Voice For Liberty

Tag: Barack Obama

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Friday May 27, 2011

    Valuing teachers. Writing in Education Next, Eric A. Hanushek explains the importance of academic achievement of schoolchildren, the low achievement of American schools relative to the world, and the huge impact this poor performance has on our economic future. It’s very important, he writes: “From studying the historical relationship, we can estimate that closing just half of the performance gap with Finland, one of the top international performers in terms of student achievement, could add more than $50 trillion to our gross domestic product between 2010 and 2090. By way of comparison, the drop in economic output over the course of the last recession is believed to be less than $3 trillion. Thus the achievement gap between the U.S. and the world’s top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession.” … Teacher effectiveness is one factor that is under control of schools, and is more important than many other factors also under control of schools: “The quality of the teachers in our schools is paramount: no other measured aspect of schools is nearly as important in determining student achievement. The initiatives we have emphasized in policy discussions — class-size reduction, curriculum revamping, reorganization of school schedule, investment in technology — all fall far short of the impact that good teachers can have in the classroom. Moreover, many of these interventions can be very costly.” … Reforms: “better recruitment so that ineffective or poor teachers do not make it into our schools.” We can also work to improve poor teachers, but Hanushek says this is often not effective, as “there is no substantial evidence that certification, in-service training, master’s degrees, or mentoring programs systematically make a difference in whether teachers are in fact effective at driving student achievement.” … There is also the possibility of a “clearer evaluation and retention strategy for teachers.” This means better evaluation systems to identify the best and worst teachers, but Hanushek calls current evaluation systems dysfunctional. Currently, salaries are based on longevity and earned credentials, which he warns are “factors that are at best weakly related to productivity.” … Of note: it is the teachers unions which support the current failing system, and which block any attempt at meaningful reform. In Kansas this year, tinkering with the teacher tenure formula is all that has been accomplished this year regarding school reform. This is in a state that ranks very low among the states in policies relating to teacher effectiveness, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.

    Job recovery is slow. USA Today: “Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression. The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s. In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009.”

    Obamacare waivers. Michael Barone: “If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?” Barone cites the high concentration of waivers granted to labor unions, which are a big source of political support for Obama. Then there’s the recent revelation of the large number of waivers to companies in Nancy Pelosi’s district. This is harmful, writes Barone: “One basic principle of the rule of law is that laws apply to everybody. If the sign says ‘No Parking,’ you’re not supposed to park there even if you’re a pal of the alderman. Another principle of the rule of law is that government can’t make up new rules to help its cronies and hurt its adversaries except through due process, such as getting a legislature to pass a new law. The Obamacare waiver process appears to violate that first rule. Two other recent Obama administration actions appear to violate the second.”

    Tax increment financing. From Randal O’Toole: “Tax-increment financing (TIF) costs taxpayers around $10 billion per year and is growing as fast as 10 percent per year, according to a new report, Crony Capitalism and Social Engineering: The Case against Tax-Increment Financing published by the Cato Institute. Though originally created to help renew “blighted” neighborhoods, TIF today is used primarily as an economic development tool for areas that are often far from blighted. The report argues that TIF does not actually generate economic development. At best, it moves development that would have taken place somewhere else in a community to the TIF district. That means it generates no net tax revenues, so the TIF district effectively takes taxes from schools and other tax entities. At worst, TIF actually slows economic development, both by putting a larger burden on taxpayers and by discouraging other developers from making investments unless they are also supported by TIF.” … Tax increment financing — TIF districts — are expected to be a major source of revenue for the revitalization of downtown Wichita — and the accompanying social engineering directed from Wichita city hall. Wichita has also shown itself to be totally incapable of turning away from crony capitalism.

