves you behind, that’s okay. Just don’t do anything. I just thank God we have individuals that have enough gumption to step forward and say I’m willing to make a change, I’m willing to make a difference, I’m willing to improve the community. Because they don’t want to acknowledge the fact that improving the quality of life, improving the various different things, improving bringing in businesses, cleaning up street, cleaning up neighborhoods, doing those things, helping individuals feel good about themselves: they don’t want to acknowledge that those types of things are important, and those types of things, there’s no way you can assess or put a a dollar amount to it.

“Not everyone has the luxury to live around a lake, or be able to walk out in their backyard or have someone come over and manicure their yard for them, not everyone has that opportunity. Most have to do that themselves.

“But they want an environment, sometimes you have to have individuals to come in and to help you, and I think that this is one of those things that going to provide that.

“This community was a healthy thriving community when I was a kid in high school. I used to go in and eat pizza after football games, and all the high school students would go and celebrate.

“But, just like anything else, things become old, individuals move on, they’re forgotten in time, maybe the city didn’t make the investments that they should have back then, and they walk off and leave it.

“But new we have someone whose interested in trying to revive it. In trying to do something a little different. In trying to instill pride in the neighborhood, trying to create an environment where it’s enticing for individuals to want to come back there, or enticing for individuals to want to live there.

“So I must commend those individuals for doing that. But if we say we start today and say that we don’t want to start taking care of communities, then tomorrow we’ll be saying we don’t want more technology, and then the following day we’ll be saying we don’t want public safety, and it won’t take us very long to get back to where we were at back when the city first settled.

“So I think this is something that’s a good venture, it’s a good thing for the community, we’ve heard from the community, we’ve seen the actions of the community, we saw it on the news what these communities are doing because they know there’s that light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve seen it on the news. They’ve been reporting it in the media, what this particular community has been doing, and what others around it.

“And you know what? The city partnered with them, to help them generate this kind of energy and this type of excitement and this type of pride.

“So I think this is something that’s good. And I know that there’s always going to be people who are naysayers, that they’re just not going to be happy. And I don’t want you to let let this to discourage you, and I don’t want the comments that have been heard today to discourage the citizens of those neighborhoods. And to continue to doing the great work that they’re doing, and to continue to have faith, and to continue that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that there is a value that just can’t be measured of having pride in your community and pride in your neighborhood, and yes we do have a role to be able to help those individuals trying to help themselves.”

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Capitalism, Carl Brewer, Economic development, Economic freedom, Entrepreneurship, Free markets, Government planning, Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, Interventionism, Politics, Role of government, Subsidy, Wichita city council, Wichita city government

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To boost jobs and prosperity, Kansas should cut spending

by Bob Weeks on May 1, 2013

In order to increase jobs and prosperity in Kansas, we should seek to reduce state spending as much as possible, thereby leaving more resources in the productive private sector.

In the debate over reducing and eventually eliminating the income tax in Kansas, those who oppose income tax reduction say it will simply shift the burden of taxation to others, in the form of sales and property taxes. This is true only if we decide to keep spending at the same level. We could cut spending in response to reduced revenue, but it is argued that state spending is a good thing, a source of wealth that Kansas should continue to rely on.

The idea that government spending is a generator of wealth and prosperity is true only beyond a certain minimal level of spending. We benefit from government provision of things like national defense, public safety, and a court system. (There are those who believe that even these could be provided by the private sector rather than markets.) But once government grows beyond these minimal core functions, it is virtually certain that markets — that is, free people trading in the private sector — can produce a wider variety of better goods and services at lower cost.

We also have to realize that government spending has a cost that must be paid. Advocates of government spending point to the salary paid to a government worker and how that money gets spent in the economy, producing jobs. These advocates, however, do not recognize the source of the worker’s salary, which is money taken from someone through taxation (or through borrowing and inflation at the federal government level). The loss of that money to government has a cost in the form of the reduced economic activity of those who paid the taxes.

