Category: The Atlasphere

BY THOMAS SOWELL

Many activists complain about the phenomenon of party gridlock.  But a look at history shows that nothing provides more benefits to the people than the division and limitation of power.

Whenever the party that controls the White House does not also control Capitol Hill, political pundits worry that there will be “gridlock” in Washington, so that the government cannot solve the nation’s problems.

Almost never is that fear based on what actually happens when there is divided government, compared to what happens when one party has a monopoly of both legislative and executive branches.

The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, instead of its usual deficits, there was divided government. That was when the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, and Bill Clinton was in the White House. The media called it “the Clinton surplus.”

By the same token, some of the worst laws ever passed were passed when one party had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as being led by their own President of the United States. ObamaCare is a product of the kind of arrogance that so much power breeds.

It was the same story back in the famous “first hundred days” of the New Deal in 1933. The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 clamped down on the American economy the kind of pervasive government control seldom seen outside of totalitarian countries.

It was the ObamaCare of its time, but covering industries right down to local dry cleaners. One man was sent to jail for charging less than the government-specified price for pressing a suit of clothes. This typified the mindset of the New Deal.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. But, before that happened, the N.I.R.A. probably did more to prevent the economy from recovering from the Great Depression than any other law or policy. Even liberal icon John Maynard Keynes said at the time that the N.I.R.A. “probably impedes recovery.”

You cannot tell what effect a law or policy will have by what politicians call it, whether they label it a “recovery” program or a “stimulus” program.

Those who fear gridlock in Washington today implicitly assume that government actions are needed to “solve” the economy’s “problems.” That assumption has been so pervasive over the past 80 years that many people fail to realize that the republic existed for nearly twice that long before the federal government intervened to get the economy out of a recession or depression.

During all that time, no depression ever lasted even half as long as the Great Depression of the 1930s, when first President Hoover and then President Roosevelt intervened.

For most of the history of this country, there was no Federal Reserve System, which was established in 1914 to prevent bank failures and the bad effects of large expansions or contractions of the supply of money and credit. But bank failures in the 1930s exceeded anything ever seen before the Fed was established. So did the contraction of money and credit during the Great Depression.

The seductive notion that some Big Daddy in Washington can solve our problems for us — whether healing the sick, preventing poverty or “growing the economy” — is encouraged by politicians for obvious reasons, and the media echo the idea.

Both in Washington and in the media, there is virtually zero interest in comparing what actually happens when the federal government intervenes in the economy and when it does not.

More than a century and a half of ignoring downturns in the economy never produced a depression as deep or as long as the 1930s depression, with its many federal interventions, first under Herbert Hoover and then under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The unemployment rate was 6.3 percent when the first big intervention took place, during the Hoover administration. It later peaked at 25 percent, but its fluctuations were always in double digits throughout the 1930s, as FDR tried one thing after another. As late as the spring of 1939, nearly a decade after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment hit 20 percent again.

It is not a matter of faith that a market economy can recover on its own. It is a matter of faith that politicians speed recovery. But there is no way that Barack Obama is going to stop intervening in the economy unless he gets stopped. Only gridlock can do that.

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 LARRY ELDER

While many voters express disgust with runaway government spending, this feeling rarely extends to the most costly entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt the United States. Why?

On Nov. 2, 2010, the Republican Party recaptured the majority in the House. In the Senate, Republicans now possess numbers sufficient to sustain a filibuster and stop objectionable legislation from getting to the floor.

Obamalism has now been arrested. Voters rose to say no to the two-year gusher of spending and the staggering increases in the annual deficit and the national debt. Under Obama and the Democratic congressional majority, the national debt, as a percentage of GDP, jumped from 69 percent to a projected 94 percent. Voters said, “Enough!”

Now what?

“Governing isn’t as easy as you think,” said retiring Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash. “Many of you have taken pledges that are contradictory. … You must be honest about the numbers, since our annual deficit now exceeds all discretionary spending combined. If you set as your goal to roll back the size of government, you have an obligation to answer the tough questions and show real courage, not just appeal to ideology. Treat the voters like adults.”

Politicians take contradictory pledges because voters send contradictory signals. Voters oppose tax hikes, even on the so-called rich. They agree that government is too large and understand that the three major drivers of domestic spending — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — grow on automatic pilot and saddle future generations with trillions of dollars in unfunded liability.

But voters, especially older ones, still want to spare this or that program or entitlement from the scalpel. Voters dislike ObamaCare. But a majority finds it perfectly acceptable to mandate that insurance companies take on those with pre-existing illnesses. This, of course, stands the concept of “insurance” on its head by forcing companies to assume known risks rather than just unknown ones.

We need a November 3 Contract with America.

This Contract acknowledges that the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution as a contract that limits the size and scope of the federal government, not as a “living, breathing document” that supports whatever desires voters want and politicians grant.

It challenges voters to face up to the train wreck of entitlement programs, annual deficit, national debt and interest payments on the debt. The Contract reduces government’s size and scope so that we never again jeopardize our prosperity — which threatens our national security by robbing Americans of the resources necessary to defend ourselves against our enemies.

The November 3 Contract with America addresses these issues without raising taxes or cutting benefits for those currently receiving them or who will soon be eligible for them.

