Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom
This is a speech that is well worth reading in it's entirity.
ECONOMIC FREEDOM, HUMAN FREEDOM, POLITICAL FREEDOM, Address by Milton Friedman.
I appreciate that very much, Chuck, but I don't want you to give these good people the impression that Ken Galbraith is all bad. Rose and I were in India in the early 1960s when he was ambassador to India. I wrote Ken to see if I could visit him when we went to New Delhi. He wrote back inviting us to lunch at the embassy, adding that, as I knew, he didn't agree with my ideas but they would do less harm in India than anywhere else he could think of.
In 1962, when our book Capitalism and Freedom was published, the general intellectual climate of opinion was very differ ent than it has since become. That book was not reviewed by a single major publication in the United States; not by Newsweek or Time, the New York Times or any other major newspaper. It was reviewed only in professional economic journals and in The Economistof London. It sold fewer than 10,000 copies in the first yearafterpublication, but since then it has sold well over half a million copies without any reviews whatsoever.
The situation was very different in 1980, as Chuck indicated, when our Free to Choose appeared. The difference was not because Free to Choose is a better book; it is not. In fact, l believe that Capitalism and Freedom is a better book. The differ ence was because the climate of opinion had changed. In the 1950s and 1960s, socialist thinking was dominant; those of us who rejected that view were regarded as fringe eccentrics. Since then, there has been a reaction against such socialist thinking and a recognition of the importance of private enterprise and of private property. Unfortunately, as I shall note later, the reaction has been more in the climate of opinion than in practice. Talk and rhetoric have been one thing; actual practice has been very different.
What I want to talk about tonight is the relationship among economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom. In Capitalism and Freedom, I wrote: "Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity" (p. 9). I went on to point out that "History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition" (p. 10).
Both of those statements remain valid today, thirty years later. Over the centuries many nonfree societies have relied on capitalism and yet have enjoyed neither human nor political freedom. Ancient Greece was fundamentally a capitalist society, but it had slaves. The U.S. South before the Civil War is another example of a society with slaves that relied predominantly on private property. Currently, South Africa has relied predominantly on private markets and private enterprise, yet it has not been a free society. Many Latin American countries are in the same position. They have been ruled by an oligarchy, and yet they have employed primarily private markets. So it is clear that capitalism is not a sufficient condition for human or political freedom, though it is a necessary condition.
While experience has not contradicted the statements I made, it has persuaded me that the dichotomy I stressed between economic freedom and political freedom is too simple. Even at this broad level, l am persuaded that it is important to con sider a trichotomy: economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom.
The example that persuaded me that the relationship was less simple than the one I had sketched in Capitalism and Freedom is Hong Kong as it developed in the 1950s and especially as it has developed in the period since CapitalismandFreedomwaswritten. Hong Kong has beenthough unfortunately as the Mainland communist regime takes over it will not remainone of the freest, if not the freest, of countries in the world in every respect but one. Hong Kong has had an extraordinary degree of economic freedom: no tariffs and no import or export quotas, except as we in our wisdom have forced such quotas on Hong Kong in order to protect our industries from its efficiency. (It is truly absurd for the United States to force Hong Kong to limit the output of textiles so that our textile industry will not be bothered. That is no way for a great nation to behave.) Taxes have been very low, 10 to 12% of the national income. (In the United States today, government spending is 43% of the national income.) There are few regulations on business, no price controls, no wage controls.
Hong Kong's completely free economy has achieved marvels. Here is a place with no resources except a magnificent harbor, a small piece of land, an island offs peninsula, a population of 500,000afterWorldWar 11 that has grown to a population close to six millionover ten times as large and at the same time, the standard of life has multiplied more than fourfold. It has been one of the most rapidly growing countries in the world, a remarkable example of what free markets can do if left unre stricted. I may say that Hong Kong is not a place where most of us would want to live. It is not a place where most of the people there want to live. It is very crowded; it is a very small area. If other places would take them, the people would love to go. However, the remarkable thing is that under such adverse circumstances they have done so well.
In addition to economic freedom, Hong Kong has a great deal of human freedom. I have visited many times and I have never seen any evidence of suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or any other human freedom that we regard as important.
However, in one respect Hong Kong has no freedom whatsoever. It has no political freedom. The Chinese who fled to Hong Kong were not free people. They were refugees from the communist regime and they themselves had been citizens of a regime that was very far from a free society. They did not choose freedom; it was imposed on them. It was imposed on them by outside forces. Hong Kong was governed by officials of the British Colonial Office, not by selfchosen representatives. In the past couple of years, in trying to persuade the world that Britain has not done a dastardly deed in turning Hong Kong over to the communists, the British administration has tried to institute a legislative council and to give some evidence of political representation. However, in general, over the whole of that period, there has been essentially no direct political representa tion.
That brings out an enormous paradox, the one that as I said caused me to rethink the relationship among different kinds of freedom. The British colonies that were given their political freedom after World War II have for the most part destroyed the other freedoms. Similarly, at the very time officials of the British Colonial Office were imposing economic freedom on Hong Kong, at home in Britain a socialist government was imposing socialism on Britain. Perhaps they sent the backward people out to Hong Kong to get rid of them. It shows how complex the relationship is between economic freedom and political freedom, and human freedom and political freedom. Indeed, it suggests that while economic freedom facilitates political freedom, political freedom, once established, has a tendency to destroy economic freedom.
Consider the example that I believe is most fascinating, India. It was given its political freedom by Britain over forty years ago. It has continued, with rare exceptions, to be a political democracy. It has continued to be a country where people are governed by representatives chosen at the ballot box, but it has had very little economic freedom and very limited human freedom. On the economic side, it has had extensive controls over exports and imports, over foreign exchange, over prices, over wages. There have been some reforms in the past year or so, but until recently you could not establish any kind of enterprise without getting a license from the government. The effect of such centralized control of the economy has been that the standard of life for the great bulk of the Indians is no higher today than it was forty years ago when India was given its political freedom.
The situation is even more extreme if you consider that Hong Kong, which I started with, got zero foreign aid during its growth. India has been a major recipient; it got some $55 billion of foreign aid over the past forty years. It is tempting to say that India failed to grow despite foreign aid. I believe that it was the other way: in part, India failed to grow because of foreign aid. Foreign aid provided the resources that enabled the government to impose the kind of economic policies it did.
What is true for India is true much more broadly. Foreign aid has done far more harm to the countries we have given it to than it has done good. Why? Because in every case, foreign aid has strengthened governments that were already too power ful. Mozambique, Tanzania, and many another African country testify to the same effect as India.
To come back to Hong Kong, the only reason it did not get its political freedom is because the local people did not want political freedom. They knew very well that that meant the Chinese communists would take them over. In a curious way, the existence of the Chinese communistgovernment was the major protection of the economic and human freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed. Quite a paradoxical situation.
Hong Kong is by no means unique. Wherever the market plays a significant role, whether you have political freedom or not, human freedoms are more widespread and more extensive than where the market does not play any role. The totalitarian countries completely suppressed the market and atso had the least human freedom.
Another fascinating example that brings out the complexity of the situation is Chile. Chile, as you know, was first taken over by Salvador Allende and a socialist group. Allende came into power as a result of an election in which no one of the three major parties was able to get a majority, and subsequent political maneuvering, along with his promise to abide by the constitution. No sooner in office, however, than he reneged on his promise and proceeded to try to convert Chile into a fullfledged communist state. The important thing for my purpose is what happened after Allende's policies provoked the military to overthrow him and set up a military junta led by General Pinochet to run the country.
Almost all military juntas are adverse to economicfreedom for obvious reasons. The military is organized from the top down: the general tells the colonel, the colonel tells the captain, the captain tells the lieutenant, and so on. A market economy is organized from the bottom up: the consumer tells the retailer, the retailer tells the wholesaler, the wholesaler tells the pro ducer, and the producer delivers. The principles underlying a military organization are precisely the reverse of those underly ing a market organization.
Pinochet and the military in Chile were led to adopt freemarket principles after they took over only because they did not have any other choice. They tried for a while to have military officers run the economy. However, inflation doubled in the first eight or nine months of their regime. When rates of inflation reached 700 to 1,000% they had to do something. By accident, the only group of economists in Chile who were not tainted by a connection with the Allende socialists were the socalled Chicago boys. They were called Chicago boys because they consisted almost entirely of economists who had studied at the University of Chicago and had received their Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago. They were untainted because the University of Chicago was almost the only institution in the United States at the time in which the economics department had a strong group of freemarket economists. So in desperation Pinochet turned to them.
I have nothing good to say about the political regime that Pinochet imposed. It was a terrible political regime. The real miracle of Chile is not how well it has done economically; the real miracle of Chile is that a military junta was willing to go against its principles and support a freemarket regime designed by principled believers in a free market. The results were spectacular. Inflation came down sharply. After a transitory period of recession and low output that is unavoidable in the course of reversing a strong inflation, output started to expand, and ever since, the Chilean economy has performed better than any other South American economy.
The economic development and the recovery produced by economic freedom in turn promoted the public's desire for a greater degree of political freedom exactly what happened, if I may jump from one continent to another, in China after 1976 when the regime introduced a greater measure of economic freedom in one sector of the economy, agriculture, with great success. That, too, generated pressure for more political freedom and was one of the major factors underlying the dissatisfaction that led to Tiananmen Square.
In Chile, the drive for political freedom, that was generated by ecoriomic freedom and the resulting economic success, ultimately resulted in a referendum that introduced political democracy. Now, at long last, Chile has all three things: political freedom, human freedom and economic freedom. Chile will continue to be an interesting experiment to watch to see whetheritcan keep all three orwhether, nowthat it has politicalfreedom,that political freedom will tend to be used to destroy or reduce economic freedom.
In order to understand the paradox that economic freedom produces political freedom but political freedom may destroy economic freedom, it is important to recognize that free private markets have a far broader meaning than the usual restric tion to narrowly economic transactions. Literally, a market is simply a place where people meet, where people get together to make deals with one another. Every country has a market. At its most extreme totalitarian stage Russia had a market. But there are different kinds of markets. A private market is one in which the people making deals are making them either on their own behalf or as agents for identifiable individuals rather than as agents of governments. In the Russian market, the market existed and deals were being made all over the lot, but people were dealing with one another not on their own behalf, not as representatives for other identifiable individuals, but supposedly as agents for the government, for the public at large. A private market is very different from a government market. In a strictly private market, all the deals are between individu als acting in their own interest or as agents for other identifiable individuals.
Finally, you can have a private market, but it may or may not be a free market. The question is whether all the deals are strictly voluntary. In a free private market, all the deals are strictly voluntary. Many of the cases of private markets that I cited before were not cases of free private markets. You have a private market in many of the Latin American countries, but they are not free private markets. You have a private market in India, but it is not a free private market because many voluntary deals are not permitted. An individual can deal with anotherto exchange a good or service only if he has the permission of the government. I may say a completely free private market exists nowhere in the world. Hong Kong is perhaps the closest approximation to it. However, almost everywhere what you have, at best, is a partly free, largely hampered, private market.
A free private market is a mechanism for achieving voluntary cooperation among people. It applies to any human activity, not simply to economic transactions. We are speaking a language. Where did that language come from? Did some government entity construct the language and instruct people to use it? Was there some government commission that developed the rules of grammar? No, the language we speak developed through a free private market. People communicated with one another, they wanted to talk with one another, the words they used gradually came to be one thing rather than another, and the gram mar came to be one thing rather than another entirely as a result of free voluntary exchange.
Take another example, science. How did we develop the complicated structure of physics, economics, what will you? Again, it was developed and continues to develop as a result of a free private market in which scientists communicate with one another, exchange information with one another, because both parties to any exchange want to benefit.
