Strassel: Two Cliff-Top Lessons for GOP

The GOP should learn 2 big lessons from the recent round of failed debt talks, writes Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal. First, Mr. Obama is not, and will never be a serious negotiating partner.

House Speaker John Boehner came out of the election assuming his counterpart—faced with a dramatic economic moment—would act the statesman. With working-class taxpayers on the line, the military on the chopping block and the economy in the balance, Mr. Boehner found it impossible to believe the president would fail to see the risks at hand.

Then again, this was the same president who in 2011, during the debt-ceiling negotiations, proved willing to risk national default if it meant he could keep spending...
In that context, it seems no surprise that Mr. Boehner's worthy offer, in November, to offer Mr. Obama the tax revenue he sought—by closing deductions on higher earners—was treated with derision. Mr. Obama's only response was to pocket that offer and demand more.

The GOP's hope that this White House would walk the plank with it on entitlement reform was equally fanciful. Mr. Obama won't willingly agree to any serious cuts, to any meaningful entitlement reform, ever. He will risk everything—the "middle class" he claims to want to protect, his economic legacy—to continue growing government.

The second lesson is that a house divided is a losing house.

Be of Good Cheer, Conservatives

2012 had more than its share of disappointments for conservatives. The twisted logic of the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision—a law forcing people to purchase health insurance isn't constitutional, so we'll make the it constitutional by calling it a tax—was unfathomable. The growth of food stamps and federal welfare payments (to $1.03 trillion annually) was staggering. The U.S.'s precipitous drop out of the top 10 in the world's Prosperity Index was disheartening. The reelection of a liberal-progressive president—whose policies had utterly failed the nation by every economic measure—was shocking.

The country has weathered dark liberal-progressive storms in the past, and it will again. As Amity Shlaes makes clear in her book, The Forgotten Man, Franklin D. Roosevelt (the current president's hero) prolonged the Great Depression in the U.S. long after other industrialized nations were back on their feet. He, too, waged class warfare, persecuted and vindictively taxed business people, regulated the private sector into paralysis, and showered political favors on groups and business cronies that cozied up to him. Many of FDR's failed economic policies left with him, however; and America's economy rebounded, enjoying more than a half-century of innovation, growth and prosperity. The FDR experience serves as a reminder that the present circumstances may be disheartening, but the future still holds promise.

One example of that promise is domestic energy. Today while the White House pursues the fool's gold of green energy policies, trillions of dollars of black gold sit waiting beneath America's feet and just off her shores. Try hard as he may, this president can neither un-invent the technology that is making America's black gold rush possible nor un-discover the vast fields of natural resources available to the nation. He can only succeed in delaying their full potential. (Read more about the amazing energy boom.)

So be of good cheer. America's natural and human resources are her strength, and they still offer a bright future. 

The Liberal-Progressive Religion

Logic, consistency and civility aren't strengths of Liberal-Progressive ideology because it's a fundamentalist religion with its own canon, writes Robert Hall in a piece that would be funny if his observations weren't so true. Here are a few:

• If conservatives oppose gay marriage, it is an atrocity; but if Muslims call for the murder of gays, it's a heartwarming display of Multiculturalism.
• The Rich are evil, but only if they earned their money in business and are not Progressives. So mega-millionaires Michael Moore, Warren Buffet, Al Gore, George Soros, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, Angelo "Friends of Angelo at Countrywide" Mozilo and any number of entertainment and athletic stars are all righteous people, while a couple each working 60 hours a week to bring home $260k are among the evil rich who aren't "paying their fair share."
• It isn't racist to require minorities to identify themselves to cash a check, fly, drive, buy a gun, buy alcohol, buy tobacco, sign up for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, or to enter a government building, Obama rally, or the Democrat National convention, but it is racism to ask for ID to vote.
• Progressives think it's an outrage if you don't want to pay for free birth control for yuppie law students, but completely ignore the stoning of women, child marriages, female genital mutilation, honor killings of female relatives for even speaking to a strange man and oppressive inequality of women in Muslim countries under Shari'a Law.
• Children are a high priority. As long as they are children of the Progressive Elect voting blocks in the US. So banning DDT to save the birds to feel good about the Environment was wonderful, and several million dead black, brown, and yellow kids from malaria in the Third World mattered not at all. Nor did the birds, of course, when it was time to build eagle-chopper wind farms in homage to Big Green.

Worth the whole read for anyone who must deal with the cognitive dissonant positions of the Progressive self-righteous, self-annointed 'elect'.

Move on, Conservatives!

You were right to fight Obamacare, right to fight legal challenges, right to fight state exchanges. Now move on, conservatives, and turn your intellectual energy to fixing the national health care mess, including Obamacare. That's essentially the message Avik Roy argues here and here. He suggests that once conservatives get over their grief, "they may realize Obamacare presents them with a counter-intuitive opportunity."

Drawing upon Switzerland's model — which uses health insurance exchanges and has NO government-run public option — Roy outlines a four-step plan.

1. Leverage Obamacare's state government-run exchanges into market-oriented exchanges (with no government option) and repeal O'Care's "community rating" provisions so young people can afford insurance.
2. Migrate Medicare enrollees (government's seniors plan) into exchanges and offer premium support (somewhat like the Paul Ryan plan).
3. Accept that many employers will move away from providing insurance, so enable more people to buy insurance on their own via free-market exchanges.
4. Move patients of Medicaid (government's welfare plan) — "America's worst health care program" — into exchanges to eliminate the disincentive they currently have to avoid work (for fear of losing Medicaid) and to ease the financial burden O'Care puts on states.

Read the whole argument. It's worth the intellectual energy.

The Tax Fight Begins

Only in the Land of Oz (or Obama) would this be "fair." Big business and small business could be pitted against each other in Obama's "over-$250K" tax hike demand. If nothing else, it shows just how insane the current tax code is.  Tim Cavanaugh explains,

Big Businesses

• they file as Subchapter C corporations;
• they include GE, IBM, Ford, Pepsi, etc.;
• they pay a federal tax rate of 35%, but that's not their real rate because of countless loopholes carved out for certain industries: retail's real tax rate is an average 36.4%; most industries real rate is 26.6%; and 8 sectors (including finance/insurance, food services, and manufacturing) pay a mere 13.5% tax rate;
• GE, by the way, paid a tax rate of zip-zero-nada in 2010; and
• this group, often represented by the Business Roundtable, was invited to the White House recently to plead their case for lowering Subchapter C tax rate to 25%.

Small Businesses

• they file as Subchapter S corporations (i.e., as partnerships or sole proprietorships);
• they include your neighborhood hairdresser, deli, coffee shop, doctor, pet store, etc.;
• they pay the same tax rate as individuals (not as a business) — 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% or 35% — but they get to claim individual deductions like you;
• there are 26 million S corporations in the U.S, they employ 70 million people, and they account for the majority of business activity in the U.S.;
• this group, often represented by the Chamber of Commerce, doesn't get invited to the White House;
• Obama doesn't see them as businesses — just as 'rich people' — and he wants to raise their tax rates (if they earn more than $250K in a year) to 39.6% (from 35%) so they pay their "fair share."

Read Cavanaugh's article, and ask yourself:  how could any sane person think that raising small businesses' tax rate — while lowering big businesses' tax rate — is "fair"?

