No One Gets to Sit at Home on Election Day

Last night, after a monthly religious study group, while we were standing around visiting, three people separately asked me the question, “What do you think is going to happen in the November election?” I’m not a good predictor. But I am, in some very local circles, the go-to person on political matters. I wish I had more answers. But I do have thoughts.

The prevailing estimates are that it will be a bloodbath for Democrats in November. Recent polls are trying to say otherwise, but I doubt their validity; I’m guessing such polls have an opinion-forming purpose, rather than an opinion-learning purpose.

FiveThirtyEight makes these predictions for House races.
Image from here; you can go there to click on individual races.

Typically, the midterm after a presidential election goes against the president’s party.  Typically, when the economy is in bad shape, the midterms go against the president’s party—and the state of the economy right now is pitiful. There’s a useful Katie Pavlich article here. And here are a few stats from a Heritage Action email I received today:

·        Inflation rose 9.1% for the month of June, even higher than anticipated.       

·        Milk and coffee prices are up 16% percent, butter is up more than 21%, flour by more than 19%, eggs are up a staggering 33%, regular gasoline is up more than 60%, natural gas is up 38%, and electricity is up almost 14%.

·        Real wages are down 3.7% over the past 12 months, which is nearly a 40-year record. This means that a typical family now pays more than $1,900 in inflation tax.

In any normal year, that would be an automatic death knell for the party in power.

meme found on Facebook here

Add to that, the country’s respect worldwide has plummeted under Biden. His Middle East tour this week produced nothing positive. Without a strong America, the imminent attainment of nuclear weapons by Iran leaves Israel alone to protect itself and others. In case you've forgotten, under Trump’s leadership, Middle East countries allied against Iran in the Abraham Accord. Biden has managed to undo all that progress.

Add to that the spending of taxpayer resources on the Ukraine/Russia conflict rather than on our own southern border. And then add the Hunter Biden evidence of Biden family corruption, including deals that seem to explain Biden’s favoritism toward China.

Any of these things would be enough to sink a presidency that was otherwise functional. This one is not otherwise functional. The president’s own party entertains the possibilities for replacing him, in full view—only a year and a half into his administration.

So of course the predictions are for a Democrat blood bath.

FiveThirtyEight makes predictions for governor races, here.
This shows that in 96 out of 100 scenarios, Abbott beats Beto in Texas.

However, these are not normal times. And these are not normal people. These are power mongers. They will do anything to maintain their power. That means they will be desperate, like a cornered wild animal. Expect lashing out. Expect the unlikely.

And remember, they have the media covering for them. Even though those of us with eyes wide open can clearly see what they’re doing, people who allow themselves to be fed the propaganda day after day don’t know what we know.

What can we do?

As far as that November election goes—be more vigilant than you have ever been. No one gets the luxury to sit home on election day this year. This is not a call to simply go vote, although you must do that. It is a call to volunteer to be part of the army necessary in this very real war against those who want to take away our freedoms.

This is not a year that you can leave it to someone else and maybe you’ll volunteer another time. Because if they get away with stealing elections this November, we will not have a next time that matters.

Be a poll worker—a presiding judge, an alternate judge, or a clerk. Or be a poll watcher. All of these are necessary for Early Voting, Election Day, and for the counting of the ballots after the polls close.

In Harris County it takes an army to run an election. There are roughly 1,000 voting locations on Election Day. Each takes an average of 6-8 workers. That’s 6,000-8,000 right there. We need more than half of these to be Republicans. Add in Early Voting. With roughly 50 locations, with more clerks to handle more voters, there’s probably 10-12 workers for each—and we’ll assume they all work all the Early Voting days, for simplicity. That’s another 500-600 workers, of which we need at least half to be Republican. Add on the counting of the ballots. I’m not sure of numbers, but I’d say around 20 of each party to do this.

I haven’t mentioned the many volunteers who handle the pickup of equipment and supplies, including ADA regulations. That’s probably another 20-40. And the people to deliver equipment to those 1,000 voting locations, another 20-30, I’m guessing.

And, besides the people who count the ballots, there are the workers who accept the ballots and equipment being turned in. There are an additional several dozens of these.

In addition to all these jobs, the Harris County Republican Party is trying to put at least one poll watcher at every polling location. Close to 1,000. Some of these got practice at easy places during the Primary Runoff.

Harris County’s now-fired-and-finally-gone Elections Administrator has tried to institute pickup of the ballots and equipment by Constables and random (Democrat) county employees—breaking the chain of custody between election officials. Republicans have refused to go along. But any polling place led by a Democrat presiding judge will do that again in November, if we don’t stop it by then.

The point here is, there is something you can volunteer to do. And you should. Here in Harris County, you can go to the party website and find a way to volunteer. The Harris County signup is here. Training opportunities are underway. And, in our party (can’t say as much for the County, whose official training you’ll probably also have to undergo, depending on the position you volunteer for), we have good training from some of the best experts on election integrity in the country. Poll watcher training is especially good on election law.