A characteristic feature of a free private market is that all parties to a transaction believe that they are going to be better off by that transaction. It is not a zero sum game in which some can benefit only at the expense of others. It is a situation in which everybody thinks he is going to be better off.
A free private market is a mechanism for enabling a complex structure of cooperation to arise as an unintended consequence of Adam Smith's invisible hand, without any deliberate design. A f ree private market involves the absence of coercion. People deal with one another voluntarily, not because somebody tells them to or forces them to. It does not follow that the people who engage in these deals like one another, or know one another, or have any interest in one another. They may hate one another. Everyone of us, everyday without recognizing it, engages in deals with people all over the world whom we do not know and who do not know us. No super planning agency is telling them to produce something for us. They may be of a different religion, a different color, a different race. The farmer who grows wheat is not interested in whether it is going to be bought by somebody who is black or white, somebody who is Catholic or Protestant; and the person who buys the wheat is not concerned about whether the person who grew it was white or black, Catholic or Protestant. So the essence of a free private market is that it is a situation in which everybody deals with one another because he or she believes he or she will be better off.
The essence of human freedom as of afree private market, is freedom of people to make their own decisions so long as they do not prevent anybody else from doing the same thing. That makes clear, l think, why free private markets are so closely related to human freedom. It is the only mechanism that permits a complex interrelated society to be organized from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, it also makes clear why free societies are so rare. Free societies restrain power. They make it very hard for bad people to do harm, but they also make it very hard for good people to do good. Implicitly or explicitly, most opponents of freedom believe that they know what is good for other people better than other people know for themselves, and they want the power to make people do what is really good for them.
The recent absolutely remarkable phenomenon of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe raises in acute form the issues that we have been discussing. There is much talk in those countries about moving to a free market, but so far very limited success. In the past, free markets have developed in all sorts of waysout of feudalism, out of military juntas, out of autocracyand mostly they have developed by accident rather than by design. It was a pure accident that Hong Kong achieved a free market. Insofar as anyone designed it, it was the colonial officials who were sent there; but it was a pure accident that they were favorable to, or at least not hostile to, a free market. It was an accident that a free market developed in the United States, nothing natural about it. We might very well have gone down a very different road. We started to go down a very different road in the 1830s when there was widespread governmental activity in the building of canals, in the building of tollways, and the taking over of banksthere were state banks in Ohio, lilinois, and so on. What happened is that in the Panic of 1837 they all went broke, and that destroyed people's belief that the way to run a country was by government. That had a great deal to do with the subsequent widespread belief that small government was the best government.
While free societies have developed by accident in many different ways, there is so far no example of a totalitarian country that has successfully converted to a free society. That is why what is going on in Eastern Europe is so exciting. We are witnessing something that we have not seen before. We know and they know what needs to be done. It is very simple. I tell the people in Eastern Europe when I see them that I can tell them what to do in three words: privatize, privatize, privatize. The problem is to have the political will to do so, and to do so promptly. It is going to be exciting to see whether they can do so.
However, the point that impresses me now and that I want to emphasize is that the problem is not only for them but for us. They have as much to teach us as we have to teach them. What was their problem under communism? Too big, too intrusive, too powerful a government. I ask you, what is our problem in the United States today? We have a relatively free system. This is a great country and has a great deal of freedom, but we are losing our freedom. We are living on our capital in considerable measure. This country was built up during 150 years and more in which government played a very small role. As late as 1929, total government spending in the United States never exceeded about 12% of the national incomeabout the same fraction as in Hong Kong in recent years. Federal government spending was about 3 to 4% of the national income except at the time of the Civil War and World War I. Half of that went for the military and half for everything else. State and local governments spent about twice as much. Again, local governments spent more than state governments. In the period between then and now, the situation has changed drastically. Total government spending, as I said, is 43% of national income, and twothirds of that is federal.
Moreover, in addition to what government spends directly, it exercises extensive control over the deals that people can make in the private market. It prevents you f rom buyi ng sugar in the cheapest market; it forces you to pay twice the world price for sugar. It forces enterprises to meet all sorts of requirements about wages, hours, antipollution standards, and so on and on. Many of these may be good, but they are government dictation of how the resources shall be used. To put it in one word that should be familiar to us by now, it is socialist.
The United States today is more than 50% socialist in terms of the fraction of our resources that are controlled by the govern ment. Fortunately, socialism is so inefficient that it does not control 50% of our lives. Fortunately, most of that is wasted. People worry about government waste; I don't. I just shudder at what would happen to freedom in this country if the govern ment were efficient in spending our money. The really fascinating thing is that our private sector has been so effective, so efficient, that it has been able to produce a standard of life that is the envy of the rest of the world on the basis of less than half the resources available to all of us.
The major problems that face this country all derive from too much socialism. If you consider our educational system at the elementary and secondary level, government spending per pupil has more than tripled over the past thirty years in real terms after allowing for inflation, yet test scores keep declining, dropout rates are high, and functional illiteracy is widespread. Why should that be a surprise? Schooling at the elementary and secondary level is the largest socialist enterprise in the United States next to the military. Now why should we be better at socialism than the Russians? In fact, they ought to be better; they have had more practice at it. If you consider medical care, which is another major problem now, total spending on medical care has gone from 4% of the national income to 13%, and more than half of that increase has been in the form of government
spending. Costs have multiplied and it is reasonably clear that output has not gone up in anything like the same ratio. Our automobile industry can produce all the cars anybody wants to drive and is prepared to pay for. They do not seem to have any difficulty, but our government cannot produce the roads for us to drive on. The aviation industry can produce the planes, the airlines can get the pilots, but the government somehow cannot provide the landing strips and the air traffic controllers. I challenge anybody to name a major problem in the United States that does not derive from excessive govern ment.
Crime has been going up, our prisons are overcrowded, our inner cities are becoming unlivable all as a consequence of good intentions gone awry, the good intentions in this case being to prevent the misuse of drugs. The results: very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims. The harm which is being done by that program is far greater than any conceivable good. And the harm is not being done only at home. What business do we have destroying other countries such as Colombia because we cannot enforce our laws?
It is hard to be optimistic about how successful we can be in preserving our relatively free system. The collapse of the com munist states in Eastern Europe was the occasion for a great deal of selfcongratulation on our part. It introduced an element of complacency and smugness. We all said, " Oh my, how good we are! See, we must be doing everything right." But we did not learn the lesson that they had to teach us, and that lesson is that government has very real functions, but if it wanders beyond those functions and goes too far, it tends to destroy human and economic freedom.
I am nonetheless a longterm optimist. I believe that the United States is a great country and that our problems do not arise from the people as such. They arise from the structure of our government. We are being misgoverned in all these areas but not because of bad motives or bad people. The people who run our government are the same kind of people as the people outside it. We mislead ourselves if we think we are going to correct the situation by electing the right people to government. We will elect the right people and when they get to Washington they will do the wrong things. You and I would; I am not saying that there is anything special about them.
The important point is that we in our private lives and they in their governmental livesareall moved by the same incentive: topromote ourown selfinterest. ArmenAlchianonce made averyimportantcomment. He said, "You know, there is one thing you can trust everybody to do. You can trust everybody to put his interest above yours." That goes for those of us in the private sector; that goes for people in the government sector. The difference between the two is not in the people; it is not in the incentives. It is in what it is in the selfinterest for different people to do. In the private economy, so long as we keep a free private market, one party to a deal can only benefit if the other party also benefits. There is no way in which you can satisfy your needs at the expense of somebody else. In the government market, there is another recourse. If you start a program that is a failure and you are in the private market, the only way you can keep it going is by digging into your own pocket. That is your bottom line. However, if you are in the government, you have another recourse. With perfectly good intentions and good will nobody likes to say "I was wrong"you can say, "Oh, the only reason it is a failure is because we haven't done enough. The only reason the drug program is a failure is because we haven't spent enough money on it." And it does not have to be your own money. You have a very different bottom line. If you are persuasive enough, or if you have enough control over power, you can increase spending on your program at the expense of the taxpayer. That is why a private project that is a failure is closed down while a government project that is a failure is expanded.
The only way we are really going to change things is by changing the political structure. The most hopeful thing I see on that side is the great public pressure at the moment for term limits. That would be a truly fundamental change.
I want to close on a slightly optimistic note. About 200 years ago, an English newspaper wrote: "There are 775,300,000 people in the World. Of these, arbitrary governments command 741,800,000 and the free ones ... Only 33 1/2 million... On the whole, slaves are three and twenty times more numerous than men enjoying, in any tolerable degree, the rights of human nature" [cited in Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p.9]. I know of no such precise estimate for the present, but I made a rough estimate on the basis of the freedom surveys of Freedom House. I estimate that, while slaves still greatly outnumber free people, the ratio has fallen in the past two centuries from 23 to 1 to about 3 to 1. We are still very far from our goal of a completely free world, but, on the scale of historical time, that is amazing progressmore in the past two centuries than in the prior two millennia. Let's hope and work to make sure that that keeps up. Thank you.
source:
"Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom"
by Milton Friedman
Delivered November 1, 1991
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Introduction of Milton Friedman by Charles W. Baird, Director.
In 1963 I was an undergraduate economics major in a private university in Massachusetts. In a small seminar class I was assigned to read a new book by Milton Friedman, Capitalism & Freedom, and a 1958 book by John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, which expressed contrary views. My task was to write an essay defending Galbraith against Friedman. I got an "A" on that assignment.
But, in the fullness of time, I made my way to UCLA and the tutelage of Armen Alchian. I came to appreciate the wisdom of Milton Friedman. Moreover, judging from a lecture Galbraith gave at Berkeley just last month, even he is beginning to see the light.
Professor Friedman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976 "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."
He was the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago from 1962 1977. He is now the Emeritus holder of that chair. Since 1977, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institu tion.
Professor Friedman was the founder, and chief proponent of the Chicago School of monetary economicsaka., monetarism. I can recall during the 1960s that the great debate in macroeconomics, set off by Friedman & Schwartz' monumental Monetary History of the U.S., was between the Keynesians and the Monetarists. Which was more stable: the Keynesian multiplier or, as Friedman would have it, the velocity of circulation of money? Most economists today would agree that Friedman and company had the better arguments and the better evidence.
Professor Friedman is one of the most versatile members of the profession. His 1953 article, "The Methodology of Positive Economics," is still required reading in almost every class in economic theory. It is the starting point for all discussions of what separates good economics from bad economics. In addition to methodology and macroeconomics, he has made significant contributions in the areas of economic history, statistics, international finance, risk and insurance, and microeconomic theory. He is one of the most cited economists of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Professor Friedman is a founding member and a past president of the Mont Pelerin Societyan international organization of individuals who share a dedication to the principles of free markets and limited government. Without doubt, Milton Friedman is the best known, and most widely respected, freemarket economist in the entire world.
The three books which he coauthored with Rose Friedman, are among the best nontechnical defenses of economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom ever written by anyone. Capitalism & Freedom (1962) set forth the case for market liberalism at a time when almost everyone accepted the premises of the welfare and regulatorystate as beyond reproach. Free to Choose (1980), was the best selling nonfiction book in the United States for the year 1980, and it was translated into most major languages. It was based on a tenpart television series of the same name. Tyranny of the Status auo (1984) was also complemented by a threepart television series of the same name in which Milton Friedman discussed a broad range of topics with seven university students of widely varying views.
Milton Friedman is one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He is unsurpassed as an academic teacher, formidable as a debater, persuasive as a public policy analyst, and pathbreaking as a scholar and scientist. There simply could not be a more appropriate person to deliver the Smith Center Inaugural Lecture.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Milton Friedman.