    Assumptions about capitalism. Burton W. Folsom in The Myth of the Robber Barons: “This shallow conclusion dovetails with another set of assumptions: First, that the free market, with its economic uncertainty, competitive stress, and constant potential for failure, needs the steadying hand of government regulation; second, that businessmen tend to be unscrupulous, reflecting the classic cliché image of the ‘robber baron,’ eager to seize any opportunity to steal from the public; and third, that because government can mobilize a wide array of forces across the political and business landscape, government programs therefore can move the economy more effectively than can the varied and often conflicting efforts of private enterprise. But the closer we look at public-sector economic initiatives, the more difficult it becomes to defend government as a wellspring of progress. Indeed, an honest examination of our economic history — going back long before the twentieth century — reveals that, more often than not, when government programs and individual enterprise have gone head to head, the private sector has achieved more progress at less cost with greater benefit to consumers and the economy at large.” … Folsom goes on to give examples from the history of steamships, railroads, and the steel and oil industries that show how our true economic history has been distorted. Concluding, he writes: “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 if we have difficulty learning from history, it is often because our true economic history is largely hidden from us. We would be hard pressed to find anything about Vanderbilt’s success or Collins’s government-backed failure in the steamship business by examining the conventional history textbooks or taking a history course at most colleges or universities. The information simply isn’t included.” … Folsom’s book on this topic is The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America.

  • ThinkProgress and Lee Fang: wrong again

    Earlier this week we noted that Center for American Progress Action Fund (an arm of the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely associated with President Barack Obama’s administration and left-wing financier George Soros) was launching an “ideologically driven news organization.” Its implementation would be through the ThinkProgress blog, which has been active for some time, including a role as a vocal — and often highly misinformed — critic of Charles and David Koch.

    This bit of background is important because ThinkProgress has shown to be an unreliable source of information. Case in point: Yesterday John H. Hinderaker of Powerline examined a recent post on ThinkProgress that is critical of Koch Industries and found it and its author Lee Fang to be highly lacking in a number of areas, such as facts, knowledge, and understanding of economics. One comment left to the article included: “Based on 25 years of scholarly research and market experience, I can say that Fang the Farcical knows not the first thing about either manipulation or commodities pricing. You would think that Soros could have found a junior assistant trader to teach Fang the basics. But then there wouldn’t have been a story, would there?”

    Here’s just a small example: One of the most telling parts of Fang’s article is this: “Big banks and companies like Koch employ a contango strategy by buying up oil and storing it in massive containers both on land and offshore to lock in the oil for sale later at a set price.”

    Here Fang is criticizing Koch Industries for speculation in oil markets. Hinderaker notes that unlike banks — which aren’t in the oil business — Koch Industries is actually in the oil business: “Koch certainly does buy oil and store it; it is in the oil business. However, I would be curious to know what ‘big banks’ ‘buy[] up oil and stor[e] it in massive containers both on land and offshore.’”

    Buying something when the price is low and storing it for later use seems a rather innocent act. I wonder if Fang has ever done like I have: When I notice the grocery store has Diet Pepsi on sale, I buy extra and store it for later use when I expect the price will be higher.

    Contango Confusion

    By John H. Hinderaker

    The Think Progress web site is a Soros-funded mouthpiece for the Obama administration. Someone at Think Progress or its parent, the Center for American Progress, has instructed cub reporter Lee Fang to devote full time to attacking Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. (It would be interesting to know who gave that instruction, and why.) We have deconstructed several of Mr. Fang’s attacks, all of which have been juvenile. But his latest effort is perhaps his most pitiful yet.

    In “The Contango Game,” Fang tries to show that Koch Industries “manipulates the oil market for profit.” Unfortunately, young Mr. Fang has neither the business experience nor the intelligence to understand the issues about which he writes. The result is that nearly every sentence is a howler. Among other things, while a contango market is the main subject of Fang’s post, he doesn’t know what the phrase means.

    Fang begins with the claim that oil prices are high these days because of speculation. Whether it is even possible for “speculators” — some call them investors — to have a material impact on the price of oil over time is dubious. While partisans like to blame speculators for rising oil prices–never, however, for falling prices–objective studies, like this one by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2008, have failed to document any such influence.

    Continue reading at Powerline.

  • Center for American Progress starts ideologically driven news organization

    A common criticism of anyone taking a conservative political position is that they should stop getting all their information from Fox News. Criticism like that works both ways, however, especially now that the Center for American Progress Action Fund, according to Politico, is “ramping up an in-house full-fledged, ideologically driven news organization aimed in part at tripping up Republican candidates on the ground in the early presidential contests.” In the coming weeks the ThinkProgress blog will be relaunched as this news organization.

