The Dog Who Doesn't Bark

In the short story Silver Blaze, literature's most famous detective investigates the disappearance of a prize racehorse and an apparent murder in the Dartmoor region of Devonshire in southwest England. During this investigation, Sherlock Holmes learns that the animal was led out of his stall in the middle of the night and that the stable hand charged with guarding the thoroughbred had been drugged senseless. Nonetheless, there was a dog nearby that should have raised an alarm if any suspicious characters were lurking around, whether the stable boy was conscious or not. Had the dog also been drugged or otherwise silenced? This question led to one of fiction's greatest exchanges:





Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"



Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."



Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."



Holmes: "That was the curious incident."





The dog didn't bark because he recognized the man leading Silver Blaze out of the stable as John Straker, the horse's trainer. Mr. Straker was a bigamist whose second wife had very expensive tastes, and he intended to injure the animal so as to fix a major race for gamblers. He drugged the stable hand so he could lead the animal out into the dark unobserved, but unfortunately for him, the horse panicked and killed him accidentally, solving the suspected murder.





His Serene Loftiness has repeatedly and forcefully urged Congress and the American people to support the now-$789 billion spending bill presented for his signature. He has stated clearly that the economic crisis now upon us is the worst since the Great Depression and that the only remedy is massive government intervention paralleled on President Roosevelt's New Deal. The upheaval in the banking industry, predicated on the upheaval in the housing market, seems to validate the President's claim and unemployment stands at 7.6%, double the figure from April 2000 and the worst level since September 1992. But inflation barely registers at 0.09% (as of December 2008) and the Federal Reserve's prime lending rate stands at a miniscule 0.25%. Are these really the worst economic conditions we've faced in seventy-five years?





When Ronald Reagan assumed the Presidency in January 1981, the country was enduring a "double-dip" recession; that is, we had recovered from the recession that began in 1978 under President Carter and plunged into another. Unemployment stood at 7.5% and would peak at 10.8% in December 1982. Inflation, which had jumped as high as 14% under President Carter, was a still-dangerous 9.2%. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to throttle said inflation, had increased the prime lending rate to an astonishing 21%, making credit extremely expensive even when it could be had. President Reagan's answer to this triple threat to the economy was to cut taxes, first in 1982 and again in 1986. By the time he left office in January 1989, the prime lending rate had settled to 10.5 % as inflation had been cut to an annual rate of 5.4%, and unemployment had also dropped to 5.4% as nearly twenty million jobs had been created. The effects of President Reagan's tax cuts and the Federal Reserve's tight control of money markets was to allow wage earners to keep more of their own money, that money held more of its value, jobs were created and prosperity returned across the board - the percentage of husbands of poor families working low-income jobs dropped 13.7% between 1979 and 1990.





Like the dog that didn't bark, the choicest clue is often the one we don't hear. It seems evident from the historical record that President Obama is simply lying when he omits this period of economic difficulty and recovery when he appeals for his "stimulus package." Why would he do so? Because to mention it would undercut the urgency, the absolute necessity of such colossal spending, as well as the purpose. If we have overcome worse economic troubles than what we currently face with different methods, and those methods succeeded wonderfully, it would seem logical to use those methods again, except that Mr. Obama is philosophically opposed to them. Cutting taxes is not what he's about, not what his liberal allies are about, and he will ignore the lessons of our own recent history and imperil us all rather than admit that a conservative principle is correct.

Similarly, while Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi and all the other usual suspects rail against the unbridled greed and arrogance and corruption on Wall Street, and grandstand on TV, raking corporate CEO's across the coals in Congressional hearings, you hear not a word about investigating Congress' role in launching the housing market crash. As discussed in earlier postings here, liberal Democrats decided to ingratiate themselves to their constituents in the 1990's by changing the laws to help bad credit risks obtain home mortgages, bullying HUD and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and everyone else with a dollar to lend to lend it to their cronies. As late as 14 July 2008, Rep. Frank stated, "I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They're not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward. They're in a housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid. And in fact, we're going to do some things that are going to improve them."