Charles W. Baird, Director
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ECONOMIC FREEDOM, HUMAN FREEDOM, POLITICAL FREEDOM, Address by Milton Friedman.
I appreciate that very much, Chuck, but I don't want you to give these good people the impression that Ken Galbraith is all bad. Rose and I were in India in the early 1960s when he was ambassador to India. I wrote Ken to see if I could visit him when we went to New Delhi. He wrote back inviting us to lunch at the embassy, adding that, as I knew, he didn't agree with my ideas but they would do less harm in India than anywhere else he could think of.
In 1962, when our book Capitalism and Freedom was published, the general intellectual climate of opinion was very differ ent than it has since become. That book was not reviewed by a single major publication in the United States; not by Newsweek or Time, the New York Times or any other major newspaper. It was reviewed only in professional economic journals and in The Economistof London. It sold fewer than 10,000 copies in the first yearafterpublication, but since then it has sold well over half a million copies without any reviews whatsoever.
The situation was very different in 1980, as Chuck indicated, when our Free to Choose appeared. The difference was not because Free to Choose is a better book; it is not. In fact, l believe that Capitalism and Freedom is a better book. The differ ence was because the climate of opinion had changed. In the 1950s and 1960s, socialist thinking was dominant; those of us who rejected that view were regarded as fringe eccentrics. Since then, there has been a reaction against such socialist thinking and a recognition of the importance of private enterprise and of private property. Unfortunately, as I shall note later, the reaction has been more in the climate of opinion than in practice. Talk and rhetoric have been one thing; actual practice has been very different.
What I want to talk about tonight is the relationship among economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom. In Capitalism and Freedom, I wrote: "Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity" (p. 9). I went on to point out that "History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition" (p. 10).
Both of those statements remain valid today, thirty years later. Over the centuries many nonfree societies have relied on capitalism and yet have enjoyed neither human nor political freedom. Ancient Greece was fundamentally a capitalist society, but it had slaves. The U.S. South before the Civil War is another example of a society with slaves that relied predominantly on private property. Currently, South Africa has relied predominantly on private markets and private enterprise, yet it has not been a free society. Many Latin American countries are in the same position. They have been ruled by an oligarchy, and yet they have employed primarily private markets. So it is clear that capitalism is not a sufficient condition for human or political freedom, though it is a necessary condition.
While experience has not contradicted the statements I made, it has persuaded me that the dichotomy I stressed between economic freedom and political freedom is too simple. Even at this broad level, l am persuaded that it is important to con sider a trichotomy: economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom.
The example that persuaded me that the relationship was less simple than the one I had sketched in Capitalism and Freedom is Hong Kong as it developed in the 1950s and especially as it has developed in the period since CapitalismandFreedomwaswritten. Hong Kong has beenthough unfortunately as the Mainland communist regime takes over it will not remainone of the freest, if not the freest, of countries in the world in every respect but one. Hong Kong has had an extraordinary degree of economic freedom: no tariffs and no import or export quotas, except as we in our wisdom have forced such quotas on Hong Kong in order to protect our industries from its efficiency. (It is truly absurd for the United States to force Hong Kong to limit the output of textiles so that our textile industry will not be bothered. That is no way for a great nation to behave.) Taxes have been very low, 10 to 12% of the national income. (In the United States today, government spending is 43% of the national income.) There are few regulations on business, no price controls, no wage controls.
Hong Kong's completely free economy has achieved marvels. Here is a place with no resources except a magnificent harbor, a small piece of land, an island offs peninsula, a population of 500,000afterWorldWar 11 that has grown to a population close to six millionover ten times as large and at the same time, the standard of life has multiplied more than fourfold. It has been one of the most rapidly growing countries in the world, a remarkable example of what free markets can do if left unre stricted. I may say that Hong Kong is not a place where most of us would want to live. It is not a place where most of the people there want to live. It is very crowded; it is a very small area. If other places would take them, the people would love to go. However, the remarkable thing is that under such adverse circumstances they have done so well.
In addition to economic freedom, Hong Kong has a great deal of human freedom. I have visited many times and I have never seen any evidence of suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or any other human freedom that we regard as important.
However, in one respect Hong Kong has no freedom whatsoever. It has no political freedom. The Chinese who fled to Hong Kong were not free people. They were refugees from the communist regime and they themselves had been citizens of a regime that was very far from a free society. They did not choose freedom; it was imposed on them. It was imposed on them by outside forces. Hong Kong was governed by officials of the British Colonial Office, not by selfchosen representatives. In the past couple of years, in trying to persuade the world that Britain has not done a dastardly deed in turning Hong Kong over to the communists, the British administration has tried to institute a legislative council and to give some evidence of political representation. However, in general, over the whole of that period, there has been essentially no direct political representa tion.
That brings out an enormous paradox, the one that as I said caused me to rethink the relationship among different kinds of freedom. The British colonies that were given their political freedom after World War II have for the most part destroyed the other freedoms. Similarly, at the very time officials of the British Colonial Office were imposing economic freedom on Hong Kong, at home in Britain a socialist government was imposing socialism on Britain. Perhaps they sent the backward people out to Hong Kong to get rid of them. It shows how complex the relationship is between economic freedom and political freedom, and human freedom and political freedom. Indeed, it suggests that while economic freedom facilitates political freedom, political freedom, once established, has a tendency to destroy economic freedom.
Consider the example that I believe is most fascinating, India. It was given its political freedom by Britain over forty years ago. It has continued, with rare exceptions, to be a political democracy. It has continued to be a country where people are governed by representatives chosen at the ballot box, but it has had very little economic freedom and very limited human freedom. On the economic side, it has had extensive controls over exports and imports, over foreign exchange, over prices, over wages. There have been some reforms in the past year or so, but until recently you could not establish any kind of enterprise without getting a license from the government. The effect of such centralized control of the economy has been that the standard of life for the great bulk of the Indians is no higher today than it was forty years ago when India was given its political freedom.
The situation is even more extreme if you consider that Hong Kong, which I started with, got zero foreign aid during its growth. India has been a major recipient; it got some $55 billion of foreign aid over the past forty years. It is tempting to say that India failed to grow despite foreign aid. I believe that it was the other way: in part, India failed to grow because of foreign aid. Foreign aid provided the resources that enabled the government to impose the kind of economic policies it did.
What is true for India is true much more broadly. Foreign aid has done far more harm to the countries we have given it to than it has done good. Why? Because in every case, foreign aid has strengthened governments that were already too power ful. Mozambique, Tanzania, and many another African country testify to the same effect as India.
To come back to Hong Kong, the only reason it did not get its political freedom is because the local people did not want political freedom. They knew very well that that meant the Chinese communists would take them over. In a curious way, the existence of the Chinese communistgovernment was the major protection of the economic and human freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed. Quite a paradoxical situation.
Hong Kong is by no means unique. Wherever the market plays a significant role, whether you have political freedom or not, human freedoms are more widespread and more extensive than where the market does not play any role. The totalitarian countries completely suppressed the market and atso had the least human freedom.
Another fascinating example that brings out the complexity of the situation is Chile. Chile, as you know, was first taken over by Salvador Allende and a socialist group. Allende came into power as a result of an election in which no one of the three major parties was able to get a majority, and subsequent political maneuvering, along with his promise to abide by the constitution. No sooner in office, however, than he reneged on his promise and proceeded to try to convert Chile into a fullfledged communist state. The important thing for my purpose is what happened after Allende's policies provoked the military to overthrow him and set up a military junta led by General Pinochet to run the country.
Almost all military juntas are adverse to economicfreedom for obvious reasons. The military is organized from the top down: the general tells the colonel, the colonel tells the captain, the captain tells the lieutenant, and so on. A market economy is organized from the bottom up: the consumer tells the retailer, the retailer tells the wholesaler, the wholesaler tells the pro ducer, and the producer delivers. The principles underlying a military organization are precisely the reverse of those underly ing a market organization.
Pinochet and the military in Chile were led to adopt freemarket principles after they took over only because they did not have any other choice. They tried for a while to have military officers run the economy. However, inflation doubled in the first eight or nine months of their regime. When rates of inflation reached 700 to 1,000% they had to do something. By accident, the only group of economists in Chile who were not tainted by a connection with the Allende socialists were the socalled Chicago boys. They were called Chicago boys because they consisted almost entirely of economists who had studied at the University of Chicago and had received their Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago. They were untainted because the University of Chicago was almost the only institution in the United States at the time in which the economics department had a strong group of freemarket economists. So in desperation Pinochet turned to them.
I have nothing good to say about the political regime that Pinochet imposed. It was a terrible political regime. The real miracle of Chile is not how well it has done economically; the real miracle of Chile is that a military junta was willing to go against its principles and support a freemarket regime designed by principled believers in a free market. The results were spectacular. Inflation came down sharply. After a transitory period of recession and low output that is unavoidable in the course of reversing a strong inflation, output started to expand, and ever since, the Chilean economy has performed better than any other South American economy.
The economic development and the recovery produced by economic freedom in turn promoted the public's desire for a greater degree of political freedom exactly what happened, if I may jump from one continent to another, in China after 1976 when the regime introduced a greater measure of economic freedom in one sector of the economy, agriculture, with great success. That, too, generated pressure for more political freedom and was one of the major factors underlying the dissatisfaction that led to Tiananmen Square.
In Chile, the drive for political freedom, that was generated by ecoriomic freedom and the resulting economic success, ultimately resulted in a referendum that introduced political democracy. Now, at long last, Chile has all three things: political freedom, human freedom and economic freedom. Chile will continue to be an interesting experiment to watch to see whetheritcan keep all three orwhether, nowthat it has politicalfreedom,that political freedom will tend to be used to destroy or reduce economic freedom.
In order to understand the paradox that economic freedom produces political freedom but political freedom may destroy economic freedom, it is important to recognize that free private markets have a far broader meaning than the usual restric tion to narrowly economic transactions. Literally, a market is simply a place where people meet, where people get together to make deals with one another. Every country has a market. At its most extreme totalitarian stage Russia had a market. But there are different kinds of markets. A private market is one in which the people making deals are making them either on their own behalf or as agents for identifiable individuals rather than as agents of governments. In the Russian market, the market existed and deals were being made all over the lot, but people were dealing with one another not on their own behalf, not as representatives for other identifiable individuals, but supposedly as agents for the government, for the public at large. A private market is very different from a government market. In a strictly private market, all the deals are between individu als acting in their own interest or as agents for other identifiable individuals.
Finally, you can have a private market, but it may or may not be a free market. The question is whether all the deals are strictly voluntary. In a free private market, all the deals are strictly voluntary. Many of the cases of private markets that I cited before were not cases of free private markets. You have a private market in many of the Latin American countries, but they are not free private markets. You have a private market in India, but it is not a free private market because many voluntary deals are not permitted. An individual can deal with anotherto exchange a good or service only if he has the permission of the government. I may say a completely free private market exists nowhere in the world. Hong Kong is perhaps the closest approximation to it. However, almost everywhere what you have, at best, is a partly free, largely hampered, private market.
A free private market is a mechanism for achieving voluntary cooperation among people. It applies to any human activity, not simply to economic transactions. We are speaking a language. Where did that language come from? Did some government entity construct the language and instruct people to use it? Was there some government commission that developed the rules of grammar? No, the language we speak developed through a free private market. People communicated with one another, they wanted to talk with one another, the words they used gradually came to be one thing rather than another, and the gram mar came to be one thing rather than another entirely as a result of free voluntary exchange.