    Some key points:

    • There are ambitious goals: “The newsroom side is absolutely competing with all the leading news organizations,” said Faiz Shakir, the editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress. “We’re not out there to peddle research — we’re out there to make news.
    • Disclosure requirements are good for my political enemies, but not for me: “ThinkProgress may quack like a duck, but it’s hardly just another media organization. For one thing, like the conservative groups that have drawn Democratic criticism, its parent 501(c)4 nonprofit doesn’t disclose its donors, which Palmieri justified on the grounds that, unlike those groups, they don’t produce political advertising.”
    • CAP Action fund is, of course, an arm of the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely associated with President Barack Obama’s administration and George Soros, who advocates many liberal and left-wing political causes: “Further, CAP Action Fund openly runs political advocacy campaigns, and plays a central role in the Democratic Party’s infrastructure, and the new reporting staff down the hall isn’t exactly walled off from that message machine.”
    • Oh, it’s a moral thing: “Rejecting a question from POLITICO about why CAP declined to reveal its donors while calling out the Kochs for not disclosing their donations, he [blogger Lee Fang, a vocal critic of Charles and David Koch] said ‘It’s fundamentally different when you have wealthy individuals that want to donate to a worthy cause, and the Koch brothers and some of their cohorts that are funding groups that are essentially just advancing their self interests and their lobbying interests.’” Fang and the others at Center for American Progress and its allied organizations are evidently not able to understand that the economic freedom that Charles and David Koch advocate is not necessarily in their own interests, if all they wanted to do is become richer. As Charles Koch recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay. Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.”

    It’s the big-government, freedom-killing policies that Center for American Progress supports that are not moral. As seen in the video presented Monday by Walter E. Williams, most government programs exist to take property from one American and give it to another to whom it does not belong, thereby making us all poorer in the process. After these government programs become ensconced, we end up with a country that is not able to care for itself and make arrangements for even the most important things such as retirement and health care, as George Resiman explained.

    Center for American Progress news team takes aim at GOP

    By Ben Smith & Kenneth P. Vogel

    The liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund is ramping up an in-house full-fledged, ideologically driven news organization aimed in part at tripping up Republican candidates on the ground in the early presidential contests.

    The group, executives told POLITICO, now has 30 writers and researchers at ThinkProgress, its blog, which is being redesigned and relaunched in the coming weeks. The editorial staff, similar in size or larger than that of many political websites, marks the latest phase in the deliberate, decade-long construction of a liberal infrastructure for reporting, research, and hammering home a message that the right is scrambling to match.

    “We see ourselves as a content provider,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the president of The Center for American Progress Action Fund, the group’s advocacy arm. “There actually is an echo chamber now.”

    Continue reading at Politico

  • The Left’s ‘obsession with all things Koch’

    Yesterday John H. Hinderaker of Powerline wrote another article about the political Left’s obsession with Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries. It’s a lengthy piece and worth reading, but because it is long, I will try to summarize.

    The Center for American Progress and its website ThinkProgress are fronts for the Obama Administration and are “lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires.”

    The Center for American Progress, through ThinkProgress, “has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries.” The Kochs are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side.

    Having an “obsession with all things Koch,” ThinkProgress has attacked freshman U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, who represents the strongly Republican Kansas fourth congressional district where Koch Industries’ Wichita headquarters is located.

    Therefore, the man-bites-dog story: “Republicans support Republican candidate in Republican district!”

    Other things we learn: ThinkProgress charges that Pompeo “made his fortune off of a Koch backed company.” The facts are that Koch Venture Capital invested in a company that Pompeo and some partners founded to the amount of two percent.

    ThinkProgress has also made an issue of campaign contributions by Koch Industries, writing “In fact, Koch Industries even ranked at top of Pompeo’s campaign contribution list, outpacing the second top contributor by $60,000.” This is true, but when we look at data at OpenSecrets.org, we can see that of the $79,500 contributed, $10,000 came a Koch Industries political action committee (PAC). The balance of this amount came from a large number of people employed by Koch Industries.

    The left-wing mob behavior is noted in the story: “One of the curious media phenomena of our time is the synergy between the fever swamp of left-wing web sites, often closely affiliated with the Democratic Party and supported by far-left billionaires, and the supposedly mainstream media. Repeatedly, ‘stories’ that begin in the fever swamp attain a sort of respectability a few days later when they are picked up by the New York Times or the Washington Post, and often are disseminated from there to liberal newspapers around the country. This is a case in point. On March 20, the Washington Post, evidently inspired by Think Progress, laundered that site’s attack on Pompeo into slightly more respectable form, and brought it into polite company.”

