Unintended consequences of excessive regulation and bad lawmaking
With the US Treasury department admitting they don’t know where the 1 Trillion dollars went or is, we are looking like a bad Austin Powers movie. We have a perfect example of unintended consequences and excessive regulations.
And that is the essence of the libertarian view. Government can not simply react fast enough, nor can it get it 100% or even 50% right. Case in point, all signs point to a “Springtime for America” our economy is starting to recover. Housing sales are up and the stock market is making a bit of a run up.
But our 1 Trillion dollars in Government boost has not taken effect and will not for another year, probably just in time for a booming US economy. The effects of the Government printed money boost will be horrible. We will see and we are starting to see inflation. The Government will be forced to raise interest rates much higher than they would have been if they didn’t spend the money they didn’t have to slow the economy down. The Government will of course claim victory over the recession. And we will be left to clean up the mess and suffer through a round of high interest rates.
An unintended consequence is the world is looking at us and wondering if the world would be better off if the US dollar was not the standard of commerce. But rather a global currency run by say the UN?
The world socialists are absolutely thrilled at this possibility including George Soros. The world does business in US dollars and we benefit from it. With a world currency our financial markets will suffer and we will cease to be the financial center of the world. We have already lost much of the financial markets with the knee-jerk not thought through Sarbanes-Oxley. World markets have found the over the top regulations bothersome and London has surpassed New York city as the place to float a new company. Indeed did Sarbanes-Oxley have any effect on this latest crisis? And I can tell you from first hand knowledge it has raised the cost of doing business considerably.
America would be better off if the government would leave us alone and let Americans be Americans.
I submit this article for your consideration.
We libertarians and critics of large government will often criticize this or that initiative as being misguided, or dumb, or counter-productive, or too costly, or whatever. Too often we do so in the context of the particular personalities involved — e.g. Bush is going to far, Obama made a mistake, Pelosi is trying to do something dumb. This tends to give the impression that these are individual mistakes, with the corollary that if we could just get better people in government, these mistakes would not occur.
I see this reaction — that its the quality of the people, not the system itself, at fault — all the time. Of course, it was a common one on the left for years during the Bush administration — if only we had our guys, smarter guys, non-fundamentalist guys, scientific guys, whatever — in there, things would work. Republicans, though, did the same thing for years with Congress — if only we’d get those liberals out of the Congressional majority, we would run things intelligently (anyone remember the Contract with America?).
The subject was ever-increasing cigarette taxes, and the guest on WGN-AM 720 Wednesday morning was Cook County Board President Todd Stroger.
Host John Williams asked: Isn’t it unfair to keep targeting smokers with tax increases?
“That is the American way,” Stroger replied. “And the way that it’s generally done is, you find some group that’s small enough where they can’t beat you up, and you tax them and you tell everybody else, ‘See? We didn’t tax you.’ “
When they finally came for me, no one was left to defend me. The “rich” yesterday, you today.
Sorry Carrier
Students of history will recognize that this is actually not too far off from the principles behind FDR’s National Recovery Act, the purpose of which was to limit competition among business so as to drive up prices. If you can believe it.
If central planning worked, the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea etc, would have been wild economic successes, not basket cases with secret police.
Short commercial upfront.
Thanks to TigerHawkBlog for the idea.
Connecticut Tea Parties, Tax Protest
April 15th Tea Parties in CT - Hartford, New Haven & Norwich
New Haven, Hartford and Norwich are hosting modern day Tea Parties on April 15th where fellow citizens can use the microphone to let their elected officials know that ‘Connecticut has a VOICE’ and they are saying, ‘No more!’ which exactly expresses the Repeal the Pork! Cut the Taxes! theme of our Tax Day Tea Parties.
New Haven Tea Party – Long Wharf Exit 46 – 11am to 2pm
Hartford Tea Party - 12 pm to 2 pm - State Capitol (North Steps), Hartford, CT
Norwich Tea Party – 3 pm to 6 pm - Howard T. Brown Memorial Park
When asked about the Tea Party movement, Tanya Bachand, one of the New Haven Tea Party organizers said,
“It comes down to whether you believe in individual responsibility or do you believe that the government should take care of every little nook and cranny of our lives. I’m betting on individual responsibility.”