Of course, the Federal government seized control of both lending giants less than three months later after they lost about 80% of their value in nine months, costing taxpayers about $11 billion and sending shockwaves throughout the financial markets. But will someone, anyone, vigorously pursue Mr. Frank's responsibility for causing the financial panic, and the responsibility of his social engineering friends on the Hill? No. No, we will not. Doing so would bring the guilt and shame of this mess to their doorstep, so we will not see it. So as President Obama glories in this first legislative victory, pay attention, as Baker Street's most illustrious resident did, to what is not said, to what is not heard, to the dog who doesn't bark.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432501,00.html

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/treasury-set-bail-out-fannie/story.aspx?guid=%7B46D1439E-A2C4-418C-9BE0-09BE0B9EE60D%7D&dist=msr_7


Source: http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/images/charts/Annual_Inflation/annual_inflation_chart.htm





Source: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/ratewatch/leading-rates.asp





Source: http://www.bls.gov/CPS/





Source: The Real Reagan Record, National Review, August 31, 1992

For God's Sake, DO NOTHING!

On 13 December 1799, George Washington spent the day laying out some improvements to the front of his mansion at Mount Vernon, Virginia. The hardiest in an an era of hardy men, he worked diligently outdoors all day in the cold and freezing rain, not stopping until the work was completed and he was satisfied. After coming inside to change clothes, however, he complained of nausea, chills and a sore throat to his adopted grandson George Custis and cut dinner short that evening, managing only a cup of tea before retiring to his library for a few hours. He spent an agonizing and sleepless night wracked by fever and acute laryngitis before allowing his family to summon his family doctors the following morning, who spared no effort in treating him. All their accumulated knowledge and skill were bent to the task of saving America's greatest hero but nothing worked, and late on the evening of 14 December, George Washington passed into history.

Further examination of General Washington's symptoms indicated that he likely suffered from pneumonia, a severe throat infection and probably dehydration as he fought multiple problems at once without being able to eat or drink and was in serious trouble even if no other complications had arisen, but examination of his doctors' methods revealed that they likely accelerated his demise, albeit through ignorance. Men well-educated by 18th century standards prescribed mercury chloride to induce vomiting in a man whose throat was constricted, and repeatedly a bled a man whose blood was his only means of fighting the symptoms that plagued him. In short, they made a perilous situation fatal.

The point is that sometimes the remedy can be worse than the disease. Three intelligent, dedicated, professional and well-meaning doctors, employing commonly accepted medical techniques with the full approval and urging of the patient's family, probably killed the Father of our Country. Now, His Serene Loftiness feels compelled to administer a $789 billion injection to the United States economy, driven by philosophy and the urgings of a Democrat Party reeling with power. His constituents, the millions of Americans who feel cheated by free enterprise, scream for action. He has won an historic election and in his mind, an historic mandate. He cannot stand by and do nothing, he must intervene powerfully and decisively, he must be a dynamic, even epic figure. Doing nothing to harm the patient - the first rule of Hippocrates' credo - is forgotten in the mad scramble. Disregard the failures of the New Deal, disregard the gigantic increase in government spending during the Bush administration (if government spending were beneficial to an economy in crisis, why does Obama criticize his predecessor's lavish habits?), disregard the failures of the Spring 2008 rebates and the $700 billion TRAP package to stimulate the economy. Obama demands this colossal bill to validate himself as an American icon, to validate liberalism and the idiotic Keynesian economics to which liberals cling. But when the bill is passed and signed into law, when the money is spent and the bridges are built and the sod is laid and every wild pork-barrel fantasy is indulged and relief is still wanting, the President will be exposed for what he is: Another left-wing politician buying votes with other people's money. For God's sake, Mr. President, do nothing.

Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2283.cfm

I Am Joe's Mortgage

My name is Joe Smith. Six years ago when the housing market was white-hot, my wife and I decided to jump in and buy a house of our own so we wouldn't be left behind by our friends and family. We'd been lifelong renters but come on! When everyone you know is buying and flipping and making all kinds of cash, how could we resist? We've had some problems in the past - getting fired from jobs, missing payments on stuff we'd bought, $50,000 in credit card debt and stuff like that - so we were really surprised when the bank approved our application, especially with no down payment, but the loan officer said we were getting something he called an "adjustable rate mortgage" that was tailor-made for people like us. We could move into the house with a really low interest rate to start off, and by the time the rate went up, we would have our finances squared away. It sounded pretty good to us at the time and like I said, we didn't want to be left out when every house in America was being bought up, so we took it.

Unfortunately, things have gotten worse, not better. We've been late on a few of our mortgage payments because we decided to play the lottery and take a trip to Cabo instead - booyah! - and we got sued by one of our creditors because we wrote a rubber check as a down payment for our car. (Don't judge us! How else could we get a new Escalade with our credit score?) The bank jacked up the interest rate on our mortgage which Hello! we couldn't afford and now they're threatening to foreclose on us. The good news is that Barack Obama is President now and he wants to help us out, like if things get really bad and we declare bankruptcy, we can ask the judge to lower our interest rate, lower our monthly payments, lengthen our mortgage out to forty years or even cancel part of our balance which would really be cool - we could stay in our house as long as we wanted, on our terms and the bank couldn't do a thing about it! After all, shouldn't everyone have the American Dream, not just the people who can afford it?

My name is Joe Smith and I am the president of First Neighborhood Bank of Anywhere, USA. Ten years ago when the subprime lending craze was starting to sweep the nation, I tried my hardest to stay out of it because the money I lend belongs to my friends and neighbors and I would no sooner risk their life savings than I would risk my own. If I jeopardize their kids' college fund, or their retirement savings, or their home, I violate their trust and deserve to lose their business.

That is not to say that I haven't been pressured to compromise. It seemed like every week HUD or Fannie Mae was issuing new guidelines for "underserved demographics," meaning people you'd never loan your car keys to, let alone $300,000 for a house. Bankruptcies, lawsuits, judgments, defaults on other loans, nothing seemed bad enough to disqualify these people from a mortgage, every basic premise of good credit being sacrificed for some damned Washington social experiment, and now we're taking it on the chin. In fact, the world is taking it on the chin because of this idiotic lab test. Things are tight in my town and at my bank, we've seen a few of our customers laid off from their jobs but overall, we seem to be weathering the storm OK unless Obama gets this new legislation through Congress that I've heard about. Judges dictating the terms of a mortgage? Interest rates and balances and monthly payments subject to their whimsy and not financial principles? That's nuts. Mortgages are contracts, Mr. President, and as a lawyer you should know that - they're not collectibles you buy on QVC and return in thirty days if you don't like them. Giving millions of bad credit risks a break on their mortgages sounds great on TV but is extraordinarily destructive for my customers since they would have to pay for it. I'd be forced to raise their fees, increase interest rates on their new loans or reject their loan applications, punishing hundreds of diligent, responsible, thrifty people so some deadbeats can get over. Bunk! It's not politically popular right now but if someone defaults on their mortgage, that's why we have foreclosures, and that might be the opportunity someone else is looking for: Joe's mortgage, you might say.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Green Curtain

In his inaugural address, he told the American people to prepare for sacrifice, after they paid for a $120 billion stimulus package that didn't work, after they paid for a $700 billion bailout package that didn't work, as he prepares to spend $850 billion on another stimulus package and wants to spend even more.





He invited an openly gay Episcopal bishop to pray at the Inauguration concert last Sunday, Rev. Joseph Lowery prayed that "white will embrace what is right" during the benediction at his Inauguration, his Secretary of Labor wants to exclude white male construction workers from receiving contracts related to the $850 billion stimulus package, yet he warns Republicans against listening to Rush Limbaugh because that would be divisive.