Another way you can help is on cleaning up voter rolls. For us, here’s the instruction:

1.      Go to https://www.harrisvotes.com/VoterRegistration/Search.

2.      Search by your address; i.e., house number and street name.

3.      Confirm the list for valid, registered voters.

4.      Repeat for neighboring addresses.

If you see anything odd, send a message to your county party, preferably someone involved in ballot security, and they can help any citizen file to challenge a registered voter. This is a fairly easy process (I’m working on it right now; daughter Social Sphere, who hasn’t lived here or voted here since 2011, is on our rolls; I’ve checked, and no one has voted in her name, but I want that possibility to be gone). People move, yet our county, as most counties, has not done a good job in removing invalid voters. Spread the word, we can all play a small part in forcing the county election administrators to do their job.

There are lawsuits underway, and on the way, in our county, because of previous lawbreaking. There’s work to do in the state legislature. There’s holding people accountable to the law. Good people are working on those things.

But more than anything there is the need for everyone who cares about preserving our freedoms to be part of the solution in November.

We don’t know what the enemies of freedom will try. But we’ve seen them act as though they have a right to do whatever they want to get their way. We try to anticipate. But we don’t know what they’ll try next in their desperation. When they see the looming loss of their power, they’re going to pull out all the stops.

So, watch. Be vigilant. And be part of the army of volunteers that day. Voting is absolutely not enough at this critical time.

Sampling the Substitutes, Part I

Over the holidays many of my favorite radio shows and podcasters take a break. It’s good to take a break from the daily news. A podcast can simply not provide content until they decide to. But radio shows can’t leave dead air. So they get substitutes to fill in. Often these are less well-known broadcasters, people who are thrilled to have a chance to have a larger audience. So they might be putting forth their best work—which they have a chance to do, because the news onslaught tends to be less intense during holidays.

I was listening to the substitutes on the Glenn Beck radio program, which had some valuable information. So I’m sharing some of what they said. I'm covering three programs, and I pictured it as just some quick lists, but when I included some commentary on each one, it went long. So I’ll cover two of the days today and save the third for a part II.

Mike Broomhead
image from his Facebook page

Monday, December 23, Mike Broomhead

On the Monday before Christmas the substitute was Mike Broomhead, who has a radio show in Phoenix, Arizona. He spent the beginning ten minutes of the second hour (from 39:58 on the recording) listing the data on the economy. I’ll do it in list form.

·         Stock Market: The Dow Jones has added of 10,000 points since Trump was inaugurated. The Dow, the NASDAQ, the S&P, the three big indicators, have all touched and/or set records this month.

·         Employment: The lowest unemployment rate in 54 or 55 years.

o   Highest number of Americans employed.

o   Lowest black unemployment since statistics have been kept.

o   Lowest Hispanic unemployment since statistics have been kept.

o   60% of jobs created during this administration have gone to women.

·         Income Growth: People’s incomes growing faster now than in decades.

o   Low inflation means raises don’t just keep up with standard of living, but people are actually living better.

o   Lowest earners have seen the greatest growth.

o   All demographics of Americans are better off.

·         Consumer Confidence: These two indicators are both positive, which they haven’t been in decades:

o   “Are you better off this year than you were last year?” Yes.

o   “Do you believe you will be better off next year than you are this year?” Yes.

o   Travel over Thanksgiving was the highest in decades, or forever. True also for Christmas holiday travel.

o   Gift giving and spending up. People are willing to risk using a credit card, because they believe their job is secure.

o   Working-class Americans notice a huge difference when inflation stays low and they have more discretionary income.

·         Tax Cuts Working: The US Treasury is collecting more income tax dollars from individuals and businesses now than ever in the history of America—even when adjusted for inflation.

o   That means deficits are definitely due to a spending problem, not a “not enough taxes” problem.

The odd thing is that many Americans don’t seem to be cheering about all this good news.  As Broomhead says,

I live in a desert. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. There’s a time of year we call monsoon season when the rains come. People dance in the streets when it rains here, because of the long spans without rain. When it rains, it’s a joyous experience.

We should be overjoyed with the rain right now. We had so much of an economic drought, and climbing out of a recession, businesses scraping by and not thriving. And now businesses big and small are thriving, and individuals are thriving as well. As a nation we should be overjoyed.

The only explanation for the lack of celebration is disdain for President Trump. If the opposition allows people to notice that they’re better off, he’ll get reelected. But it’s hard to deny this vindication of what we conservatives have been saying all along:

We have now shown that, when the government gets out of the way, the lives of people improve. They do it themselves. All this president did was unleash the job creators, and look what it’s done.

Monday, December 30, Steve Deace

image from Amazon.com

Steve Deace (pronounce Dace) has a program on The Blaze. He filled in for Glenn Beck for two days, and I’m going to cover both of them (one in the next post). Both include lists. This first one is philosophical. The second one is tactical. Both refer to books he’s written.