    (The story referred to is GOP freshman Pompeo turned to Koch for money for business, then politics.)

    The recent congressional campaign between Pompeo and Raj Goyle is mentioned, and it is revealed that the Center for American Progress — the parent of ThinkProgress, the site attacking Pompeo and Koch Industries — contributed $8,300 to the Goyle campaign. By the way, according to OpenSecrets, Goyle raised much more money for his campaign from out-of-state donors than from people in Kansas.

    Powerline also criticizes the Post story’s usage of Kansas University political science professor Burdett A. “Bird” Loomis as a source without identifying Loomis as a “Democratic Party partisan and a virulent enemy of Republicans in general and the Kochs in particular” and having written an “anti-Koch op-ed.” (The op-ed, from the Wichita Eagle, doesn’t outright criticize Koch, but you can tell Loomis doesn’t care for the Kochs and their advocacy of economic freedom.)

    Powerline also notes on Loomis’ Facebook page his affinity for left-leaning politicians like Jim Ward, Laura Kelly, and Goyle, and also for the left-wing attack blog “Dome on the Range,” which exists only to poke fun at Republicans.

    Summarizing — and from my observations Hinderaker is correct:

    What we see here is incest to the third degree. The disgusting morass of left-wing blogs, funded by far-left billionaires like George Soros, spew up an endless stream of slimy attacks on mainstream citizens, like Charles and David Koch, and mainstream politicians, like Mike Pompeo. Democratic Party outlets that are generally presumed to be more respectable, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, watch the dirt flow by and periodically, when they see something promising, pluck it out of the swamp and take it mainstream in order to benefit their party. The Post isn’t as bad as some — I have referred to it as the most respectable voice of the Democratic Party — but when it follows this disgusting practice, plucking out the vilest unsubstantiated smear and promoting it for purely partisan purposes, it is hard to distinguish the Post from the most disreputable far-left rags, like ThinkProgress and the New York Times.

    Anatomy of a Smear

    By John H. Hinderaker

    The Center for American Progress is generally regarded as a front for the Obama administration. Its President and CEO is John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and the chairman of Barack Obama’s transition team. CAP is lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires. It runs, among other things, a web site called Think Progress, which cranks out a steady stream of slimy hit pieces for the benefit of the Obama administration and the far left.

    Soros apparently believes that only left-wing billionaires should be able to participate in public discourse, so his Center for American Progress, through its web site, has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. The Kochs are two of the very few billionaires who are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side, a phenomenon that apparently drives left-wing billionaires wild with rage. I’m not sure why; maybe they think the Kochs are traitors to their class. In any event,Think Progress has stalked the Koch brothers with video cameras and produced one false, over-the-top attack on the Kochs after another, some of which we have had fun dissecting here.

    Continue reading at Powerline.

  • Less spending, not more taxes, is required to balance the budget

    Last week the Congressional Budget Office estimated that President Obama’s budget will cost more than first thought, leading to larger deficits than originally forecast. If we hadn’t received the news by now, we need to cut federal spending.

    In commentary made available through the Mercatus Center, Antony Davies notes that there are proposals to cut spending, but even proposals by Republicans aren’t enough: “The President initially offered to cut the budget by $6.5 billion, and Republicans responded by asking for 10 times that amount. The truth is, we need 100 times that amount before we come close to balancing the budget. On any given day, the government spends $6.5 billion before lunch.”

    The president estimates this year’s deficit at $1,645 billion. The deficit, of course, is not the total amount of federal spending. It’s the part of federal spending that isn’t being paid for by current year revenue.

    Spending needs to be cut, but the cuts don’t have to be overwhelming, as liberals contend they must. Jason J. Fichtner writes in The 1 Percent Solution that reducing real federal spending by one percent each year would balance the federal budget by 2016. This requires actual cuts in spending, not just cuts in budget requests.

    It seems inconceivable that we can’t cut spending by one percent each year. But if we could hold down the rate of spending growth to one or two percent per year, we could still balance the budget in less than ten years.