He ordered the closure of the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo without a plan to dispose of the prisoners there, could not explain the contents of his own Executive Order, admitted that some prisoners are so dangerous that they will never be released (one former detainee car-bombed the US Embassy in Yemen and has become the leader of Al Qaeda in that country) but bitterly criticized President Bush during the campaign for not closing Guantanamo anyway.


He has forbidden the use of torture when interrogating terror suspects, including the technique of waterboarding. His nominee for Attorney General has agreed, his nominee for Director of National Intelligence has disagreed, and when asked if we would torture Osama bin Laden if he fell into our hands to gain information that might prevent terrorist attacks, his Press Secretary demurred.


He signed a new Executive Order establishing sweeping new ethics rules for lobbyists and political appointees, then granted a waiver to William Lynn within 24 hours.

Only 1457 more days to go.


Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/23/obama-quit-listening-rush-limbaugh-want-things/



Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1411081/robert_reich_excludes_white_male_construction.html

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012303507.html

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/23/obama-hopeful-congress-pass-stimulus-plan-despite-gop-resistance/

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481849,00.html

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-EthicsCommitments/

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/23/lobbyist-nominated-pentagon-agrees-sell-raytheon-stock/

Bear Market

When Barack Obama assumes the Presidency this Tuesday, he will face an array of foreign policy issues that will demand his attention and not in the let's-make-nice-now-that-George W. Bush-is-gone sort of way. Israel and the Palestinians are mixing it up again, North Korea continues its hysterical temper tantrums, Iran continues to foment global Islamic terror and of course, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq proceed unabated. Lost in the shuffle, possibly, is a dispute between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union over natural gas that threatens NATO expansion and possibly a split in the alliance itself, and which serves as a perfect example of the problem an inexperienced and outclassed rookie President has to handle.

The rise in fuel prices has given Russia a power it never enjoyed during the Cold War as the world's leading Communist nation. Flush with money, Russia has rebuffed American designs against Iran's nuclear program, has intimidated her Baltic neighbors, has sold weapons to that socialist goon Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and has threatened Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to cooperate with America's ballistic missile defenses. Led by Vladimir Putin and other KGB alumni, Russia has cast off its post-Cold War image as a weakened and pathetic country, asserting itself as a huge, ancient and powerful nation accustomed to dominating two continents and intimidating its neighbors. Money is indeed power, they have discovered, too late to save the USSR but in time to shape a new Russia and get things done.

They started four years ago in Ukraine. In an effort to maintain control of their former Soviet satellite, they poured boatloads of money into the presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych, tried their best to rig the election in his favor and when that failed, tried to assassinate his rival, Viktor Yushchenko: Old habits die hard. Overwhelming popular resistance ultimately prevailed, Yushchenko survived the dioxin poisoning and was inaugurated President, but the hearts that rule the Kremlin are stout hearts indeed and the new old Russia would try again.

Aleksandr Litvenenko, a former KGB agent turned author and rabid Putin critic, became violently ill in London in November 2006 and died an agonizing death three weeks later, all the while claiming that his enemies in Moscow were responsible. He was right. British authorities determined that he had been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, a substance produced by nuclear power plants, tightly controlled by national governments and which was used to send a very loud message that the Kremlin was not to be trifled with. British attempts to interrogate and extradite Andrei Lugovoi failed, the man suspected and charged with Litvenenko's murder. British diplomats were expelled from Russia in retaliation, no-one has ever gone to jail and more proof was provided that the Russia everyone knew and feared was back and ready for a brawl.

Next was a territorial dispute with Georgia, another ex-Soviet slave state. President Mikhail Saakashvili embraced the US and emphatically sought NATO membership in the face of bitter Russian protests, confident that his personal relationship with George W. Bush ensured American support in any potential conflict, and made the mistake of putting that assumption to the test. In August 2008, he ordered Georgian military forces to reoccupy Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian provinces who were ethnically Russian and who had been allowed to assume a measure of autonomy. Russia responded swiftly. In a matter of days, Russian troops had repelled the Georgian attack, seized their largest Black Sea port, cut the major east-west highway and a major oil pipeline and threatened the capital of Tbilisi while inflicting thousands of casualties before retiring, proving that handshakes and photo ops in the White House are no match for Russian tanks.