S.E. Cupp, Katie Pavlich: the Future of Conservatism

Columnists S.E. Cupp and Katie Pavlich (also editor of townhall.com) discussed the 2012 election results and the future of conservatism at the Conservative Women's Network in Washington DC, a monthly event co-sponsored by the Luce Institute and The Heritage Foundation. Watch below, or on YouTube

Fellowships for Print, Online Journalists

The Phillips Foundation is now accepting applications for its Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program, which offers full-time $50,000, and part-time $25,000, one-year fellowships to working journalists, with less than 10 years of professional experience in print or online journalism, who share their mission to advance constitutional principles, a democratic society and a vibrant free enterprise system. Applications must be postmarked by February 12, 2013. Contact John Farley or visit the website for more information.

California: #1 Welfare State

"Can conservatives prevent the U.S. from becoming California?" asks Conn Carroll. We'd better, or the nation will soon become the United States of Welfare and as unsustainable as Greece. Currently one-third of all the nation's welfare recipients live in California. Noting that middle-class, job-seeking families are fleeing California in droves, Carroll warns that if conservatives allow "what has happened to California happen to the rest of America ... middle-class families will have nowhere to go."

Gender Gap No; Marriage Gap Yes

Ignore the media hype about a Gender Gap, argues Kay Hymowitz at City Journal. It's really a Marriage Gap, and it isn't limited to gender: a majority of female and male marrieds voted Republican, while a majority of female and male singles voted Democrat.

Interactive "Soak-the-Rich" Calculator

The left loves to demonize large corporations and their CEOs as a greedy lot who should pay more taxes to reduce the federal debt. Now there's an interactive website, http://soaktherich.us, to calculate how much revenue the federal government would collect if it doubled corporate taxes and confiscated CEOs' pay of each, some, or all of the largest employers in 33 different U.S. industries, from aerospace to utilities. The results may surprise.

Election May Not Save Obamacare

The left may be cheering Obama's reelection as protection for his signature achievement, but 6 major flaws may leave it so weak as to be unworkable in its present form, concludes NCPA's John Goodman:

[The flaws] are so serious that the Democrats are going to have to perform major surgery on the legislation in the next few years, even if all the Republicans do is stand by and twiddle their thumbs. Here is a brief overview.

Strange Voting Patterns

Investor's Business Daily editors pulled together just a few of the strange voting patterns spotted on election day in states with no voter ID requirements.

Pennsylvania — a state where a judge blocked a voter ID law for 2012 and "where 75 legal and credentialed GOP election workers were blocked or removed from the polls" — had 59 Philadelphia voting divisions report Obama 19,605 votes, Romney 0 votes.

The Obama Justice Department might not be concerned about that, but one man who studies voting patterns is dubious. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it deserves scrutiny. "Not a single vote for Romney or even an error?" he asked. "That's worth looking into."

Ohio — Romney faced a similar shutout in 9 districts in Cuyahoga County "where he did even worse than the third-party candidates."

Seem impossible? Yes, it does. And that's not just our opinion. Rich Exner, the Cleveland Plain Dealer's data analysis editor, said he doesn't find the shutout credible.

Colorado — two counties reported more votes cast than their total voter-age populations.

Federal Welfare Spending Now Single Largest Federal Expense

"Means-tested welfare spending is currently the single largest category of spending in the federal budget — more than Medicare, Social Security, and national defense," reports the GOP U.S. Senate Budget Committee. Citing a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the Committee said that federal and state spending on the 80-plus federal welfare programs is up 32% since 2008, now comprises 21% of federal outlays (spending), and amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion.

This doesn't count the Obama Phone, which is a separate welfare benefit paid for via fees assessed on those who pay for their telephone service:

What the "Fiscal Cliff" Means

In a tweet, it's bye-bye to those 'evil' Bush tax cuts and hello to across-the-board federal spending cuts and new taxes. Below is a list via AP, followed by an argument that the cliff could save us from a worse crisis.

Say goodbye to:

• Bush's decade-old package of(1) cuts to lower marginal tax rates for everyone [rates below], (2) the elimination of the marriage penalty on working couples, (3)larger personal tax deductions for dependent children, (4) lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains, and (5) a variety of smaller tax cuts for businesses, research and development, and some state sales tax deductions;
• Obama's temporary 2% cut in the paycheck FICA tax; and
• Unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

Say hello to:

• the imposition of the Alternative Minimum Tax on some 26 million households, which will raise their taxes by an average of $3,700;
• a sharp cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors taking care of grannies (the "doc fix");
• the Sequestration: an automatic across-the-board cut next year of $55 billion in federal domestic programs, including another 2% cut to grannies' Medicare doctors; and $55 billion, 9% cut in defense spending.

(New taxes are also slated to begin in January 2013 to pay for Obamacare, but those are not part of the "fiscal cliff.")

Some see the fiscal cliff as the lesser of two evils. The economists @ idealtaxes.com blog argue:

The entire discussion of the "fiscal cliff" has things a bit backward. People talk of "going off" the fiscal cliff — and the natural image is of the disaster that awaits one who tumbles from the edge of a precipice. Instead, perhaps we should say "running into" the fiscal cliff — the cliff being a force that stops a tumble.

Running into a cliff isn't fun. It would raise nearly everyone's taxes. It would cut spending on most of the programs everyone uses. It would temporarily raise unemployment rates. But the fiscal cliff would back us away from a true disaster scenario, and it would slow the growth of the government debt.

While media focus on one warning from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report (i.e., that unemployment could go up if we hit the cliff), the authors argue a greater disaster awaits if the cliff doesn't slow the federal debt:

The media has been relatively quiet about the second paragraph of the CBO report -- that without fiscal responsibility, the U.S. economy faces imminent disaster. The CBO wrote:

If the fiscal tightening was removed and the policies that are currently in effect were kept in place indefinitely, a continued surge in federal debt during the rest of this decade and beyond would raise the risk of a fiscal crisis (in which the government would lose the ability to borrow money at affordable interest rates) and would eventually reduce the nation's output and income below what would occur if the fiscal tightening was allowed to take place as currently set by law.

The actual scenario is even worse than the CBO makes out.  If the U.S. national debt continues to explode, then, eventually, when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to prevent inflation, the rising interest rates will greatly increase the interest component of the federal budget.

From then on, either alternative would be a disaster: (1) the federal government could default, or (2) the Federal Reserve could take the brakes off inflation. In either case, the dollar would collapse in the currency exchange markets, interest rates and import prices would go sky-high, and the U.S. standard of living would hit the bottom with a splat.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker breaks down the marginal tax rate changes.

• Bush rate 35% goes up to Obama rate 39.6%
• Bush rate 33%  ... to ... Obama rate 36%
• Bush rate 28% ... to ... Obama rate 31%
• Bush rate 25% ... to ... Obama rate 28%
• Bush rate 10% ... to ... Obama rate 15%

Quote of the Day

from Steven Hayward @ powerline.com:

Well, how to begin?  What’s on your mind this week?  Perhaps we should start with H.L. Mencken, who once wrote that democracy is the theory that the people know what they want—and deserve to get it good and hard.

Or as New York Mayor Ed Koch put it, “The people have spoken . . . and they must be punished.”  I think that’s just been arranged.

Hispanics Vote Welfare - Not Immigration - Policy

Immigration policy isn't the key issue for Hispanics, explains Heather Macdonald at NRO. Welfare policy is. And conservatives can thank 'official and defacto immigration policy favoring low-skilled over high-skilled immigrants' for setting in motion a large wave of liberal voters seeking 'a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation'.