I. Sell or lease land. The federal government owns about 700 million acres, more than one-fourth of all land in the U.S. For fiscal year 2007, the government valued its land holdings only at about $1 trillion — but that includes a zero-dollar valuation for much of the acreage because it was never “purchased.” The national debt is approximately $14 trillion. The proceeds from sales/mortgages/leases will fund our current and near-term liabilities and, with other changes, will completely eliminate our debt.

II. Social Security. Workers below the age of 55 shall have the option of placing their retirement contributions in private savings accounts.

III. Medicare. Health care needs of those below the age of 55 shall be addressed with individual, tax-free health savings accounts. From these accounts, people can purchase policies with high deductibles, as we do with auto insurance. Non-emergency matters will be paid for out-of-pocket from the accounts.

IV. Medicaid. Those currently on Medicaid must be grandfathered in, but by a date certain, all federal welfare payments will stop. The needs of the needy will be handled by the states and/or by the unparalleled generosity of the American people.

V. Eliminate, privatize, outsource or sell/lease many federal activities. These include, but are not limited to, Amtrak; the Tennessee Valley Authority; government-operated dams and nuclear power plants; the federal student aid grants and loans; public housing; the Food and Drug Administration; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; the departments of Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development; the Environmental Protection Agency; Freddie Mac; Fannie Mae; the National Institutes of Health; and the Federal Housing Administration.

VI. Repeal laws that violate the principle of federalism, such as wage and hour laws; federal minimum wage; the Clean Air Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; equal pay laws; the Davis-Bacon Act (mandating prevailing union wages for those working under federal contracts); and all federal anti-discrimination laws that apply to the private sector.

VII. Taxes. Eliminate income, corporate, capital gains, dividend and estate taxes. Given the reduced size of government, the limited duties of the federal government as described in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution will be funded, as the Founding Fathers envisioned, with duties and tariffs.

Conclusion:

The Contract extricates the taxpayers from this unsustainable burden of spending and mortgaging our future. To do so without drastically reducing the size of government is like burning the living room furniture to keep warm. There is no “solution,” only trade-offs.

Let’s begin the conversation, and let it lead to action.

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 JACOB SULLUM

California is now considering a blatantly unconstitutional law that blocks the sale of ‘offensively violent’ video games to minors. But who gets to be the arbiter of taste in this matter? Consider the implications.

Does a zombie count as “an image of a human being”? What about an android or a shape-shifting alien? If his arm regenerates when you hack it off, does that still amount to “maiming”? Are you “killing” him if he comes back to life after you incinerate him with a flamethrower?

These are a few of the questions raised by California’s law against selling “offensively violent” video games to minors. But the most important question is this: Should the Supreme Court, which considered arguments for and against the law on Tuesday, create an exception to the First Amendment at the behest of moral crusaders who, like critics of dime novels, motion pictures, and comic books in earlier generations, see a newly popular medium as an intolerable threat to the youth of America?

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in violent movies that have inspired several violent video games, nevertheless argues that the Court should uphold the law (which he proudly signed) by extending the logic of a 1968 decision that allowed states to impose age restrictions on sales of pornography. But that ruling was based on the obscenity doctrine, which holds that certain kinds of sexual material are beyond the scope of the First Amendment even for adults.

The Court has never taken that position with respect to violence. Furthermore, as two industry groups note in their challenge to California’s law, “Depictions of violence, unlike obscenity, have played a longstanding and celebrated role in expression properly consumed by minors, from Greek myths to the Bible to ?Star Wars? and Harry Potter.”

Although California’s law applies only to video games, the principle espoused by its defenders would authorize censorship of other media as well ‒ a point that Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who ordinarily do not agree on much, both made in questions on Tuesday. There is no constitutional basis for distinguishing between video games, a form of artistic expression that tells interactive stories, and books, movies, or TV shows.

The evidence that California cites to support a video game exception has failed to persuade any of the federal appeals courts that have considered this issue. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit noted when it overturned California’s law last year: “Nearly all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology as they relate to the state’s claimed interest. None of the research establishes or suggests a causal link between minors playing violent video games and actual psychological or neurological harm.”

In any event, the research does not support the distinctions California wants to draw, since it implicates TV shows as well as video games and cartoonish as well as realistic violence. The trade groups challenging the law note that the state’s main expert witness “admits that even viewing a picture of a gun has the same aggressive effect as playing a violent video game,” while “one of his fellow researchers claims to find nearly identical links between aggressive behavior and reading violent passages in the Bible.”

Although California says it is only “reinforcing parents’ authority,” there is little evidence that parents need the state’s help. They already can use the industry’s rating system, backed up by parental controls built into game consoles, to regulate the games their children play.

Unlike the industry’s age-based ratings, California’s law treats 17-year-olds the same as preschoolers. Its vague standards would encourage the industry to err on the side of labeling games as off-limits to teenagers, while its penalties would discourage stores from stocking such games, thereby affecting adults as well as minors.

Despite the far-reaching implications of the constitutional license California seeks, it complains that it cannot reasonably be expected to supply “empirical proof of how expressive material impacts such nebulous concepts as one’s ethics or morals.” It could avoid this problem if it stopped using such nebulous concepts to justify censorship.

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.