Tests do not exist to show what your potential was when you entered the world but to measure what you have actually accomplished since then, as a guide to what you are likely to continue to do in the future. Tests convey a difference that tests did not create. But the messenger gets blamed for the bad news.
He's referring to a recent commencement address in which a high school graduate attributed his and all his fellows' abillity to graduate to "luck and circumstances."
Such is a prevailing (some would say liberal) philosophy of success and accomplishment: that nothing we earn is really ours because we were born into states of advantage that made it possible for us to accomplish such things in the first place. Since we did not earn our state in life at birth, neither could we justly claim to have earned anything thereafter. Sowell handily dismembers this vision.
While I agree that we accomplish nothing entirely by ourselves, because we do not even accomplish our own existence by ourselves, I believe there is such a thing as "earning" something, and when one does, it should be celebrated. True, everything I own belongs ultimately to my Creator. But the proposition that whatever I and my family owns may be redistributed, via taxation and profligate spending, to "society" by the federal government, confuses the State with God, which is not a mistake unprecedented in human history.
A Wall Street Journal study published yesterday found that only three out of 52 metro areas in the United States have actually seen gains in both net earnings and personal incomes. "In all three, the biggest gains were among workers in the federal government and the military; private sector compensation fell," writes WSJ's Conor Dougherty. "The same picture was reflected nationally, as private employers froze and in many cases reduced workers' pay and hours."
Unlike the private sector, the federal government has actually been adding jobs, too. According to Heritage Foundation analyst Rea Hederman, since the start of this recession in December 2007, private sector employment has fallen by 6.8 percent while federal government employment has actually increased by 10 percent. Even after factoring in state and local government job losses, governments, on net, have added 64,000 jobs during this recession while the private sector has lost 7.8 million jobs.
Thomas Sowell August 4 astutely observed that the stimulus package really just consists of taking hundreds of billions from one sector of the economy and putting it somewhere else -- somewhere, he surmised, more politically advantageous for Obama than a free and unencumbered market would place it. So when Timothy Geithner claims the stimulus saved a million jobs, what we don't see is the trade-off.
Not all government jobs are bad are pointless, mind you. I have friends and family who do good work for local and state governments, as well as federal. But the work many of them do -- in education, for instance -- is intended to make people independent and independently successful. How many government programs serve to do just the opposite?
Taxes are not an intrinsic evil. But when the Congressional Budget Office reports that the national debt that was 36 percent of gross domestic product in 2007 will be 62 percent of GDP by the end of this year, one begins to wonder if sensible public spending has started giving way to simple redistribution.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters say the health care reform plan now working its way through Congress will hurt the U.S. economy.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% think the plan will help the economy. But only seven percent (7%) say it will have no impact. Twelve percent (12%) aren't sure.
Two-out-of-three voters (66%) also believe the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats is likely to increase the federal deficit. That's up six points from late November and comparable to findings just after the contentious August congressional recess. Ten percent (10%) say the plan is more likely to reduce the deficit and 14% say it will have no impact on the deficit.
Underlying this concern is a lack of trust in the government numbers. Eighty-one percent (81%) believe it is at least somewhat likely that the health care reform plan will cost more than official estimates. That number includes 66% who say it is very likely that the official projections understate the true cost of the plan.
Just 10% have confidence in the official estimates and say the actual costs are unlikely to be higher.
Seventy-eight percent (78%) also believe it is at least somewhat likely that taxes will have to be raised on the middle class to cover the cost of health care reform. This includes 65% who say middle-class tax hikes are very likely, a six-point increase from late November.
Sen. Barack Obama promised during his 2008 presidential campaign that he would cut taxes for 95 percent of American families. But it looks like a lot of people are not buying it now. It is simply not possible to pay such enormous costs just by taxing the rich. Everyone who pays taxes will see the cost of this healthcare legislation if it passes.
Harvard's Institute of Politics released the latest results from its ongoing survey of young adults this morning, and they don't look good for Democrats. As in the rest of the population, President Obama remains personally popular (56 percent approval), but support for his individual initiatives, like health-care reform, is much weaker. Only 38 percent of young people (defined as 18- to 29-year-olds) approve of the president's handling of the deficit, and a majority disapprove of his economic management (51 percent) and his work on health care (53 percent). Young people are unimpressed with congressional Democrats, with only 42 percent approving of their performance. That's still higher than for congressional Republicans--who have a mere 35 percent approval rating--but Democratic approval is down 6 points since last November, which is a worrying trend going into the midterms.
The worst sign for Democrats is voter enthusiasm. Young voters are a critical demographic for both the president and Democrats in Congress. They were the key to Obama's success last cycle, both in the primaries and the general election.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.
Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president's chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, "I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform."