    Raising taxes won’t work

    There are many who call for raising taxes, especially on the rich, as a way to generate more revenue and balance the budget. But try as we might, raising tax rates won’t generate higher revenues (as a percentage of gross domestic product), due to Hauser’s law. W. Kurt Hauser explains in The Wall Street Journal: “Even amoebas learn by trial and error, but some economists and politicians do not. The Obama administration’s budget projections claim that raising taxes on the top 2% of taxpayers, those individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning $250,000 or more, will increase revenues to the U.S. Treasury. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. None of the personal income tax or capital gains tax increases enacted in the post-World War II period has raised the projected tax revenues. Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this ‘Hauser’s Law.’”

    People react to changes in tax law. As tax rates rise, people seek to reduce their taxable income, and make investments in unproductive tax shelters. There is less incentive to work and invest. These are some of the reasons why tax hikes usually don’t generate the promised revenue.

    The subtitle to Hauser’s article is “Tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised. Better to cut rates and get 19% of a larger pie.”

    Hauser's LawHauser’s Law illustrated. No matter what the top marginal tax rate, taxes collected remain an almost constant percentage of GDP.

  • Charles G. Koch: Why Koch Industries is speaking out

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Charles G. Koch, who is chairman of the board and CEO of Koch Industries, writes that economic freedom — not government spending and intervention — leads to prosperity and economic well-being for all, even for our poorest citizens.

    Koch describes an “economic crisis” of increased spending and debt, at both the federal and state levels. The spending cuts currently being considered by Congress, he says, are “relatively minor,” with few proposals for necessary cuts to military and entitlement programs. He describes Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as someone who takes seriously the challenge of controlling government spending.

    Mismanagement of our finances by both Democrats and Republicans, along with their and President Obama’s refusal to tackle the problem of existing debt and the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, means we are looking at “looming bankruptcy,” Koch writes.

    On the relationship between government and business, Koch writes that too many business firms have practiced “crony capitalism”: lobbying for special favors, subsidies, and regulations to keep competitors — who may be more efficient — out of the way.

    While it’s more difficult than practicing cronyism, competing in open markets assures that firms that efficiently provide goods and services that consumers demand are the companies that thrive, Koch writes. It is these efficient firms that raise our standard of living. When politically-favored firms are propped up and bailed out, our economy is weakened: “Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.”

    He concludes: “I am confident that businesses like ours will hire more people and invest in more equipment when our country’s financial future looks more promising. Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.”

    Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out

    Crony capitalism and bloated government prevent entrepreneurs from producing the products and services that make people’s lives better.

    By Charles G. Koch

    Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year — double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year’s projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.

    Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget shortfalls this year. Next year, they will be in even worse shape as most so-called stimulus payments end.

    For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.

    Both Democrats and Republicans have done a poor job of managing our finances. They’ve raised debt ceilings, floated bond issues, and delayed tough decisions.

    Continue reading at The Wall Street Journal (subscription not required)

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Friday February 18, 2011

    Wichita-area legislators to meet public. Tomorrow members of the South-Central Kansas Legislative Delegation will meet with the public. Tomorrow’s meeting is in the Sunflower Room of the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center, 21st and Tyler Rd, at 9:00 am. Generally these meetings last for two hours. The first of these meetings, two weeks ago, was focused more on hearing the concerns of citizens rather than allowing legislators to speak a lot. … Two other meetings have been scheduled. One is on March 19th — right before the legislature adjourns for its break — at Derby City Hall, 611 Mulberry Road. Then on April 23 — right before the “wrap-up session” — at the Wichita State University Hughes Metropolitan Complex, 5015 E. 29th Street (at Oliver).

    This Week in Kansas. On This Week in Kansas Joe Aistrup of Kansas State University and co-author of of the new book on Kansas politics Kansas Politics and Government: The Clash of Political Cultures, Richard Schrock of Emporia State University and Education Frontlines, and myself join host Tim Brown to discuss immigration and abortion bills in Kansas, concealed carry on college campus, and public schools medicating students. This Week in Kansas airs on KAKE-TV channel 10 at 9:00 am Sunday.