Take another example, science. How did we develop the complicated structure of physics, economics, what will you? Again, it was developed and continues to develop as a result of a free private market in which scientists communicate with one another, exchange information with one another, because both parties to any exchange want to benefit.
A characteristic feature of a free private market is that all parties to a transaction believe that they are going to be better off by that transaction. It is not a zero sum game in which some can benefit only at the expense of others. It is a situation in which everybody thinks he is going to be better off.
A free private market is a mechanism for enabling a complex structure of cooperation to arise as an unintended consequence of Adam Smith's invisible hand, without any deliberate design. A f ree private market involves the absence of coercion. People deal with one another voluntarily, not because somebody tells them to or forces them to. It does not follow that the people who engage in these deals like one another, or know one another, or have any interest in one another. They may hate one another. Everyone of us, everyday without recognizing it, engages in deals with people all over the world whom we do not know and who do not know us. No super planning agency is telling them to produce something for us. They may be of a different religion, a different color, a different race. The farmer who grows wheat is not interested in whether it is going to be bought by somebody who is black or white, somebody who is Catholic or Protestant; and the person who buys the wheat is not concerned about whether the person who grew it was white or black, Catholic or Protestant. So the essence of a free private market is that it is a situation in which everybody deals with one another because he or she believes he or she will be better off.
The essence of human freedom as of afree private market, is freedom of people to make their own decisions so long as they do not prevent anybody else from doing the same thing. That makes clear, l think, why free private markets are so closely related to human freedom. It is the only mechanism that permits a complex interrelated society to be organized from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, it also makes clear why free societies are so rare. Free societies restrain power. They make it very hard for bad people to do harm, but they also make it very hard for good people to do good. Implicitly or explicitly, most opponents of freedom believe that they know what is good for other people better than other people know for themselves, and they want the power to make people do what is really good for them.
The recent absolutely remarkable phenomenon of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe raises in acute form the issues that we have been discussing. There is much talk in those countries about moving to a free market, but so far very limited success. In the past, free markets have developed in all sorts of waysout of feudalism, out of military juntas, out of autocracyand mostly they have developed by accident rather than by design. It was a pure accident that Hong Kong achieved a free market. Insofar as anyone designed it, it was the colonial officials who were sent there; but it was a pure accident that they were favorable to, or at least not hostile to, a free market. It was an accident that a free market developed in the United States, nothing natural about it. We might very well have gone down a very different road. We started to go down a very different road in the 1830s when there was widespread governmental activity in the building of canals, in the building of tollways, and the taking over of banksthere were state banks in Ohio, lilinois, and so on. What happened is that in the Panic of 1837 they all went broke, and that destroyed people's belief that the way to run a country was by government. That had a great deal to do with the subsequent widespread belief that small government was the best government.
While free societies have developed by accident in many different ways, there is so far no example of a totalitarian country that has successfully converted to a free society. That is why what is going on in Eastern Europe is so exciting. We are witnessing something that we have not seen before. We know and they know what needs to be done. It is very simple. I tell the people in Eastern Europe when I see them that I can tell them what to do in three words: privatize, privatize, privatize. The problem is to have the political will to do so, and to do so promptly. It is going to be exciting to see whether they can do so.
However, the point that impresses me now and that I want to emphasize is that the problem is not only for them but for us. They have as much to teach us as we have to teach them. What was their problem under communism? Too big, too intrusive, too powerful a government. I ask you, what is our problem in the United States today? We have a relatively free system. This is a great country and has a great deal of freedom, but we are losing our freedom. We are living on our capital in considerable measure. This country was built up during 150 years and more in which government played a very small role. As late as 1929, total government spending in the United States never exceeded about 12% of the national incomeabout the same fraction as in Hong Kong in recent years. Federal government spending was about 3 to 4% of the national income except at the time of the Civil War and World War I. Half of that went for the military and half for everything else. State and local governments spent about twice as much. Again, local governments spent more than state governments. In the period between then and now, the situation has changed drastically. Total government spending, as I said, is 43% of national income, and twothirds of that is federal.
Moreover, in addition to what government spends directly, it exercises extensive control over the deals that people can make in the private market. It prevents you f rom buyi ng sugar in the cheapest market; it forces you to pay twice the world price for sugar. It forces enterprises to meet all sorts of requirements about wages, hours, antipollution standards, and so on and on. Many of these may be good, but they are government dictation of how the resources shall be used. To put it in one word that should be familiar to us by now, it is socialist.
The United States today is more than 50% socialist in terms of the fraction of our resources that are controlled by the govern ment. Fortunately, socialism is so inefficient that it does not control 50% of our lives. Fortunately, most of that is wasted. People worry about government waste; I don't. I just shudder at what would happen to freedom in this country if the govern ment were efficient in spending our money. The really fascinating thing is that our private sector has been so effective, so efficient, that it has been able to produce a standard of life that is the envy of the rest of the world on the basis of less than half the resources available to all of us.
The major problems that face this country all derive from too much socialism. If you consider our educational system at the elementary and secondary level, government spending per pupil has more than tripled over the past thirty years in real terms after allowing for inflation, yet test scores keep declining, dropout rates are high, and functional illiteracy is widespread. Why should that be a surprise? Schooling at the elementary and secondary level is the largest socialist enterprise in the United States next to the military. Now why should we be better at socialism than the Russians? In fact, they ought to be better; they have had more practice at it. If you consider medical care, which is another major problem now, total spending on medical care has gone from 4% of the national income to 13%, and more than half of that increase has been in the form of government
spending. Costs have multiplied and it is reasonably clear that output has not gone up in anything like the same ratio. Our automobile industry can produce all the cars anybody wants to drive and is prepared to pay for. They do not seem to have any difficulty, but our government cannot produce the roads for us to drive on. The aviation industry can produce the planes, the airlines can get the pilots, but the government somehow cannot provide the landing strips and the air traffic controllers. I challenge anybody to name a major problem in the United States that does not derive from excessive govern ment.
Crime has been going up, our prisons are overcrowded, our inner cities are becoming unlivable all as a consequence of good intentions gone awry, the good intentions in this case being to prevent the misuse of drugs. The results: very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims. The harm which is being done by that program is far greater than any conceivable good. And the harm is not being done only at home. What business do we have destroying other countries such as Colombia because we cannot enforce our laws?
It is hard to be optimistic about how successful we can be in preserving our relatively free system. The collapse of the com munist states in Eastern Europe was the occasion for a great deal of selfcongratulation on our part. It introduced an element of complacency and smugness. We all said, " Oh my, how good we are! See, we must be doing everything right." But we did not learn the lesson that they had to teach us, and that lesson is that government has very real functions, but if it wanders beyond those functions and goes too far, it tends to destroy human and economic freedom.
I am nonetheless a longterm optimist. I believe that the United States is a great country and that our problems do not arise from the people as such. They arise from the structure of our government. We are being misgoverned in all these areas but not because of bad motives or bad people. The people who run our government are the same kind of people as the people outside it. We mislead ourselves if we think we are going to correct the situation by electing the right people to government. We will elect the right people and when they get to Washington they will do the wrong things. You and I would; I am not saying that there is anything special about them.
The important point is that we in our private lives and they in their governmental livesareall moved by the same incentive: topromote ourown selfinterest. ArmenAlchianonce made averyimportantcomment. He said, "You know, there is one thing you can trust everybody to do. You can trust everybody to put his interest above yours." That goes for those of us in the private sector; that goes for people in the government sector. The difference between the two is not in the people; it is not in the incentives. It is in what it is in the selfinterest for different people to do. In the private economy, so long as we keep a free private market, one party to a deal can only benefit if the other party also benefits. There is no way in which you can satisfy your needs at the expense of somebody else. In the government market, there is another recourse. If you start a program that is a failure and you are in the private market, the only way you can keep it going is by digging into your own pocket. That is your bottom line. However, if you are in the government, you have another recourse. With perfectly good intentions and good will nobody likes to say "I was wrong"you can say, "Oh, the only reason it is a failure is because we haven't done enough. The only reason the drug program is a failure is because we haven't spent enough money on it." And it does not have to be your own money. You have a very different bottom line. If you are persuasive enough, or if you have enough control over power, you can increase spending on your program at the expense of the taxpayer. That is why a private project that is a failure is closed down while a government project that is a failure is expanded.
The only way we are really going to change things is by changing the political structure. The most hopeful thing I see on that side is the great public pressure at the moment for term limits. That would be a truly fundamental change.
I want to close on a slightly optimistic note. About 200 years ago, an English newspaper wrote: "There are 775,300,000 people in the World. Of these, arbitrary governments command 741,800,000 and the free ones ... Only 33 1/2 million... On the whole, slaves are three and twenty times more numerous than men enjoying, in any tolerable degree, the rights of human nature" [cited in Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p.9]. I know of no such precise estimate for the present, but I made a rough estimate on the basis of the freedom surveys of Freedom House. I estimate that, while slaves still greatly outnumber free people, the ratio has fallen in the past two centuries from 23 to 1 to about 3 to 1. We are still very far from our goal of a completely free world, but, on the scale of historical time, that is amazing progressmore in the past two centuries than in the prior two millennia. Let's hope and work to make sure that that keeps up. Thank you.
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"Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom"
by Milton Friedman
Delivered November 1, 1991
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Introduction of Milton Friedman by Charles W. Baird, Director.
In 1963 I was an undergraduate economics major in a private university in Massachusetts. In a small seminar class I was assigned to read a new book by Milton Friedman, Capitalism & Freedom, and a 1958 book by John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, which expressed contrary views. My task was to write an essay defending Galbraith against Friedman. I got an "A" on that assignment.
But, in the fullness of time, I made my way to UCLA and the tutelage of Armen Alchian. I came to appreciate the wisdom of Milton Friedman. Moreover, judging from a lecture Galbraith gave at Berkeley just last month, even he is beginning to see the light.
Professor Friedman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976 "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."
He was the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago from 1962 1977. He is now the Emeritus holder of that chair. Since 1977, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institu tion.
Professor Friedman was the founder, and chief proponent of the Chicago School of monetary economicsaka., monetarism. I can recall during the 1960s that the great debate in macroeconomics, set off by Friedman & Schwartz' monumental Monetary History of the U.S., was between the Keynesians and the Monetarists. Which was more stable: the Keynesian multiplier or, as Friedman would have it, the velocity of circulation of money? Most economists today would agree that Friedman and company had the better arguments and the better evidence.
Professor Friedman is one of the most versatile members of the profession. His 1953 article, "The Methodology of Positive Economics," is still required reading in almost every class in economic theory. It is the starting point for all discussions of what separates good economics from bad economics. In addition to methodology and macroeconomics, he has made significant contributions in the areas of economic history, statistics, international finance, risk and insurance, and microeconomic theory. He is one of the most cited economists of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Professor Friedman is a founding member and a past president of the Mont Pelerin Societyan international organization of individuals who share a dedication to the principles of free markets and limited government. Without doubt, Milton Friedman is the best known, and most widely respected, freemarket economist in the entire world.
The three books which he coauthored with Rose Friedman, are among the best nontechnical defenses of economic freedom, human freedom, and political freedom ever written by anyone. Capitalism & Freedom (1962) set forth the case for market liberalism at a time when almost everyone accepted the premises of the welfare and regulatorystate as beyond reproach. Free to Choose (1980), was the best selling nonfiction book in the United States for the year 1980, and it was translated into most major languages. It was based on a tenpart television series of the same name. Tyranny of the Status auo (1984) was also complemented by a threepart television series of the same name in which Milton Friedman discussed a broad range of topics with seven university students of widely varying views.
Milton Friedman is one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He is unsurpassed as an academic teacher, formidable as a debater, persuasive as a public policy analyst, and pathbreaking as a scholar and scientist. There simply could not be a more appropriate person to deliver the Smith Center Inaugural Lecture.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Milton Friedman.
