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Economy

jobs-report-getty

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – MAY 30: A job seeker holds a pamphlet during a job and career fair at City College of San Francisco southeast campus on May 30, 2013 in San Francisco, California. Hundreds of job seekers attended a career fair hosted by the San Francisco Southeast Community Facility Commission. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The firing rate for the week ending July 11, as the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits fell last week to 281,000. The prior week was downwardly revised to 296,00. Wall Street expected claims to fall to 285,000 from an initially reported 297,000.

The 4-week moving average — which is widely considered a better gauge of labor market conditions, as it irons out week-to-week swings — was 282,500, an increase of 3,250 from the previous week’s revised average.

The previous week’s average was revised down by 250 from 279,500 to 279,250.

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending July 4 were in Michigan (+9,961), New York (+6,488), California (+5,714), Ohio (+3,190), and Missouri (+2,661), while the largest decreases were in New Jersey (-3,276), Texas (-2,405), Connecticut (-2,180), Maryland (-1,304), and South Carolina (-905).

The firing rate for the week ending

Opinion

Jeb-Bush-Miami

Jeb Bush formally enters the 2016 Republican presidential race with a kickoff rally in Miami, Monday, June 15, 2015. (Photo: Reuters/Joe Skipper)

“In the feudal system,” The Oxford English Dictionary says, a vassal is “one holding lands from a superior on conditions of homage and allegiance.”

The system lives on in modern American politics, forsooth in changed form. No longer is it local lords providing military support to a king in return for grants of land. Nowadays, the vassals show their loyalty in the form of large campaign checks. In return, they are promised various economic privileges, among them protection from taxation.

The ritual in all its pageantry has been on display at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. There former President George Herbert Walker Bush, his wife, Barbara, and other members of the Bush dynasty hold court to advance Jeb Bush’s quest for the presidency. The object is to make Jeb the second son of H.W.’s, after George W., to capture the White House.

Picture the Bush clan treating CEOs, sports team owners and other modern-day vassals to lobster rolls and consenting to pose in the courtiers’ selfies. Imagine the splendor: the many houses, including a new one for Jeb, perched on the rocks of Walker’s Point, the Atlantic crashing at their feet.

Such invites are “the prize for members of the vaunted Bush fund-raising operation,” writes political reporter Nicholas Confessore. They are why Jeb has raised as much money for his campaign as the other Republican presidential candidates and their super PACs combined.

Spending so much time in this closed society may also help explain Jeb’s politically awkward remark that Americans “need to work longer hours.”

In olden times, the serfs were regarded as beasts of burden, to be whipped into higher productivity. Conditions are much-improved, but one can assume the conversations at the Bush compound do not linger long on the common folk’s economic interests.

A big reason Donald Trump is matching or passing Jeb in the polls is that he is talking to the serfs. He may be saying stupid things, but at least he recognizes their existence.

Bush complained that his views are being taken out of context and elaborated. He really said that sustained growth requires that “people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours.” That way, they have more money and can “decide how they want to spend it rather than getting in line and being dependent on government.”

Another way of stimulating growth would be to have Americans work the same hours but get paid more. That, too, would put more money in their pockets, prompting more spending and saving. This solution might require employers to share more of the profits with their laborers as they used to do. Such scenarios don’t cross the royal mindset, the key to growth always being to crank up the serfs’ stress level.

The reality is that lots of Americans would love a 40-hour job but are instead stuck working two 30-hour jobs, neither offering such luxuries as health coverage and vacation time. That’s the sad reality of today’s job market and one reason the Affordable Care Act was so necessary. It subsidizes health coverage for workers who can’t get it through their employment.

But economic security in some eyes is dependency in others’. One conservative argument goes that repealing Obamacare would force workers into the 40-hour jobs they’re alleged to be turning up their noses at. It’s the lash, always the lash.

Over at Walker’s Point, donors are meeting a new set of Bushes, known as “P’s crowd.” That would be George P. Bush, a son of Jeb’s apparently looking to claim the family political inheritance. Some of P’s followers have parents who back P’s parent.

Methinks the show goes on.

