WSJ.com - A New Strategy for Economic Growth

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: A New Strategy for Economic Growth*

 

U.S. economic policy is sorely lacking an effective grand strategy, and we are likely to endure high unemployment, weak economic performance and trying financial markets until such a strategy is articulated and pursued.

So, what should be the economic grand strategy? In a word: growth.

The grand strategy is sector-neutral. It doesn't have favored industries or political parties. It does not seek to curry favor with special interests. The grand strategy fights statism everywhere.

The grand strategy goes out of its way to ensure that big companies are not advantaged at the expense of smaller, entrepreneurial competitors. If banks are "too big to fail," they are too big. They must be allowed to succeed or fail on their own merit, without any hint of government support.

A pro-growth strategy is decidedly long term in orientation. It aims for higher standards of living five, 10 and 20 years out, long past the next election cycle. It replaces the false promise made to the next generation of entitlement-program recipients with a solvent, dependable model that encourages work and savings.

An effective growth strategy confronts tough challenges before they become intractable.  Fundamental tax reform—dramatically lowering tax rates for individuals and companies while eliminating loopholes, deductions and credits—is critical to economic growth.

Achieving strong growth requires the free flow of capital, goods and ideas. We have world-class products and services to sell to the growing middle class in emerging markets. We must find our voice to resist the rising tide of economic protectionism…

The growth strategy also demands an abiding respect for the rule of law, and stable, cost-effective rules of the road from regulators.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - How Big Government Hurts the Average Joe

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: How Big Government Hurts the Average Joe

 

During the debt-ceiling debate, President Obama characterized his push for higher taxes and less aggressive budget cuts as being helpful to the middle class. The claim was that failing to raise taxes on high-income earners would place a disproportionate share of the pain on the rest. But it is our record-high government spending, not the failure to raise taxes on the rich, that is the typical American's largest long-term problem.

Workers do well only when the economy grows at a healthy and consistent pace. The biggest threat to long-term economic growth is government growth of the magnitude that characterized the past two years and that is forecast for our future.

Our current problems are not a result of acts of nature. They stem from policy choices that dramatically increased the size of the government. In the past two years, the federal budget has grown by a whopping 16%.

The budget for Health and Human Services, for example, home to Medicare and Medicaid, rose a hefty 22%, as compared with 12% for Defense.  The sum of 11 other agencies experienced an increase of more than 50% over the two-year period. Some of the budget increases should disappear when the economy rebounds, but much of the addition is permanent and is reflected in the president's projected future budget numbers.

The price of the stimulus is what appears to be a permanent increase in the size of government that will continue to slow economic growth. Most economists believe that high debt and high taxes each contributes to slow economic growth, which hurts workers both in the short and long run.

In the short run, job growth is very closely linked to GDP growth. If the economy is not growing, then jobs are not being added.

In the long run, wage growth suffers when GDP growth is weak. Labor productivity grows when technology advances as a result of capital investment, human or physical. But high taxes and the increased interest rates caused by high government debt reduce investment, which in turn impedes growth in labor productivity.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Global Rout

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Global Rout

 

They say there's always a silver lining. Yesterday there wasn't. Markets around the globe sold off in a chaotic day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average's hair-raising ride ended the day down 512 points. The discernible theme among the wreckage was a generalized loss of confidence in the policy-making role of governments, here and in Europe.

The economies of Europe and the United States have arrived at the moment when they no longer have any conceivable hope of being able to pay for the huge public commitments they've amassed the past 40 years. This year's "debt crisis" has been building for decades.

In the wake of the debt deal, liberal economists are now complaining that the downward pressure on spending violates the Keynesian commandment to flood a faltering economy with government outlays.

We've done that. From the first months of the Obama Presidency, billions of stimulus have been injected into the economy, budgeted federal spending has grown toward 25% of GDP and the Federal Reserve has poured oceans of cash into the markets.

The Keynesians have fired all their ammo, and here we are, going south. Maybe now President Obama should consider everything he's done to revive the American economy—and do the opposite.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - A Debt Deal The Founders Could Love

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: A Debt Deal The Founders Could Love

 

The debt-ceiling crisis has prompted predictable media laments about how partisan and dysfunct ional our political system has become. But if the process leading to the current deal was a "spectacle" and a "three-ring circus," the show's impresarios are none other than James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Our messy political system is working exactly the way our Founders intended it to.

To the extent House members were the most intransigent during the process—a matter of opinion, in any case—they were meant to be. The House of Representatives is the "popular branch," as described in The Federalist Papers, and was intended to "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." Many people, especially those who elected tea party candidates last November, passionately believe that the federal government has gone off the rails. They think that Washington has been spending like a dru nken sailor since President Obama took office, and that this profligacy must end.