Information on the Connecticut Tax Day Tea Party movement can found at http://taxdayteaparty.com/teaparty/connecticut/ or on Facebook at Connecticut Tax Day Tea Party
We Get What We Pay For, And We Get What We Deserve
John Cole has been The Times-Tribune’s editorial cartoonist since April 2005. He draws five to seven full-color cartoons weekly.
Is The Obama Presidency Over?
When historians write the final chapters of the age of Obama, they will note while the Obama Presidency had such a great promise and hope at the start, it ended quicker than most.
Our worst fears of an Obama Presidency are being realized. Massive spending, massive intrusion into the private sector and a great expansion of the federal government at the expense of our pocket books.
The economic crisis is only the excuse and the remedies have little to do recovery.
Our greatest ally in preventing the destruction of America maybe actually Obama himself. Devoid of virtually all opposition, and a compliant, nay an unbridled congress bursting with 8 years of unfulfilled dreams, there are no checks and balances to keep the young President anchored in reality and restraint.
He is overreaching.
Cracks in the Obama juggernaut are starting to show, even Democrats are starting to express doubts and fears of the Obama solution.
Democrats in Congress are even beginning to express in public print their worries that Obama has reached too far with the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and the $3.6 trillion budget proposal (and the trillions more senior aides whisper are coming in further bailouts, loan guarantees, “tax cuts” that are really just grants, and other spending accountrements of Leviathan Unleashed.)
Charles Krauthammer: “Obama’s mastery of public speaking has heretofore served to deflect attention away from the details of what he is actually proposing. And there is in those details, according to Krauthammer, a fundamental deception: Obama summons visions of catastrophe that are the result of too little government regulation of the financial markets and he offers as a solution vastly more government regulation of …. health care, energy and education.”
Obama’s and his aides attacks on Rush Limbaugh are nothing short of stupid. It betrays a fundamental disconnect with America outside the beltway. It’s a crass attempt to identify Rush as the King Kong of this recession.
Rush Limbaugh’s audience has never been bigger and the Democrats attempt to paint all Republican opposition as nattering ditto heads is backfiring. This would work only if the image of Rush was as hateful in American’s minds as it is in the Democrat leadership’s minds. It is not. Rather then seeing Rush as an out of control Ape/Chimp many Americans are finding a voice in Rush.
Whereas Obama is bringing us to a new America that most American’s suspect looks a lot like Old Europe, Rush is calling us back to the tried and true American philosophy of our founding fathers.
Rush is striking a chord with America and they are tuning in record numbers. Rush is on fire and loving it. The famous tacit of Saul Alinsky of freezing your opponent in time is not going to work if vast numbers of Americans identify with Rush. Attacking Rush will only serve to highlight how non-mainstream the Democrats have become and freeze the Democrat leadership in time and philosophy.
America voted for the cool young black guy and that in itself was change, sometimes change will happen just for the sake of change. Doesn’t mean it’s coattails are good or desirable.
Obama, Pelosi and Reid are pushing an agenda on America that is attempting to change the core of American political and private life. Rapid change is disruptive and unsettling, this current crisis is just cover for implementation of a social agenda that has been decades in waiting.
American’s know the big lie been fostered on them. They thought they were getting a cool, reasoned, thoughtful and studied hand on the ship of state. What we got was a series of Democrats who can’t pay taxes, broken promises (remember transparency?), partisanship (Pelosi and Reid unleased) and wildly out of control spending.
If you take one salient point from this post, remember this. The only location in America where housing prices are increasing is, the suburbs of Washington DC.
The big lie of the Democrat juggernaut is starting to unwind, the rank and file Democrats know the 2010 elections are just around the corner, and they know they’ll have little to show for their uncontested power and spending.
The congressional Democrats will lose their taste for revolution as 2010 draws near, the pain of the recession will linger and the hangover of massive deficit spending will pound in the electorate collective conscious.
Look to the east at dawn and ride out to meet them.