Charles W. Baird, Director
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
Democrats Blue Dogs
Typically, what "Blue Dog Democrats" means is the lying Democrats who fake being conservative so they can get elected in conservative districts that would otherwise elect Republican conservatives. Often as what happened in 2008 the 'blu-dogs' run more conservative than the candidate that they are opposing that is supposedly conservative.
The 'blu-dogs' then go to Congress and elect liberal party leaders who then run them around in circles, making their voters wonder what's up with that? All politics is local, and if you can lie your way into office, the better you are.
Doug Ross has put together this list(click the widget above) of Blue Dogs so yo can call your blu-dogs ... When Pelosi most needs them.
The 'blu-dogs' then go to Congress and elect liberal party leaders who then run them around in circles, making their voters wonder what's up with that? All politics is local, and if you can lie your way into office, the better you are.
Doug Ross has put together this list(click the widget above) of Blue Dogs so yo can call your blu-dogs ... When Pelosi most needs them.
White House sees $646 billion from 2012-19 CO2 trade
It's all about taxes and energy rationing, it's always been about taxes and energy rationing schemes to be able to collect taxes based on an hoax that they think ignorant people will believe.
Pay more in taxes to the government, so government scientists can pretend to control the weather. What is there about paying more in taxes that you did not get?
source:
Pay more in taxes to the government, so government scientists can pretend to control the weather. What is there about paying more in taxes that you did not get?
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
So far, it's been Obamateur Hour
Mark Steyn:
The new president has been tripping himself up, rather than being blown off course by events.
Few pieces of political "wisdom" are more tediously recycled than a well-retailed bon mot of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Asked what he feared most in the months ahead, he gave an amused Edwardian response: "Events, dear boy, events." In other words, you can plan all you want, but next month, next year some guy off the radar screen will launch a war, or there'll be an earthquake, or … something. Governments get thrown off course by "events."
It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single "event" to throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: "Is Obama tanking already?" (Congressional Quarterly) "Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?" (The Financial Times). Whether or not it's "already" failed or tanked, the monthly magazines still gazing out from their newsstands with their glossy inaugural covers of a smiling Barack and Michelle waltzing on the audacity of hope seem like musty historical artifacts from a lost age. The ship didn't need to hit an iceberg; it stalled halfway down the slipway. This is still the phase before "events" come into play, when an incoming president has nothing to get in the way of his judgment and executive competence. President Obama choseto nominate Tim "Indispensable" Geithner and Tom "Home, James!" Daschle, men whose enthusiasm for the size of the federal budget is in inverse proportion to their own urge to contribute to it. He choseto nominate as commerce secretary first the scandal-afflicted Bill Richardson and then the freakishly scandal-free Judd Gregg, and wound up losing both of them.
To be sure, the present state of the economy is an "event," and has blown many governments around the world off course. But again: The hideous drooling blob of toxic pustules dignified as the "stimulus" bill is something the incoming Obama had months to prepare for and oodles of bipartisan goodwill and fawning press coverage to waft him along on. Instead, he chose to outsource it to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and the rest of the congressional pork barons. So that, too, is not an "event" but merely, like his Cabinet picks, a matter of judgment and executive competence.
Not to matter. When the going gets tough, the tough go campaigning. So, almost as if he were still running for office rather than actually running an office, the president arranges a photo-op or a town-hall meeting, where, for the moment, the hopeychangey shtick still plays. "I have an urgent need," a freeborn citizen of the republic (I use the term loosely) beseeched the president in Fort Myers last week. "We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom."
As Michelle Malkin commented, "If she had more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too." He took her name – Henrietta Hughes – and ordered his staff to meet with her. Hopefully, he won't insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the big time tax-avoiding Cabinet honchos to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence, with a swing set hanging where the drive-thru ATM used to be.
Still, the audience loved it. "Yes!" they yelped, and "Amen!," and even "Gracious God, thank you so much!" In the words of Bob Hope, "Leave your name with the girl, and we may get to you for some crowd scenes." Ah, but eventually the hosannahs fade, and the Community-Organizer-in-Chief has to return to Washington to attend to the drearier chores of being president. The "Buy American" provisions in the "stimulus" will invite certain retaliation around the world, wrote Jagdish Bhagwati, the Columbia economics professor, in The New York Times. This is presumably the same Jagdish Bhagwati who reassured a Toronto audience last year that he was endorsing Obama despite the senator's anti-NAFTA anti-free-trade rhetoric because he didn't think Obama really believed it. Today it's even less clear what, if anything, Obama believes – and, even more critically, whether he has the wit or authority to impose those beliefs on a Congress whose operating procedure for the new era seems to be business as usual with three extra zeros on the end.
Someday soon this inaugural Obamateur Hour (as one of my correspondents, John Gross, calls it) will end, and the "events" phase will begin. Back last spring, some gloomy reflections of mine on multiculturalism prompted a reader to advise me to lighten up: "We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid." A mere nine months later, the first part of that equation no longer seems quite so obvious. The market value of the U.S. banking sector is worth barely a quarter of what it was two years ago – from just north of $1.4 trillion in February 2007 to under $400 billion at the beginning of this month, and that only due to the "bailout." The so-called Wall Street "fat cats" are, in fact, emaciated cadavers in the late stages of that feline version of HIV.
On the other hand, U.S. mortgage debt has more than quadrupled since 1990, from $2.5 trillion to over $10 trillion. On the other other hand – you may be running out of fingers by now – the IMF has increased its calculation of potential losses on U.S.-originated credit assets from $1.4 trillion last October to $2.2 trillion today, and they're at the lowball end of estimates (others figure closer to $4 trillion). If you stick the Community-Organizer-in-Chief in a room with Henrietta Hughes, he can play Bob Barker and tell her to "Come on down!" But back in the Oval Office, poring over the smoldering ledgers, it's not obvious that that technique is going to prove quite so effective.
2008: We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.
2009: We're not so rich so let's be even more stupid.
The Obama narrative as packaged by the American media (another all-but-bankrupt industry, not coincidentally) is very appealing. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if a benign paternalist sovereign could take care of all the beastly grown-up stuff like mortgages and health care, like he's gonna do for Henrietta Hughes, while simultaneously blowing gazillions on "green" initiatives and other touchyfeely things?
America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality. Or it can buckle its mandatory seat belt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London's Mall for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on Earth. Seventy years later….
Let's not go there.
The new president has been tripping himself up, rather than being blown off course by events.
Few pieces of political "wisdom" are more tediously recycled than a well-retailed bon mot of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Asked what he feared most in the months ahead, he gave an amused Edwardian response: "Events, dear boy, events." In other words, you can plan all you want, but next month, next year some guy off the radar screen will launch a war, or there'll be an earthquake, or … something. Governments get thrown off course by "events."
It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single "event" to throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: "Is Obama tanking already?" (Congressional Quarterly) "Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?" (The Financial Times). Whether or not it's "already" failed or tanked, the monthly magazines still gazing out from their newsstands with their glossy inaugural covers of a smiling Barack and Michelle waltzing on the audacity of hope seem like musty historical artifacts from a lost age. The ship didn't need to hit an iceberg; it stalled halfway down the slipway. This is still the phase before "events" come into play, when an incoming president has nothing to get in the way of his judgment and executive competence. President Obama choseto nominate Tim "Indispensable" Geithner and Tom "Home, James!" Daschle, men whose enthusiasm for the size of the federal budget is in inverse proportion to their own urge to contribute to it. He choseto nominate as commerce secretary first the scandal-afflicted Bill Richardson and then the freakishly scandal-free Judd Gregg, and wound up losing both of them.
To be sure, the present state of the economy is an "event," and has blown many governments around the world off course. But again: The hideous drooling blob of toxic pustules dignified as the "stimulus" bill is something the incoming Obama had months to prepare for and oodles of bipartisan goodwill and fawning press coverage to waft him along on. Instead, he chose to outsource it to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and the rest of the congressional pork barons. So that, too, is not an "event" but merely, like his Cabinet picks, a matter of judgment and executive competence.
Not to matter. When the going gets tough, the tough go campaigning. So, almost as if he were still running for office rather than actually running an office, the president arranges a photo-op or a town-hall meeting, where, for the moment, the hopeychangey shtick still plays. "I have an urgent need," a freeborn citizen of the republic (I use the term loosely) beseeched the president in Fort Myers last week. "We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom."
As Michelle Malkin commented, "If she had more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too." He took her name – Henrietta Hughes – and ordered his staff to meet with her. Hopefully, he won't insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the big time tax-avoiding Cabinet honchos to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence, with a swing set hanging where the drive-thru ATM used to be.
Still, the audience loved it. "Yes!" they yelped, and "Amen!," and even "Gracious God, thank you so much!" In the words of Bob Hope, "Leave your name with the girl, and we may get to you for some crowd scenes." Ah, but eventually the hosannahs fade, and the Community-Organizer-in-Chief has to return to Washington to attend to the drearier chores of being president. The "Buy American" provisions in the "stimulus" will invite certain retaliation around the world, wrote Jagdish Bhagwati, the Columbia economics professor, in The New York Times. This is presumably the same Jagdish Bhagwati who reassured a Toronto audience last year that he was endorsing Obama despite the senator's anti-NAFTA anti-free-trade rhetoric because he didn't think Obama really believed it. Today it's even less clear what, if anything, Obama believes – and, even more critically, whether he has the wit or authority to impose those beliefs on a Congress whose operating procedure for the new era seems to be business as usual with three extra zeros on the end.
Someday soon this inaugural Obamateur Hour (as one of my correspondents, John Gross, calls it) will end, and the "events" phase will begin. Back last spring, some gloomy reflections of mine on multiculturalism prompted a reader to advise me to lighten up: "We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid." A mere nine months later, the first part of that equation no longer seems quite so obvious. The market value of the U.S. banking sector is worth barely a quarter of what it was two years ago – from just north of $1.4 trillion in February 2007 to under $400 billion at the beginning of this month, and that only due to the "bailout." The so-called Wall Street "fat cats" are, in fact, emaciated cadavers in the late stages of that feline version of HIV.
On the other hand, U.S. mortgage debt has more than quadrupled since 1990, from $2.5 trillion to over $10 trillion. On the other other hand – you may be running out of fingers by now – the IMF has increased its calculation of potential losses on U.S.-originated credit assets from $1.4 trillion last October to $2.2 trillion today, and they're at the lowball end of estimates (others figure closer to $4 trillion). If you stick the Community-Organizer-in-Chief in a room with Henrietta Hughes, he can play Bob Barker and tell her to "Come on down!" But back in the Oval Office, poring over the smoldering ledgers, it's not obvious that that technique is going to prove quite so effective.
2008: We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.
2009: We're not so rich so let's be even more stupid.
The Obama narrative as packaged by the American media (another all-but-bankrupt industry, not coincidentally) is very appealing. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if a benign paternalist sovereign could take care of all the beastly grown-up stuff like mortgages and health care, like he's gonna do for Henrietta Hughes, while simultaneously blowing gazillions on "green" initiatives and other touchyfeely things?
America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality. Or it can buckle its mandatory seat belt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London's Mall for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on Earth. Seventy years later….
Let's not go there.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Socialism Defined
No better definition exists of the Acting President Obama …
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” -Winston Churchill
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” -Winston Churchill
Less Fire, More Ice
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, February 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Environment: The claim that man's activities are heating the planet was weakened when it was learned that a glitch caused satellites to undermeasure the volume of Arctic ice. Doom has been overdone.