By contrast, the Framers conceived the Senate as a body of graybeards (or, at the very least, as modestly mature individuals who have reached the age of 30). It was meant to represent the interests of the states and to serve as a check on "the impulse of sudden and violent passions," or the danger of "factious leaders" offering "intemperate and pernicious resolutions" that might in time characterize the lower house. If the Senate has been less willing than the House to call an immediate halt to federal borrowing and to seek a more gradual return to fiscal responsibility, this too is exactly what it is supposed to do.

The result was a compromise, as it has nearly always been throughout our history.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Poverty in America

There are poor in this country, but government-defined-poverty does not equal real-poverty.  The government does a disservice to the truly poor with their definitions and statistics.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Notable & Quotable

 

The Census Bureau reported last fall that 43 million Americans—one in seven of us—were poor. But what is poverty in America today? The most recent government data show that more than half of the families defined as poor by the Census Bureau have a computer in the home. More than three of every four poor families have air conditioning, almost two-thirds have cable or satellite television, and 92% have microwaves. . . . The typical poor family has at least two color TVs, a VCR, and a DVD player. One-third have a wide-screen, plasma, or LCD TV. And the typical poor family with children has a video-game system such as Xbox or PlayStation. . . .

The poor are r arely overcrowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor European. How about hunger? Activists proclaim, "At the end of the day, 17 million children go to bed hungry." TV news reports wail that America faces a "hunger crisis" in which "nearly one in four kids" is hungry.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which conducts the nation's food-consumption and hunger survey, says otherwise. The USDA reports that 988,000 children (or 1.3% of all American children) personally experienced very low food security—which means "reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns"—at any point in 2009. During the full course of the year, only one child in 67 was reported "hungry," even temporarily, because the family couldn't afford enough food. Ninety-nine percent of children did not skip a single meal during 2009 because of lack of financial resources.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Road to a Downgrade

A brief history of how the entitlement state started and grew into the problem we face today.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Road to a Downgrade

 

Even without a debt default, it looks increasingly possible that the world's credit rating agencies will soon downgrade U.S. debt from the AAA standing it has enjoyed for decades.

President Obama will deserve much of the blame for the spending blowout of his first two years (see the nearby chart). But the origins of this downgrade go back decades, and so this is a good time to review the policies that brought us to this sad chapter and $14.3 trillion of debt.

****

The looming debt downgrade only confirms what everyone knows: Congress has made so many promises to so many Americans that there is no conceivable way those promises can be kept. Tax rates might have to rise to 60%, 70%, even 80% to raise the revenues to finance these promises, but that would be economically ruinous.

Yet Mr. Obama and most Democrats still oppose any serious reform of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This insistence on no reform reinforces the notion that our entitlement state is too big to afford but also too big to change politically. This is how a AAA country becomes AA, the first step on the march to Greece.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - A Dangerous Medicare Proposal

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: A Dangerous Medicare Proposal

 

Medicare Part D, the prescription-drug benefit program for seniors, has cost the federal government considerably less than was initially estimated. It's also overwhelmingly popular among beneficiaries. But in Washington, Part D is now a prime target for overhaul. In the heat of debate over the debt ceiling, President Obama and a group of lawmakers have proposed lowering the deficit by eliminating one of the very things about Part D that makes it such a success.

That thing is competition. Part D works—and stands out among federal entitlement programs—because it harnesses market forces to save money for the government and beneficiaries. Drug companies compete for the right to sell their drugs to the private insurers who participate in the program. Those private insurers, in turn, compete to offer their plans to the Medicare enrollees.

The result is a program that cost 32% less than the Congressional Budget Office's original estimate. The competitive bidding process—aided, in part, by patent expiration of brand drugs—drives down the costs to both the beneficiaries and the taxpayers.

Some policy analysts dismiss the argument that medical innovation is driven by profits. But the facts tell the opposite story. Lack of potential profits is exactly the reason why diseases that afflict poor countries receive few R&D dollars.

Venture capital funding for the biotechs that kick-off research for new drugs is completely contingent on strong signs of profitability in terms of intellectual property, disease prevalence and reimbursement. The government's proposed price controls will ultimately cause some of this funding to dry up entirely.

This is the rerun of a much too familiar story: The more a government gets involved in paying for care, the more it will use its power as a big buyer to force down prices to providers. This has already happened in other parts of Medicare and many European countries.  For the U.S., this story will not end as happily.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Toying With Default

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Toying With Default

 

Barack Obama was in full-scold mode Friday night, summoning Congressional leaders to the White House to "explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default." It's a terrific question, albeit one the President refuses to answer. He remains far more interested in maneuvering to blame a default or credit downgrade on Republicans than in making himself part of any plausible solution to a crisis he insists is imminent.