MacDonald warns that the call for conservatives to 'discard their opposition to immigration amnesty' to enhance their electoral prospects is very misguided. She argues that California—a state undergoing a demographic revolution—is the wave of the future of the U.S., and it does not bode well for those who favor limited government and individual responsibility:

• U.S.-born Hispanic households in California use welfare programs at twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households;
• 1/4th of all Hispanics are poor in California, compared to a little over 1/10th of non-Hispanics;
• nearly 7 in 10 poor children in the state are Hispanic;
• 1 in 3 Hispanic children is poor, compared to less than 1 in 6 non-Hispanic children; and
• the idea of the “social issues” Hispanic voter is a mirage. A majority of Hispanics now support gay marriage, a Pew Research Center poll from last month found. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate is 53 percent, about twice that of whites.

In Immigration: Turning the Tide, Dr. Barry R. Chiswick explains how the demographic revolution began:

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was sold to the American public as having two major features—amnesty which was to “wipe the slate clean” of undocumented workers, and employer sanctions which was to “keep the slate clean”—along with some increased border enforcement of the immigration law. Employer sanctions were intended to cut off the “jobs magnet” that attracted undocumented workers to the United States. Half of the political bargain was fulfilled.

Under its two major amnesty provisions legal status was granted to nearly 3 million undocumented individuals, nearly all of whom were low-skilled workers, and millions more have subsequently been able to immigrate as their relatives. It is noteworthy that while in 1986 the word “amnesty” was used outright, in the current political debate the “A” word is anathema to the proponents of what is euphemistically called “earned legalization.” This by itself is testimony to public perception of the failures of the 1986 Act.

Can the 'snowball effect' of low-skilled immigrants be reversed? Yes, but only with substantial change in immigration policy. In testimony before a previous Congress, Dr. Chiswick — a University of Illinois at Chicago economist with international expertise in researching the economics of immigration and minorities — argued that the 'current legal immigration system is not serving the best economic interests of the United States', and recommended these among several changes to legal immigration policies:

• end the "nepotism" immigration policy system that encourages low-skilled workers to bring extended family to the U.S.; and
• replace it with "skills-based" immigration policies, such as those adopted by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that give preference to immigrants who are most likely — by their age, schooling, technical training and proficiency — to add value and strength to the U.S. economy and tax revenues (rather than drain from them).

Don't expect such economy-boosting policy changes to be made in the next four years, however.

What will Mainstream Media Do Now?

With the election over, MSM will now be forced to report serious issues they largely covered up during the campaign. IBD lists a few of the stories MSM will soon "discover."

The economy really does stink.

The press studiously ignored the ongoing economic catastrophe under Obama, while parading any "green shoot" they could find that suggested growth was around the corner.

Don't be surprised if, after the election, they start to notice that three years of subpar growth have left the middle class further behind and more mired in poverty, and created a vast pool of long-term unemployed.

Massive debt and entitlement crisis loom.

Despite four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits and a national debt that now exceeds total GDP, the media largely treated the debt crisis with a collective yawn.

Ditto the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. These crises are nevertheless real and will have to be dealt with soon, a fact the press will almost certainly acknowledge after Nov. 6.

The debt ceiling is fast approaching.

The Treasury Dept. warned last week that it expects the government to reach its borrowing limit before the end of the year. Congress and the White House will have to deal with that just as they're trying to avoid the fiscal cliff.

ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed.

Reports are sure to appear pointing out the law's lack of cost controls, its adverse impact on doctors and hospitals, and the fact that, after spending $1.76 trillion, it will still leave 30 million uninsured.

Obama's deficit cutting plan won't work.

The press let the president get away with one of the biggest whoppers yet — that his tax hikes on "the rich" would be enough to pay for his spending binge and bring down the deficit $4 trillion. Obama's own budget proved this wasn't the case. And after the election, you can bet the media will be "shocked" to find that his numbers didn't add up.

Questions about Benghazi still remain.

After almost two full months spent burying the Benghazi story, expect the mainstream press to wake up and notice that, as the Washington Post admitted in an editorial last Friday, "a host of unanswered questions" remains. So far, only Fox News has bothered to pursue this story, but we expect that other outlets will pick up on it after the elections.

Conservatives: Don't Panic

After Mitt Romney's loss, there's been plenty of talk about how demographic trends will require Republicans to move to the center if they want to capture the White House, writes John Merline at IBD. What's missing from all this handwringing is the fact that conservatives today account for a bigger share of voters than they did when Reagan won his 1980 landslide.

He uses exit polling data to make these points:

• The country remains center-right:  In 1980, 32% of voters were conservative, according to exit polls at the time. By 1996, when Clinton won reelection, that share had risen to 33%. This year, exit polls show that 35% of voters are conservative, far more than 25% who identify themselves as liberal. The share of moderates has remained relatively steady at 40% to 45%.
• Voters haven't suddenly decided they love big government. Voters who say government is doing too much climbed from 43% in 2008 to 51% in 2012. 
• This election exposed a glaring disconnect between voters' ideology and the person they picked to run the country.  51% say the federal government is too big and does too much, 52% said the country is seriously off track; 63% said taxes should not be raised to help cut the deficit; and almost half want ObamaCare repealed either in whole or in part. Yet substantial portions of these conservative-leaning voters actually cast their ballots for Obama, the one candidate who opposes them on each of these issues.

Concludes Merline:

All this suggests that if conservatives want to win presidential elections, they don't need to dust off their "compassionate conservative" hats, or make peace with high taxes and an intrusive federal state.

They do, however, need to learn how to communicate with today's voters and help them understand how a limited federal government and a thriving private sector will deliver unmatched prosperity to everyone.

Read the full article here, and bookmark Investor's Business Daily for always reliably insightful articles.

Forbes: Can 'Feminine' Women Make it To The Top?

Caroline Turner at Forbes explores the three forms of being feminine—looking feminine; acting girlish or seductive; and working and leading in feminine ways—and how each may or may not contribute to success in the business world.  She also links to a Stanford study with interesting insights...
 

"English Majors Are Exactly Who I'm Looking For"

Michael Moore's article in the WSJ will bring a smile to humanities majors.

A few months back I invited a friend to speak in front of my professional writing class. Santosh Jayaram is the quintessential Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur: tech-savvy, empirical, ferociously competitive, and a veteran of Google, Twitter and a new start-up, Dabble. Afraid that he would simply run over my writing students, telling them to switch majors before it was too late, I asked him not to crush the kids' hopes any more than they already were.

Santosh said, "Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I'm looking for."

Planned Parenthood Does Not Offer Mammograms

"Operating mammogram machines without a license is a violation of federal law," writes Senior Counsel Casey Mattox of the Alliance Defending Freedom, "and in response to an Alliance Defending Freedom request, the Department of Health and Human Services verified that Planned Parenthood has no such licenses."

DHHS verification here.

Doctors' Full Page Ad Against Obamacare

A full-page advertisement, authored by gastroenterologist Farid Naffah and signed by more than 40 other Ohio physicians, warns newspaper readers in the state that Obamacare "is an administrative and fiscal disaster, bringing higher health care costs, a severe physician shortage and the rationing of medical services," reports the Daily Caller.

In the letter, the doctor argues that, “If all you know about Obamacare is that it will provide insurance to 32 million Americans who don’t have it; that patients with pre-existing conditions may not be excluded from coverage; that certain screening procedures are offered without co-payments, and that children may remain on their parents’ plan until the age of twenty-six, you would have no reason to fear or oppose it.”

Economic Recoveries: Reagan vs. Obama

"Obama's policies have produced a smaller economic recovery than any since World War II," argue Investor's Business Daily editors. "If you want to see what a really huge recovery looks like, take a look at the one President Reagan oversaw."  IBD adds this graphic (enlarged version here):

Malkin: Planned Parenthood's Mammogram Sham

"Planned Parenthood's 'women's health' mantle is a sham," writes Michelle Malkin. "An undercover investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, conducted by pro-life group Live Action, confirmed that the abortion provider does not perform breast cancer screenings. We don't provide those services whatsoever, a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona admitted. Planned Parenthood's Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kan., acknowledged: "We actually don't have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics." But don't just take Live Action's word for it..."

Read her full article.

Law Prof Warns of New Assaults to Free Speech

"Free speech is dying in the Western World," writes GWU law professor Jonathan Turley, who catalogues efforts to limit free speech in Europe and the U.S.

Such efforts focus not on the right to speak but on the possible reaction to speech — a fundamental change in the treatment of free speech in the West. The much-misconstrued statement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that free speech does not give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater is now being used to curtail speech that might provoke a violence-prone minority. Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

Turley identifies 4 rationales used by speech-restricting advocates:

Sowell on Ann Coulter's book, "Mugged"

Thomas Sowell heaps praise on Ann Coulter and her new book.

If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter's new book, "Mugged." Its subtitle is: "Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama."

Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best.

Friess: More Fat Cats, Please!

"What the 'supposed 99 percent' don't realize," writes businessman Foster Friess in Newsweek, "is that they are better off if there are more fat cats, not less."

He cites a few examples of fat cats' largess: David Koch's $100 million gift to cancer research. Bill Gates' $28 billion to global health initiatives, which saved an estimated 5.8 million lives in Africa alone. Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million to New Jersey public education.

Friess argues that asking fat cats to pay higher taxes only "enlarges government" and "creates divisiveness."

For example, if you want to buy a Cadillac and I want to buy a Ford, we go to our respective dealers and we’re both happy. But if the government starts issuing automobiles, suddenly you and I become political enemies over how we position our favorite car. We have so many government activities that divide us. If it were left to the private sector, people would not have those animosities.

An enlarged government also leads to waste. Who in their right mind would voluntarily contribute to any of these "investments" made by our own government:

• $700,000 for a pig flatulence study in Thailand,
• $500,000 to study shrimp on a treadmill,
• $1.9 million to study the drinking habits of prostitutes on the job ... in China?

He doesn't say, but could have, that free-market capitalism, and the fat cats it creates, have lifted more people out of poverty throughout the world than any redistributionist government system.

Shouldn't Matt Damon be a Little Embarrassed?

There's a little surprise behind Matt Damon's latest flick, "Promised Land." No, the surprise isn't that the movie, according to Phelim McAleer, "attacks fracking—a new way to get oil and gas out of the ground, which has become the latest villain of the environmental movement." It's that the film "is being financed by New Image Abu Dahbi—a company fully owned by the government of the United Ara Emirates."

The UAE is a small Arab kingdom with a spotty record on freedom-of-speech issues and whose economy is completely dependent on selling oil and gas. The UAE stands to lose trillions of dollars if fracking leads to increasing energy independent for the United States and Europe, as many analysts predict.

Media outlets don't seem bothered by this revelation, certainly not to the extent they were bothered by another recent movie release.

“Won’t Back Down,” a film just released at the weekend, casts a cold eye on the union-dominated public-school system. Starring Oscar winner Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, it is an emotional, heartwarming tale of parents succeeding against the odds.

But many reviewers have focused on attacking the funding for the film.

The NPR reviewer called it a “propaganda piece . . . from a conservative mogul.” Slate.com’s critic called it an “agenda-driven piece of crap . . . financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz.”

Strange, next to the utter lack of curiosity about funding for “Promised Land.”

Until the media start applying consistent standards and asking difficult questions about that film’s funding, we’ll never know if Matt Damon has gone from producing works of art to a new, more sinister type of film — a very different “movie on demand."

Incidentally, McAleer, a documentary film producer is currently working on "FrackNation," a new documentary telling the truth about fracking. Watch for it.

Bi-Partisan Agreement on Income Taxes

A Fox News poll released Thursday found 79% say all Americans should pay something in federal income taxes, even if it's only 1%. The sentiment enjoys broad bi-partisan support:  85% of Republicans, 83% of Independents and 71% of Democrats.

Instapundit links to this September report suggesting Americans have reason to be concerned when nearly half the population has no federal income tax liability:

Aside from the revenue impact of not having 58 million Americans pay income taxes, economists worry about the social and political effects of having so many people disconnected from the cost of government—a phenomenon known as fiscal illusion.[1] The concern is that when people perceive the cost of government to be cheaper than it really is, they will demand ever more government benefits because they either don’t feel the cost directly or believe that others will be paying those costs. Indeed, when one takes into account those who do not file, about half of all households pay no federal income tax, making the situation particularly worrisome in a majority-rule democracy.[2]

UK Guardian: New Books 'Sure to be Rightwing Hits'

The UK Guardian cattily previews several new American books that no one should care about but that are 'sure to be rightwing hits', including:

Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, by Ann Coulter
The story of the left's agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else.

I Know You Are, But What Am I? by Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg challenges conventional wisdom from "Democrats are the party of civil rights" to "Nazi's were rightwing." 

PUNK'D!!! Conservative Arguments to Drive Liberals #@!**?@ Crazy!, by S. E. Cupp and Greg Gutfeld
"This book is sure to annoy the 'politically correct' brigade, whose opinions Cupp and Gutfeld certainly don't care about!"

Apple vs. Crony Capitalist Companies

"To hear some politicians speak, you might think that the only way an American company can employ Americans is with help from Washington," writes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.

Reasonable but uninformed people might conclude that Apple's enormous success comes from the largess of the federal government: subsidies here, tax breaks there, and winks and promise everywhere. Apple demonstrates otherwise. ... Apple, whose share price of $691 makes it the world's biggest corporation as measured by market value, has been on a tear — without government assistance."

The author contrasts Apple with companies awarded government loan guarantees under the Energy Department's programs, noting that 26 of the 33 (almost 80%) have shown signs of trouble ranging from missed production goals to bankruptcy filings.

Meanwhile, "Apple rolled out its iPhone 5 to the eager anticipation of consumers, some of whom waited up all night for the bragging rights to own it first."

Islam vs. Free Speech

"Amid widespread protests against an amateur movie that denigrates Islam's Prophet Mohammad," reports the Washington Times, at least one Muslim leader — with the backing of the 57 states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — wants the United Nations to criminalize blasphemy against his religion:

“We call for legislation or a resolution to criminalize contempt of Islam as a religion and its prophet,” Emad Abdel Ghaffour, who heads the ultra-orthodox [Egyptian] sect’s Nour political party, told Reuters over the weekend.

Jonah Goldberg writes about a recent parody, headlined "No One Murdered Because of This Image" in the faux-newspaper Onion, in which 4 "cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity." Missing was Islam's prophet Mohammed.

The Onion’s point should be obvious. Amidst all of the talk of religious tolerance and the hand-wringing over free speech in recent days, one salient fact is often lost or glossed over: What we face are not broad questions about the limits of free speech or the importance of religious tolerance, but rather a very specific question about the limits of Muslim tolerance and the unimportance of free speech to much of the Muslim world.

It’s really quite amazing. In Pakistan, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories, Christians are being harassed, brutalized, and even murdered, often with state support, or at least state indulgence. And let’s not even talk about the warm reception Jews receive in much of the Muslim world.

And yet, it seems you can’t turn on National Public Radio or open a newspaper or a highbrow magazine without finding some oh-so-thoughtful meditation on how anti-Islamic speech should be considered the equivalent of shouting “fire” in a movie theater.

But there is no equivalency, argues Goldberg. Muslims are people, not a force of nature. They have free will. They choose to riot.

There’s nothing wrong with exercising sound judgment, even caution, when it comes to offending another’s most cherished beliefs. But the First Amendment isn’t the problem here, the dysfunctions and inadequacies of the Arab and Muslim world are.

James Burnham famously said that when there is no alternative there is no problem. If free speech in America causes a comparative handful of zealots to want to murder Americans, the correct response is to protect Americans from those zealots (something the Obama administration abjectly failed to do in Libya) and relentlessly seek the punishment of anyone who succeeds. Because, as far as America is concerned, there is no alternative to the First Amendment.

If only we had national leadership who would defend Americans' cherished freedoms and beliefs as strongly.

"Women's Figures"

Diana Furchtgott-Roth has authored a wonderful resource for conservatives: Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America.

"Conventional wisdom holds that women suffer from discrimination in the workplace that leaves them economically worse off than men," the author writes. "Yet compared to men, women in twenty-first century America live five years longer; face a lower unemployment rate; earn a substantially larger share of high school diplomas, associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees; and face lower rates of incarceration, alcoholism, and drug abuse. When women and men in the same jobs and with the same experience are compared, the wage gap disappears. In other words, contrary to what AAUW, NOW, and many other women's groups would have Congress believe, women are doing well."

The 140 graphs, charts and tables confirming women's progress will be great visuals for conservative students and activists who battle liberal/feminist women-as-victim myths on campus and in the public policy arena.


Video: Diana discusses the book at the Conservative Women's Network, a monthly event co-hosted by the Luce Institute and The Heritage Foundation:

Fields: Feminist Fantasies (the Latest)

"Certain feminists, like children discovering that certain words shock their mommies, like to talk dirty," writes Suzanne Fields. "Or at least naughty. Naomi Wolf climbs on this bandwagon once more with her eighth book, Vagina: A New Biography. She joins aging shock jock ('jockette'?) Eve Ensler in shouting the word in a marketplace crowded with female monologues..."  Read the rest.

Malkin: The Politics of 'Squirrel'!

Liberal "surrogates in the Fourth Estate have infested the political arena with an army of tactical and rhetorical rodentia," writes Michelle Malkin.

Embassy attacks? Quick, find a squirrel! Warnings ignored? Squirrel! American troops killed by long-plotting jihadis exploiting security weaknesses? Squirrel! First Amendment sabotage by White House officials in the name of political correctness? Squirrel! Chronic joblessness, high gas prices, exploding dependency? Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!

Read the rest.

The Islamic Threat Within

Should the U.S. deny visas and immigration to applicants from Muslim nations? The Islamic terrorist threat is obvious to all but a village idiot. Not so obvious is the threat from slow infiltration of Islam’s true believers into Western democracies through immigration and population explosion. The video below is a news story on the growing Muslim influence in the European nation of Belgium.

In it, a native Belgian scholar, who argues that Islam is a fascist ideology, explains that Belgium's major cities are so Muslim-dominated that Belgium is forecast to be a majority-Muslim nation in only 18 years. In it, too, a Muslim cleric tells the reporter, with a calm air of inevitability, “democracy is the opposite of Islam and Sharia,” and “the West needs to prepare itself for a wave of Islam and Sharia Law.”



Sharia Law and Western-style democracy rooted in individual freedom are wholly incompatible, as  Mark Steyn, Nonie Darwish, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali articulately argue.

Moreover, it isn't only 'radical' Muslims who find Western-style freedom of speech and religion repulsive, as Hirsi Ali explains in the most recent issue of Newsweek:

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.

Rachel Lu at ricochet.com, who has lived in the Islamic world, echoes that assessment in What If Muslims Just Don't Like Democracy?

[M]y experiences in the Islamic world eventually led me to believe that, on the whole, Muslims do not want democracy. When asked, they normally say that they do. Further discussion reveals, however, that what they really want is peace and prosperity. If you talk to them about civil liberties, you’ll find that most of them are pretty adamantly opposed to free speech and [tolerance of another] religion. They don’t think proselytizing should be legal, and most are suspicious of legal protections for Muslims who want to convert to another faith. They are scandalized by the suggestion that blasphemy, for example, would qualify as protected speech.

Lu explores the question of whether the Islamic world can find a different form of government “that was more hierarchical and authoritarian than ours … and that restricted civil liberties more than we would allow.” It’s an interesting thought experiment, but not one that solves the problem of how to deal with Muslim rage against all things Western today.

“The Premodern Middle East and the Postmodern West don’t mix,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, adding "each time we castigate a Rushdie, a Danish cartoonist, a U.S. soldier, or a nut like Terry Jones, we simply play into the hands of the Islamists."

[W]e must examine the ubiquitous Westernized Middle Easterner who appears as pundit, talking head, and the authentic voice of the Arab Street. Quite dangerous are the Mohamed Morsis of the world — men like a Sayyid Qutb or Mohammed Atta, who had spent time in the West, fled here for its protection, enjoyed its affluence, indulged in its sins, and blossomed amid its hot-house universities. These men can often be quite dangerous.

Most are intelligent and understand the self-loathing that is endemic among their postmodern Western hosts. For the Westernized anti-Americanist, being educated, working, and living in California or New York reminds him of the contrast with his own Egypt or the West Bank. That disconnect evokes all sorts of contradictory emotions: why am I so blessed in the land of the infidels and so wretched at home? Or how much penance must I undertake for satisfying over here what would be seen as illicit appetites at home? Or how can these affluent atheists have so much more than my pious brothers in the Middle East?

As Belgians are realizing, these represent as great a threat to the longer-term security of Western nations as the bomb-strapped terrorist. Until we are better at screening Muslim visitors and immigrants who harbor deeply-held anti-Western bigotry and ill-will, perhaps it would be wise to suspend all visas and legal immigration from predominately Muslim nations.

Don't Appease Islamists, Warns Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali (right) argues in Newsweek magazine that America should quit apologizing and stop treating the Muslim masses as helpless victims, especially now that they freely elect leaders who reject Western-style freedom.

The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support—whether actively or passively—the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.

Until recently, it was completely justifiable to feel sorry for the masses in Libya because they suffered under the thumb of a cruel dictator. But now they are no longer subjects; they are citizens. They have the opportunity to elect a government and build a society of their choice.

Will they follow the lead of the Egyptian people and elect a government that stands for ideals diametrically opposed to those upheld by the United States? They might. But if they do, we should not consider them stupid or infantile. We should recognize that they have made a free choice—a choice to reject freedom as the West understands it.

How should American leaders respond?... If the U.S. follows the example of Europe over the last two decades, it will bend over backward to avoid further offense. And that would be a grave mistake—for the West no less than for those Muslims struggling to build a brighter future.

Not surprisingly, American liberals and Muslim media outlets were outraged by the American Enterprise Institute scholar's article.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Insights from two very smart men: Victor Davis Hanson and Danesh D'Souza.
Hanson writes:

...the orchestrated outrage is predicated on two simple facts. First, there is a deep sense of inferiority in the Islamic world stemming from the fact that a supposedly once-exalted culture, in contemporary comparative terms, is failing. Rather than look inward for the causes of general impoverishment (e.g., tribalism, fundamentalism, religious intolerance, misogyny, statism, authoritarianism, anti-modernism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, etc.), it scapegoats the West in general and its powerful icon, the United States, in particular. The theme is that such decadent, godless, and blasphemous peoples do not deserve and should not enjoy such global influence and cultural supremacy while we, the morally superior of the Middle East, must grovel.