The global warming speculation has more holes in it than Al Gore's oversized carbon footprint has square miles. Deeply infected with statistical and common sense problems, the climate change argument is beginning to crumble. Suddenly what many considered irrefutable evidence has more in common with fables than scientific work:
• The famed hockey stick chart that supposedly shows Earth's temperature rising sharply in response to the industrial age is not an accurate measure of what has actually occurred. This stick, used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to scare the public into believing that human activity is causing the Earth to warm, has been revealed to be in error.
The unmasking happened five years ago when Canadian researchers Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick crunched the numbers and uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann used to create the chart.
Mann and his co-researchers also conveniently left the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age out of the temperature chart, a deception, whether intended or not, that renders their entire work unreliable.
• Global temperatures peaked in 1998, a fact that contradicts the assertion that man's continued pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is making the planet hotter. This was not predicted by the climate models that say we're headed for a warm period.
Nor can anthropogenic global warming be explained when introduced into the argument is the fact that 1934, when far fewer carbon-spewing machines existed than we have today, is the hottest year on record.
Global warming alarmists invested heavily in convincing everyone that 1998 was the hottest year and 2006 the third warmest. After correcting for faulty data, NASA had to backtrack.
At the same time NASA made the correction, it also reported that six of the top 10 hottest years are from a period before 90% of the 20th century growth in carbon emissions occurred.
• In 2007, it was learned that the placement of temperature stations across the U.S. had skewed readings. Equipment at a site in Oregon was found to be just 10 feet from an air conditioning exhaust vent. The sensor at another Oregon station is located on a rooftop near an air conditioning unit. A Tahoe, Calif., station is located next to a drum where trash is burned.
A volunteer group has found that 69% of the 807 stations it has rated (of the 1,221 U.S. Historical Climatological Network stations) are located less than 12 yards from an artificial heating source; 11% are located "next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot or concrete surface."
Most interesting is a comparison between two California stations located within 40 miles of each other. The station in Orland is isolated from man-made influences and has recorded falling temperatures since the late 19th century. Meanwhile, the Marysville station, once in a remote area but now surrounded by artificial heat sources, has shown increases in temperatures over a similar period.
• Last week, researchers at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center admitted that from early January to the middle of this month, "sensor drift" in the satellite monitors used to measure sea ice caused them to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles. That's a significant area roughly the size of California.
Will the alarmists and media apologize for spreading fear about shrinking sea ice that was not really shrinking? Not likely. They'll move on to something else to hype. But it won't change the facts on the ground — or in the sea.
I read the IBD first, everyday.
Environment: The claim that man's activities are heating the planet was weakened when it was learned that a glitch caused satellites to undermeasure the volume of Arctic ice. Doom has been overdone.
The global warming speculation has more holes in it than Al Gore's oversized carbon footprint has square miles. Deeply infected with statistical and common sense problems, the climate change argument is beginning to crumble. Suddenly what many considered irrefutable evidence has more in common with fables than scientific work:
• The famed hockey stick chart that supposedly shows Earth's temperature rising sharply in response to the industrial age is not an accurate measure of what has actually occurred. This stick, used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to scare the public into believing that human activity is causing the Earth to warm, has been revealed to be in error.
The unmasking happened five years ago when Canadian researchers Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick crunched the numbers and uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann used to create the chart.
Mann and his co-researchers also conveniently left the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age out of the temperature chart, a deception, whether intended or not, that renders their entire work unreliable.
• Global temperatures peaked in 1998, a fact that contradicts the assertion that man's continued pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is making the planet hotter. This was not predicted by the climate models that say we're headed for a warm period.
Nor can anthropogenic global warming be explained when introduced into the argument is the fact that 1934, when far fewer carbon-spewing machines existed than we have today, is the hottest year on record.
Global warming alarmists invested heavily in convincing everyone that 1998 was the hottest year and 2006 the third warmest. After correcting for faulty data, NASA had to backtrack.
At the same time NASA made the correction, it also reported that six of the top 10 hottest years are from a period before 90% of the 20th century growth in carbon emissions occurred.
• In 2007, it was learned that the placement of temperature stations across the U.S. had skewed readings. Equipment at a site in Oregon was found to be just 10 feet from an air conditioning exhaust vent. The sensor at another Oregon station is located on a rooftop near an air conditioning unit. A Tahoe, Calif., station is located next to a drum where trash is burned.
A volunteer group has found that 69% of the 807 stations it has rated (of the 1,221 U.S. Historical Climatological Network stations) are located less than 12 yards from an artificial heating source; 11% are located "next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot or concrete surface."
Most interesting is a comparison between two California stations located within 40 miles of each other. The station in Orland is isolated from man-made influences and has recorded falling temperatures since the late 19th century. Meanwhile, the Marysville station, once in a remote area but now surrounded by artificial heat sources, has shown increases in temperatures over a similar period.
• Last week, researchers at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center admitted that from early January to the middle of this month, "sensor drift" in the satellite monitors used to measure sea ice caused them to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles. That's a significant area roughly the size of California.
Will the alarmists and media apologize for spreading fear about shrinking sea ice that was not really shrinking? Not likely. They'll move on to something else to hype. But it won't change the facts on the ground — or in the sea.
I read the IBD first, everyday.
Brace For Impact
With Acting President Obama and Democrats at the helm, the economy is crashing. I it took only months, not years.
Source:
Brace yourself: The recession is projected to worsen this year.And you thought reparations would be debated.
The country stands to lose a sizable chunk of economic activity in 2009 as consumers at home and abroad retrench in the face of persistent economic troubles.
And the U.S. unemployment rate—now at 7.6 percent, the highest in more than 16 years—is expected hit a peak of 9 percent this year.
That gloomy outlook came from leading forecasters in the latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics to be released Monday.
The new estimates are roughly in line with other recent projections, including those released last week by the Federal Reserve.
Source:
Monday, February 23, 2009
Gov Jindal Responds To Acting President Obama
Gov Jindal gives as good as he gets. No wonder he is so high on most Republican's list.
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
Founding father. Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute for religious freedom, member of the Continental Congress, statesman, diplomat, Secretary of State, Vice-President, 3rd President of the United States, founder of the University of Virginia. Made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore it
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
One of Thomas Jefferson's most famous quotes.
And here is another to remember: "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Ike's Second Warning
President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address to the nation left the nation with two things of import to consider. Most everybody has heard about Ike's first warning, about the military-industrial complex. This warning came from a military man, so it has become common lexicon in American discourse.
The first warning fit the liberal idea of a world without conflict, the badly distorted kumbaya vision of the world, but the second forgotten warning, fits the notion of the liberals and their lies about many things cloaked in science. DDT, ALAR, the OZONE hole, all those are liberal hoaxes perpetrated on people with little of no science understanding. And now comes the grandest hoax of them all, the CO2 driven global warming hoax, designed to tax and ration energy for control of man's life on Earth, to the liberals idea of Gaia utopia.
Sadly, it's the later warning, that harbors the tentacles of Marxism in their fond embrace.
More here
Ike’s second warning: “…that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”Does anything come to mind when reading this? Smart people will always try and take advantage of lesser, you would be wise to choose careful which smart person you listen to.
“…Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded.”
The first warning fit the liberal idea of a world without conflict, the badly distorted kumbaya vision of the world, but the second forgotten warning, fits the notion of the liberals and their lies about many things cloaked in science. DDT, ALAR, the OZONE hole, all those are liberal hoaxes perpetrated on people with little of no science understanding. And now comes the grandest hoax of them all, the CO2 driven global warming hoax, designed to tax and ration energy for control of man's life on Earth, to the liberals idea of Gaia utopia.
Sadly, it's the later warning, that harbors the tentacles of Marxism in their fond embrace.
More here
Friday, February 20, 2009
First Amendment; Free Speech
A short history lesson: Many may not know that the U.S. Constitution contains a Bill of Rights. Those rights contained therein are what is known as the 'enumerated rights", unalienable rights, granted by our creator, reserved to the people and not to be interfered with by government. Rights such as your right to self defense, defense against a tyrannical federal or state government, contained in the Second Amendment. Another right enumerated in the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment, the right to free speech.
The First Amendment:
Although the Bill of Rights as written only explicitly applies to the Congress, the Supreme Court has interpreted it as applying to the executive and judicial branches. Additionally, in the 20th century the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies the limitations of the Bill of Rights to each state, including any local government within a state. The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, ratified on July 9, 1868, first intended to secure the rights of former slaves. It is now generally recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to all States of the union, and all forms of government, State and local.
Now we come to the fairness doctrine. Rush Limbaugh has an essay on the subject in today's WSJ entitled "Mr. President, Keep the Airwaves Free" ... with the subtitle 'As a former law professor, surely you understand the Bill of Rights.' The fairness doctrine is an abomination, concocted by the Democrats in Congress to try and insure fairness of the airwaves, it was introduced in the U.S. in 1949.
Pres Reagan repealed the FCC rule called the Fairness Doctrine, arguing at the time that:
So would the fairness doctrine apply to today's marketplace of ideas, that's a resounding NO!. There are so many stations that the differing points of view are heard everywhere. But even still, Congress has loaded the deck, with the government funded left of center NPR/PBS combination which is carried in near every market in the USA.
The Fairness Doctrine and the courts:
The Supreme Court has ruled on the Fairness Doctrine, in a case involving an on-air personal attack, the plaintiff sued, arguing that the Fairness Doctrine entitled him to free air time to respond to the personal attacks. This case was Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld by a vote of 8-0, the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine.
However, the Court warned that if the Fairness Doctrine ever restrained speech, then its constitutionality should be reconsidered.
Another case that of Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote (for a unanimous court), "Government-enforced right of access inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate." This decision differs from Red Lion v. FCC in that it applies to a newspaper, which, unlike a broadcaster, is unlicensed and can face a theoretically-unlimited number of competitors.
But now the broadcasting situation of the market has changed once again. There are so many stations that it is literally possible to find whatever you want somewhere on the dial, every market served. With technologies such as HD-Radio, a single broadcaster can air multiple channels at the same time on the same frequency.
The marketplace decides who gets heard, by voting with their eyes and ears. A station is not going to put on shows that draw little audience, and small ad revenues as a consequence. If ideas and show personalities are good, then the audience will come.
Now back to Rush:
Rush argues that
The First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.The intent of the free speech clause was to specifically protect "political speech". As with the Second Amendment, the First Amendment was written to limit government actions, not restrict citizens.
Although the Bill of Rights as written only explicitly applies to the Congress, the Supreme Court has interpreted it as applying to the executive and judicial branches. Additionally, in the 20th century the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies the limitations of the Bill of Rights to each state, including any local government within a state. The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, ratified on July 9, 1868, first intended to secure the rights of former slaves. It is now generally recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to all States of the union, and all forms of government, State and local.
Now we come to the fairness doctrine. Rush Limbaugh has an essay on the subject in today's WSJ entitled "Mr. President, Keep the Airwaves Free" ... with the subtitle 'As a former law professor, surely you understand the Bill of Rights.' The fairness doctrine is an abomination, concocted by the Democrats in Congress to try and insure fairness of the airwaves, it was introduced in the U.S. in 1949.
Pres Reagan repealed the FCC rule called the Fairness Doctrine, arguing at the time that:
"This doctrine . . . requires Federal officials to supervise the editorial practices of broadcasters in an effort to ensure that they provide coverage of controversial issues and a reasonable opportunity for the airing of contrasting viewpoints of those issues. This type of content-based regulation by the Federal Government is . . . antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. . . . History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee."One important point, when originally implemented in 1949, there were relatively few, compared to newspapers, radio and TV stations broadcasting, and nowhere near nationwide coverage with multiple channels, satellites, and cable that we have today. The bands today are so crowded with choices, that the entire band is nearly filled, as competition for listeners and viewers is fierce among stations.