Then again, it has long been clear that Mr. Obama isn't interested in spending reform. In February he proposed a budget that spent more than any in U.S. history. In April he demanded that Congress pass a "clean" debt ceiling hike that included no spending cuts whatsoever. Only after House Republicans unveiled their own sweeping budgetary reforms did the White House rush to also claim it wanted deficit reduction as part of the debt-ceiling debate.

The President insists his party is offering serious spending cuts and entitlement reform. He also likes to talk about "balance," which to him means real tax increases immediately and speculative spending cuts some time in the distant future. Behind the scenes the White House has only ever agreed to token reform and cuts. Here's a number for the debt history books: Mr. Obama's final offer in the Biden talks was a $2 billion cut in 2012 nondefense discretionary spending. The federal government spends more than $10 billion a day.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - A Gun Activist Takes Aim at U.S. Regulatory Power

I was told my link in Friday's email didn't work right, so I'm sending it out again.

WSJ.com - A Gun Activist Takes Aim at U.S. Regulatory Power

WSJ.com - A Gun Activist Takes Aim at U.S. Regulatory Power

This article contains some background on the commerce clause and 10^th amendment fights, including quick summaries of the key court cases that have greatly expanded Federal power.  While my level of hope is low that SCOTUS will correct past mistakes, I strongly support a narrow reading of the commerce clause.  After all, do you really think the Feds should be able to control how much wheat you grow for your own use on your own land?  Does that sound like “Land of the Free” to you?

 

WSJ.com - A Gun Activist Takes Aim at U.S. Regulatory Power

 

For years, Mr. Marbut argued that a wide range of federal laws, not just gun regulations, should be invalid because they were based on an erroneous interpretation of Congress's constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

Ten state attorneys general, dozens of elected officials and an array of conservative groups are b acking the legal challenge he engineered to get his constitutional theory before the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court in San Francisco is now considering his case.

Mr. Marbut isn't basing his pro-gun effort on the Second Amendment, the one that talks about a right to bear arms, but on the 10th, which discusses the limits of federal power.

He concluded the Supreme Court had twisted the words of the commerce clause, which grants Congress authority to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States."

He conceived of the Firearms Freedo m Act as a way to get it reconsidered. He says he focused on the commerce clause, rather than Second Amendment theories popular with firearms enthusiasts, to prompt a broad ruling that would rein in federal power.

 

 

WSJ.com - Overcaffeinated CAFE

WSJ.com - Opinion: Overcaffeinated CAFE

 

Praying for the insanity to blow over is the auto industry's strategy for dealing with the Obama administration latest urge to double down on fuel economy mandates. Auto makers, wishing to appear deferential to the government that bailed them out, only plead that any new targets be ratcheted up slowly so future administrations will have plenty of chance to repeal the rules before they take effect.

This, we're sad to say, is the most rational stance taken by any player in the CAFE bargaining now under way in Washington.

Economies around the world are foundering from an accumulation of policy excesses produced by the sort of straight-line, robotic thinking Obama is applying to so-called corporate average fuel economy rules.

If more money for less work is popular, thought Greece, twice as much money for half as much work will be even more popular.

If 64% of Americans owning their own homes is a good thing, thought Bill Clinton, 67% is better. If 67% is good, thought George Bush, 69% is better.

If forcing auto makers to build cars that deliver an average of 35.5 mpg is good, believes Mr. Obama, forcing them to deliver 56.2 is even better.

Engineering is absent. Any appreciation of the law of diminishing returns is absent.

Asking consumers, meanwhile, to bear the cost of fuel-economy improvement they don't value will cause them to keep their old cars on the road longer. And in pursuit of what benefits? If we junked every gasoline-powered car and truck in America, it would have no appreciable impact on global carbon dioxide. If, as Mr. Obama intends, we switch to electric cars, those cars would be powered by coal, so the alleged atmospheric dividend will be doubly elusive.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Jobless Summer

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Jobless Summer

 

Perhaps you've already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job. The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948.

Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001. The nearby chart chronicles the teen employment percentage over time, including the notable plunge in the last decade. So instead of learning valuable job skills—getting out of bed before noon, showing up on time, being courteous to customers, operating a cash register or fork lift—millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out.

The lousy economic recovery explains much of this decline in teens working, and some is due to increases in teen summer school enrollment. Some is also cultural: Many parents don't put the same demands on teens as they once did to get out and work.

But Congress has also contributed by passing one of the most ill-timed minimum wage increases in history. Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics.