Philosophy day covered "The Seven Deadly Worldviews," and refers to his book The Nefarious Plot. These seven worldviews, he says, go in order to devolve a civilization. They are summarized in an article in The Christian Post, so, for simplicity I’m using the definitions from that article for each of the seven. Then for each one there’s Deace’s commentary, plus a bit of mine.

1.       Gnosticism: The rejection of God's Word as not sufficient for us to know our true purpose or for life to have its ultimate meaning. The seeking of extra or special knowledge elsewhere other than God himself.

·   There’s a preference for experts, to make people believe that knowledge they need is hidden to them, and only the special few have it. Then there’s a search, not for actual truth, but for something to make the searcher feel elite.

2.       Legalism: A religious system that puts more emphasis on works based righteous than the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

·   This is feeling superior because of behavioral rules you adhere to and impose on others. There’s no acceptance of contrarians, or heresies from what the rule setters impose.

3.       Dualism: The belief that good and evil are equal in power and essentially two sides of the same coin.

·   An example of this came up in a review I read about the latest Star Wars movie, but covering the whole three-trilogy series. Particularly in episodes 1-3 there’s this pseudo-scientific way of looking at good and evil, with measurements of Midi-Chlorians. There’s talk about there needing to be a balance in the force. But that is never the goal. Neither the dark side nor the light side seeks balance, but dominance. There is no satisfaction in getting to the point in the battle where you say, “We’ve done enough winning; lets let the dark side win for a bit to create balance.” Light always needs to vanquish the dark. The odd thing about this worldview is that it’s so close. No. Anywhere you turn on a light, darkness is vanquished. Good is much more powerful than evil, so it’s always better to choose good over evil.

4.       Darwinism: The belief the universe is the result of random chance occurring completely in the natural world and not the purposeful plan of a creative and sovereign God.

·   Darwinism is not equivalent to evolution. Darwinism reduces humans to animal status. It is nihilistic. There’s no meaning, no purpose in life. This worldview paves the way for eugenics and racism. The Twentieth Century was Darwin’s century. His “scientism” was used by Margaret Sanger (of Planned Parenthood) and the Nazis to murder massive numbers of human beings.

·   There’s a piece I wrote in 2011 that compares treating people as “meat machine” or a human being. 

5.       Pragmatism: A utilitarian ideology that says something can only be true if the practical consequences of accepting it satisfies our needs, desires and wants.

·   The most common summary is “The ends justify the means.” The wrong questions are asked, so the answer comes out wrong. For example, “Why should Mother Teresa be helping people who were put into their miserable circumstances for some karmic reason?” And, as Margaret Sanger would say, “It’s cruel to bring an unwanted child into the world,” so you should kill them before they’re born.

6.       Syncretism: The blending of two or more distinct belief systems for the purpose of creating a new system.

·   A more understandable term might be relativism. People choose their truth. They incorporate any useful belief into their own belief system. They offer fake tolerance; they get to judge you all they want, but don’t allow you to judge them. But in reality, two opposing, contrary views cannot both be simultaneously true. Our founders cracked the code on living peaceably with those that have differing beliefs—holding strong to your own Judeo-Christian beliefs while respecting the differing beliefs of others, but not accepting and taking on the differing beliefs.

7.       Secular Humanism: A belief system that rejects virtually every single principle of God's Word.

·   The seeds for this final deadly worldview have already been sown. It’s the endgame of a culture. We need to worship; there’s never been a longstanding secular culture. The Soviets ended up making government their god—and that is the typical move of secular humanists all over. Note that enlightenment thinkers were supporters of the slave trade, and then of eugenics. Clues: if your culture is doing baby killing, they’re worshiping a pagan god, as anthropology shows us every culture has done. You either worship the true and living God, or you make a god such as government to worship, or you make yourself as god.

The final words on the show were:

We live in a nation where we are first and foremost accountable to God. We know what secular humanism will bring. It’s revival or bust.

Just Another Empty Speech

Do you remember just a month ago when we had a standoff about raising the debt ceiling? It was raised, along with a half-hearted promise to lower spending sometime about a decade down the road. And then, of course, our AAA credit rating was lowered to AA+, which means when we borrow, it will be at a higher interest rate, costing us even more over time. 

So when it was announced that 2 ½ years into his presidency Obama would finally give us a plan to improve the economy—specifically to help correct the lingering high unemployment rate—even the skeptical among us had “hope” that he was going to “change” to something that would work. Something other than “Let’s gouge the rich some more,” which is really getting old. And something other than “Let’s spend lots more money so that the private sector won’t misspend it, no matter how much that causes the recession/depression to linger.” We also wanted something other than, “What Bush left us was a much bigger mess than we had anticipated.” 

So what did we get? “Let’s spend nearly another nearly half trillion that we’ve already clearly shown that we don’t have. It will be paid for, not additional debt, which I’ll explain later, but you can assume it will be by making the rich finally pay their fair share [i.e., gouge the evil rich who already pay most of our revenue]. And Congress has to pass it, or I will go around the country blaming them for all our nation’s ills, since blaming Bush is getting unbelievable.” That about summarizes it.