    Mandatory union political spending questioned. From Derrick Sontag of Americans for Prosperity, Kansas: “It was Thomas Jefferson who said, ‘To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.’ On that note the Kansas Legislature is considering House Bill 2130, commonly referred to as ‘paycheck protection.’ Money derived from public employee union membership dues, for example, is often spent on functions outside of bargaining and administrative activity. That’s certainly the prerogative of a union but the problem is in some instances members may not choose to support union political activity, yet their money is going towards just that. … This is not a bill designed to eliminate unions. Rather it provides workers the ability to protect themselves from financially supporting political candidates they otherwise wouldn’t support. The unions that effectively present their case as to why political activity should occur will more than likely earn the financial support of a number of its members. Members of public employee unions should have the right to fully safeguard against their money being spent on political causes and candidates they don’t support.”

    Tom Woods: Rollback. This week I traveled to Kansas State University to attend a lecture by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.. His topic, mostly, was his new book Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse. Of the book, Woods explains: “The book does two things. First, it lays bare the true fiscal position of the U.S. government, and shows why some kind of default is not merely possible but inevitable. … By far the more central part of the book is this: the critical first step for reversing this mess and checking the seemingly unstoppable federal advance is to stick a dagger through the heart of the myths by which government has secured the confidence and consent of the people. We know these myths by heart. Government acts on behalf of the public good. It keeps us safe. It protects us against monopolies. It provides indispensable services we could not provide for ourselves. Without it, America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week. Thus Americans tolerate much government predation because they have bought into the myth that state intervention may be an irritant, but the alternative of a free society would be far worse.”

    $100 million in cuts. It’s two years old, but this video places a proposal by President Barack Obama to cut $100 million from the federal budget in context. As the video explains, the scale of numbers so large — millions, billions, trillions — are often difficult to grasp. … Currently some Republicans in Congress are trying to cut $100 billion (1,000 times as much) from the federal budget, and it’s a difficult process. Even a cut of this size is not enough. As Tom Woods recently wrote in Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse: “America is staring default in the face, and the boldest proposal we hear is for trimming $100 billion. That’s like taking three dollars off a trip to the moon.”

    Brownback plan ignored in Wichita. At this week’s meeting of the Wichita City Council I explained to council members a few points of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s economic development plan and how several actions the council was considering were directly in opposition to that plan. No council member asked a question. No Wichita news media reported on how the council ignored the governor’s plan. Especially troubling is how the Wichita Eagle had two reporters attending the meeting, yet there was no mention in that newspaper as to how the council voted several times against the principles of the Brownback plan. … Especially puzzling are the votes of Sue Schlapp, who held a leadership role in the Brownback campaign. Video and more is here.

    National League of Cities junket defended. Speaking of Schlapp and other city council members, the Wichita Eagle printed a letter from the Executive Director of the National League of Cities defending the value of the conference for city council members. Fair enough. But the problem is that Wichita is sending council members to the conference who will serve less than one month after the conference. These council members — Sue Schlapp, Paul Gray, and Roger Smith — ought to refrain from spending taxpayer money on this trip, which is a junket for lame ducks.

  • Koch Industries: Jobs created through market principles

    Now that President Barack Obama has embraced job creation in his 2011 State of the Union Address, he might want to take a look at a company that has been successful in creating both jobs and value for its customers. Wichita-based Koch Industries Inc. has done this through an application of market-based practices as described in The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company, a 2007 book authored by company CEO Charles G. Koch. Koch’s approach has been successful. Since 1960, the value of Koch Industries Inc. has increased faster than the value of the broad-based S&P index of the 500 largest U.S. companies by a factor of 16 times.

    Charles and David Koch also believe in free markets and economic freedom as the best way to promote prosperity for all people, and they have long supported organizations that work towards this goal.

    But not everyone agrees with Charles and David Koch and their free-market approach to creating jobs, value, and prosperity. Recently they have come under baseless attack by the liberal activist group Common Cause for an alleged attempt to influence two U.S. Supreme Court justices. But as shown in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, Common Cause’s complaint is based on incorrect facts, even a total disregard for facts, and is totally groundless. As the Journal notes: “Common Cause’s letter to the Justice Department is just the latest salvo in a long campaign by left-wing groups to intimidate conservative judges, academics and activists.” Fortunately for the cause of freedom, Charles and David Koch do not shrink back from these attacks.