President George Herbert Walker Bush, his wife,

Elections

Hillary Clinton economic speech

US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton speaks outlining economic vision at the New School in New York on July 13, 2015. (Photo: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

New polling data conducted in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia spell deep trouble for Hillary Clinton in 2016. While the PPD election projection model, which was hands down the most accurate model in 2014, never subscribes to the ill-advised philosophy of reading too much into early polling, fundamentals historically can present themselves pretty early in a cycle.

For Hillary Clinton, those fundamentals are pointing to some serious danger signs, despite head-to-head match-ups seemingly suggesting otherwise. Let’s go through the data piece-by-piece. It may get a little tedious at times, but I promise it will be worth the point.

Vox Populi polled 1670 likely voters in the aforementioned battleground states, where Clinton is underwater on favorability by a large 53 – 38 percent margin. Only 11 percent of respondents said the former secretary of state “Completely” shares their values, while 35 percent said “Not at all.” When adding partial answers — “on most issues” and “not on most issues” — she is on the outs with voters by a 54 – 40-percent margin. These questions speak to both the ideology of the electorate and the candidates ability to connect with voters, which presents a huge problem for the likely frontrunner.

In 2012, Gov. Mitt Romney suffered from low favorability and likability ratings throughout most of the cycle. Yet, as the election season entered the fall he turned that around. However, voters never thought he shared their values even if they agreed with him on the overall role of government, nor did they believe he cared about people like them. For Hillary, trust is perhaps even more concerning.

Thirty-nine percent “Strongly Agree” with the statement “Hillary Clinton will say or do anything in order to get elected president,” while just 20 disagree. Again, with partial answers, Hillary is underwater on the question by a 58 – 37 percent margin. Meanwhile, 56 percent either “completely” (42 percent) or “somewhat” (14 percent) distrust Hillary Clinton, juxtaposed to just 16 who say they “completely” trust her. On Benghazi, 58 percent either say she is “definitely” (37 percent) or “probably” (21 percent) trying to hide something about her actions during the Benghazi crisis, while just 13 percent say she is definitely not. In total, just 33 percent give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt, at least somewhat.

In fact, her numbers are so bad in the battleground states polled, that more voters would rather have Vice President Joe Biden (34 percent) serve as the next president than Hillary (30 percent). But here is the kicker. Much is made of her lead among potential or declared Republican candidates. At this point in the cycle, however, name recognition is largely the cause of these numbers. When polled against “the winner of the Republican nomination,” Hillary trails badly in both solid and soft (leaning) support, 50 – 42 percent in the tally.

We’ve seen this before. It’s a pattern going back much farther than 2014, but we will use it here to make the larger point.

In March 2014, I wrote Why Iowa Senate Poll Showing Braley Leading GOP Hopefuls Doesn’t Mean Anything in justification of the Iowa Senate race rating on PPD’s election projection model. It saw the danger for Rep. Bruce Braley even before he ever was caught on video belittling Iowa farmers. It’s worth going back to read, but the basic argument held that Braley had “greater name recognition, and independents and Republican-leaning independents are soft on support for his potential challengers, a common anomaly in primary polling.” The same was true throughout the states with competitive Senate races in 2014 and it is true of the 2016 presidential election during the nomination process.

In fact, Rep. Bruce Braley, former Sens. Mark Udall, Mark Begich and others had more room to grow their support respecting favorability ratings and name recognition compared with Hillary. Of course, a slew of other variables go into our election projection model, and those will ultimately help to determine which party controls the White House after President Barack Obama, including his approval rating. But, historically, presidential elections are decided on the fundamentals given each party nominates an acceptable, viable candidate during their nomination process.

Candidate strength cannot be understated. A fresh, new face could further damage Clinton’s campaign given that more voters than not say she represents the past, not the future. Even in this hyper-polarized political environment, each of the respective parties will get a solid floor of support with a flawed candidate. But we aren’t saying that doesn’t mean it won’t cost them the election. Given these numbers — and the averaged numbers for Hillary on the PPD Pollster Scorecard — we are saying she has the makings of a flawed candidate.

New polling data conducted in the battleground

Politics

Image: U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 19, 2015. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

House Republican leaders announced a probe into Planned Parenthood after the release of a video revealing the organization sells the body parts of aborted babies. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, released a statement saying that “nothing is more precious than life,” and that if Planned Parenthood is really working to “monetize an unborn child,” then “we must all act.”

“As a start, I have asked our relevant committees to look into this matter,” Boehner said in a statement. “I am also calling on President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”

Undercover footage released by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies, and admitting she and others at the organization use partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts. The footage, which also starred Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards, herself, who praised Nucatola’s work to facilitate connections for fetal tissue collection, resulted in outrage from Republicans and their 2016 presidential candidates.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., also announced Wednesday that his committee has opened an investigation into the allegations that Planned Parenthood “altered abortion procedures in order to harvest the organs and body parts of aborted children for money.”

“Every human life is sacred and should be protected from the atrocities allegedly undertaken by Planned Parenthood. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating these horrific acts including ascertaining how Congress might act,” Chairman Goodlatte said. “The prospects of altering an abortion procedure in order to preserve intact the organs of aborted children, including their brains, reminds us yet again of the horrors of late-term abortions, and the need for the Senate to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

In January, when GOP leadership tabled the aforementioned ban on late-term abortion after 20 weeks, in what was one of their first acts after taking the majority in both houses of Congress following the 2014 midterm elections. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Speaker Boehner were bleeding support from moderate lawmakers in swing districts, but Rep. Goodlatte and other supporters of the bill vowed to bring it back to the floor.

“Members of the House Judiciary Committee have been committed to the preservation of human life, including the lives of unborn children,” Chairman Goodlatte said. “We will continue to fight for the rights of the unborn.”

Majority Leader McCarthy released a separate statement saying that “life is truly a miracle,” and “the House will continue to fight to protect the sanctity of life.”

“I speak for all of my colleagues when I say I was deeply disturbed by reports and video of an organization engaging in such grotesque and inhumane practices,” House Majority Leader McCarthy said. “I will be working with House Committees to investigate the claims made by the employee. We should all agree that no life is expendable, and our society has no place for such callous indifference to life.”

Following McCarthy’s statement, the Chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee announced that they have also opened an investigation into the organization, and the video.

“This video is abhorrent and rips at the heart,” said Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and other top Republicans on the panel. “The committee will get to the bottom of this appalling situation.”

The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2). According to its 2013-2014 annual report, Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million dollars in taxpayer federal funding for the year ending June 30, 2014. During the same year, the organization performed 327,653 abortions, which they have repeatedly claimed does not result in the harvest of body parts for sale or other illegal use. In fact, when they were first caught harvesting baby body parts 15 years ago, Planned Parenthood claimed it was the action of a rogue affiliate, or franchise-like location.

“This video is deeply disturbing and made me sick to my stomach. That anyone from Planned Parenthood could so casually talk of selling off organs from aborted babies is repulsive,” said Rep Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who is running to replace Sen. Marco Rubio. “I join my colleagues in denouncing this loathsome practice and Planned Parenthood’s callous attitude regarding the disposal of fetal remains. The organization ought to be ashamed and I will continue to support efforts in Congress to prevent them from receiving taxpayer dollars.”

Considering Americans’ near-180-degree swing on abortion since the 1990s, particularly regarding late-term and partial-birth abortion, it’s no wonder why the Democratic candidates are in hiding. As of Wednesday morning, not a single declared Democratic presidential candidate — including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, or former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee — have responded to multiple requests from PPD to comment.

House Republican leaders announced a probe into

Opinion

news-media

When I write about the media, it’s generally to criticize sloppy and/or biased reporting. But maybe I need to have a new category that features misleading headlines. For instance, here’s a report by Fox Business News that grabbed my attention because of the headline. The story is about the arrest of an IRS bureaucrat.

The main reason I was startled by the story is that it didn’t seem at all newsworthy. To be blunt, isn’t it the job of IRS employees to use our Social Security numbers to steal our money? That’s certainly what goes through my mind as I fill out my tax return.

So why was this bureaucrat arrested?

Was it for being a slacker, I wondered? The federal government confiscates about $3.5 trillion of our money each year, after all, which means the 95,000 IRS bureaucrats generate an average haul of more than $35 million. By contrast, $326 thousand is a mere pittance.

But then I read the story and realized that the story was about a completely different kind of theft. It appears that the bureaucrat was getting in on the nationwide scam of filing false claims to get EIC handouts.

An IRS employee who worked in the agency’s St. Louis, MO., office pled guilty this week to charges of tax fraud. Demetria Brown netted $326,000 in a fraud in which she stole taxpayer identities and created fake tax returns to steal refunds. …The scheme lasted seven years from 2008 to 2001.

So my first instinct was correct. There isn’t really anything newsworthy in that story. After all, nobody should be surprised that income-redistribution programs such as the EIC attract a lot of fraud. Nobody should be surprised that an IRS bureaucrat decided to take other people’s money (above and beyond the excessive salary the rest of us paid for). And nobody should be surprised that the other bureaucrats at the IRS were so incompetent that the scam was successful for seven years.

By the way, this isn’t the first time a thieving IRS bureaucrat generated a story with a misleading headline. Speaking of which, here’s our second example of a headline that creates a completely false impression. It’s from a story in the Toronto Star.

Needless to say, I was completely shocked at first. After all, France is the nation where the national sport is taxation. It’s the country where taxes are so onerous that even the European Commission warns about over-taxation. It’s the nation where thousands of people have to pay more than 100 percent of their income to the tax authorities. It’s the country where high taxes are equated to patriotism. And it’s the nation that pushes tax policies that are so radical than even the Obama Administration sometimes says no.

So is it true? Is France going to become a Libertopia? The Galt’s Gulch of Europe? But then my bubble burst. It turns out the story is about a technical shift in how taxes are collected.

The government wants to shift to a system of automatic withholding, similar to that in Canada and much of the rest of the world. Employees in France currently pay taxes a year after their income is earned. Christian Eckert, France’s budget secretary, said Wednesday that the government will not double-tax workers in 2018, the year automatic withholding is to begin. So 2017 incomes could effectively be tax-free for regular salaries. Taxpayers won’t actually feel much of a difference though — they would still spend 2017 paying for the previous year.

Though this might create an interesting social science experiment.

Depending on how rigorously France decides to be with its definition of “regular salaries,” this might be an opportunity for long-suffering French taxpayers to figure out ways of delaying 2016 income until 2017 and accelerating 2018 income so it’s received in 2017.

This could be a particularly useful strategy for investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, all of whom (if they’re like their American counterparts) presumably have some control over the timing, level, and composition of their income.

But I suspect the French government already is contemplating ways of making sure that every possible penny is being taxed at the highest possible rate, so I won’t hold my breath.

When I write about the media, it’s

Politics

Planned-Parenthood-President-Cecile-Richards-DNC

Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards speaks at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. (Photo: AP)

Planned Parenthood and proponents of the billion-dollar abortion industry outright dismissed a video revealing a practice they have repeatedly denied the organization engages in as a policy. Undercover footage released by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies, and admitting she and others at the organization use partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.

“A well funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research,” the organization said in a statement. “Similar false accusations have been put forth by opponents of abortion services for decades. These groups have been widely discredited and their claims fall apart on closer examination, just as they do in this case.”

The footage, which also starred Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards, herself, who praised Nucatola’s work to facilitate connections for fetal tissue collection, resulted in outrage from Republican candidates. Yet, as of Wednesday morning, not a single declared Democratic presidential candidate — including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, or former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee — have responded to multiple requests from PPD to comment. The same is true for the White House communication team, who heralded President Obama’s decision to become the first sitting U.S. president to speak at a Planned Parenthood conference.

According to its 2013-2014 annual report, Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million dollars in taxpayer federal funding for the year ending June 30, 2014. During the same year, the organization performed 327,653 abortions, which they have repeatedly claimed does not result in the harvest of body parts for sale or other illegal use. In fact, when they were first caught harvesting baby body parts 15 years ago, Planned Parenthood claimed it was the action of a rogue affiliate, or franchise-like location.

Planned-Parenthood-Director-CEO

New undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted fetuses, and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.

However, the video footage clearly proves otherwise. Nucatola reveals that Planned Parenthood’s national office is concerned about their liability for the sale of fetal parts, but they are speaking with affiliate locations “behind closed doors” until they have a leftwing Supreme Court willing to deem their activities legal and constitutional.

“At the national office, we have a Litigation and Law Department which just really doesn’t want us to be the middle people for this issue right now,” she says. “But I will tell you that behind closed doors these conversations are happening with the affiliates.”

The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2). Considering Americans’ near-180-degree swing on abortion since the 1990s, particularly regarding late-term and partial-birth abortion, it’s no wonder why the Democratic candidates are in hiding.

“Planned Parenthood and the Democrats who vote to fund this organization owe the American people an explanation for these heinous, and possibly illegal actions,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a 2016 presidential candidate said. “Practices like this cannot be tolerated, which is why as governor I defunded Planned Parenthood.”

Indeed, unlike other candidates in the running for the White House, Walker did ban the use of taxpayer money to fund the abortion industry’s leading organization. Following the release of the video, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is also running for president, ordered an investigation to make sure the practice isn’t occurring in his state. In the video, Dr. Nucatola paints a very clear picture of exactly how those practices are put into place and transpire.

“I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps,” the good doctor said in the video. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

The age of information and science has ironically proven a detriment to the abortion movement and lawmakers who support it. Since 1995, when Gallup measured a 23 percent advantage for the pro-choice designation, support for abortion has steadily ceded ground to the pro-life designation and now trails by an average 7-point margin. Most Americans, particularly younger Americans, find it harder to see a 20-week-old baby as a fetus considering the science. Yet, Republican lawmakers and leaders in Washington have repeatedly displayed a lack of political courage on the issue, as they did in January when they tabled a ban on late-term abortion after 20 weeks.

That was a political miscalculation, as usual.

A recent WaPo/ABC news poll found that by a 56 percent – 27 percent margin, Americans say they’d prefer to impose limits on abortions after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than the 24-week mark established under current law in some states. Even a recent Huffington Post poll found that by a two-to-one margin, Americans said they would favor a federal law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the exact timeframe named in the now-tabled House bill. It gets worse when we look at the average of polls over the last year and a half.

Only 26 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all circumstances, while 20 percent say it should be illegal in all circumstances and 52 percent say only in certain circumstances should it be allowed. When polled together, 72 percent supported a ban on late-term abortion. I suspect the support for harvesting baby body parts from partial-birth and late-term abortions wouldn’t fare much better.

Yet, while Republicans in Washington continue to fear the mainstream media more than the voters, unlike Govs. Walker and Jindal, Planned Parenthood will continue to insist they did nothing wrong.

“In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases,” the organization said. “Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”

Democrats silent as Planned Parenthood dismisses a

Economy

Producer-Prices

Producer Price Index (PPI): A worker in a wholesale foods production and distribution warehouse.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the Producer Price Index (PPI) increased by 0.4 percent in June, beating expectations for a gain of 0.2. Excluding the food and energy components, prices rose 0.3 percent juxtaposed to expectations for a gain of 0.1 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly two-thirds of the increase in the final demand index can be attributed to prices for final demand goods, which rose 0.7 percent. The index for final demand services advanced 0.3 percent, while intermediate demand, prices for processed goods climbed 0.7 percent.

A whole 30 percent of the June gain in producer prices for final demand goods reflects an increase in the gasoline index, which rose 4.3 percent. Prices for chicken eggs, pharmaceutical preparations, residential electric power, residential natural gas, and cigarettes also moved higher. In contrast, the index for fresh and dry vegetables fell 6.0 percent. Prices for liquefied petroleum gas and electronic computers also decreased.

The PPI comes ahead of the more closely-watched Consumer Price Index (CPI), which will gauge inflation. The Federal Reserve is looking for a target inflation rate before increasing interest rates, but they have a separate internal survey they use apart from the CPI.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the

Economy

workers-manufacturing-factory

(Photo: Reuters)

The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey rose 6 points to 3.86 in July, up from -1.98 in June. Wall Street was expecting a gain of 3.

Readings above 0 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.

The new orders index was little changed at -3.5, a sign that orders continued to decline, and the shipments index fell four points to 7.9. Labor market indicators signaled a small increase in employment levels and the average workweek. Price indexes pointed to modest increases in both input prices and selling prices, with the prices paid index reaching its lowest level in three years.

Indexes for the six-month outlook suggested that optimism about future business conditions was slightly higher than in June, but in line with the trend over the past six months, expectations for improvement remained subdued.

The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State

Opinion

us-president-obama-greece-pm-tsipiras

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, left. (Photos: AP)

ObamaCare! The War on Drugs! A War on Poverty! Prohibition! The idea that government will bring social progress isn’t new.

Europe’s monarchs believed in big government long before there was a Soviet Union or a welfare state. Eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire praised “enlightened” monarchs like Prussia’s Frederick the Great. Since the nineteenth century, so-called “progressives” have wanted government to get ever larger. They got their wish. The results were not so good for people.

Today pundits and protesters moan about fiscal “austerity” in nations like Greece. But if austerity means cuts in government, there hasn’t been much of it.

Sure, Greece cut spending, but only by 3 percent. One in four Greek workers still works for government (vs. one in seven in the U.S.). Greek politicians run government “businesses” that employ politicians’ cronies. In other words, Greece has barely begun what I would call austerity.

Paul Krugman deceitfully trashes real cuts and writes that he wants to see “some example, somewhere, of austerity policies that succeeded.”

But there are plenty. The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards and Dan Mitchell discussed some at FreedomFest, a giant gathering of people who care about free markets held last week in Las Vegas. Mitchell points out that Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands cut government spending and were quicker to recover from economic problems.

In the mid-90s, Canada was going broke, so the government cut its budget by about 10 percent. The growth that followed allowed Canada to cut its debt dramatically — from about 68 percent of GDP to 28 percent. During that same decade, unemployment shrank. Canada’s economy grew faster than that of every other G7 nation. Good things happened not because government spent (SET ITAL) more (END ITAL), but because it spent (SET ITAL) less (END ITAL).

The U.S. contains its own version of the Greek debt crisis in the form of Puerto Rico.

A recent island governor tried to cut Puerto Rico’s bloated government. Luiz Fortuno fired thousands of workers and made it easier to open a business. The economy improved. But firing workers isn’t popular. Fortuno lost the next election and his successor increased spending and raised taxes. Of course that didn’t work. Now Puerto Rico can’t pay its $70 billion debt.

“Are there any success stories based on tax (SET ITAL) hikes (END ITAL) or (SET ITAL) bigger (END ITAL) government? The answer is no,” warns Mitchell.

Progressives pretend they have a technical fix for problems. On a national level, their fixes always involve giving more power to Washington, D.C. That soothes the left, since they love the idea of centralizing decision-making.

For a while, around the start of the twentieth century, technology advanced while government grew. Intellectuals thought the two things must go hand in hand. Government electrified rural areas! It can do anything!

Well, government can do some things, mostly expensive, obvious things, like building interstate highways, guarding borders and going to war — though government doesn’t do those things efficiently. Almost all its projects end up way over budget and behind schedule.

“Centralization of government spending in Washington over the past century has severely undermined good governance,” argues Edwards on the site he edits, DownsizingGovernment.org. “Citizens get worse outcomes when funding and decision-making for education, infrastructure and other things are made by the central government rather than state and local governments and the private sector.”

Politicians rarely notice the millions of tiny opportunities for people to make progress via new inventions and smarter ways of doing things — the new app, the robotics start-up, the do-it-yourself metalworking printer.

Instead, politicians’ limited imaginations lean toward big government-run projects like building bigger airports (needed or not), more welfare and micromanaging every private workplace.
“Politicians and lobby groups constantly complain that America does not spend enough,” writes Edwards. “But they rarely discuss how to ensure efficiency in (government) spending, or cite any advantages of federal spending over state, local and private spending.”

Government shovels more money into its big, dumb projects and pretends to build the future. But our future is more likely to be built by thousands of entrepreneurs who make the countless contributions that quietly improve our lives.

John Stossel: ObamaCare! The War on Drugs!

Policy

school-choice-cartoonOur friends who believe in big government have this funny habit of self-exempting themselves from the bad policies that they impose on the rest of the population.

Statists are very opposed to so-called tax havens, for instance, because they don’t want there to be any constraints on the ability of governments to impose higher tax burdens. Yet it’s quite common to discover that these folks who want higher taxes for you and me have decided to protect their income and assets by utilizing low-tax jurisdictions.

Another example is that leftists are big advocates of one-size-fits-all, substandard government schools and they vociferously fight against school choice proposals that would help low-income families obtain better opportunities for their kids.

Yet these fans of monopoly government schools routinely make sure their children are in private schools. President Obama is the most high-profile example of this form of hypocrisy.

And so is his Secretary of Education.

The Wall Street Journal opines on this example of rank hypocrisy.

Arne Duncan…the Education Secretary continues to fight vouchers for private schools. So it’s worth noting that he has decided to send his own children to a private school in Chicago. …where tuition runs about $30,000 a year. That’s also where Barack and Michelle Obama sent their children before moving to Washington and sending Sasha and Malia to the tony Sidwell Friends. Mr. Duncan’s choice is all the more striking since he used to run the Chicago public schools.

I suppose you have to give Duncan credit for wanting good things for his kids, and he obviously had first-hand knowledge that the government schools in Chicago aren’t very good.

What’s nauseating, though, is how he doesn’t want poor families to have similar options.

He…stood aside in 2009 when Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin managed to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington until Speaker John Boehner and the Republican Congress revived it. The Education Secretary was also a muted voice when the Obama Justice Department filed a lawsuit aimed at scuttling Louisiana’s innovative voucher program. And he was silent again when the Colorado Supreme Court recently invoked a leftover of 19th-century bigotry—its anti-Catholic Blaine amendment—to stop students from receiving vouchers for private schools.

By the way, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that another prominent Chicago leftist also has rejected government schools for his own children.

Here are some blurbs from a 2011 report in the Washington Post.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel…has decided to send his children to a private school… Emanuel…served in the White House as President Obama’s chief of staff… The decision where to send your children to school is certainly a personal one, even for public officials. But it is worth publicly noting what public officials…choose to do with their own children when given the chance.

What’s really worth publicly noting is that these politicians don’t want other families to have any escape options from failed government schools.

That’s what makes them hypocrites.

Even more important, that’s what makes them immoral. Sort of like modern-day equivalents of George Wallace, standing in the schoolhouse door to deny opportunity to the less fortunate.

And why do politicians behave so reprehensibly? For the simple reason that they want to curry favor with the unions that represent teachers.

Which makes this excerpt from a Chicago Tribune story especially remarkable. It seems that teachers from Chicago’s government schools also want better options for their own kids.

…a Thomas B. Fordham Institute study found that 39 percent of CPS teachers sent their own kids to private schools.

Sauce for the goose obviously isn’t sauce for the gander.

P.S. On the issue of government schools, I suppose we can paraphrase Winston Churchill and note that never have so many paid so much to achieve so little.

P.P.S. There’s also a strong argument that government schools are a form of child abuse because of bizarre political correctness.

P.P.P.S. Shifting from the immoral to the inane, I probably shouldn’t move to Pennsylvania. At least not if I want to keep my current license plate.

Why? Because bureaucrats in the Keystone State are on the lookout for plates with…gasp!…anti-government messages.

In addition to outright vulgarity and racism, some states prohibit messages on vanity license plates that can be viewed as “anti-government.” In Pennsylvania, for example, where five state employees in Harrisburg get to decide what’s allowed on vanity plates…“ENDFED,” a reference to libertarian-led efforts to shut down the Federal Reserve Bank, is…on the do-not-license list.

I’m not sure why expressing an opinion on monetary policy is considered vulgar or offensive.

But if that’s what Pennsylvania bureaucrats think, then I hope they don’t know about my video on the Federal Reserve. Between that and my seditious license plate, they’d probably arrest me just for simply driving through the state!

Our statist friends who believe in government

People's Pundit Daily
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