It turns out I am still capable of being shocked. Obama had the “audacity of hope” to order the Congress to blow off a long-scheduled presidential candidate debate for this earth-shaking speech, almost the very moment Congress returned to session after the August break. We were to assume that he had used his own Martha’s Vineyard golf vacation to prepare, perfect, and hone this most important plan. And we are to assume he was just more than gracious for consenting to put it off till the next day, and further, to speak early so as not to interfere with the opening of football season. 

Imagine if he had actually pre-empted either the debate or the ballgame—on the pretext that his message was so urgent that the world must stop for it! He did not actually present a plan. At Whitehouse.gov it is possible to get a bare outline of the supposed plan, but it’s blissfully free of details [my cursory view of it looked like the bare details repeated a couple of times]. The speech itself presented almost nothing. Just a promise of another speech, a week from Monday, in which he will detail how it will be paid for. In the meantime, let it be known, Congress must pass this undefined plan. 

Did he mention that Congress must pass this plan? Why yes, yes he did. Seventeen times, by my count. [I downloaded the transcript, used find and highlight commands for the word “pass,” left out the few that didn’t relate to this meaning, and counted 17. You can do it yourself.] 

A 44-second montage of the many times he said to pass the plan can be found here: http://bcove.me/8hlvri6g  

Among a few responses I came across after the speech was Kevin Jackson of Blacksphere, which made me laugh out loud, a good thing in bad times:  

Apparently we only got half the speech. The second half of the speech supposedly contains the actual meat of Obama’s program, but that part of the speech is on layaway. It seems America couldn’t afford to hear both parts of the speech together, thus the installment plan. 

The speech may be on layaway, but Obama says that his job-creating ideas of which we will be blessed to hear soon are funded. The new round of blood-letting will cost the taxpayers around $500B, which in government-speak means $1T+. We can spend our way into more jobs.  

Obama has yet again grabbed America by the wallet and said, “Cough.” 

Just like he promised when he was running for office, Obama will create more jobs. Just not in America. 

Speaking of creating jobs, Ford, that all-American force of innovation, announced this week that it will be opening up another factory in India. Are they suddenly anti-American? Or are they trying to find a way to keep their head above water in the face of outrageous union labor and regulations that presumably even Obama is now in favor of scaling back (as long as there’s no loss in safety)? Or maybe it’s just part of doing business worldwide and has no political ramifications at all. Maybe.

Here we are at Friday, and I haven’t tackled the other two charts referred to in Monday’s number-crunching piece. Still considering spelling it out, but here are some basic economic premises Obama seems to be ignoring. 

• When government spends money, that means the private sector has less money to spend on basic economic purposes, including hiring workers. “Stimulus spending” does not “stimulate” the economy; it uses money that would otherwise have been used more efficiently and effectively by private enterprise. The only thing “new” about more stimulus is facing a higher interest rate on the resulting debt.
• When you raise taxes, you don’t necessarily raise revenue, because people change their behavior based on whether they receive less benefit (hold money instead of spending it on capital projects, hold it in forms subject to lower tax rates, or hold it in offshore accounts not subject to the taxes—see the Laffer Curve). So having a plan “paid for” by raising taxes will not guarantee raising revenue. Revenue is more likely to rise with lower taxes that result in growth in GDP.
• Whenever federal spending goes to projects that are not part of the Constitutionally delineated powers, negative unanticipated consequences result. 

So, should Congress consider the plan (once it appears), rather than dismiss it out of hand? Sure. And then, unless it is a plan of significant federal spending cuts from areas where the federal government shouldn’t be involved, and unless it releases money to the private sector rather than raising taxes, Congress should stand firm and refuse to pass it. They have offered alternatives, dismissed out-of-hand by this president. So let this ineffectual man travel around and blame them to his heart’s content. Blaming Republicans, who hold only one-half of one branch, for what he did wrong during two full years of total control will simply not satisfy as a substitute for a plan to get Americans back to work.

Numbers Don't Lie; People Do

This is Labor Day, so I could talk about the anomaly that in the past month there was zero movement in unemployment. Kind of odd. But I’d rather go ahead with a number crunching piece I’ve been mulling over for several days. 

Last Tuesday I got one of those posts, you know the kind, meant to put me—and those who believe in economic and political freedom—in our place. 

The provocative headline read: 

3 Reality-Based Charts Your Right-Wing Relatives Will Have a Hard Time Ignoring

Here are some reality-based charts to help knock down absurd right-wing propaganda about the economy.

August 29, 2011 |

Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse.

Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

To my knowledge I do not send annoying political emails to anyone that would be irritating to them. Not to relatives or friends. But I do have this blog as a forum. Using it to refute this bait is normally not worth the effort. But since they claimed to use government data that was easily available, I was curious enough to run the numbers.  