So would the fairness doctrine apply to today's marketplace of ideas, that's a resounding NO!. There are so many stations that the differing points of view are heard everywhere. But even still, Congress has loaded the deck, with the government funded left of center NPR/PBS combination which is carried in near every market in the USA.
The Fairness Doctrine and the courts:
The Supreme Court has ruled on the Fairness Doctrine, in a case involving an on-air personal attack, the plaintiff sued, arguing that the Fairness Doctrine entitled him to free air time to respond to the personal attacks. This case was Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld by a vote of 8-0, the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine.
However, the Court warned that if the Fairness Doctrine ever restrained speech, then its constitutionality should be reconsidered.
Another case that of Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote (for a unanimous court), "Government-enforced right of access inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate." This decision differs from Red Lion v. FCC in that it applies to a newspaper, which, unlike a broadcaster, is unlicensed and can face a theoretically-unlimited number of competitors.
But now the broadcasting situation of the market has changed once again. There are so many stations that it is literally possible to find whatever you want somewhere on the dial, every market served. With technologies such as HD-Radio, a single broadcaster can air multiple channels at the same time on the same frequency.
The marketplace decides who gets heard, by voting with their eyes and ears. A station is not going to put on shows that draw little audience, and small ad revenues as a consequence. If ideas and show personalities are good, then the audience will come.
Now back to Rush:
Rush argues that
Mr. President, we both know that this new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity. It should be rejected. You've said you're against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but you've not made it clear where you stand on possible regulatory efforts to impose so-called local content, diversity-of-ownership, and public-interest rules that your FCC could issue.And to that I say dittos.
I do not favor content-based regulation of National Public Radio, newspapers, or broadcast or cable TV networks. I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org. There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.
The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression. The AM broadcast spectrum cannot honestly be considered a "scarce" resource. So as the temporary custodian of your office, you should agree that the Constitution is more important than scoring transient political victories, even when couched in the language of public interest.
We in talk radio await your answer. What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as "fairness" and "balance"? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?
The Second American Revolution
Thomas Paine, author of "Common Sense," returns to modern times to pleas for a second revolution to take back America, Now!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
I'm Sure Glad
These people have been replaced by these people:
The environmental agency is under order from the Supreme Court to make a determination whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare, an order that the Bush administration essentially ignored despite near-unanimous belief among agency experts that research points inexorably to such a finding.While blatantly false, the Supreme Court said that the EPA 'can' regulate CO2, it did not say it 'must' regulate CO2. Read the ruling here, it's numbered 05-1120 in pdf form. In fact, the Supreme Court said the EPA could defer judgment, because the science is complex. The science wizards on the Supreme Court also must know how photosynthesis and cellular respiration works.
So does this mean the EPA must rid the atmosphere of all CO2? Why not? Who determines how much is too much? What the Supreme Court did was declare CO2 a pollutant, which it is not. Carbon life forms would cease to exist on Earth without atmospheric CO2.
Now we have a Fascists as President, so CO2 must be controlled, because don't you all understand, it's destroying the planet. Which is total complete bunk. CO2 has been as much as 10 times what it is today, and lookey here, the planet is still here, so are humans, the plants and animals as well.
The coming ice age, that is going to be a different matter. The issue with the next ice age is when, not if.
Venezuela's Elected Dictatorship
If a majority says the Earth is flat, is the Earth flat?
Americans are being set up for the same fate as Venezuela -- An elected dictatorship.
Will America's Constitution and it's people resist this assault, only if Americans stand in opposition to what is happening, only time will answer that question.
Something to ponder: Hitler took dictatorial control of Germany in 1933 after being elected to the parliament and appointed as Chancellor. At what point could the German people have stopped Hitler, and didn't?
Truth should not be determined by majority vote, nor by who wins elections.
Tyranny: Sunday's referendum in Venezuela was hailed as a "victory" for the Chavez regime and extolled as participatory democracy. In reality, it was a farce undermining a multiparty state. So why does the U.S. praise it?Really good commentary by the IBD editorial page today. After the U.S. State Department praised Hugo Chavez's rigged election win this week, my guess is the USA has given up on championing freedom and democracy worldwide. Our founders called this the "Tyranny of the Majority". This was a major concern with the writers of the Constitution. John Adams believed in a strong executive that can preserve basic rights in the face of the tyranny of the majority. Thomas Jefferson believed in the power of the people, expressed ideally through an all-powerful, all-responsive legislature.
"Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots." – John AdamsIt is a mistake to suppose that the majority is necessarily right. The motives that push majorities are not always pure, and are most often self interest in the outcome of one form or the other. In the case of recent elections in Venezuela, the poeple who voted for the continuance of a dictatorship, were guided by the promise of free stuff from the dictator. Same thing Obama is now doing, promising the lower income people he will make their lives better.
In reality, Sunday's referendum, Venezuela's 14th since 1998, wasn't about voice and choice. It was a manipulative maneuver using voters' fear, exhaustion and capacity to be bought to make Chavez president for life in an elected dictatorship.Obama seems headed off the cliff of getting people to do the right thing, by bribing them. A concept foreign to Americans, but the way it is with Kenyans. It's more like a bribe, than a payoff, since if you read his program's details, you find the bribes continue in perpetuity, and it requires the bribed to vote for the briber.
That's why the Obama administration's praise for this phony facade of democracy was dispiriting: "We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercised their democratic right to vote," a State Department spokesman said, breaking past policy of not commenting on Venezuela's referenda.
Although he noted "troubling reports of intimidation" of voters, he called the referendum "fully consistent with the democratic process" and high-mindedly urged Venezuelan officials to "focus on governing democratically."
The trouble with these courtesies is that the "governing-democratically" horse left the barn long ago, and the current praise gives Chavez legitimacy. After being driven bonkers by the silent treatment of the Bush administration, this was what he wanted. But not if he had to govern democratically to get it.
It's an important detail. Chavez longs to exercise the power and have the longevity of his mentor, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. But he's savvy enough to know that losing the designation of democracy would reduce Venezuela to being a pariah state with little global influence, like Cuba.
Americans are being set up for the same fate as Venezuela -- An elected dictatorship.
Will America's Constitution and it's people resist this assault, only if Americans stand in opposition to what is happening, only time will answer that question.
Something to ponder: Hitler took dictatorial control of Germany in 1933 after being elected to the parliament and appointed as Chancellor. At what point could the German people have stopped Hitler, and didn't?
Truth should not be determined by majority vote, nor by who wins elections.
Smart Meters, What Are Smart Meters
Smart Meters are central planning electricity rationing devices.
During the 2008 election campaign Obama said this:
If the government starts monitoring our energy consumption, shortly the government will be dictating to us how much energy we can use. From the porkulus bill signing teleprompter session:
On second thought, they buy the global warming hoax, so probably not.
Welcome to the error of Obama and electricity rationing.
During the 2008 election campaign Obama said this:
If the government starts monitoring our energy consumption, shortly the government will be dictating to us how much energy we can use. From the porkulus bill signing teleprompter session:
In the process, we will transform the way we use energy. Today, the electricity we use is carried along a grid of lines and wires that dates back to Thomas Edison, a grid that can’t support the demands of clean energy. This means we’re using 19th- and 20th-century technologies to battle 21st-century problems like climate change and energy security..What it actually means is way to expensive, electricity produced by wind generators, which couldn't exist unless there were massive government subsidies, will supply what was once abundant and cheap electricity generated from coal and nuclear sources will be directed at the most expensive electricity for America. And it's now an investment, when you do things that are ridiculous and inordinately expensive for what it returns. Wind power has got to be at the top of that list, unreliably costly, and usually far from nowhere so transmission losses are highest.
It also means that places like North Dakota can produce a lot of wind energy but can’t deliver it to communities that want it, leading to a gap between how much clean energy we are using and how much we could be using
The investment we are making today will create a newer, smarter electric grid that will allow for the broader use of alternative energy. We will build on the work that’s being done in places like Boulder, Colorado, a community that is on pace to be the world’s first Smart Grid city. This investment will place Smart Meters in homes to make our energy bills lower, make outages less likely and make it easier to use clean energy.This is a tiny bit sophomoric for even the Obama voter to take in. Surly they must know that today's grid uses banks of computers, massive numbers of switches and relays, to balance and control the flow of electricity through the grid. Today's grid and the flow of electricity over it is nothing like what was available in Edison's time. They do know this, don't they.
It’s an investment that will save taxpayers over $1 billion by slashing energy costs in our federal buildings by 25 percent and save working families hundreds of dollars a year on their energy bills by weatherizing over 1 million homes. And it’s an investment that takes the important first step towards a nationwide transmission superhighway that will connect our cities to the windy plains of the Dakotas and the sunny deserts of the Southwest.
On second thought, they buy the global warming hoax, so probably not.
Welcome to the error of Obama and electricity rationing.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
EIA Oil Demand Down
Global petroleum demand will fall by another 400,000 b/d during 2009 as economic conditions worsen, the US Energy Information Administration said on Feb. 10 in its latest short-term energy outlook.
EIA now projects that worldwide oil consumption will drop by 1.2 million b/d this year as a deteriorating world economy and a weak oil consumption outlook keep the market well supplied despite two downward revisions in the last 2 months by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Reduced demand and rising surplus production capacity through at least mid-2009 reduce the possibility for a strong and sustained oil price rebound over that period, the federal energy analysis and forecasting service said.
"OPEC is scheduled to meet in Vienna on March 15, which could lead to another production cut to mitigate some of the slack in the world oil market. However, near-month oil prices will likely be driven primarily by the global economy," it noted.
EIA now assumes that global gross domestic product, weighted according to shares of world oil consumption, will decline by 0.1% in 2009 and rise by 3% in 2010. January's short-term energy outlook assumed 0.6% growth in real GDP in 2009 and 3% growth in 2010.
Domestically, it expects GDP to fall by 2.7% this year, triggering consumption declines for all major fuels. Retail regular gasoline prices are projected to average $1.95/gal nationwide in 2009 and $2.19/gal in 2010.
The US average retail price for gasoline of $1.69 in December was the lowest monthly average since February 2004 and nearly $2.40/gal below the July 2008 monthly peak, according to EIA. "Gasoline prices have been slowly increasing over the last six weeks as crude oil prices have stabilized and refiner margins have recovered from their recent near-historic lows," it said.
"The US economic downturn is also contributing to a decline in natural gas consumption, particularly in the industrial sector, which has led to lower natural gas prices," EIA continued. It said that it expects the Henry Hub spot gas prices to decline from an average of $9.l3 per thousand cubic feet in 2008 to about $5/Mcf in 2009 before increasing to nearly $6/Mcf in 2010.
source:
EIA now projects that worldwide oil consumption will drop by 1.2 million b/d this year as a deteriorating world economy and a weak oil consumption outlook keep the market well supplied despite two downward revisions in the last 2 months by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Reduced demand and rising surplus production capacity through at least mid-2009 reduce the possibility for a strong and sustained oil price rebound over that period, the federal energy analysis and forecasting service said.
"OPEC is scheduled to meet in Vienna on March 15, which could lead to another production cut to mitigate some of the slack in the world oil market. However, near-month oil prices will likely be driven primarily by the global economy," it noted.
EIA now assumes that global gross domestic product, weighted according to shares of world oil consumption, will decline by 0.1% in 2009 and rise by 3% in 2010. January's short-term energy outlook assumed 0.6% growth in real GDP in 2009 and 3% growth in 2010.