Second, radical Islamists continue to act out its crack-pot fantasies in deadly fashion because they believes it works, and that the U.S. will grants concessions, both material and psychological, at the slightest provocation — as we saw with the embarrassing apologetic communiqués, with each clarification even more embarrassing than the last. (In this regard, should we laugh or cry to watch supposedly liberal civil libertarians in the administration fall all over themselves attacking the video as much as, or more than, those who would destroy or murder any whose expression bothers them. Why have a First Amendment in the first place, if not to protect odious speech from even more odious totalitarians?)

The most vehement anti-Americans are often precisely those who have lived in the United States and the West, enjoyed its freedoms, indulged in its affluence, and have come to resent the contrast with their own homelands...

In the movie 2016: Obama's America (review here), Danesh D'Souza explains that many in those regions of the world whose ancestors experienced European colonization developed a hatred of colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. That the United States was never a colonizer — never 'stole' their natural resources or subjugated their ancestors — is irrelevant to those who cling to their ancestors' bigotry. To them, colonialism and Western culture are synonymous and to be despised.

Cupp: Muslim Uprising Not About A Movie

"We've got this all wrong," says S. E. Cupp.

Our public statements on the developments in Libya, Egypt and now Yemen, have bought wholesale into the false premise that the attacks on our embassies and assets were in retaliation for an amateur video some idiots made lampooning Islam.

The tawdry little film is the red herring. As was the Danish cartoon, and every other rationale Islamic terrorists have given for killing innocent people (including many Muslims). Even acknowledging the film in our official statements is giving credence to a lie. Waxing poetic about free speech and religious tolerance might make us feel like good and high-minded people, but it does nothing to alter the threat. Islamic extremists will not be intellectually bullied into sanity or respect for life. Our imposing strength, our military might and our readiness to use it is the only response that matters.

The UK Independent reports that the "U.S. State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert ..."

Some More Equal Than Others?

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated the Hatch Act by campaigning for a candidate while in her official capacity, an "activity that is illegal and normally results in the offender's termination from government employment," explains the Daily Caller.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said Wednesday that Sebelius violated the law when she publicly endorsed President Barack Obama’s re-election during a taxpayer-funded public event on Feb. 25, 2012.

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner wrote to Obama that the OSC found Sebelius “violated the Hatch Act by making extemporaneous political remarks in a speech delivered in her official capacity” on Feb. 25.

“The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election,” Lerner wrote to the president. “A federal employee is permitted to make partisan remarks when speaking in their personal capacity, but not when using an official title or when speaking about agency business.”

Thus far no action has been taken by the White House.

Inactive Map of Muslim Protests Around Globe

"If you can't keep track of all the Muslim protests erupting across the globe, writes the Atlantic wire, "you're not alone." So they've created an interactive map of the 20-plus locations of Muslim uprisings with links for more details:

If corporations aren't people, then neither are governments

"Corporations are not people," Elizabeth Warren said last week. "People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live, they love and they die." To liberals, corporations are greedy, heartless institutions.

But if corporations aren't people, neither are these four beloved liberal institutions that are arguably more greedy and heartless than corporations:

1. Governments. Federal, state, and local governments fuel their greed with countless taxes, fees, and penalties assaults on taxpayers — from fishing licenses to death taxes — and no one can ever accuse the IRS, the EPA, the TSA, or any other government agency of having a heart.
2. Unions. The Chicago Teachers Union is a timely case in point. Although the average teacher salary is $71,000 (well above the $47,714 average salary of the college-educated tax-paying Chicagoan), the union just rejected a $400 million package that included a 16% pay raise.That's greed.
3. Universities. The overall inflation rate since 1986 is 115.06%, yet college tuition increased 498.31% during the same period. Universities hold billions of dollars in endowments — University of Virginia topped the list in 2011 at $4.8 billion — while their students accumulate millions in student loan debt. That's heartless.
4. Public Schools. American public schools spend an average $91,700 per student between the ages of 6 and 15 (not all the way to 18), the second highest per pupil spending behind Switzerland among the world's industrialized nations. Yet public schools continue to demand more money each year from local governments (property taxes), state governments (income taxes), and federal governments (income taxes). At the same time, public schools lobby vigorously against allowing even a small portion of a child's tax-appropriated dollars to follow him or her to a charter school, a private school, or a parochial school of choice. All greed and no heart for the kids trapped in really bad public schools.

At least corporations seek to please their customers. These liberal darlings don't need to bother.

"Kanye West: Is Profanity in Music Okay?"

"Over the weekend," writes Emily Esfahani Smith at ricochet.com, "Kanye West took to Twitter to have a philosophical conversation about whether it is ever acceptable to use the B or N words in music or conversation."

It seems like West is having second thoughts about the type of language that he uses in his songs–maybe he’s even worried about the messages that his music–and that of his hip hop peers–sends out. Another thing to worry about is the type of behavior such extreme language could encourage in listeners (mostly young men) who would otherwise suppress their more violent impulses. I can’t help but think here of hip-hop singer Chris Brown and Rihanna, whose relationship ended after Brown beat up Rihanna so badly that she ended up in the hospital.

Toward the end of his trail of tweets, West has two pretty insightful points. The first is a litmus test about how we know if it’s ok to use these vulgar words:

Here’s the age old question, would we refer to our mothers as [expletive]? Would’ we call our fathers [expletive] or better yet [expletive]?

The answer is obviously no. He goes on to ask:

If [expletive] is such a positive word, why do we feel so uncomfortable for white people to say it, even with a hall pass?

The implicit answer is that it’s not such a positive word. Though he then asks whether the United States should allow profanity on the radio, he concludes by appealing to a higher standard of both music and manner–the great Stevie Wonder.

“Stevie Wonder,” West writes, “never had to use the word [expletive] to get his point across.”

Well said.

ObamaCare Causes 50% Jump in NC Student Premiums

CNN reports that student semester health insurance premiums jumped by more than 50% this fall at colleges and universities in North Carolina, in part due to the ObamaCare law, according to university officials.

In April, Tom Ross, the president of the University of North Carolina system, sent a letter to the university's board of governors announcing that students should brace for a hike in the cost of university-provided insurance plans.

Ross explained that at least 64,000 North Carolina college students - roughly a third of those enrolled in the state's 17 public universities - should expect to see "substantial" increases in health coverage costs for the 2012-2013 academic year.

"Based on more than three semesters of actual claims experience, as well as the new provisions of the Affordable Care Act, we are facing large increases in premiums for our students," Ross wrote in the letter.

In North Carolina, college students are required to have proof of health insurance, either through their university, their parents or a private provider.

Students who purchase insurance plans from North Carolina public universities this fall will be shelling out $709 per semester. That's up significantly from a cost of $460 per semester last year.

As Ed Morrissey at hotair.com explains, the low-cost student health plans available to students last year were eliminated under ObamaCare, so students are forced to buy high-cost comprehensive plans instead.

If students wanted a comprehensive-policy option, they could have gotten it without ObamaCare, and now students no longer have the more sensible low-cost option thanks to ObamaCare’s mandate. ...college students haven’t realized so far just how badly ObamaCare exploits them to lower costs for the more politically reliable 40-54 YO demographic, who really benefit most by forcing younger people to pay higher premiums. They may begin to understand it, though, as those health-insurance bills get delivered this month.

"Painful Pandering to Women"

"It’s the year of the woman — or at least the year of the painful political pander to women," writes Karol Markowicz. "Both political parties are bending over backward to cater to this underrepresented minority group, which made up just 54 percent of voters in 2008."