You can read their full diatribe here, along with all three charts. The piece says they got info from the government budget office, so, with help from my son Economic Sphere, who does this kind of research more regularly, I checked the facts (here, we used pp 54-56 of Table 3.1--Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940-2016). 

Today we’ll deal with the first chart, US Government Spending, which contains, as you’d expect, both some inaccuracies and some distortions. 

Here’s a rule of thumb to start with: if liberals are making a claim that their liberal hero is spending less than his “conservative” arch-nemesis, you can be pretty certain the claims are wrong—because liberals don’t value lower spending by government. 

To be clear, budgets originate in the House, are amended and agreed to in the Senate, and then sent to the President for signature; while the President can guide and suggest, his budget is really the House budget, with as much influence by him as he could politically muster, but is not technically his budget. Budgets from 2006 on, therefore, are spending set by the Democrat-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate. But for the sake of this chart, we will call them Bush or Obama budgets, since they presided over them. And there are some way-beyond-budget spending outlays we’ll deal with as well. 

Bush Spending

The chart starts in 2002, even though Bush took office in 2001. That is because budgets get prepared the year before, so the 2001 budget was from Clinton’s last year, 2000. But they used numbers from the whole of Bush’s term, so I include them. 

Here are Bush’s numbers, rounded:

            2001    $1.86 T (last Clinton budget)

2002        $2.01 T

2003        $2.16 T

2004        $2.29 T

2005        $2.47 T

2006        $2.66 T

2007        $2.73 T

2008        $2.98 T

2009        $3.518 T 

Increase per year:

2001-2002              $0.15 T ($150 B)

2002-2003        $0.15 T ($150 B)

2003-2004        $0.13 T ($130 B)

2004-2005        $0.18 T ($180 B)

2005-2006             $0.19 T ($190 B)

2006-2007        $0.07 T ($70 B)

2007-2008        $0.25 T ($250 B)

2008-2009        $0.538 T ($538 B) 

Total increases for these 8 years add up to $1.658 T, literally an 88% increase. Divided by 8 that is an annual increase of $207 Billion, or 11% per year. 

But there are some things we should consider. Notice that, during the recovery from 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, increases are still steady in the $150 B range, and get even lower. In 2008 we have a sharp increase. That is TARP, a shocking $700 B. Many of us were against it, but it was supposed to be a one-time outlay, not a permanent addition to annual budgets, and much was indeed repaid as intended. So the 2008 outlay of $2.98 T would have been $2.28 T without that spike, an annual decrease from 2007 of $450 B. If only! 

But there’s an additional problem with 2009: the Bush budget for 2009 did not include $825 B in “economic stimulus” and $700 B in bailouts, spread over two years (divided with $1.175 T spent in 2009 and $412 B in 2010). So the Bush budgeted outlays for 2009 are $1.175 T less than Obama spent.  

            $3.518 T - $1.175 T = $2.343 T  =  Bush budget spending for 2009 

So Bush’s actual outlay increases from 2001 through 2009 are this: 

            $2.343 T - $1.863 T = $0.480 T   =  Bush spending increases from 2001 to 2009, around 25.8 %,—much much lower than the chart’s 88%. That’s an annual increase of around $60 B, about 3.2% per year, not far off from the rate of inflation.

Obama Spending

Let’s look at the rest of the chart, the Obama years. The story starts Obama spending in 2009, showing a decrease from 2009 to 2010, then a sharp increase in 2011, followed by approximately flat spending from 2011 through 2013 (the first year of the next presidential term, but presumably budgeted in Obama’s last year). 

The numbers listed for these years are as follows: 

2009        $3.518 T (Bush budget plus stimulus and bailouts)

2010        $3.456 T

2011        $3.818 T (estimate)

2012        $3.729 T (estimate)

2013        $3.771 T (estimate) 

Increase/Decrease per year:

2009-2010              $0.062 T lower (lower by $62 B)

2010-2011              $0.362 T higher (increase of $362 B)

2011-2012              $0.089 T lower (lower by $89 B)

2012-2013       $0.042 T higher (increase of $42B) 

Doing the straightforward math this way, you get a 4-year increase of $0.253 T ($253 B), or about 7.2%. Annually, that’s an increase of $63 B, about 1.8% per year. Looks good, but… 

Since $1.175 T spent in 2009 was Obama spending above the Bush budget, this is inaccurate.  The most accurate way to go about this would be as follows: 

            2009 Bush budget out            lays      $2.343 T

            2009 Obama outlays               $1.175 T

            2010 Obama outlays               $3.456 T

            2011 Obama outlays               $3.818 T (estimate)

            2012 Obama outlays               $3.729 T (estimate)

            2013 Obama outlays               $3.771 T (estimate) 

Increase/Decrease per year:

            2009 Bush-2010 Obama         $1.113 T increase

            2010-2011                               $0.354 T increase ($356 B more)

            2011-2012                               $0.089 T decrease ($89 B less)

            2012-2013                               $0.0.42 T increase ($42 B more)           

The increases for these four years total $1.336 T, or 57% more—not 7.2%. Annually that is $0.334 T ($334 B). Remember, Bush’s total 8-year increase was about $483 T, or $60 B a year. Obama’s annual increase is nearly 6 times Bush’s annual increase. His annual increase of around 14.2 % is about double what the chart claims is his 4-year increase. 