That brings us to the present. Ukraine imports Russian natural gas for its own consumption as well as for transit to Europe through a 23,000-mile network of pipes, paying about $195 per 1000 cubic meters for its fuel. Russia has demanded that Ukraine pay $450 per 1000 cubic meters, has withheld gas for Ukraine while shipping supplies meant for its European customers and refusing to supply so-called "technical gas" meant to push fuel through the pipeline. President Yushchenko of Ukraine, of course, is unwilling to allow his own citizens to freeze while he argues with the Russians and has kept the gas intended for Europe, sparking criticism from the EU since they now have to scramble for alternate supplies in the middle of winter. Russia is capitalizing on this mess as they now blame Ukraine for stealing fuel and forcing Europe to suffer unnecessarily, President Dmitri Medvedev going so far as to propose a conference in Moscow where the whole European Union can debate a solution, his own preference being to place Ukraine's pipeline network under "international control" - meaning Russia. In short, we have Russia bullying Ukraine with a view of either ruining her economically, gaining control of her pipeline network, short-circuiting her aspirations of NATO membership (most of the EU nations now shivering in the cold are also NATO members who would look at any Ukrainian request with a certain amount of, say, circumspection), cancelling further NATO expansion altogether or, in a perfect world, all of the above. This is bare-knuckle politics the way the Kremlin likes to play it, and there is real danger here. If Russia is allowed to intimidate the West and those countries who have befriended the West, if Russia is allowed to bite off those smaller countries and beat them up, if Russia is allowed to force Europe to choose between loyalty to the alliance and keeping her people warm, if Russia is allowed to dictate European and American foreign policy without heavyweight repercussions - they do, after all, need us so much more than we need them - then the effort of winning the Cold War will have been wasted and Mr. Obama will find himself facing the Russia of 1949, not 2009.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479880,00.html

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2531027/Georgia-Crisis-deepens-as-Russia-snubs-George-W-Bushs-call-to-pull-troops-out.html

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4061253.stm

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/26/ap/world/mainD8LKJSHG0.shtml

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/2547451/Russia-Georgia-conflict-timeline.html

Drinking Our Way To Sobriety, Part II

His Serene Loftiness gave a major speech up at George Mason University in Fairfax last week during which he warned us that failure of Congress to approve another "stimulus" package to assuage the currrent economic crisis could result in a recession extending for years, and urged his Democrat colleagues to present the $850 billion bill for his signature not later than 31 January. In a continuation of my remarks last week, I have several observations about Mr. Obama's plan and its supposed urgent nature.

• National governments have several ways to raise money. They may simply print more of it, they may increase tariffs on imports, they may increase taxes or they may borrow the money. Printing money is easy, it avoids increasing the public debt or risking a public backlash over taxes, but it also decreases the currency's value and risks inflation. Increasing tariffs shifts the burden to foreigners which is pretty good if you're a politician, it also avoids the dangers of public anger over increased taxes and inflation, but raising the kind of money desired might be problematic, what with treaty obligations and all. Increasing taxes carries no danger of inflation and likely results in the amount of money desired being raised, but it's extremely unpopular to the point of dangerous: See the Congressional elections of 1994 or the voters' rejection of Bush 41 when he broke his pledge not to raise taxes. Borrowing money doesn't risk inflation or voter outrage, it results in the desired amount being raised and the pain of repayment is postponed, all very attractive inducements to politicians who want to spend more money but who want to keep their seats, the same inducements that persuade ordinary citizens to live on their credit cards. But the consequences of national governments borrowing money can be catastrophic. Because there is no immediate cost to spending on credit, governments are tempted to live that way, becoming complacent, adopting a spendthrift lifestyle until there is nothing left to borrow and everything comes crashing down. As of this writing, the United States government owes $10.6 trillion or over $37,000 for every man, woman and child, legal and illegal in this country. Mr. Obama proposes to borrow $850 billion more at the very beginning of his Presidency and use that money to "stimulate" the sluggish economy. In reality, borrowing such a vast sum will act as a sedative to the economy since the government is taking money out of circulation, money badly needed in the private credit markets that Mr. Obama says he wants to help, and blowing it on its own purposes. The national debt is increased, the percentage of the annual budget devoted to repaying that debt and its interest is increased and in effect, the borrowed money amounts to a de facto tax increase that further interrupts the recovery Mr. Obama claims to be seeking, definitely not sound fiscal strategy.