...why, exactly, are women being treated as some sort of mass unit? All this catering to “women’s issues” assumes that all women feel the same way about all issues — and that those issues are almost all tied to sex or reproduction. That women may worry about taxation, terrorism, government spending, jobs or other “men’s” issues is apparently inconceivable.

It’s not a step forward for women that we are the focus of all this; it’s condescension, pure and simple.

If the goal is still equality between the sexes, then the pats on the head women have been receiving from politicians in the last year show we’re just not there yet.

Why Are We Not Outraged by This?

That's the last question Barkha Herman asks at ricochet.com, but she has many more leading up to it:

I own my own business, travel and entertain a lot, have many hobbies that I don't always get enough time for, and am considering writing a memoir. I donate money and time to causes I believe in. Birth control has never occupied more than one percent of my time ever in my life. I suspect the actual lifetime number is much lower than that.

So what is up with the entire birth control debate?  Am I just a walking vagina? Is this insulting just to me or others?

Read her full post.

"Trading Caps and Gowns for Mops"

Quentin Fottrell reports on two surveys of 18- to 29-year-old working college grads. An online survey of 500,000 young workers by Payscale.com found that "while 63% of 'Generation Y' workers have a bachelor's degree, the majority of the jobs taken by graduates don't require one." Another survey by Rutgers University reported that "half of graduates in the past 5 years say their jobs didn't require a four-year degree and only 20% said their first job was on their career path."

Worse, employers are hiring older workers over younger ones:

The jobs that once went to recent college graduates are now more often going to older Americans. Over the past year, workers over 55 accounted for 58% of employment growth, says Dean Baker, a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. Why? Employers think older workers are a safer bet and more likely to stay, he says. Unemployment hovered at 6.2% in July for workers over 55, according to the Labor Department, but was more than double that rate — 12.7% — for those ages 18 to 29. As a result, college graduates are finding themselves locked into lower-paid jobs.

Don't Blame Tax Cuts for Huge Deficits

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report puts to rest any misperception that tax cuts are the leading driver of our currently enormous budget deficits. Key findings:

• had there only been the tax cuts and no further spending measures, we would have enjoyed large and growing surpluses instead; and
• the main cause of today's huge deficits is increased mandatory spending in the form of Medicare prescription drug benefits, the TARP bailout and the 2009 stimulus. 

For more, see National Center for Policy Analysis synopsis of the CBO findings, or full paper by the Economic Policies for the 21st Century: How Did Federal Surpluses Become Huge Deficits? (Hint: It Wasn't Because of Tax Cuts for the Rich) by Charles Blahous, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Liberalism Explained: The "Herd" of Independent Minds

Why do liberals bitterly cling to their cults and mantras, impervious to rational counter-arguments and sound evidence? Victor Volsky offers an interesting theory called the "collective shaming code," a concept developed by Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's Bulldog") and further explored by Lee Harris in his book, The Suicide of Reason.

Huxley concluded that the shaming code was "the glue that holds together individuals in a group" in order to increase their individual chances of survival.

"It is this code that makes the members of the group feel as one," writes Lee Harris. "They are disgusted, angered, delighted and shamed by the same things. The unanimity of their visceral response is what provides the powerful sense of collective identity. It makes them feel and think as a tribal Us, in contrast to those tribes who are not disgusted by what disgusts us, or made angry by what makes us angry, and who feel no shame at what we think of as shameful[.] ... A tribe that shares a powerful visceral code that inhibits the natural tendency of the individual to self-assertion will present a united front against its enemies." ...

Lopez: It's Not a War of the Sexes

NRO's Kathryn Lopez has an enjoyable interview with Dr. Elizabeth Kantor, author of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, in which Kantor probes the characters of Austen's six books for insights into male and female psychology and relationships.  Here are a few excerpts of the interview:

LOPEZ: Is Austen’s advice for all ages? Or is there a particular age range that may find your book of particular use? Is this all very silly if you’re over a certain age?
KANTOR: I don’t think anybody is too old to learn from Jane Austen. She herself was eventually a 40-year-old spinster who had given up any prospect of marriage for herself. But I don’t think she ever stopped being a great role model for all of us. When the secret that she was the author of Pride and Prejudice was getting out, her comment was, “What a trifle it is, in all its bearings, to the really important points of existence even in this world.” The most important things in her life were relationships — with her sister, with her nieces and nephews. Her novels are about finding “relationships” in the romantic sense, but I certainly benefit from her insights and her heroines’ example in my married life. And for women who feel like it may be too late for love — well, that’s the exact scenario of her novel Persuasion.

LOPEZ: Is this book more an Austen fan’s indulgence at a market opportunity? Do you see it as a help to a wounded culture?
KANTOR: There is an awful lot of pain and misery out there; modern relationships seem to have hit a brick wall. Doing the research for the book, I kept noticing how bitter many single women are about men, something I was already to a certain extent familiar with, but, even more, how very resentful of women a lot of single men are.
It’s not universal, of course. But modern mating habits don’t seem to be contributing much harmony and bliss to the human race. Jane Austen can offer each sex a refreshing alternative approach to the other — more mutual respect, more intelligence about how to get what we want from each other, but in a way that’s neither manipulative nor ham-fisted.

LOPEZ: What would Jane Austen make of Fifty Shades of Grey? Of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? Of our interest in any of these things?
KANTOR: I actually wrote a piece for the Huffington Post pointing out how the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon seems to suggest that women have some desires that aren’t being met in their relationships today, and trying to show how exactly the kind of love we see between Elizabeth and Darcy is an ultimately more satisfying outlet for those desires.
Reading erotica is just playing at a love that’s risky and powerful and life-altering. Jane Austen was more ambitious than that. She gives us pictures of how women can find a thrilling, transformative love that fits into real life, right in the middle of all the humdrum things we’re perpetually pestered with, like financial worries and annoying relatives. I think she’d advise us to forget about vicarious excitements, whether it’s reading trashy fiction or following the lives of the rich and famous, and figure out how our own lives can be more satisfying and exciting.

Koch: Fighting for Economic Freedom

Billionaire businessman Charles Koch, who has been demonized by the progressive left, penned an article explaining why he fights for economic freedom. "Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way," he writes, adding that "the tendency of our own government here in the U.S. has been to grow bigger and bigger, controlling more and more." He argues that government growth comes with a "devil's bargain," cronyism, and income inequality:

Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.

It was President Franklin Roosevelt who said: “Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

Businesses can become dependents, too. If your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car – even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.

Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.

After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.
 ...
Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us – customers and competitors alike – worse off.

One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides. Meanwhile, consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay an average of five times more for wind-generated electricity.
 ...
Some people worry about the disparity of wealth in a system of economic freedom. What they don’t realize is that the same disparity exists in the least-free countries.

The difference is who is better off.

Under economic freedom, it is the people who do the best job of producing products and services that make people’s lives better.

On the other hand, in a system without economic freedom, the wealthiest are the tyrants who make people’s lives miserable.

As a result of this, the income of the poorest in the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest.