There are a couple of other curiosities about Obama’s spending according to the chart. He takes over, and there’s a decrease in spending from 2009 to 2010? Yes, because $1.175 T of the stimulus and bailouts were assigned to 2009, and only $412 B of was assigned to be spent in 2010. A cut in spending? Only if you expected those spikes to come year after year (not a totally wrong assumption with this crew in power).  

Here’s another curiosity: there hasn’t actually been an Obama budget yet. In 2009 and 2010, the Democrat-controlled House failed entirely to even do their basic duty of writing a budget. Without a budget, they guaranteed a specified level of automatic increases, without having to justify any increases before their opponents in the House. In 2011, we had a newly elected Republican House, which put out a budget almost immediately (without real cuts, but with reductions in the automatic increases). The Senate, still controlled by the Democrats, refused to take up the budget for a vote. So if there is a sharp increase for 2011 (and the chart shows there is), then it is because Obama ordered additional spending spikes over and above automatic budget increases. The relatively flat estimates for 2012 and 2013 imply there won’t be any such one-time outlays during those years. Good luck trusting that. 

I’m undecided about spending time on the other two charts. If I find it worthwhile, I’ll cover those later in the week.

Economics in Austen-World

It’s Flag Day, and I enjoyed putting the flag out. We had for some time a bougainvillea that grew in front of my flag pole holder and made it difficult to fly the flag, but severe weather did it in a year or so ago, so I’m unhindered in my patriotic efforts now. 

It is also a book club day. Today my friends and I talked about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which I love and have read multiple times. I’ve been thinking for a while that when this discussion came up, I would do a blog post about the economics of Jane Austen’s world. 

We’re talking right around 1800 in England. I’ve been reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which was published around 1776 in Scotland, so that has given me some additional perspective. 

One of the reasons I find reading Jane Austen so enjoyable, soothing even, is that her world seems so civilized in comparison to our own. People are still very human, but there is an assumption that people are trying to be honest, noble, and good. Even when evil comes up, it’s far milder than would show up on most TV dramas today. And it’s hard to find someone in a movie that could live up to the everyday standards of Austen-world. 

But the most common source of struggle in her books is economic. Austen always writes about the gentleman class. Stratified society is foreign to me, but it was natural to them. In the Spherical Model, one of the descriptions I have for a civilized world is that it is possible to rise socially and economically. Classes are merely economic levels that can be overcome by education, hard work, and good opportunities—if not in a single generation, then in the next. But in Austen-world there is very little crossing of these imaginary social boundaries. 

In Pride and Prejudice, there’s the difference in station between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett’s family, even though her father is considered of the gentleman class, so the distinction is in level within the layer, so economics is part of it. The real trial is an assumption that one cannot be of the gentle class and actually work for a living. Managing an estate, including farming, is considered appropriate. But being a lawyer or a shopkeeper is disqualifying. Gentlemen who do not inherit the estate are expected to fulfill their lives either by joining the clergy and having some patron pay for their living, or to go into the military, which may also require someone paying their commission. This seems to me indecently limiting. Education is encouraged and expected, but only in order to make one more interesting in social situations, not to make one more useful to the world. 

Wickham, the evil gentleman and near villain of the story, flirts with Elizabeth near the beginning, but when he turns his attention to a young woman who just inherited 10,000 pounds (a sizable principle sum in its day that would provide interest enough for a comfortable, even wealthy, living), she sees it as possibly a prudent move on his part. 

A similar situation happens in Sense and Sensibility, when Willoughby abandons his infatuation with Marianne because he has crossed his aunt from whom he had hoped to inherit wealth and must therefore turn to a wealthy woman for his future upkeep. 

Things are even worse for women without money. They have the opportunity of serving as a governess, if she doesn’t have relatives who can support her, as was the expected fate of Jane Fairfax in Emma. Or they can marry. We see Charlotte Lucas’s decision to marry Mr. Collins, in Pride and Prejudice, as somewhat desperate. But she makes the best of things, because this was her best chance to have a household to run and to stop being a burden on her parents. So her husband’s folly is just a tolerable cost she is satisfied to bear. 

The whole inheritance system seems something of a problem. In Pride and Prejudice, Longbourn, the Bennett family estate, is entailed to Mr. Collins. In other words, Mr. Bennett owns it but, according to the terms by which he inherited it, he cannot pass it on to his wife or any of his daughters—only to a son, which he never had. So the next nearest male relative, Mr. Collins, will receive it based on nothing of his own conduct, only his luck that a legal paper says so. 