• As part of the $850 billion boondoggle, Mr. Obama wants to provide $350 billion worth of "tax cuts" to lower- and middle-income families, the people who voted for him and his liberal Democrat allies two months ago. The problem is that the bottom fifty percent of American wage earners pay less than 4% of all Federal income taxes, presenting us with a logical dilemma: How can the government provide income tax relief to people who pay no taxes? That might be difficult to answer if you aren't Barack Obama, but for him, it's easy - it's redistributing income. You see, his offhand comment to Joe the Plumber during the campaign was too telling and he intends to write $350 billion in welfare checks to his friends, be financed mainly by people who voted against him. (The top ten percent of wage earners pay over 65% of all Federal income taxes.)

• The Emperor of the Americas would also like to spend $500 billion or so to repair infrastructure and clean energy projects with the intent of converting America into a Green Republic. However, 98% of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuels and 70% of our electricity comes from the same, so it seems hugely illogical to spend such a huge sum on "clean energy" when the market has largely rejected the same. But if the point is to placate the rabidly Leftist environmental lobby and to feed fat construction projects to pro-Democrat unions, then you can see why Mr. Obama finds this plan so attractive.

• The $120 billion stimulus package approved in Spring 2008 had virtually no effect. Half of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package approved in October 2008 has been spent but the country has lost over one million more jobs regardless. Undeterred by facts, Mr. Obama is prepared to throw another $850 billion worth of borrowed money at the problem, which seems illogical because it is illogical.

So what are we to make of Mr. Obama, the Democrats and the financial geniuses who advise them? For starters, their strategy has nothing to do with returning the country to long-term prosperity but everything to do with implementing liberal dogma:

• The market is fundamentally unfair and government intervention is necessary to correct it.
• Rather than allow the market to correct itself naturally which might cost hundreds of thousands of union jobs and many low-wage, bad-credit homeowners their homes, the government should spend a colossal amount of money for a temporary fix knowing that their Republican rivals will be stuck with the check.
• The tree huggers and the unions are traditional Democrat constituencies. The government should spend whatever it needs to spend to help them and screw the consequences.

And people used to ridicule Ronald Reagan for cutting taxes in the middle of a recession...like that's just plain crazy.

Source: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/04in06tr.xls

Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/obama-speech-pushes-clean-energy/

Drinking Our Way to Sobriety

In seventeen days, President Bush will leave office as the most unpopular President in the history of our Republic, at least as far as polling can determine. After enjoying approval ratings as high as ninety percent after 9/11, Mr. Bush's support has slowly dwindled to its current level of 28 percent and settled there, the deepest funk suffered by any Chief Executive and an indication of the public's deep dissatisfaction with his performance. Certainly, Mr. Bush has had his successes, such as his handling of the Navy P-3 incident with the Chinese, the tax cuts, his appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court and of course, the liberation of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. The United States homeland has not been attacked since that dreadful day seven years ago, surely the best metric we could possibly hope for and for which Mr. Bush should receive all the credit. He oversaw the expansion of NATO and our country's missile defenses and persuaded Libya to abandon its major weapon programs, a huge achievement considering Muammar Qaddafi's history of belligerence. However, the negatives were overwhelming. He allowed liberal Democrats to undermine education reform and to drive him (maybe willingly) toward establishment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, saddling the American taxpayers with a huge new entitlement program. He mishandled the Federal responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (though Gov. Kathleen Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the culture of corrupt Louisiana politics were the main culprits), advocated clemency for millions of illegal immigrants in the face of stiff public opposition, allowed North Korea to test a nuclear weapon, test fire a salvo of missiles on the Fourth of July and repeatedly ignore its international obligations, and invaded Iraq without adequate preparations for security and reconstruction that cost tens of thousands of lives before the successful surge of 2007. But beyond education reform, new entitlements and even war, Mr. Bush's legacy is defined by a titanic increase in the Federal debt, some of which was beyond his control (the recesssion he inherited from Bill Clinton, the economic shock of 9/11) but much of which was completely controllable.