Just 23% of U.S. voters say they prefer a more active government with more services and higher taxes over one with fewer services and lower taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. This finding has remained fairly consistent since regular tracking on this question began in November 2006.
Two-thirds (66%) of voters prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes. In August at the height of the congressional town hall controversy over the health care plan, 70% felt that way.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 68% of voters not affiliated with either major political party favor a government with fewer services and lower taxes. Democrats are more closely divided: 38% like a more active government with more services and higher taxes, while 45% prefer one with fewer services and lower taxes.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of liberals favor a bigger, more activist government. Eighty-four percent (84%) of conservatives and 61% of moderates prefer a smaller government instead.
Well gee whiz, I thought the whole point of these massive government spending programs was to enable Americans to do just that -- to work their way out of property.
And it may be the point, but the American people increasingly are showing that they are not as concerned with good intentions as solid results. Charitable though the motivations behind enormous government programs and spending may be, what they accomplish is a culture of people who think they can count on themselves and their neighbors for zero, and the government for what little scraps manage to make it all the way to them from Washington, D.C.
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And yet, the going criticism of Obama's administration is that they're failing to effectively communicate their message. David Axelrod, the White House spin maestro, is under fire as the president is, as the aforementioned polls indicate, losing the public relations battle.
I suppose it is not in the nature of progressives, or some in the press, for that matter, to ever question the merits of progressive ideas. If the American peopel do not see to be buying whatever progressive policy wonks, elected officials, advisers and spokespersons are selling, then by golly they must not be using the right phrasing!
The simpler explanation is that many people are dissatisfied with the substance of progressive ideas. Many people want approaches that will cost less in the form of taxes and government spending.
President Barack Obama's budget would increase the U.S. deficit in 2011 to 2020 by $1.2 trillion more than the White House has forecast, the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday.
The CBO report fueled immediate criticism from Republicans who said Obama was raising government debt to "alarming" levels.
"Measured relative to the size of the economy, the deficit under the President's proposals would fall to about 4 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by 2014 but would rise steadily thereafter," the CBO said in a preliminary analysis.
What the Reuters story fails to observe, though, is that the projected deficit is expected to be $9.8 trillion. Trill-ee-yun.
Let me write it out numerically: $9,800,000,000,000. For the next ten years.
You know how you get a credit card balance every month? It could be in the thousands of dollars, but the minimum you have to pay each month is like $20 or something? Imagine that a person pays that minimum amount each month and piles on thousands in charges -- i.e. money he does not have -- every single month. Think of what that does to his financial wellbeing, and multiply that times a nation. Now multiply that by a couple of generations. That's what we're looking at. The United States of America is paying the minimum and piling up billions, even trillions, in charges every year.
So naturally the folks in Washington are looking for ways to pay for it. The first easy avenue is always to stick their hands further into the pockets of Americans.
The report says that extending tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under GOP President George W. Bush and continuing to update the alternative minimum tax so that it won't hit millions of middle-class taxpayers would cost $3 trillion over 2011-2020. The tax cuts expire at the end of this year and Obama wants to extend them -- except for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making $250,000.
Now let's get something straight, here. Cutting taxes doesn't cost the government anything. That would imply the government has an inherent claim to the money that it has less of as a result of the tax cuts.
It does not. The people do.
Raising taxes costs Americans. Refusing to extend the Bush tax cuts means raising taxes on Americans.
Let's assume that the folks in Washington really would update the alternative minimum tax so that it won't hit millions of middle-class taxpayers. Why is it better for that $3 trillion to be in the hands of federal bureaucrats than for it to be in the hands of business owners who are in a position to hire people who are now looking for work? This is what infuriates people about the prevailing philosophy in Washington. The philosophy is that whatever problems society faces can be "solved" in Washington. So let's all make sure Washington has the resources to fix it by patriotically ponying up more and more of our hard-earned cash.
How little faith does one have to have in private sector citizens, how cynical does one have to be about hardworking Americans to subscribe to such a vision? Does anyone really believe all that money will be spent any more frugally or wisely by government cronies who don't know how to spend money they don't even have?
Spending the country into multiple generations of enormous debt will not cost the government. It will cost the original earners of the money the government taxes and then spends like there's no tomorrow.
WASHINGTON - U.S. employers cut a smaller than expected 36,000 jobs in February, leaving the unemployment rate steady at 9.7 percent, bolstering views the labor market was on the brink of creating jobs.
The Labor Department said Friday it was unclear how the severe snowstorms, which hit much of the country last month, had impacted payrolls. Jobs losses for December and January were revised to show 35,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.
Did anyone in the press ask if it was at all "clear" how the continued break-neck spending in Washington has impacted the job market? The threat of new taxes on employers (excuse me, "the rich")? Sorry, it just amazes me that some in the press will sooner attribute the continued mediocrity of the economy to a snowstorm (caused by global warming, no doubt) than to the enormous regulatory uncertainty of a Washington that seems determined to spend the United States into an unfathomable level of debt.
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Meanwhile, President Barack Obama promised 3.5 million jobs by 2010 during his presidential campaign, so the latest figures bring his jobs deficit to 8.3 million. Anybody seen those jobs? Anyone? Bueller?
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Didn't this president and Congress say back in January, after Republican Scott Brown snatched the Massachusetts seat that had belonged to Ted Kennedy for half a lifetime, that they would focus on jobs now? The vast majority of the news I've seen lately has been on healthcare. Part of me wonders if the president can do more than talk a big game. Another part thinks if Obama gets involved in trying to create jobs it will only lead to the kinds of command-and-control policies, runaway spending, huge debt, and burdensome taxes that have the job market in its current state. No one, not even Barack Obama, can tax and spend a people into prosperity.
I remember when everyone thought it was the Republicans with a puffed up sense of righteousness, who thought they knew right and wrong better than everybody else. Religious conservatives took hits for "legislating morality" -- using their elected status to impose a narrow moral worldview on their helpless constituents.
No more.
Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has proclaimed that her Democratic colleagues have some kind of higher duty to pass healthcare reform, even if it means ending their careers. So has President Barack Obama.
"[T]he American people need it," she said. "Why are we here? We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress."
Very noble. Of course, Pelosi is not in the awkward position of representing constituents who think nationalized healthcare reform is a bad idea. Her constituents are definitely more likely to re-elect her because they are just as uncompromisingly liberal as she is. But let's assume she's sincere in saying that her colleagues should sacrifice their political careers. Why is that so? Because she and other Democratic leaders believe it is The Right Thing To Do. In other words, they are legislating morality.
That is one assessment of the current situation. The other assessment is that Democrats believe that the quickest way to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the federal government is through people's medical care. Because through that you can control every aspect of people's lives. I can't disprove that, but, perhaps naively, I prefer to assume best attentions.
That supporters of nationalized healthcare reform think it's The Right Thing To Do explains their determination to "ram it down people's throats" no matter how much the people protest it, and no matter how obvious it may be that a vote for healthcare reform will effectively destroy one's chances of getting re-elected. Would some Republicans fall on the sword to pass major abortion-curtailing legislation, Roe v. Wade notwithstanding? Sure. This healthcare reform legislation is at that level for certain Democrats. It is so fundamental and dear to their hearts that at this point consent of the governed, and even consent of colleagues, is out the window.
But the people are opposed to healthcare reform not on coldly political grounds but moral grounds also. It's a huge tax increase. Although it has been painted as a glorious government bequest unto its people, it's a government taking. It forces people to buy something even if they don't want it. And if they already have it, it forces them to pay more for it, under the pretense that what they will get is better than what they have now. It places the next generation of Americans under tremendous debt. It may not even accomplish the extension of coverage to the supposedly 30 million people it claims. It would force taxpayers to pay for medical procedures to which they have deeply moral and religious objections, like abortion.
Supporters of the medical care overhaul will say that the government must intervene because so much uncompensated care is unsustainable. Conservatives agree that such a problem exists. The question, as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin made plain at the healthcare summit on Thursday, is whether the federal government is competent to address that problem with one-size-fits-all legislation. Conservatives believe that allowing the people to develop market-based, private sector solutions would not only work better, it would also be the right thing to do.
President George H.W. Bush made the Christian virtue known as "prudence" nerdy when he used it during his administration. But it seems our elected officials could use more of this virtue, which dictates that we cannot achieve good works solely through the righteousness of our intentions. We have to smartly channel those intentions in ways that can be effective.
On Thursday Barack Obama gathered several big players in the U.S. Congress to attempt a thoughtful discussion on healthcare reform.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin slammed the claims that the bill, which he said was "full of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors," reduces the deficit over time. "Hiding spending does not reduce spending," he said.
The big difference, he said, was that the Republicans who oppose the bill believe the U.S. government should not take a command and control approach, but rather leave it to individuals and the marketplace which they constitute to find market-based solutions to the problems of healthcare costs.
The assessment of the National Review Online's Steve Spruiell was that the supporters of the healthcare legislation engaged in "ducking and dodging" in response to Ryan's critique.
Earlier this week Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had some sobering words for Congress, essentially saying that this level of deficit spending is going to come back and bite this country's government, and the people who freely consent to it, in the collective posterior, the same way such debt recently has the country of Greece. He told Congress's big spenders that he would not help them by printing money to pay for the ballooning national deficit.
So, have supporters of Obamacare seen the light and decided to give a little? Nope.
Said Obama:
"The truth of the matter is that politically speaking, there may not be any reason for Republicans to want to do anything," Obama said, summing up. "I don't need a poll to know that most Republican voters are opposed to this bill and might be opposed to the kind of compromise we could craft.
"And if we can't," he added, "I think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that's what elections are for. "
In other words, he's going to hang his colleagues in his political party out to dry, forcing them to take vote after damning vote on an issue that they all know is now toxic for them. And for a bill that many are already declaring dead. In his own mind, he probably thinks he doesn't owe them anything. Perhaps he thinks many of them rode his coat-tails into office anyway. That's the only explanation I can think of for such nonconsideration.
Few people if anyone think the Democrats have even a snowball's chance of growing their majorities or even minimizing their losses. Members of the mainstream press including David Gergen at MSNBC are even applauding Republicans.
President Obama pledged to "listen" at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he'd be listening to his own voice.
By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes - nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a "talk clock" kept by GOP aides.
From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans' 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.
"I don't think that's quite right," he said.
But then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: "You're right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because - I'm the president." Half the room laughed. "I didn't count my time in terms of dividing it evenly."
In the first year of wrangling over the huge government overhaul of healthcare reform, the use of taxpayer dollars in all the different proposals to fund abortions proved to be a major sticking point, maybe even the main reason nothing got passed.
Well now the latest proposal, straight from the White House, apparently is coffing up even more tax dollars to pay for abortions through its funding of "community health centers," like Planned Parenthood.
If abortion really was the factor that halted Obama's vision of nationalized healthcare reform last year, and I think the case can be made that it was, then he is only hurting his chances of getting something, anything, passed. As the Cato Institute observes:
Abortion may be the one issue that Democrats care about more than health care. Democrats may therefore prefer to let ObamaCare die than violate their principles on abortion. One can imagine pro-life Democrats saying, Health reform, yes -- but not at the expense of the unborn, just as one can imagine pro-choice Democrats saying, Health reform yes -- but not at the expense of a woman's right to choose.
No matter which way ObamaCare comes down on abortion, the legislation could lose enough House Democrats to fall short of the 218 votes needed to win.
There is a lot of doubt out there about the competence of the United States government. Some 73 percent, according to Rasmussen, say that Washington is, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, "broken."
Indeed, the very term "Washington" has become a sort of catch-all for bad ideas and red tape -- too bad for our nation's first president who helped guide our first armed forces to victory in the war for independence. President Obama has tried to portray himself as somehow above the Washington fray, mentioning Washington nine times in his most recent State of the Union Address, every time negatively. His first mention lamented that "Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems."
This discontent translates to faith in government to handle the country's problems. Some 61 percent say the government should stay out of the housing market. Sixty-four percent of those polled believe government policies made it easier for people to purchase homes that they could not afford. In other words, in the minds of those polled, in Washington's zeal for "solving problems," it created new ones.
Only 28 percent of those polled believe the country is moving in the right direction. And -- most damning of all -- only 21 percent of those polled say the U.S. Government actually has the consent of the governed. The innovation of the United States Constitution was that it established a government that derived its authority from the consent of those governed. Some 71 percent view the government itself as a special interest group, and 70 percent think that government works together with big business in ways that hurt consumers, at a time when limited-government conservatives are hardly in any majority.
Now, in a strict technical sense, the government does have our consent. We voted these people into office. They have a mandate that derives from that fact that they won the last general election. But it is evident that the people feel that the spirit of the consent of the governend has been violated. People feel that they have made their voice heard loud and clear and Washington is just not listening. Healthcare is a prime example, as 61 percent believe it is time for the government to start over on reform. And 51 percent trust business leaders with economic decisions more than government officials. Even if I agreed with the prevailing policy proposals in Washington, I would think that those advancing them were doing a lousy job of explaining themselves.
Yet only 43 percent of those polled believe that Republicans would actually change things if they were voted into a majority, versus 32 percent who do not. If government is to regain ts credibility, it must do so not on the basis of party but on the basis of ideas. There is no reason why certain ideas, like low taxes, reduced spending, and basic fiscal responsibility cannot exist in each party. The problem is that in the eyes of many, such principles are non-existent in one party, and all too often abandoned in another.
The lack of trust in government may simply be an indicator that people believe the United States government is stretching outside of its intended scope, which has historically been understood to be insure the safety of its citizens, and protect their rights and liberties under the rule of law.
Conservative leaders across the country are looking to seize upon this documented lack of faith in the competence of our governing institutions by signing a document called the "Mt. Vernon Statement," named for George Washington's home. I'll be watching to see if its signatories can translate the statement of principles into actual policies that don't involve new spending or taxes and can stand a real chance of rebuilding the private sector to get real jobs into the hands of so many who are looking for them these days.