Update On Library Censorship
Of the New York Times Bestsellers only two have not been procured by my local library.
Bernard Goldberg’s “Sick! Steamy! A Slobbering Love Affair! Forbidden Love!”
And
Ann Coulter’s “Guilty!”
After noting that, the librarian and I discussed Homeland Security’s attempt a few years ago to monitor the reading habits of our good citizens and the rightous fight the librarians waged to protect our freedom to read bad stuff.
Satire is wasted on these people.
Team Obama Is Creating More Uncertainty And Less Confidence
The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.
As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997
This has been the perfect storm for the Democrats, a credit crunch, a recession, a full house and senate and a Democrat President with many IOUs. Not that any politico does not have many IOUs.
However, while perfect storms may give the cover to enact policies that normally could not pass, storms can also rip your roof off and blow your windows in. Collateral damage is severe. The Democrats are using this storm to enact every piece of social policy they can think of, its payback time on the Democrats balance sheet.
Team Obama is beating up and dismantling the very engines that will get us out of this recession. Obama is running a real risk of being a co-footnote with Herbert Hoover/FDR in Economics textbooks. For all intents and purposes historians will mark this as one the shortest Presidencies in American history. Obama has cast the die and he can not escape it.
We can only hope that Americans come to their sense and elect sane financial managers to Congress and repeal most of this stimulus package before it is enacted and spent.
The economy has taken no hits news wise since before Obama’s deitification. As far as recessions go, this one should be about over on average.
Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn’t help but wonder if they appreciate any of this. They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.
The Democrats often referred to repairing America’s image abroad during the election, a foreign policy no one likes is one thing affecting but a distant shore, dragging them into a depression and hurting their citizens within their borders is a whole different matter. We are dragging the global economy down. This will have lasting repercussions.
Could Obama Be Any Worse For Connecticut?
Tax on rich folks, making (for now) over 250,000$ a year another 4 % in tax.
This will hurt CT more than any other state.
Stop buying “Cold War Weapons”, think Sikorsky, Pratt, Hamilton, Electric Boat, Ensign Bickford, Colt, Goodrich, General Electric. This will hurt CT more than any other state.
Universal Health Care, think of all the insurance companies in Hartford, Connecticut.
We are an outflow state, we pay more in taxes than we receive, after Obama implements these policies will get even less back. And we will have lost 10,000’s of more jobs.
How dumb can we be? Apparently quite.
And just how effective will our two wounded Senators be? Not very.
And just how effective will Rosa, Joe, John, Jim and Chris will be? Laughable. How such a defense orientated state could continue to elect such an ineffectual crew is beyond comprehension.
Censorship At The Public Library
Say it ain’t so.
But our local library is practicing censorship. Those local denizens of free speech and protectors of what you get to read and who fought back at Homeland Security’s effort to record and report what you read are themselves practicing censorship.
Next to the checkout counter was list of New York Time’s best sellers, with checks indicating which books have been procured for local consumption.
The only book and it’s at #3 on the best seller list not procured is Ann Coulter’s latest. I asked them about the non-procurment and the reply I got was “Why, you want to read it?”.
Totally inappropriate behavior.
Why do I need to justify why I might want to read that book?
Will they question me when I ask where the Karl Marx books are? Or the Saul Alinskys? Or the William Ayers are?
By the way, I do have Alinsky and Ayers.
Marx On Bankruptcy
Also, please note that China is starting to see a turn around in their economy. Their governmental debt level is at 18% so they had plenty of room to work with. Look to see the Chinese economy shift from relying on exports to satisfying internal demands.
The USA’s obligations now total the entire world’s output.
China has a very effective means of getting people to tow the party line.
The Chinese Execution Buses travel the country providing quick and swift party justice while visibly reminding their citizens the penalty for non-conformance.
The number is so high, apparently, that the Chinese government sees fit to operate something that seems like it’s right out of one of the ‘Saw’ movies: a lethal injection bus, which comes complete with a camera for transmitting a live video feed of the deaths back to central command.
Remember a government big enough to give you everything is also powerful enough to take everything.
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