    Recently the Wichita Eagle profiled Koch Industries Inc. and how the company’s growth supports over 50,000 jobs in the U.S. and 17,000 overseas. When ripple effects are counted, the job count is at over 203,000 in the U.S. A reprint of the Eagle article is available at Koch cautious in acquiring other businesses.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Thursday January 20, 2011

    Pompeo to host first district event. This Saturday (January 22nd) newly-elected Kansas fourth district Congressman Mike Pompeo will hold an event billed as “Mike Pompeo’s Conversation with the Congressman.” It well be held Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 10:00 am, at the WSU Hughes Metropolitan Complex Sudermann Commons, 5015 E. 29th Street (at Oliver).

    Prognosticator Journey to address Pachyderms. Friday’s (January 21st) meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club features District Court Judge and former Kansas Senator Phil Journey speaking on the topic “Musings and Prognostications on State and Federal Government.” The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Feeling too good about our schools. Eric Hanushek looks at the results of U.S. students on the recent international tests and the attempts to explain away our generally poor performance. Is education important to our country’s economy? Absolutely, Hanushek explains: “Research has shown that international performance on these tests is very closely related to the economic growth of nations. Does the difference between 550 points (roughly Finland) and 500 points (roughly the U.S.) make a difference? By the historical record of growth, such a difference is consistent with one percent per year in the growth of per capita income. If we project this out over the lifetimes of children born today, the present value of economic gains from the U.S. reaching the level of Finland would be $100 trillion! These potential economic gains from improved schools should be compared to the huge political fights in the U.S. over a stimulus package of one trillion dollars, or one hundredth of the magnitude of the gains we are leaving on the table from ignoring the achievement in our schools.” Hanushek explains that the relatively free enterprise economy of the U.S. has attracted the “brightest from abroad” and has created an economy that spurs innovation. But our advantage is fading, he says, and the brightest often stay at home. We need to fix this now, or in a decade or two it may be impossible to recover.

    Obama order on regulation seen as ineffectual. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a watchdog on federal regulation, having published Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State since 1996. On President Obama’s recent order to review the effect of regulations, CEI is not impressed. In a press release, the organization said: “The number of rules in the pipeline at agencies has surged in the past year, from 4,041 at the end of 2009 to 4,225 now, as will be detailed in CEI’s upcoming Ten Thousand Commandments report. ‘Major’ rules, those expected to cost over $100 million annually, have experienced an even greater surge. Indeed, just to get where we were a year ago, many rules would have to be cut. Yet Obama’s Wall Street Journal op-ed today announcing the Executive Order utterly glossed over the EPA CO2 rules, the FCC’s unauthorized net neutrality push, and the torrent of rules yet to come from the health care and financial reform bills.” … CEI notes that an executive order issued by President Bill Clinton, still in effect, already orders what Obama’s order does. CEI asks: “Actually confronting regulation, the crippling extent of which remains unappreciated by both parties, requires going far beyond the words of an executive order.” … Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity is interviewed on this topic and notes the problem of “back door” legislation through regulation. … It should be noted that Obama inherited many regulations, as despite the claims of liberals, President George Bush greatly expanded the scope of the federal regulatory state.

    Massachusetts health care presages Obamacare. Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, notes the promises and the reality of health care reform in Massachusetts. The plan was implemented by Mitt Romney, a Republican, who promised, according to Pipes, “Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance, and the cost of health care will be reduced. And we need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.” But here’s the reality of what’s happened, again according to Pipes: “The only measure by which Massachusetts can be judged a success is the number of people enrolled in Medicaid and other government-subsidized insurance plans. Of the 410,000 newly insured in Massachusetts, three in four are either paying nothing or very little for their insurance. … Despite the near-universal insurance, the state still spends $414 million on uncompensated care, an expense that Romney and his architects promised would disappear. Emergency-room use has not dropped as predicted. From 2006 to 2008, emergency room use under Mass Care increased by 9%. And private employer insurance costs, far from dropping, have continued to increase.” … Prior to this plan, health insurance premiums in Massachusetts increased at a rate slower than the national average. Now they increase faster than average.

    Sowell on fixing America’s economic problems. Thomas Sowell has published the fourth edition of his now-classic work Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. Now eighty years young, Sowell appears in an interview on the topics in his book.