A similar difficulty occurs in Sense and Sensibility, when Elinor’s father dies. Her father had thought he had spelled out all that was necessary to make sure that his second wife and daughters would be well cared for. But the son from his first marriage is not only selfish; he is encouraged in greed and unkindness by a rather uncivilized wife. So the female family members end up taking a small cottage, where they can get by rather economically. 

Austen talks about money in frequent detail, naming how many thousand pounds a person has bestowed on them, because in that time the numbers brought to mind a specific sort of lifestyle. The translation in our day would be seeing the difference between $40,000 a year, $100,000 a year, $250,000 a year, and $1,000,000+ a year. You can imagine the likely housing and lifestyle for the different levels. The difference is, we can easily move from one level to another during our lifetime, and for the most part we associate with all levels as needed. A wealthy young woman wouldn’t hesitate to marry a young man from a poorer family if she meets him in the process of improving and preparing himself for a decent future. 

Austen doesn’t deal very much with the middle and lower classes in her books, but it seems to me they have some economic freedoms not open to the noble class. Elizabeth’s aunts have married a merchant and a lawyer. While it is recognized a number of times that their ways of making money reflect negatively on the family (just to be related to working men was somehow lowering), they actually come across as very good people. The Gardiners help out Elizabeth’s family quite a lot: they have Jane stay with them in London after her heartbreak; they have Elizabeth travel the countryside with them on their vacation; they help handle the mess caused by Lydia. We see them as every bit as genteel as the noble class, and better mannered than many. And even Mr. Darcy, who is prejudged to be too proud to associate with such people, seems to appreciate them when they meet. So, even if Austen didn’t see it at the time, because her world simply was what it was, the crossing of class lines does seem somewhat possible and positive. 

I prefer the many freedoms, economic and otherwise, that we enjoy in our country. But the expectation of goodness evident in their world is civilized in a way that we have not seen for a while. It ought to be possible to have both. I think we did in this country for most of our history, which is how we became a great civilization. Getting back to civilization will require following those same rules—which work every time they’re tried.

Economic Woes

The other night I read a piece someone sent me, by economist Walter Williams. I usually read his articles on Townhall, but this one I’d missed, I assumed because of the school thing I’m doing for another week. A friend emailed it—twice. It was startlingly negative, not usual for Williams. I was going to put the link here, but it turns out, this was not a piece by Williams, but was published when someone sent it in his name (according to Snopes). So, in addition to what I’m addressing below on the concepts of the piece, I suggest getting all you can from the real Walter Williams here.

The article said, in essence, there is no chance Obama won’t be reelected, no matter how good the Republican candidate. The constituencies (special interests) who lean toward Obama to get their various handouts are listed, and the list covers too much to overcome. And then the summary is that it’s because Americans don’t understand economics. So this is what I’m looking to remedy.

At this point I am following various candidates getting into the presidential race, but I’m not committed anywhere—except the whole anybody-but-Obama concept. That’s because I do have a basic understanding of economics. (Actually, the whole anti-Constitution socialism, hate-America, racist, condescending approach to the presidency is so unpalatable, I would be anti-Obama even with a better economy.)

The overused “well, the economy was much worse when we arrived than we thought” excuse, essentially the blame Bush ploy, doesn’t stand. As much as I was against the Bush bailout at the tail end of his presidency, those temporary giveaways actually were paid back in a fairly timely fashion, nearly in full. So it is the Obama handouts and QE1 and QE2, along with anti-energy policies, and foolish schemes like Obamacare and cash for clunkers (removing supply from the market usually used by poorer workers, making their transportation costs rise) that have kept the economy down.

I’m not the first to say this, but you can look at the disastrous depression that happened around 1921, which was forgettable because government resisted interfering and the market corrected quickly. Then compare that to the equally bad crash of 1929, which was followed by considerable employment recovery—until the government interfered and messed everything up for the next decade plus. They used the same excuses then: “Imagine how bad things would be if we weren’t doing all we can!” It’s not any more useful just because Obama says it.

The concept that has most stuck with me from freshman Economics is that government interference with the market ALWAYS makes things worse. It’s not a matter of trial and error and tweaking to get it just right. Government doing something about the economy will always make the economy worse.

We have just a year to get this basic concept into the heads of Americans, to avoid what could be worse, and longer, than the Great Depression of the 1930s (plus a whole lot of other ills this presidency intends to impose on us). I’m just one voice, but at least I’m saying it. I hope you will help.

If you need a quick refresher on economics, see the Free Enterprise vs Controlled Economy section of the Spherical Model website.

Hands Off My Macroeconomics

I’m always a little excited to see that a new issue of The Intercollegiate Review has arrived. In case you’re not familiar with this “Journal of Scholarship and Opinion,” it is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ISI is a non-profit educational organization, “whose purpose is to further in

successive generations of college students a better understanding of the values and institutions that sustain a free and humane society.” They provide online information, lectures, publications, conferences, and more. They are champions of “limited government, individual liberty, the rule of law, a free market economy, personal responsibility, and moral standards”—my kind of people. The Intercollegiate Review is cost-free but priceless. (ISI.org, and The Intercollegiate Review is here)

A few years back I read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and began an interest in Austrian economics (which you can learn more about through the Ludwig von Mises Institute online: Mises.org). So when I saw an article in The Intercollegiate Review mentioning Hayek’s book, I turned there first: “Economic Policy and the Road to Serfdom: The Watershed of 1913,” by Brian Domitrovic, assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. I’d like to share a few chunks of the piece here, talking about America’s golden macroeconomic era, and what we can learn from it.