The positive results of the Bush tax cuts - relieving the burden on the Federal taxpayers, encouraging corporate investment, the creation of five million jobs and an increase of $188 billion in Federal income tax receipts since 2001 - have been more than offset by runaway Federal spending. Even before the current economic crisis, increased Federal spending was responsible for 90% of the final budget deficit between 2000-2006, according to figures from the Heritage Foundation. Stir in the bailout fever that has gripped the nation and add another $1.1 trillion to the national debt in one year alone which would be scandalous by itself, but we're not done yet. As of this writing, Congressional Democrats intend to offer an $850 billion "stimulus" package for Barack Obama's signature on 20 January that would represent the total national debt for the first 200 years of our existence and push the new total somewhere north of $11 trillion, or $37,377 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Given the Republicans' traditional aversion to this kind of fiscal lunacy and the Democrats' supposed new-found discipline, how did we then get to this point?





First, Mr. Bush and his GOP colleagues in the Congress decided in favor of political expediency very early in his Presidency. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided a ready excuse, like, "Spend whatever you need to spend and worry about paying the bill later." There was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Global War On Terror, disaster recoveries from California wildfires to Midwest floods to the forementioned Gulf Coast hurricanes, to the Federal bailouts of Wall Street and the Big Three Detroit automakers. All this spending nullified the benefits of the Bush tax cuts and removed a very important issue from the Republicans' traditional agenda - that they are careful with the people's money. Second, the Democrats and their irresponsible Republican fellows predicted, in their Keynesian fervor, that colossal levels of government spending would spark the economy and generate a new round of prosperity, "priming the pump" as they say. However, the Department of Labor announced recently that unemployment rose to 6.7% in the month of November 2008 and overall job losses have reached 2.7 million since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, indicating that the $120 billion "stimulus" package approved last Spring, the various Wall Street takeovers and the $700 billion TRAP package approved in October have had exactly the opposite effect as intended, deepening the economic stress rather than relieving it. But as I mentioned above, politicians want to be seen as "doing something" and government does nothing better than spend money, though in this case it is somewhat analogous to the alcoholic who tries to kick the habit by going on a binge. It's illogical in the extreme and undeserving of even a shred of respect.






There is a fundamental economic failure at work here. Liberals who complain of high Federal deficits under Republican administrations but simultaneously urge trillions in new outlays to "stimulate" the economy are actually saying that government spending is OK but only as long as they are in charge and implicitly acknowledge that simply blowing money at a weak economy does nothing but weaken it further. They also refuse to consider cutting levels of spending and taxation in order to stimulate the economy, reducing the burden on taxpayers instead of increasing it, since the whole point as far as they are concerned is to grow government, increase its power and influence and increase the people's dependence on it. They see government as a leveler of social and economic differences, taking resources from those who've earned them and giving them to others who have not, reversing the basic unfairness of life at least as they see it. But as I already observed, by proposing $850 billion in additional government spending when $820 billion hasn't worked is like the neighborhood drunk going on a binge to attain sobriety - for all you Democrats out there, aren't you glad you voted for this?























Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTVjNzIxZDhjMWNlOGM4Zjg3ODc1MDg0NTliNDhjMTU=



















Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm2152.cfm



















Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2150.cfm





Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf