Category: Magazine

BY THOMAS SOWELL

From arbitrarily imposed rules on businesses to the revocation of many First Amendment protections, our current crop of politicians are leading us down a dark path. Can we turn it around?

Most elections are about particular policies, particular scandals or particular personalities. But these issues don’t mean as much this year‒ not because they are not important, but because this election is a crossroads election, one that can decide what path this country will take for many years to come.

Runaway “stimulus” spending, high unemployment and ObamaCare are all legitimate and important issues. It is just that freedom and survival are more important.

For all its sweeping and scary provisions, ObamaCare is not nearly as important as the way it was passed. If legislation can become laws passed without either the public or the Congress knowing what is in those laws, then the fundamental principle of a free, self-governing people is completely undermined.

Some members of Congress who voted for ObamaCare, and who are now telling us that they realize this legislation has flaws which they intend to correct, are missing the point.

The very reason for holding hearings on pending legislation, listening to witnesses on all sides of the issue, and having Congressional debates that will be reported and commented on in the media, is so that problems can be explored and alternatives considered before the legislation is voted into law.

Rushing ObamaCare into law too fast for anyone to have read it served no other purpose than to prevent this very process from taking place. The rush to pass this law that would not take effect until after the next two elections simply cut the voters out of the loop ‒ and that is painfully close to ruling by decree.

Other actions and proposals by this administration likewise represent moves in the direction of arbitrary rule, worthy of a banana republic, with only a mocking facade of freedom.

These include threats against people who simply choose to express opinions counter to administration policy, such as a warning to an insurance company that there would be “zero tolerance” for “misinformation” when the insurance company said that ObamaCare would create costs that force up premiums.

Zero tolerance for the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution?

This warning comes from an administration with arbitrary powers that can impose ruinous costs on a given business.

Those who are constantly telling us that our economic problems are caused by not enough “regulation” never distinguish between regulation which simply enforces known rules, as contrasted with regulation that gives arbitrary powers to the government to force others to knuckle under to demands that have nothing to do with the ostensible purposes of the regulation.

As more businesses reveal that they are considering no longer buying health insurance for their employees, as a result of higher costs resulting from ObamaCare legislation, the administration has announced that it can grant waivers that reduce these costs.

But the power to grant waivers is the power to withhold waivers ‒ an arbitrary power that can impose millions of dollars in costs on businesses that the administration doesn’t like.

Recent proposals from the Obama administration to force disclosure of the names of people who sponsor election ads would likewise open all who disagree with Obama to retaliation by the government itself, as well as by community activists and others.

History tells us where giving government one arbitrary power after another leads. It is like going into a Venus fly-trap, which is easy to enter and nearly impossible to get out of.

The headstrong, know-it-all willfulness of this administration, which threatens our freedom at home, also threatens our survival in the international jungle, because Obama seems determined to do nothing that will stop Iran from going nuclear.

The Obama administration goes through all sorts of charades at the U.N. and signs international agreements on sanctions that have been watered down to the point where they are not about to bring Iran’s nuclear weapons program to a halt. The purpose is not to stop Iran but to stop the American people from realizing what Obama is doing or not doing.

We have a strange man in the White House. This election is a crossroads, because either his power will be curbed by depriving him of his huge Congressional majorities or he will continue on a road that jeopardizes both our freedom and our survival.

Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He has published dozens of books on economics, education, race, and other topics. His most recent book is The Housing Boom and Bust, from April 2009.

BY WALTER E WILLIAMS

The shocking dearth of knowledge among Congressional members regarding the Constitution they have sworn to uphold is troubling. However, ignorance is not the only foe we must fight.

Most people whom we elect to Congress are either ignorant of, have contempt for or are just plain stupid about the United States Constitution. You say: “Whoa, Williams, you’re really out of line! You’d better explain.” Let’s look at it.

Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., responding to a question during a town hall meeting, said he’s “not worried about the Constitution.” That was in response to a question about the constitutionality of Obamacare. He told his constituents that the Constitution guaranteed each of us “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Of course, our Constitution guarantees no such thing. The expression “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is found in our Declaration of Independence.

During a debate, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., gave his opinion about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, concluding that “the Constitution is wrong.”

Not to be outdone, at his town hall meeting, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., responded to a constituent’s question about Obamacare by saying, “There are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from (making) rules that can affect your private life.” Adding, “Yes, the federal government can do most anything in this country.” The questioner responded, “People like you, sir, are destroying this nation.” Her comment won shouts of approval from the audience.

Last year, a CNS reporter asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Speaker Pelosi responded: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” She shares the vision of her fellow Californian Stark that Washington can do most anything.

Congressional ignorance and contempt for our Constitution isn’t only on the Democrat side of the aisle. During a town hall meeting, Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., was asked by one of his constituents whether he knew what Article I, Section I of the Constitution mandated. He replied that, “Article I, Section I is the right to free speech.”

Actually, Article I, Section I reads, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” LoBiondo was later asked whether he knew the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Fearing further revelation of his ignorance, he replied, “I can’t articulate that.”

By the way, those five guarantees are: free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Here, in part, is the oath of office that each congressman takes: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same … .”

Here’s my question to you: If one takes an oath to uphold and defend, and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, at the minimum, shouldn’t he know what he’s supposed to uphold, defend and be faithful to?

If congressmen, judges, the president and other government officials were merely ignorant of our Constitution, there’d be hope — ignorance is curable through education. These people in Washington see themselves as our betters and rulers.

They have contempt for the limits our Constitution places on the federal government envisioned by James Madison, the father of our Constitution, who explained in the Federalist Paper 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored more than 150 publications, including many in scholarly journals, and has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.

BY LARRY ELDER

Unlike Ellsworth Toohey, most collectivists are naive, not malicious. However, it should be noted that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Is President Obama evil or “just” wrong? A Rasputin or a Chamberlain?

Here’s a letter I recently received:

“Tuesday morning I happened upon your show. You were so good and I had never heard you before. But alas, you began to extol Obama’s recognition that there are certain things he knows he should have done differently. It was a nice hour or so while it lasted.

“Obama deserves no credit for anything. The man is a liar, a manipulator, a narcissist, a psychopath, a control freak, a Marxist, has no depth of knowledge about anything, etc., etc. But there you were, giving him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Aw, shucks, he’s not so bad after all.’ He spewed this garbage right before the election and yet you believed him?! Obama has to have a change of heart, not a change of mind.”

Point of clarification: I said and wrote that he would be the most radical, left-wing president in the history of this country — and that the guilt-ridden post-racialists who put him there would rue the day. Unfortunately, Obama has lived down to my expectations.

But calling the President a Hitler without the mustache is an unserious position and one that does nothing to dissuade Obama supporters, many of whom now suffer nearly terminal buyer’s remorse. It’s as obtuse as saying “Bush Lied, People Died,” or that George W. Bush ran for president so he could fabricate the intel to unjustifiably take the country to war to avenge his father and enrich his military contractor friends.

And Obama doesn’t act alone. Every Democratic senator voted for the “stimulus” and for ObamaCare. Obama’s leftism is mainstream to his party. If Obama is evil, what does this make those who support his agenda?

It’s more than enough to say that Obama is an inexperienced, naive, wrongheaded ideologue who, even now, doesn’t recognize the harm he is doing to the country.

But with crucial elections looming, Obama has already retreated on his promise to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and now says it’s Congress’ responsibility to change the law. Meanwhile, his Justice Department defends DADT in court.

He hasn’t even raised the issue of another bank bailout or a government-forced cessation of foreclosures — despite the banks’ recent admissions of negligence in processing home foreclosures. The Obama of two years ago would have used this as a pretext to intrude, if not take over the banks. What happened to his outgoing chief of staff’s admonition to “never allow a crisis to go to waste”?

Obama no longer uses the word “stimulus.”

He has exempted a number of businesses and organizations from some ObamaCare regulations.

He no longer talks about cap and trade or union card check.

When was the last time we heard about shutting down Gitmo?

When was the last time we heard about a New York trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Outreach failed. Islamofascists are still determined to kill us. The Arab and Muslim world has an even lower opinion of America than during the Bush administration. Obama’s foolish attack on Israel for building “settlements” in east Jerusalem has made the Palestinians even more intransigent about the “peace process.”

To paraphrase Joe Biden, no more “big f—ing deals.” It’s now small ball. But left-wing small ball is still left-wing.

But come November, things will change.

The next two — or, after he is dragged reluctantly to the center, even six — years of the Obama presidency will be spent trying to keep ObamaCare from unraveling, as opposed to the march toward a Canadian-style single-payer socialized health care system that he truly wants.

The President is an arrogant man with a racial chip on his shoulder. He is a wealth redistributionist who thinks of America as an imperialist power that needs to apologize to the world for its past sins.

But Obama is not evil. He’s simply wrong, which in many ways makes him harder to deal with — and even more dangerous. Obama has already made America a weaker nation — both domestically and as a foreign power. That he’s not out to intentionally destroy America makes him a larger menace.

Good intentions make it difficult to persuade people to fight against his policies, and to focus not on intentions but rather on consequences and results.

Here’s what C.S. Lewis said about people like Obama:

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Over the next two years, Obama’s inevitable retreat toward the middle will be a tactical one, not reflective of a change of heart. It doesn’t matter. He will either check himself or be checked.

America, however, will bear the scars for decades.

Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. His latest book, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?” is available now. To find out more about Larry Elder, visit his Web page at www.WeveGotACountryToSave.com.

BY WALTER E WILLIAMS

Despite historical warnings, some refuse to believe that government meddling causes nothing but misery. For those who are hesitant to read Rand, this article is a great introduction to free market morality.

One of the greatest sources of confusion and deception is the difference between leftists, progressives, socialists, communists and fascists. I thought about this as I caught a glimpse of the Oct. 2 “One Nation” march on Washington.

The participants proudly marched with banners, signs and placards reading “Socialists,” “Ohio U Democratic Socialists,” “International Socialists Organization,” “Socialist Party USA,” “Build A Socialist Alternative” and other signs expressing support for socialism and communism. They had stands where they sold booklets under the titles of “Marxism and the State,” “Communist Manifesto,” “Four Marxist Classics,” “The Road to Socialism” and similar titles.

The gathering had the support of the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, stalwarts of the Democratic Party such as Al Sharpton and organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club, and the Children’s Defense Fund.

What goes unappreciated is that socialists and communists have produced the greatest evil in mankind’s history. You say, “Williams, what in the world are you talking about? Socialists, communists and their fellow travelers care about the little guy in his struggle for a fair shake! They’re trying to promote social justice.” Let’s look at some of the history of socialism and communism.

Nazism is a form of socialism. In fact, Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nazis murdered 20 million of their own people and in nations they captured. The unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler’s Socialist Workers’ Party pale in comparison to the horrors committed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and their successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tse-tung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history’s most murderous regimes is in a book by University of Hawaii’s Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, “Death by Government.” A wealth of information is provided at his website.

You say, “Williams, isn’t it a bit unfair to lump the “One Nation” communists, socialists and their supporters with mass murderers such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung? After all, they expressed no such murderous goal.”

When Hitler, Stalin and Mao were campaigning for political power, you can bet they didn’t campaign on the promise to murder millions of their own people, and probably the thought of doing so never crossed their minds. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.”

It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, Russians and Chinese, like many of today’s Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for a Hitler, a Stalin or Mao to take over. But as Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

While America’s leftists, socialists and communists condemn Hitler, they give the world’s most horrible murderers a pass. First, they make a false distinction between fascism, communism and socialism but more importantly, they sympathize with the socioeconomic goals of communism and socialism. The primary goal of communism and socialism is government ownership or control over the means of production.

In the U.S., only a few people call for outright government ownership of the means of production. They might have learned that government ownership would mess things up. Instead, they’ve increasingly called for quasi-ownership through various forms of government regulation, oversight, taxation and subsidies. After all, if someone has the power to tell you how you may use your property, it’s tantamount to his owing it.

I believe most Americans find the ideals and principles of socialism, communism and progressivism repugnant, but by our sanctioning greater government centralization and its control over our lives, we become their dupes or, as Lenin said, “useful idiots.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored more than 150 publications, including many in scholarly journals, and has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.

BY JOHN STOSSEL

The exceptional economic prosperity of America was the result of exceptionally free market conditions. So why do some want the US to emulate the restrictive policies of far less successful nations?

The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom lowers the ranking of the United States to eighth out of 179 nations — behind Canada! A year ago, it ranked sixth, ahead of Canada.

Don’t say it’s Barack Obama’s fault. Half the data used in the index is from George W. Bush’s final six months in office. This is a bipartisan problem.

For the past 16 years, the index has ranked the world’s countries on the basis of their economic freedom — or lack thereof. Ten criteria are used: freedoms related to business, trade, fiscal matters, monetary matters, investment, finance, labor, government spending, property rights and freedom from corruption.

The top 10 countries are: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Denmark and Chile.

The bottom 10: Republic of Congo, Solomon Islands, Turkmenistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Venezuela, Burma, Eritrea, Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea.

The index demonstrates what we libertarians have long said: Economic freedom leads to prosperity. Also, the best places to live and fastest-growing economies are among the freest, and vice versa. A society will be materially well off to the extent its people have the liberty to acquire property, start businesses, and trade in a secure legal and political environment.

Bill Beach, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, which compiles the index with The Wall Street Journal, says the index defines “economic freedom” to mean: “You can follow your dreams, express yourself, create a business, do whatever job you want. Government doesn’t run labor markets, or plan what business you can open, or over-regulate you.”

We asked Beech about the U.S. ranking. “For first time in 16 years, the United States fell from the ‘totally free’ to ‘mostly free’ group. That’s a terrible development,” he said. He fears that if this continues, productive people will leave the United States for freer pastures.

“The United States has been this magnet for three centuries. But today money and people can move quickly, and in less than a lifetime a great country can go by the wayside.”

Why is the United States falling behind? “Our spending has been excessive. … We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. (Government) takeovers of industries, subsidizing industries … these are the kinds of moves that happen in Third World countries. …”

Beach adds that the rule of law declined when the Obama administration declared some contracts to be null and void. For example, bondholders in the auto industry were forced to the back of the creditor line during bankruptcy. And there’s more regulation of business, such as the Dodd-Frank law for the financial industry and the new credit-card law. But how could the United States place behind Canada? Isn’t Canada practically a socialist country?

“Canada might do health care the wrong way,” Beach said, “but by and large they do things the right way.” Lately, Canada has lowered tax rates and reduced spending.

China is an interesting case. It ranks 140th out of 179, but its economy is on fire. How can this be?

“They have a complex economy,” Beach says. “Around the edges of the mainland are rapidly growing city-states, like Hong Kong, which are pockets of enormous prosperity (and) economic freedom. But within the mainland is a very different economy. It’s heavily controlled by the state. If you look at the growth rates of these two regions, you’ll see one hardly growing.”

And look at France. It ranks 64th, behind Mexico, Peru and Latvia! Yet France is a much wealthier country.

“France is doing their best to fall out of the index,” Beach explained. “That’s a country that says, ‘We’d rather not be economically free if we can be economically secure.'”

Which countries should we keep an eye on in the future? Beach says parts of Central and South America are awakening. “Brazil has pretty much broken through after years of doing the right thing and is on the verge of serious sustained economic growth.”

And Mexico is improving: “If Mexico could fix its drug war problem, we’d see the good things happening there.”

If we want to reverse America’s decline, we’d better get to work. There’s a lot of government to cut.

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. He’s the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.” To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com

BY THOMAS SOWELL

One useful thing to remember is that in politics, as in sports, it helps to keep your eye on the ball. Let’s see how politicians try to distract voters from the issues just before a close election.

In an election year, this is the time for an “October surprise”‒ some sensational, and usually irrelevant, revelation to distract the voters from serious issues. This year, there are October surprises from coast to coast. There are a lot of incumbents who don’t want to discuss serious issues ‒ especially their own track records.

This year’s October surprise that is getting the biggest play in the media is the revelation that California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman once employed a housekeeper ‒ at $23 an hour ‒ who turned out to be an illegal immigrant. It is great political theater, with activist lawyer Gloria Allred putting her arm protectively around the unhappy-looking woman.

But why anyone should be unhappy at getting $23 an hour for housekeeping is by no means clear. Maybe she is unhappy because Meg Whitman fired her when she learned that her housekeeper was an illegal immigrant, despite false documents that indicated she was legal when she was hired.

What is Meg Whitman supposed to be guilty of? Not being able to tell false documents from real ones? Is that what voters are supposed to use to determine who to vote for as governor of California? A far more important question is whether voters can tell false issues from real ones.

October surprises are especially phony when they are used on behalf of someone with a long track record in government, like Jerry Brown, who has held government jobs ranging from state attorney general to mayor of Oakland to governor of the state.

What did Jerry Brown do the last time he was governor? That ought to tell us a lot more than whether Meg Whitman is a document expert. She is not running for a job as a document expert.

One appointment by Governor Jerry Brown ought to tell us a lot about his ideology. His most famous ‒ or infamous ‒ appointment was making Rose Bird chief justice of the California supreme court.

She over-ruled 64 consecutive death penalty verdicts and upheld none. Apparently no judge or jury could ever give a murderer a trial perfect enough to suit Rose Bird.

To hear Rose Bird and her supporters tell it, she was just “upholding the law.” But, fortunately, the California voters saw right through that pretense, and realized that she was doing just the opposite ‒ imposing her own personal opposition to the death penalty in the guise of interpreting the law. No California chief justice appointee had ever been voted off the bench by the voters before Rose Bird, but she was roundly defeated when 67 percent of the voters voted against her in a confirmation election required by California law.

Two of her like-mind colleagues on the California supreme court were likewise voted off the bench. They, too, were appointed by Governor Jerry Brown.

The question is not whether you are for or against the death penalty. If you don’t like the death penalty, you can vote to repeal it. But it is not the job of judges to deprive the voters of their right to choose the laws they want to live under.

This is part of a much larger arrogant political ideology, in which anointed elites impose their own notions, in utter disregard of the laws passed by the people’s elected representatives.

At one time, Governor Jerry Brown was riding high in the Democratic Party, and was considered a rising prospect for that party’s nomination for President of the United States. Then something happened that told us all what kind of man he was.

There was an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies out in California’s agricultural heartland in the interior valleys. Despite being urged to allow spraying of insecticide out in the valleys, to nip the infestation in the bud, Governor Brown pandered to the environmental extremists and refused.

The net result was that the “Med flies,” as they were called, spread from the valleys out into cities and towns as far west as the San Francisco Bay Area. Faced with a major political disaster, Jerry Brown finally authorized spraying ‒ over a vastly larger area than when he was first asked. That fiasco spared us a Jerry Brown administration in Washington.

No wonder his supporters have sprung an October surprise about Meg Whitman’s housekeeper. They need a distraction from his record.

Some of the longest-serving members of Congress, whose party has overwhelming majorities in both houses, are having far closer election races than they are used to. These include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, not to mention 18-year veteran Senator Barbara Boxer.

Despite their long records, they seem to want to talk about everything except their records. They could tell us why they voted for ObamaCare and huge stimulus bills, without time enough to read them. Instead, they have come up with enough red herrings to stock an aquarium.

One of the big distracting talking points is that the Republicans in Congress have been “the party of No.” Given the overwhelming majorities of the Democrats in both houses, in addition to their control of the White House, whether the Republicans said “yes,” “no” or “maybe” could not stop the Democrats from doing anything they wanted to do.

It should also be noted that the Democrats were in power in Congress before President Obama got to the White House. So “the mess” that he constantly reminds us he “inherited” includes runaway spending by Congressional Democrats, of whom Senator Barack Obama was one of the more prominent big spenders.

Usually, the incumbents can talk about their “experience.” But experience at what? Deception? Earmarks? Reckless spending?

Senator Harry Reid is playing the race card, saying that he can’t see how any Hispanic can vote for Republicans. But this is the same Harry Reid who in 1993, rejected “those who ask us to wink at illegal immigration” and warned against having “the social and cultural makeup” of the country “radically altered” by these immigrants.

In 1993, Senator Reid introduced a bill ‒ the Immigration Stabilization Act ‒ to cut back on all immigration, both legal and illegal.

Senator Reid said: “Our federal wallet is stretched to the limit by illegal aliens getting welfare, food stamps, medical care and other benefits, often without paying taxes.” He said, “Safeguards like welfare and free medical care are in place to boost Americans in need of short-term assistance,” and added: “These programs were not meant to entice freeloaders and scam artists from around the world.”

Today, of course, Senator Reid is singing an entirely different tune. He has what Thorstein Veblen once called a “versatility of convictions.” So do a lot of “experienced” politicians.

Instead of talking about the track records of people who have been wielding power in Washington for years, much of the mainstream follows the scent of the red herrings that have been dragged across their trail and focuses on the personal lives of the candidates who are challenging the incumbents.

Whether it is Meg Whitman’s housekeeper or remarks that Christine O’Donnell made when she was a teenager, or how much money Carly Fiorina made when she was a corporate CEO, the media are right on it ‒ and right off the serious issues about what the incumbents have been doing to this country.

If everyone who made silly remarks when they were teenagers were prevented from being elected, at least half the elective offices in the country would be vacant. And since when is earning a high income in private industry a disqualification for holding public office?

The Obama administration has fewer people with real world experience in the private sector than any other administration in years. Maybe if they had more people with practical experience in the economy, we wouldn’t be in the mess that politicians created.

The big question for the election next month is whether the voters keep their eye on the ball and judge candidates by what policies they advocate or whether they can be thrown off the track by red herrings.

We have already seen in 2008 what can happen when voters fail to pay attention to a presidential candidate’s track record, and let themselves be dazzled by rhetoric, symbolism and media hype. We are losing not only our jobs but our country ‒ and this could be our last chance to stop the Obama-Pelosi-Reid juggernaut.

Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He has published dozens of books on economics, education, race, and other topics. His most recent book is The Housing Boom and Bust, from April 2009.

BY WALTER E WILLIAMS

Many politicians and ‘progressives’ often try to hide their true intentions or lack of knowledge by playing semantics games with the laws of economics.  Let’s see some examples.

One of President Obama’s campaign promises was not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. So here’s my question: If there’s a corporate tax increase either in the form of “cap and trade” or income tax, does it turn out to be a middle-class tax increase? Most people would say no but let’s look at it.

There’s a whole subject area in economics known as tax incidence — namely, who bears the burden of a tax? The first thing that should be recognized is that the burden of a tax is not necessarily borne by the party upon whom it is levied. That is, for example, if a sales tax is levied on gasoline retailers, they don’t bear the full burden of the tax. Part of it is shifted to customers in the form of higher gasoline prices.

Suppose your local politician tells you, as a homeowner, “I’m not going to raise taxes on you! I’m going to raise taxes on your land.” You’d probably tell him that he’s an idiot because land does not pay taxes; only people pay taxes. That means a tax on your land is a tax on you. You say, “Williams, that’s pretty elementary, isn’t it?” Not quite.

What about the politician who tells us that he’s not going to raise taxes on the middle class; instead, he’s going to raise corporate income taxes as means to get rich corporations to pay their rightful share of government?

If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it will have one of three responses, or some combination thereof. One response is to raise the price of its product, so who bears the burden? Another response is to lower dividends; again, who bears the burden? Yet another response is to lay off workers. In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of the tax.

Because corporations have these responses to the imposition of a tax, they are merely government tax collectors. They collect money from people and send it to Washington. Therefore, you should tell that politician, who promises to tax corporations instead of you, that he’s an idiot because corporations, like land, do not pay taxes. Only people pay taxes.

Here’s another tax question, even though it doesn’t sound like it. Which workers receive higher pay: those on a road construction project moving dirt with shovels and wheelbarrows or those moving dirt atop a giant earthmover?

If you said the worker atop the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It’s not because he’s unionized or that construction contractors have a fondness for earthmover operators. It’s because the worker atop the earthmover is working with more capital, thereby making him more productive. Higher productivity means higher wages.

It’s not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation, such as lowering the cost of investing in earthmovers, enables contractors to purchase more of them. Workers will have more capital to work with and as a result enjoy higher wages.

Policies that raise the cost of capital formation such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and corporate taxes, thereby reduce capital formation, and serve neither the interests of workers, investors nor consumers. It does serve the interests of politicians who get more resources to be able to buy votes.

You might wonder how congressmen can get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is ignorance and the anti-business climate promoted in academia and the news media. The more important reason is that prosperity foregone is invisible.

In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today’s level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don’t fight it as much as we should.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored more than 150 publications, including many in scholarly journals, and has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.

BY JOHN STOSSEL

Across time, place, and culture, higher tax rates have always driven society’s producers to leave or go underground.  Why, then, do politicians keep instituting this absurdly counterproductive measure?

Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it’s wrong for the rich to be “given” more money. Sunday’s New York Times carries a cartoon showing Uncle Sam handing money to a fat cat. They just don’t get it.

As I’ve said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some — by force — and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

That’s the moral side of the matter. There’s a practical side, too. Taxes discourage wealth creation. That hurts everyone, the lower end of the income scale most of all. An economy that, through freedom, encourages the production of wealth raises the living standards of lower-income people as well as everyone else.

A free society is not a zero-sum game in which every gain is offset by someone’s loss. As long as government keeps its thumb off the scales, the “makers” who get rich do so by making others better off. (When the government allocates capital or creates barriers to competition, all bets are off.)

Of course, this is not the prevailing view among the intelligentsia. Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill tells me, “Those who have more should pay more.”

But is there a point where they stop producing wealth or leave altogether?

“The rich have always cried wolf like that,” Hill says.

But the wolf is here. Maryland created a special tax on rich people that was supposed to bring in $106 million. Instead, the state lost $257 million.

Former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who is running again for his old job, says: “It reminds me of Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown was always surprised when Lucy pulled the football away. And they’re always surprised in Washington and state capitals when the dollars never come in.”

Some of Maryland’s rich left the state. “They’re out of here. These people aren’t stupid,” Ehrlich says.

New York billionaire Tom Golisano isn’t stupid, either. With $3,000 and one employee, he started a business that processes paychecks for companies. He created 13,000 jobs.

Then New York state hiked the income tax on millionaires.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he says. “Not that I like to throw the number around, but my personal income tax last year would’ve been $13,800 a day. Would you like to write a check for $13,800 a day to a state government, as opposed to moving to another state where there’s no state income tax or very low state income tax?

He established residence in Florida, which has no personal income tax.

Now Gov. David Paterson may have even seen the light.

“We projected that we would get $4 billion, and we actually got well short of it,” he says.

Art Laffer, the economist who has a curve illustrating this point named after him, isn’t surprised.

“It’s just economics,” he says. “People don’t work to pay taxes. People work to get what they can after tax. They’ll change where they earn their income. They’ll change how they earn their income. They’ll change how much they earn, when they receive the income. They’ll change all of those things to minimize taxes.”

We can see it in the statistics. In 1960, federal revenues were 18.6 percent of total output. Over the next 50 years, that percentage has rarely exceeded 20 percent or fallen below 17 percent. As Laffer says, people adjust their activities to the tax burden.

Donald Trump, who knows something about making money, says of course the rich will leave when hit with higher taxes. “I know these people,” he told me. “They’re international people. Whether they live here or live in a place like Switzerland doesn’t really matter to them.”

You haven’t left, I told him.

“I haven’t left yet. … Look, the rich people are going to leave. And other people are going to leave. You’re going to end up with lots of people that don’t produce. And then that’s the spiral. That’s the end.”

And that’s another good reason for us to get on with reducing the size of government.

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. He’s the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.” To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com

BY JACOB SULLUM

Republicans are now pledging to undo our tangled fiscal mess that they are blaming entirely on Democrats. Apparently, the GOP believes that Americans have the collective attention span of a gnat.

In the “Pledge to America” they unveiled last week, House Republicans promise they will “launch a sustained effort to stem the relentless growth in government that has occurred over the past decade.” Who better for the job than the folks who ran the government for most of that time?

If the GOP’s record of fiscal fecklessness were not enough reason to doubt its newfound commitment to curbing “Washington’s irresponsible spending habits,” the pledge’s failure to address entitlement and defense programs would be.

The Republicans say they want to “have a responsible, fact-based conversation with the American people about the scale of the fiscal challenges we face and the urgent action that is required to deal with them.” That’s hard to do when only a small share of the $3.8 trillion budget is open for discussion, and then only in the vaguest terms.

The Pledge to America, which seems to be based on the assumption that America has a short memory, castigates Democrats for “their out-of-control spending spree.” Republicans, you may recall, had a spending spree of their own during George W. Bush’s recently concluded administration, when both discretionary and total spending doubled — nearly 10 times the growth seen during Bill Clinton’s two terms.

In fact, says Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, “President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.”

Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for six of Bush’s eight years, and their fingerprints are all over Bush’s budget busters, including the trillion-dollar wars to replace dictators with democrats in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003, is expected to cost something like $800 billion during its first decade, further darkening Medicare’s already dire fiscal outlook. It passed the Senate with 42 Republican votes and the House with 207.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, which the Republicans now promise to “cancel” because it exemplifies the “bailouts” that have “rightly outraged” the public by “forc(ing) responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior,” received 34 Republican votes in the Senate and 91 in the House. The yeas included House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, Republican Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. — all of whom are pictured in the Pledge to America as models of fiscal rectitude and all of whom also supported the reckless Medicare expansion.

As of last week, however, the Republicans pledge to “make the decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs for today’s seniors and future generations.” Such as? Sorry, that’s all you’re getting before the elections.

“Let’s not get to the potential solutions,” Boehner said in a Fox News interview on Sunday. “When you start down that path, you just invite all kinds of problems.” Aren’t solutions that invite problems what Congress is all about?

Boehner’s insistence that an “adult conversation” about entitlements need not include any discussion of what to do about them suggests a certain lack of seriousness. Likewise the Pledge to America’s complaints about Barack Obama’s “massive Medicare cuts” and its treatment of anything pertaining to “seniors” (one-third of the budget) as a sacred category.

The Republicans think expenditures related to “security” deserve the same exalted status, presumably because a government that is bumbling, wasteful and ineffective in every other endeavor could not possibly display those characteristics when protecting Americans from terrorists.

Yet defense is, among other things, a fiscal issue, consuming a fifth of the budget. The Republicans’ grandiose goal of “bringing certainty to an uncertain world” is inconsistent with their goal of “a smaller, less costly and more accountable government.”

Even if you trust the Republicans when they say “we have a plan” to cut $100 billion from the budget, that amounts to just 8 percent of the current $1.3 trillion deficit. And why trust them? As the Pledge to America warns, “It’s not enough” to “swap out one set of leaders for another.”

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine, and his work appears in the new Reason anthology Choice (BenBella Books). Sullum is a graduate of Cornell University, where he majored in economics and psychology. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.