Domestically, it expects GDP to fall by 2.7% this year, triggering consumption declines for all major fuels. Retail regular gasoline prices are projected to average $1.95/gal nationwide in 2009 and $2.19/gal in 2010.
The US average retail price for gasoline of $1.69 in December was the lowest monthly average since February 2004 and nearly $2.40/gal below the July 2008 monthly peak, according to EIA. "Gasoline prices have been slowly increasing over the last six weeks as crude oil prices have stabilized and refiner margins have recovered from their recent near-historic lows," it said.
"The US economic downturn is also contributing to a decline in natural gas consumption, particularly in the industrial sector, which has led to lower natural gas prices," EIA continued. It said that it expects the Henry Hub spot gas prices to decline from an average of $9.l3 per thousand cubic feet in 2008 to about $5/Mcf in 2009 before increasing to nearly $6/Mcf in 2010.
source:
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Digital TV Arrives
The FCC said yesterday that 421 local TV stations today will switch to all-digital signals although the federal government has postponed the mandatory transition date to June 12. That's according to an article by Broadcasting & Cable Magazine.
Last week a bill that moves the mandatory Digital TV switch date from today to June 12. But the FCC permitted some local TV stations to switch early.
B&C reports that roughly 36 percent of local stations will have gone all-digital today; approximately 220 stations had already made the switch to digital signals. The total is now 641 stations digital only, out of about 1796 stations nationwide.
UPDATE: Well it happened locally, the TV channels went digital, and the best I can tell, no one cared.
Last week a bill that moves the mandatory Digital TV switch date from today to June 12. But the FCC permitted some local TV stations to switch early.
B&C reports that roughly 36 percent of local stations will have gone all-digital today; approximately 220 stations had already made the switch to digital signals. The total is now 641 stations digital only, out of about 1796 stations nationwide.
UPDATE: Well it happened locally, the TV channels went digital, and the best I can tell, no one cared.
Did Porkulus Kill Welfare Reform?
UPDATE: AskHeritage.org has the details of this shameful deceit ...
Evidence Unearthed Obamas Plan All Along Was to Repealed Clinton 96 Welfare Reform, which he just did with the Stimulus Package.
Evidence Unearthed, Obamas original plan to repeal Clinton 96 Welfare Reform was a major success.
Obama also reveals his views on Americas perceptions of Race and the Poor.
Buried deep in the stimulus plan is the repeal of Clintons 96 Welfare Reform:
The original 1996 welfare reform welfare reform accounted for the steep decline in poverty among black children, as more and more went to work in useflu jobs.
So now you know one reason why they didn't want you to be able to read the porkulus bill, the welfare state is now back, better than ever before.
Evidence Unearthed Obamas Plan All Along Was to Repealed Clinton 96 Welfare Reform, which he just did with the Stimulus Package.
Evidence Unearthed, Obamas original plan to repeal Clinton 96 Welfare Reform was a major success.
Obama also reveals his views on Americas perceptions of Race and the Poor.
Buried deep in the stimulus plan is the repeal of Clintons 96 Welfare Reform:
The original 1996 welfare reform welfare reform accounted for the steep decline in poverty among black children, as more and more went to work in useflu jobs.
So now you know one reason why they didn't want you to be able to read the porkulus bill, the welfare state is now back, better than ever before.
World's Biggest Marketplace, Falls Silent
In the heyday of China’s economic miracle, buyers from all over the world flocked to Yiwu, an unremarkable city in the southern province of Zhejiang.
Inside the halls of Futian Market, which sprawl over the equivalent of 800 football pitches, they haggled over hundreds of thousands of low-cost goods – everything from candles and fake flowers to eyeglasses and DVD players. Their orders would then be shipped across the globe to high street shops and supermarkets, fuelling China’s incredible growth.
Li Xuhang, the city’s deputy mayor, said: “If you spent only three minutes with each Chinese manufacturer and spent eight hours here each day, you would need over a year to make your way around the whole market.”
During the decade-long boom, Yiwu attracted buyers not only from American and European companies, but also increasing numbers of Arabs, Russians, and Africans. Scores of Pakistani, Korean and Middle-Eastern restaurants line the streets and there is even an Iraq Hotel.
More here.
Monday, February 16, 2009
That “Great” Canadian Healthcare System
Nothing to add to what this guy said….classic! (h/t Hot Air)
The Hugo Chavez Show
Chavez wins the referendum to be "President for Life". The Chavez goons rigged the outcome, pulled out all the stops, and didn't even need to call on Obama's ACORN for help.
In a national referendum Sunday, 54% of voters favored the plan, electoral officials said.Demagogue Obama is a close follower of Hugo Chavez. As the article states, Chavez's oil fueled paradise is running inflation rates of 35% or so, now that the free oil money has run out -- As it always does. The communist reforms have not worked. But nevertheless the Chavez goons succeeded in getting the referendum passed.
The outcome is a key victory for Mr. Chavez, who has been on an electoral losing streak since voters rejected a first attempt to do away with term limits just 14-months ago. Mr. Chavez, who took office in 1999, left little to chance this time around, leading mass marches and papering the capital with pro-Chavez posters and billboards.
No word how many gulags are now open for dissenters. First comes reeducation then comes murder, as happens with all these socialist paradise. Frontline has a video called "The Hugo Chavez Show" which you should watch. The Obama-Operah Shows running live last week are close seconds. But they definitely proved to be amateur hour, and a man behind the curtain and a new teleprompter will be needed to conduct proper Professional Show level.
Remember all the boot lick liberals going to Venezuela and singing the praises of Chavez over the last few years? Well Obama is the real-life demagogue that is trying to make it happen here. Will America wake up and see it is going on in our won country.
Unless America gets back to it's basic principles, Fascism is the only outcome, where the government controls everything of importance.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Porkulus, A New High In Lies
The biggest waste of money in the history of the Republic.
7 Broken Promises in one act:
1. Make Government Open and Transparent
2. Make it “Impossible” for Congressmen to slip in Pork Barrel Projects
3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public
4. No more secrecy
5. Public will have 5 days to look at a Bill
6. You’ll know what’s in it
7. We will put every pork barrel project online
Porkulus was written in secret, no hearings, Republicans were shutout, the public was shut out, and they had 12 hours to read and review near 1100 pages of mumble jumble. NO one can read 1100 pages of legal jargon in 12 hours, much less understand it.
A new way, indeed. Besides, Nanny Peloser had to leave for Europe to get an award, aboard her government provided 757. No one knows what the award was far, I would say number of face lifts in a single year.
7 Broken Promises in one act:
1. Make Government Open and Transparent
2. Make it “Impossible” for Congressmen to slip in Pork Barrel Projects
3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public
4. No more secrecy
5. Public will have 5 days to look at a Bill
6. You’ll know what’s in it
7. We will put every pork barrel project online
Porkulus was written in secret, no hearings, Republicans were shutout, the public was shut out, and they had 12 hours to read and review near 1100 pages of mumble jumble. NO one can read 1100 pages of legal jargon in 12 hours, much less understand it.
A new way, indeed. Besides, Nanny Peloser had to leave for Europe to get an award, aboard her government provided 757. No one knows what the award was far, I would say number of face lifts in a single year.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Glenn Beck - 02-05-2009 - Global Warming Indoctrination with Bernard Goldberg
"If such and art of active mass influence through propaganda is joined with the long-term systematic education of a nation, and if both are conducted in a way unified and precise way, the relationship between the leadership and the nation will always remain close" -- Joseph Goebbels, NAZI propaganda minister.
Al Gore tells 3000 school kids, they know more about some things than their parents. Gore tells kids that RACIST LAWS changed when their parents questioned their parents, so they could do the same for Global warming. ---- PASS THE M&Ms PleaZe.
Al Gore tells 3000 school kids, they know more about some things than their parents. Gore tells kids that RACIST LAWS changed when their parents questioned their parents, so they could do the same for Global warming. ---- PASS THE M&Ms PleaZe.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Stop Printing Money
All this spending, the porkulus, the bailout money, it's all going to be monetized. You do know what that means, don't you?
CO2 Hits New Peak, Climbs 2-3 ppm per Year
So what does this mean? The lies continue.
It's obvious CO2 does not drive climate from one simple graph, isn't it. More here.
It's obvious CO2 does not drive climate from one simple graph, isn't it. More here.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
True Cost of Stimulus: $3.27 Trillion
So you really want to know what the Democrats are doing to America?
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find? As you can see from the table below, the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion.
More here:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill. What did the CBO find? As you can see from the table below, the true 10 year cost of the stimulus bill $2.527 trillion in in spending with another $744 billion cost in debt servicing. Total bill for the Generational Theft Act: $3.27 trillion.
More here:
Can You Do Better ??
Rasmussen: 67% think they can do better than congress. 44% think random picks from phone book would do better
AWE. INSPIRING. CONFIDENCE:
AWE. INSPIRING. CONFIDENCE:
...67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress....I believe you could, if you just stuck to your common sense and stayed away from the payoffs and perks....Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Speed is Of Essence
On "Face the Nation," Sen. John McCain took a few whacks at his former opponent's stimulus bill, calling it everything from "a setback to change" to "not bipartisan" to "generational theft" to "fundamentally bad for America."
Why he hurry with the giant spendulus bill, over a trillion dollars in new debt for America? Simple really, support for the proposal is now much lower than it was in January among those who have heard a lot about the economic stimulus. By 49% to 41%, those who have heard a lot about the proposal now see it as a good idea; in January, those who had heard a lot favored it by more than two-to-one.
The spendulus bill is not about the economy, it's about installing a Chicago style patronage system across the USA. In other words, rig the elections for Democrats nationwide. Fascism.
Any more wasted time and it will fail.
Why he hurry with the giant spendulus bill, over a trillion dollars in new debt for America? Simple really, support for the proposal is now much lower than it was in January among those who have heard a lot about the economic stimulus. By 49% to 41%, those who have heard a lot about the proposal now see it as a good idea; in January, those who had heard a lot favored it by more than two-to-one.
The spendulus bill is not about the economy, it's about installing a Chicago style patronage system across the USA. In other words, rig the elections for Democrats nationwide. Fascism.
Any more wasted time and it will fail.
The Most Open And Ethical
President Barack Obama has proclaimed his administration will be more open than the previous administration. However, his counterparts in the House and the Senate aren’t following suit.
The Washington Post has reported that negotiations between House and Senate Democrats have resulted in a stimulus bill with a price tag of “about $789.5 billion.” This agreement raised the ire of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and he went outside of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to express it.
“My name’s Tom Price and I represent the Sixth District of Georgia and [am] the privileged chair of the Republican Study Committee,” Price said. “It’s now noon on Wednesday. I’m standing outside the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The door is closed. We just heard news break there’s been an agreement between the House and the Senate on the non-stimulus bill."
Chairman Tom Price discusses the stimulus deal struck between Congressional Democrats and the White House without Republican input or public oversight.
Yes this is how the Fascist work in Kenya and Indonesia. America, you better stand up.
Republican Study Committee Website here.
The Washington Post has reported that negotiations between House and Senate Democrats have resulted in a stimulus bill with a price tag of “about $789.5 billion.” This agreement raised the ire of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and he went outside of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to express it.
“My name’s Tom Price and I represent the Sixth District of Georgia and [am] the privileged chair of the Republican Study Committee,” Price said. “It’s now noon on Wednesday. I’m standing outside the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The door is closed. We just heard news break there’s been an agreement between the House and the Senate on the non-stimulus bill."
Chairman Tom Price discusses the stimulus deal struck between Congressional Democrats and the White House without Republican input or public oversight.
Yes this is how the Fascist work in Kenya and Indonesia. America, you better stand up.
Republican Study Committee Website here.
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