U.S. Energy Promises 3.6 Million Jobs

The U.S. fossil fuel energy news — and its potential for rebuilding our stalled economy — gets better and better. Citigroup Inc. estimated in a March report that a 'reindustrialization' of America could add as many as 3.6 million jobs by 2020 and increase the gross domestic product by as much as 3 percent. Bloomberg's Asjylyn Loder reports:

• U.S. natural gas production will expand to a record this year, and oil output swelled in July to its highest point since 1999.
• A surge in U.S. natural gas development has spurred $226 billion in spending plans on pipelines, storage, processing facilities and power plants, most slated for the next five years.
• The expansion of fossil-fuel production - coupled with a weak economy and increased energy efficiency - has helped the U.S. pare its crude oil imports by 17 percent since the 2005 peak
• Increased production and swelling domestic stockpiles have helped make energy cheaper in the U.S. than in other countries.
• So far, the economic benefits have been confined to states such as Louisiana, Texas, and North Dakota, but there are signs the economic gains have begun to expand beyond the oil and gas fields to industries from steel, aluminum, automobiles, fertilizers and chemicals. Orascom Construction Industries, for example, is investing $250 million restarting an ammonia and methanol plant in Texas, and another Orascom subsidiary may build a $1.3 billion fertilizer plant in Iowa that would create as many as 2,000 construction jobs and 165 permanent positions.

"This is one of those rare opportunities that every country looks for and few ever get," said Phillip Verleger, a former director of the office of energy policy at the U.S. Treasury Department and founder of PKVerleger LC, a consulting firm in Carbondale, Colorado. "This abundance of energy gives us an opportunity to rebuild our economy."

Full story: America's Energy Seen Adding 3.6 Million Jobs Along with 3% GDP.

"School Reform Gets Cool"

"A whole lot of 20- and 30-somethings across the political spectrum now believe something’s seriously flawed in our public-education system," writes Naomi Schaefer Riley. Why the sea-change?

• Teach for America has for decades place recent graduates from top colleges — some 28,000 to date — as teachers in some of the nation's worst schools. "The incompetence and corruption are hard to forget," and "they talk about it to their peers, too."
• Urban areas are looking attractive to hip younger people who are marrying and starting families, and the terrible state of urban schools presents a roadblock to be challenged and overcome.
• Teachers unions are looking like dinosaurs bent on protecting undeserving members while preventing kids from getting a decent education.
• Vouchers, charter schools, and parent-trigger laws have become "the hot cause of the millennial generation."

"Finally," concludes Riley, "a popular trend worth getting behind."

Epstein: The Obamacare Quagmire

"Now that the Supreme Court has held President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) constitutional, mounting evidence suggests that the statute’s most ardent defenders may well come to rue the day," writes constitutional law expert Richard Epstein.  Why? Because advocates "failed to take into account the old and powerful law of unintended consequences." Epstein maintains the law will hurt the very people it's supposed to help.

• Federal and state officials must grapple with implementing the law whose internal complexity and flawed design make it a program that was built to fail.
• The fine print of the ACA could leave dependents of millions of low-income employees without coverage from either an employer or an ACA insurance exchange.
• Many states may choose not to set up insurance exchanges at all, which would leave  low-income residents in those states with no access to the subsidies proponents promised them.
• The ACA requires every insurance plan cover, among other things, "ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services, chronic disease management, and pediatric services" [even for plans purchased by 21-year-old single, healthy, childless males]. 
• Insurers can no longer require insurance applicants to disclosed their health conditions and have no way to determine their relevant risk or estimate the potential cost in future care.
• Fearing that private insurance companies will be driven out of business by the ACA before states exchanges are up and running, the government has issued more than 1000 employer waivers involving over 3 million people.

None of this should come as a surprise. The ACA was sold with a set of promises that were not sustainable. President Obama trumpeted his program with reassuring words in June 2009: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: . . . If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” He has repeated that vow since. As David Hyman and I have shown, the ACA violates that promise in multiple ways.

The Act’s potential disruptions are not just confined to people who are forced into the exchanges; it extends to all individuals regardless of how they procure their healthcare insurance. All that can be said with confidence is that, thus far, the ACA has not been able to defeat the law of unintended consequences. Whether this nation will be able to extricate itself from the ObamaCare quagmire remains to be seen.

"Same-Sex Marriage and the Manufacture of Consent"

"Ninety years ago, Walter Lippmann wrote about the “manufacture of consent,” in his classic work Public Opinion,” write Doug Mainwaring and Stella Morabito in the Washington Examiner. "The general idea was that public opinion was becoming increasingly susceptible to manipulation by elites."

Most people today don’t have time to deal with the complexities of issues. Instead, they tend to take cues from the media and what they assume others are thinking. Especially in climates of fear, public opinion is less a reflection of what people really believe than it is an operative nudge to elicit approval or disapproval among the public.

This is clearly the case today as the shroud of political correctness suppresses open debate and aligns with the manipulation of polling numbers to push forward a perception of plausibility for a most implausible idea: same-sex marriage.

Competing Deficit Reduction Plans: Simpson-Bowles vs. Paul Ryan

Unlike the President's 2012 budget (which was rejected unanimously by both the House and Senate in May), both the 2010 Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Commission plan and the 2012 House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan plan, called the Path to Prosperity, earned respect for their serious, bipartisan efforts to bring federal deficits under control. 

William Beach of The Heritage Foundation praised Simpson-Bowles for getting "the right conversation started."

Yes, the final report would have benefited from no tax hikes, more entitlement reform and bigger spending cuts. But it was encouraging to see political appointees and politicians finally engage in the necessary work to save this country from the future we see in France, Great Britain and Greece. As these and other nations are showing, when the government runs out of other people's money, it can be a very bad thing. This is particularly true if you are under 30 and have your entire economic life ahead of you...

And Erskine Bowles praised the Ryan plan and its author:

AEI: 3 Things You Should Know about Paul Ryan's Medicare Reform - in 100 Words

"Clip and save" these "key facts about Paul Ryan's approach to saving Medicare," writes James Pethokoukis at AEI:

1. No one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.

2. Traditional Medicare fee-for-service would remain available for all. “Premium support”—that is, government funding of private insurance plans chosen by individuals—is an option for those who choose it. No senior would be forced out of the traditional Medicare program against his will.

3. Overall funding for Medicare under the Ryan-Wyden plan is scheduled to grow at the same rate as under President Obama’s proposals. Is this “gutting Medicare” and “ending Medicare as we know it”? In reality, it’s the market giving seniors cheaper, higher quality choices they can take if they wish, with the traditional program remaining an option.

Who is Paul Ryan?

In Man With a Plan, reporter Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard traces Paul Ryan's career from his early college days as a Capitol Hill summer intern to how he became the intellectual leader of his party.

UPDATE — via powerlineblog.com the opening lines of Ryan's CPAC speech:

There are those who say modern society is too complicated for the average man or woman to deal with. This is a long-standing argument, but we heard it more frequently after the mortgage credit collapse and financial meltdown in 2008. They say we need more experts and technocrats making more of our economic decisions for us. And they argue for less “political interference” with the enlightened bureaucrats … by which they mean less objection by the people to the overregulation of society. 

If we choose to have a federal government that tries to solve every problem, then as long as society keeps growing more complex, government must keep on growing right along with it. The rule of law by the people must be reduced and the arbitrary discretion of experts expanded. . .

If the average American can’t handle complexity in his or her own life, and only government experts can … then government must direct the average American about how to live his or her life. Freedom becomes a diminishing good.
But there’s a major flaw in this “progressive’” argument, and it’s this. It assumes there must be someone or some few who do have all the knowledge and information. We just have to find, train, and hire them to run the government’s agencies.

Friedrich Hayek called this collectivism’s “fatal conceit.” The idea that a few bureaucrats know what’s best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of free individuals interacting in a free market is both false and arrogant. It has guided collectivists for two centuries down the road to serfdom — and the road is littered with their wrecked utopias. The plan always fails!