If this loss was economically equivalent to the gain, we might be unconcerned. But there is a huge cost in taxation and government inefficiency that makes government spending a negative-sum proposition.

Another fundamental problem with government taxation and spending is that it is not voluntary. In markets, people voluntarily trade with each other because they feel it will make them better off. That’s not the case with government. I do not pay my taxes because I feel doing so makes me better off, other than for that small part that goes to the basic core functions. Instead, I pay my taxes so that I can stay out of jail. This fundamentally coercive nature of government spending gets it off to a bad start.

Then, ask how that money is spent: Who decides, and how? Jeffrey A. Miron explains: “The political process, alas, does not lend itself to objective balancing of costs and benefits. Most programs benefit well-defined interest groups (the elderly, teachers unions, environmentalists, defense contractors) while imposing relatively small costs per person on everyone else. Thus the winners from excess spending fight harder than the losers, and spending far exceeds the level suggested by cost-benefit considerations.” (Slash Expenditure to Balance the Budget)

An example in Kansas is the special interest group that benefits from highway construction. They formed a group called Economic Lifelines. The group says it was formed to “provide the grassroots support for Comprehensive Transportation Programs in Kansas.” Its motto is “Stimulating economic vitality through leadership in infrastructure development.”

A look at the membership role, however, lets us know whose economic roots are being stimulated. Membership is stocked with names like AFL-CIO, Foley Equipment Company, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Kansas Aggregate & Concrete Associations, Kansas Asphalt Pavement Association, Kansas Contractors Association, Kansas Society of Professional Engineers, and PCA South Central Cement Promotion Association. Groups and companies like these have an economic interest in building more roads and highways, whether or not the state actually needs them. They would happily build a highway to nowhere.

As Miron explained, groups like this will spend almost unlimited money in order to receive appropriations from the government. It’s easier than competing in markets, and that’s a big problem with government spending — decision are made by the centralized few, not the many dispersed actors in markets.

Some argue that without government spending, certain types of goods and services will not be provided. A commonly cited example is education, which accounts for about half of Kansas general fund spending. Would there be schools if not for government? Of course there would be. There are many non-government schools now, even though those who patronize them must first pay for the government schools before paying for their own schools. And there were many schools and educated, literate Americans before government decided it need to monopolize education.

Still, it is argued that government spending on education is needed because everyone benefits from an educated citizenry. Tom G. Palmer explains: “Thus, widespread education generates public benefits beyond the benefits to the persons who are educated, allegedly justifying state provision and financing through general tax revenues. But despite the benefits to others, which may be great or small, the benefits to the persons educated are so great for them that they induce sufficient investment in education. Public benefits don’t always generate the defection of free-riders.”

Those who still argue that government spending in education is for the good of everyone will also need to defend the sagging and declining performance of public schools, persuading us that government schools are producing an educated citizenry. They also need to defend the capture of Kansas spending on schools by special interest groups that benefit from this spending.

Back to the basics: Government spending as economic booster is the theory of the Keynesians, including the administration of Barack Obama. Miron, from the same article cited above, explains the problems with this:

That brings us to the second argument for higher spending: the Keynesian claim that spending stimulates the economy. If this is accurate, it might seem the U.S. should continue its high-spending ways until the recession is over.

But the Keynesian argument for spending is also problematic. To begin with, the Keynesian view implies that any spending — whether for vital infrastructure or bridges to nowhere — is equally good at stimulating the economy. This might be true in the short term (emphasis on might), but it cannot be true over the long haul, and many “temporary” programs last for decades. So stimulus spending should be for good projects, not “digging ditches,” yet the number of good projects is small given how much is already being spent.

More broadly, the Keynesian model of the economy relies on strong assumptions, so we should not embrace it without empirical confirmation. In fact, economists find weak or contradictory evidence that higher government spending spurs the economy.

Substantial research, however, does find that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that fiscal adjustments — attempts to reduce deficits by raising taxes or lowering expenditure — work better when they focus on tax cuts. This does not fit the Keynesian view, but it makes perfect sense given that high taxes and ill-justified spending make the economy less productive.

The implication is that the U.S. may not face a tradeoff between shrinking the deficit and fighting the recession: it can do both by cutting wasteful spending (Medicare, Social Security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for starters) and by cutting taxes.

The reduced spending will make the economy more productive by scaling government back to appropriate levels. Lower tax rates will stimulate in the short run by improving consumer and firm liquidity, and they will enhance economic growth in the long run by improving the incentives to work, save, and invest.

Deficits will therefore shrink and the economy will boom. The rest of the world will gladly hold our debt. The U.S. will re-emerge as a beacon of small government and robust capitalism, so foreign investment (and talented people, if immigration policy allows) will come flooding in.

In Kansas, we need to scale back government to appropriate levels, as Miron recommends. That means cutting spending, as that is the measure of the size of government. That will allow us to cut tax rates, starting with the income tax. Then we in Kansas can start to correct the long record of sub-par economic performance compared to other states and bring prosperity and jobs here.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Capitalism, Education, Government spending, Kansas state government, Taxation

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Obama will need more economic growth

by Bob Weeks on January 22, 2013

To pay for the Obama taxing and spending agenda, the country will need much more economic growth. Unfortunately, the rate of growth is slowing just when we need greater rates of growth.

It’s commonly thought that annual real (after-inflation) growth of three percent is required just to keep up with population. More than that is needed to restore the loss in middle-class income during Obama’s first term. But here’s what has happened to the rate of growth.

The direction of change in economic growth is moving in the wrong direction, and it’s far below what is needed. Darkening the horizon are the planned increases in spending, in particular ObamaCare, will be a further drag on the economy. Other Obama policies are distinctly anti-growth. It’s difficult to have an optimistic outlook.

Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer told the story last summer in the Wall Street Journal:

The first is how much government spending fell during President Bill Clinton’s eight years in office and how low it was when he left office. When he became president in 1992, government spending was 23.5% of GDP, and when he left in 2001 it was 19.5% of GDP. President Clinton, in conjunction with a solid Republican Congress, cut government spending by more than any other president in modern times, and oversaw one of the greatest periods of economic growth and prosperity in U.S. history.

Sadly for fiscal conservatives, the biggest surge in government spending came during the last two years of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office (2007-2008). A weakened Republican president dealing with a strident Democratic Congress, led by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, resulted in an orgy of spending.

Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress capitulated to and even promoted each and every government bailout and populist redistribution canard put before them. It’s a long list, starting with the 2003 trillion-dollar Medicare prescription drug benefit and culminating with the actions taken to stem the 2008 financial meltdown — the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bailout of insurance giant AIG and government-sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ill-advised 2008 $600-per-person tax rebate, the stimulus add-ons to 2007′s housing and farm bills, etc. The script had it that greedy right-wingers were the cause of our collapse, and deficit spending and easy money the answer.

The numbers are mind boggling. From the second quarter of 2007, i.e., the first full quarter of a Pelosi-Reid dominated Congress and a politically weakened President Bush, to the second quarter of 2009 when President Obama assumed office, government spending skyrocketed to 27.3% of GDP from 21.4%. It was the largest peacetime expansion of government spending in U.S. history.

Following is an interactive visualization of federal revenues, expenditures, and the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product that illustrates these trends. Use the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window.

Federal Government Revenue, Spending, and Deficit as Percent of GDP

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Economics, Government spending, Taxation, United States government, Visualizations

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Obama’s debt speech just mailed in

by Bob Weeks on January 17, 2013

In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama was critical of raising the debt ceiling in order to allow the U.S. to borrow additional funds, a contentious issue that we are facing again. I present his full remarks here, and they are often excerpted thusly:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

So where can we go to view the future president’s speech on this topic?

The answer is: Nowhere.

Senator Obama never spoke these words on the floor of the United States Senate. Instead, he just mailed it in, submitting his text to be inserted in the Congressional Record.

But you’d never know that by reading the Congressional Record alone. If you’d like to follow along, here’s a link to page of the Congressional Record where Obama’s remarks appear. Note where Senator McConnell says “Congratulations, Senator Sarbanes.”

In the printed Congressional Record, the next item is Obama starting his “speech” with “Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.”

But in the video from the C-SPAN video library (see below), Obama doesn’t appear. That’s because he never spoke these words on the Senate floor.

The Senate’s explanation of the Congressional Record states: “The Congressional Record is a substantially verbatim account of the remarks made by senators and representatives while they are on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives.”

While members may insert written material in the record — that’s what Obama did — it would be nice if there was a way to distinguish between actual floor proceedings and written material submitted for inclusion.

By the way, Snopes gets this wrong. It explains: “In 2006, then a freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama made the remarks attributed to him above during discussion in the U.S. Senate prior to the call for votes on raising the debt limit. … The shortened quote now attributed to him is a verbatim capture of the opening and closing paragraphs of his remarks of 16 March 2006.”

Snopes bills itself as “The definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.”

The Washington Post Fact Checker thought it was a speech too, in its article Annotating Obama’s 2006 speech against boosting the debt limit.

Tagged as: Barack Obama

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Progressives shaping the future of America. It’s a good thing.

by Bob Weeks on January 14, 2013

Mother Jones approvingly reports on a secretive meeting of progressive activists.

When conservatives do this, it’s branded as evil. Mother Jones told us so. But it’s a good thing for liberals and progressives to meet, raise funds, and conspire, according to the magazine.

The progressive groups that attended the meeting (mentioned below) support policies (with a few exceptions) that reduce economic freedom and liberty. They’re obviously emboldened by a second Obama term. We’ll have to watch closely to protect ourselves.

A month after President Barack Obama won reelection, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association (NEA), a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off-the-record. Despite all the Democratic wins in November, a sense of outrage filled the room as labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other progressive leaders discussed the challenges facing the left and what to do to beat back the deep-pocketed conservative movement.

At the end of the day, many of the attendees closed with a pledge of money and staff resources to build a national, coordinated campaign around three goals: getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation. The groups in attendance pledged a total of millions of dollars and dozens of organizers to form a united front on these issues — potentially, a coalition of a kind rarely seen in liberal politics, where squabbling is common and a stay-in-your-lane attitude often prevails. “It was so exciting,” says Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director. “We weren’t just wringing our hands about the Koch brothers. We were saying, ‘I’ll put in this amount of dollars and this many organizers.’”

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Politics, Progressives

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Obama on debt ceiling, then and now

by Bob Weeks on December 6, 2012

Not long ago Barack Obama said that needing to raise America’s debt limit “is a sign of leadership failure.” Now he wants the power to raise the debt ceiling on his own, without Congressional approval.

Senator Barack Obama, March 16, 2006 Congressional Record, page S2237:

Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘‘trillion’’ with a ‘‘T.’’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.

Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans — a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies. But we are not doing that. Despite repeated efforts by Senators CONRAD and FEINGOLD, the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense Pay-go rules that used to apply. Previously, Pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts. The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues. Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned, and now the demands of budget discipline apply only to spending.

As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them. Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next 5 years. That is why I will once again cosponsor the Pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that has worked in the past and can work again.

Our debt also matters internationally. My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years. Now, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries. But we must remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, United States government

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The Obama tax hike, compared to deficits

by Bob Weeks on November 14, 2012

President Barack Obama is going to ask Congress for more tax revenue. But the president’s request, as large as it is, will do little to rein in our budgetary problem.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “President Barack Obama will begin budget negotiations with congressional leaders Friday by calling for $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenue over the next decade, far more than Republicans are likely to accept and double the $800 billion discussed in talks with GOP leaders during the summer of 2011.”

The stage is being set for a showdown, one that both sides will surely cast as determining the future viability of America. But placing these numbers in context shows us that we’re really arguing over nothing — when compared to the size of the problems facing the budget.

For context, the president’s most recent budget — which received zero votes when submitted to Congress — calls for cumulative deficits totaling an additional $6,684 billion from 2013 through 2022. Obama’s request for additional revenue of $1,600 billion over those years is 23.9 percent of that projected deficit. This is not what I’d call “solving the problem.”

Further, the president’s budget may be based on unrealistically optimistic projections. One of the most important variables, the rate of growth of gross domestic product, was assumed to be 3.0 percent in 2012. But through the first three quarters, GDP growth has been at the rate of 2.0 percent, and the recent trend has been for that rate to decrease, not improve.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Economics, Government spending, Taxation, United States government

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The rich don’t have enough money

by Bob Weeks on November 13, 2012

Even if President Barack Obama gets his way in upcoming tax negotiations, we’ll still be a long way from tackling the deficit.

The document General Explanations of the
Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 Revenue Proposals, Table of Revenue Estimates holds the details:

Obama Administration projection of increased tax revenue

If Obama is successful in his plan to increase taxes on upper-income taxpayers, it will bring in — according to this estimate by the Treasury Department — $56 billion in 2013. If additional tax expenditures are eliminated, revenue could increase by $83 billion. Both of these numbers are projected to rise in future years.

To place these numbers in context: In fiscal year 2012, which ended just one month ago, the federal government spent an estimated $3,500 billion. The largest tax revenue increase Obama hopes for is 2.4 percent of this.

Considering only the deficit from 2012, estimated at $1,100 billion, the $83 billion tax hike is 7.54 percent. But that’s only the deficit, which is the amount we borrow, not the amount we spend.

These tax increases are not going to solve our problems with the federal budget. That’s assuming that the tax hikes will not cause economic harm.

The federal budget is so out of balance compared to the size of the economy that even the wildest dreams of liberals won’t balance the budget. The Tax Foundation has calculated from IRS data that if government taxed 100 percent of the income earned by those who earn over $1 million, it would raise $709 billion. That’s not really close to last year’s deficit of $1,100 billion.

And then, why would these people work?

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Government spending, Taxation, United States government

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You should be able to photograph your ballot

by Bob Weeks on November 11, 2012

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach wants to make it illegal to photograph your completed ballot, and he wants the power to enforce this law.

There’s a thorny question here: Who owns your ballot? You, or the state? If you, then can you be prohibited from photographing something that you own?

The usual argument for such a law is that it constrains the buying and selling of votes. A photo of your ballot, it is said, would be proof to a vote-buyer that you delivered the service you promised, if you were to sell your vote. With no ability to prove your vote, it’s thought that there would be fewer buyers.

I don’t think, however, that the state should start judging why people voted as they did. Those who voted for Democrats in Kansas: Did they do so because these candidates promised to take more money from others in order to spend more on schools for their children?

Those who voted for Barack Obama: Did they do so because he promised to take more taxes from high income earners to give everyone else more “stuff?”

When a political party transports someone to the polling place because they believe the voter will vote in their favor: Is that buying a vote? Or only providing free shipping and handling?

As H.L. Mencken wrote some years ago — before government got really big — “Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods.” Whether the sale is implicit or explicit, it doesn’t change what’s happening. There’s no need to create new laws or enforcement powers.

If we’re really interested in reducing the market to buy and sell votes, let’s reduce the power of government to give away stuff that someone else has paid for.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Elections, Kansas Secretary of State, Kansas state government, Kris Kobach, Politics

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Obama II, from New York Times

November 8, 2012

An invigorated Obama second administration will not be good for the country, unless the president has a change of heart.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Climate change, Economic freedom, Government spending

Barack Obama

Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, August 12, 2008:

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