The most impressive half century in American—arguably world—economic history was that which followed the Civil War: the nearly fifty years form 1865 to 1913. The American economy expanded at a yearly rate of 3.62 percent from 1865 to 1913. By way of comparison, from 1913 to 2008 (also a peak-to-peak period), the American economy grew at 3.26 percent per year. The difference of about four-tenths of a percent per year proved enormous. Had the United States maintained the trend that held in the half century after the Civil War, it would now be about half again richer than it is now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century.…

The greatest decades of economic growth in American history were the 1870s and 1880s, when the economy expanded by two-thirds each time. There was one significant recession in this period, in 1873. It was overwhelmed so soon and so comprehensively that the 70 percent real growth gained in the 1870s amounts to the largest of any decade in the peacetime history of the United States.

As for the “panic of 1873” of textbook lore, that year brought a big drop in output, with people thrown out of work. The episode was a function of the incredible depreciation of the dollar that had been undertaken in the Civil War, when (following decades of price stability) the Union government printed greenbacks so quickly that the dollar suddenly lost half its value. After 1865, the U.S. government pledged to restore the value of the dollar against gold (and consumer prices), but doubts about this led to speculative investments to hedge the uncertainty and ultimately produced the asset crash of 1873.

In the wake of the 1873 bust, however, the dollar slowly reclaimed its value, just as the U.S. government had pledged. The price level declined by 1.4 percent per year on average for the next two decades, such that by the 1890s, a dollar saved before 1860 achieved its original purchasing power. As for unemployment, the term was not coined until the tail end of the century for a reason. The United States was importing tens of millions of immigrant workers on account of labor shortages given the growth boom….

[G]rowth was high; recessions were rare, shallow, and short; prices changed little as employment boomed—that it effectively defined the kind of results that governmental macroeconomic management should aspire to. The irony was that there was precious little macroeconomic management at all for most of this era. We can say with statistical precision that there has never been a golden era in American macroeconomic history like the 1870s and 1880s.

There were two other significant recessions in the half century after the Civil War. These occurred in 1893 and 1907. Both cases correlated to governmental overtures to introduce macroeconomic policy. In 1890, the United States signaled that, despite having attained the very price level that had held for decades before the Civil War, as well as having watched growth cruise at more than 5 percent per year for the long term, it was now going to monetize a new asset, silver. The prospect was of too much currency in the economy (1873 redux), and the markets quickly swelled and crashed. The recovery from 1893 stayed tepid while President Grover Cleveland spent his term trying to end the silver lark. Aggregate output was flat from 1892 until the next election year, 1896; in the latter year, free-silverite William Jennings Bryan succeeded Cleveland as Democratic nominee for president. The strong recovery began only when, with the election of Republican William McKinley in 1896, the United States committed to dropping the program for the extra silver money. Overall, growth was slower in the 1890s that it had been in preceding decades—33 percent for the decade, a typical twentieth-century number. But from the year McKinley was elected until 1907, growth came in a 4.6 percent per year, approaching the 1870s-1880s standard of 5.2 percent annually. This is tantamount to saying that the real trend of yearly growth in the post-Civil War period was not 3.62 percent but something like 5 percent per year—because 5 percent held as long as the government stayed out of the way. [Emphasis mine.]

I know that was a lot of numbers. But the point illustrated is that the free market brings about world-record-setting growth and prosperity, and government interference always causes lower growth and less prosperity. There’s more in the rest of the article, including the damage done by instituting the income tax in 1913, the depression and recovery because of hands-off policy in 1920-21, and then the interference that resulted in the Great Depression.

At Spherical Model I try to identify principles that will provide us the greatest freedom, prosperity, and civilization. I believe the U.S. Constitution is an inspired document that limits government in the very ways that lead to the best outcomes. But usurpation by power mongers slowly (and sometimes quickly) erodes our society. The Constitution limits economic interference to safeguarding the wealth of citizens: law enforcement, protection from invasion and piracy, preventing refusals of trade between and among the various states, and standardizing measures and coining money to make exchanges equitable. The 1913 amendment is now part of the Constitution, so taxing for the purpose of raising revenue to pay for the Constitutional services is also included—but any collection of taxes to redistribute wealth, provide “charity,” or anything else not spelled out in the Constitution is theft. And this theft will ALWAYS deteriorate our freedom, prosperity, and civilization. As the IR article shows, there is plenty of evidence to prove the principle true.

I suggest we once again try living by the Constitution and then see the prosperity that follows.