 

 

 

 

WSJ.com - A 'Conservative Problem-Solver'

I continue to be completely undecided in the GOP primary race, and this article is not my endorsement.  However, Huntsman is a player we should be familiar with, and I believe he’ll be competitive in this race.

WSJ.com - Opinion: A 'Conservative Problem-Solver'

 

No Republican presidential candidate stirs more curiosity than Jon Huntsman. "What about Huntsman?" You hear it all the time. Who is Jon Huntsman and where is he coming from?

If there's a short version of Mr. Huntsman's core message, it is that America needs to start competing again, and aggressively, in the global marketplace.

Jon Huntsman, a discursive talker, brings a lot to the table. What remains to be seen is how he presents it all in a way Republican voters will want to buy. He's been pegged as the man running toward the middle—with past positions in favor of cap-and-trade regimes (now repudiated) and gay civil unions. But to win, he still has to pull votes from the conservative base. How?

"When people look at what we've done," he says, "they're going to say, 'He's a conservative problem solver.' I'm going to point people in the direction of what we've done as governor. I'm pro-life, strongly pro-Second Amendment. I think there are enough voters who will say, 'I may not like everything, but there's enough here to like.'"

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Food-Stamp Crime Wave

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Food-Stamp Crime Wave

 

Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar "paperwork reduction" reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.

The Obama administration is far more enthusiastic about boosting food-stamp enrollment than about preventing fraud. Thanks in part to vigorous federally funded campaigns by organizations urging people to accept government handouts, the number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007, and costs have more than doubled to $77 billion from $33 billion.

Lax attitudes toward fraud are spurring swindles across the nation…  Looser federal rules are spurring a bureaucratic crime wave.

The explosion in the number of food-stamp recipients tilts the political playing field in favor of big government. The more people who become government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Obama vs. ATMs: Why Technology Doesn't Destroy Jobs

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Obama vs. ATMs: Why Technology Doesn't Destroy Jobs

 

The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?"

Businesses relentlessly look for ways to replace workers with machines. The machines get better and smarter. We go from spoons to shovels to excavators, not the other way around.  The president calls this a structural issue—we usually call it progress.

But should we call this progress? In a sense it sounds like a deal with the devil. Replace workers with machines in the name of lower costs. Profits rise. Repeat. It's a wonder unemployment is only 9.1%. Shouldn't the economy put people ahead of profits?

Well, it does. The savings from higher productivity don't just go to the owners of the textile factory or the mega hen house who now have lower costs of doing business. Lower costs don't always mean higher profits. Or not for long. Those lower costs lead to lower prices as businesses compete with each other to appeal to consumers.

The result is a higher standard of living for consumers. The average worker has to work fewer and fewer hours to earn enough money to buy a dozen eggs or a pair of shoes or a flat-screen TV or a new car that's safer and gets better mileage than the cars of yesteryear. That higher standard of living comes from technology. It isn't just the rich who get cheaper TVs and cars, plus the convenience of using an ATM at midnight.

 

 

WSJ.com - Don't Know Much About History

I love history, and agree that my grade school education did a poor job teaching it to me.  Luckily I had parents that dragged me to many historic sites and I picked up some glimmers of understanding.  I think my love of history didn’t really set in until I started to realize how much better I understand my world today by understanding history.  

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Don't Know Much About History

 

The popular historian David McCullough says textbooks have become 'so politically correct as to be comic.' Meanwhile, the likes of Thomas Edison get little attention.

'We're raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate.  I know how much these young people—even at the most esteemed institutions of higher learning—don't know." Slowly, he shakes his head in dismay. "It's shocking."

He's right. This week, the Department of Education released the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found that only 12% of high-school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation's history. And consider: Just 2% of those students understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education.

Mr. McCullough began worrying about the history gap some 20 years ago, when a college sophomore approached him after an appearance at "a very good university in the Midwest." She thanked him for coming and admitted, "Until I heard your talk this morning, I never realized the original 13 colonies were all on the East Coast." Remembering the incident, Mr. McCullough's snow-white eyebrows curl in pain. "I thought, 'What have we been doing so wrong that this obviously bright young woman could get this far and not know that?'"

Answer: We've been teaching history poorly. And Mr. McCullough wants us to amend our ways.

One problem is personnel. "People who come out of college with a degree in education and not a degree in a subject are severely handicapped in their capacity to teach effectively," Mr. McCullough argues. "Because they're often assigned to teach subjects about which they know little or nothing." The great teachers love what they're teaching, he says, and "you can't love something you don't know anymore than you can love someone you don't know."

Another problem is method. "History is often taught in categories—women's history, African American history, environmental history—so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what."

What's more, many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back"—such as, say, Thomas Edison—"are given very little space or none at all."

 

 

 

WSJ.com - The Secret of Dads' Success

In honor of the Fathers out there (and with a big THANKS for mine)!

 

WSJ.com - The Secret of Dads' Success

 

As an estimated 70.1 million fathers prepare to celebrate Father's Day in the U.S., recent research shows that their distinct style of parenting is particularly worth recognition: The way dads tend to interact has long-term benefits for kids, independent of those linked to good mothering.

Beyond rough-and-tumble play, men tend to challenge crying or whining children to use words to express themselves. Men are more likely to startle their offspring, making faces or sneaking up on them to play.

The benefits of involved fathering are known: improved cognitive skills, fewer behavioral problems among school-age children, less delinquency among teenage b oys and fewer psychological problems in young women…

 

 

 

WSJ.com - A Welfare State or a Start-Up Nation?

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: A Welfare State or a Start-Up Nation?

 

Who you vote for in the next election will largely be determined by how you answer the following question: Should we encourage more productive use of resources or more social welfare? Higher taxes to support a larger welfare state means a larger share of national resources pay for a Medicare system that everyone recognizes as expensive and inefficient. More spending reduction, especially for Medicare and Medicaid, allows a more productive use of resources for growth.

Capitalist development and open economies lifted vastly more people out of poverty in a decade than welfare state policies had achieved in 50 years.  The welfare of the citizens—poor, middle-class and wealthy—is best improved by using resources more productively.

After one generation, a one percentage point difference in growth rate becomes a 25% difference in per-capita income. Low growth significantly lowers real wages and living standards for everyone, which in turn lessens tax receipts and resources for redistribution.

Mr. Obama and his followers claim they want a solution that is "fair." Why is it fair to distribute more welfare to today's voters at the expense of their children and grandchildren who will pay for this less productive use of resources? This is the same "fair" approach that Europeans chose decades ago, and which led to chronic low growth and high unemployment.

It isn't fair to tax future generations just because they can't vote. We have a choice between a brighter future for our descendants and more social spending now. The missing words "more productive use of resources" are critical for a rational choice. To realize the promise that the U.S economy has always offered, we must choose less social spending, less intrusive regulation, and more efficient use of resources in both the public and private sectors.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Europe's Organic Food Scare

Factory farms have their own problems, but this example provides a counter-weight to the “organic is always better” argument.

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: Europe's Organic Food Scare

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German Greens and their European Union acolytes have long fought scientific advances in food production and protection. After a spice manufacturer in Stuttgart employed the world's first commercial food irradiation in 1957, West Germany banned the practice in 1959 and has since allowed few exceptions. So it's no small scandal that the latest fatal E. coli outbreak has been linked to an organic German farm that shuns modern farming techniques.

But both harmful and harmless E. coli strains are present in the intestines of most animals, as well as human beings. No amount of standardizations or certifications will guarantee E. coli's eradication from food.

The best practice for doing so would be, well, irradiation, which involves sending gamma rays or electron beams into meat, poultry and produce. The process can deactivate up to 99.999% of E. coli, and was declared safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration almost 50 years ago. Even so, less than 10% of the global food supply is irradiated.

The problem is largely that the term "irradiation" sounds like what might have happened to Blinky, the three-eyed fish that Bart Simpson caught downstream from the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in a 1990 "Simpsons" TV episode. Yet study after study has turned up no evidence that zapping food with low doses of radiation damages human health.

This latest E. coli outbreak is painful real-life evidence that natural foods are not always better, nor safe for consumption.

 

 

WSJ.com - The Lone Star Jobs Surge

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Lone Star Jobs Surge

 

The Texas model added 37% of all net U.S. jobs since the recovery began.  Using straight nonfarm payroll employment, Texas accounts for 45% of net U.S. job creation.

What explains this Lone Star success? Texas is a big state, but its population of 24.7 million isn't that much bigger than the Empire State, about 19.5 million. California is a large state too—36.9 million—and yet it's down 11,400 jobs. Mr. Fisher argues that Texas is doing so well relative to other states precisely because it has rejected the economic model that now prevails in Washington, and we'll second that notion.

All states labor under the same Fed monetary policy and interest rates and federal regulation, but all states have not performed equally well. Texas stands out for its free market and business-friendly climate.

Capital—both human and investment—is highly mobile, and it migrates all the time to the places where the opportunities are larger and the burdens are lower. Texas has no state income tax. Its regulatory conditions are contained and flexible. It is fiscally responsible and government is small. Its right-to-work law doesn't impose unions on businesses or employees. It is open to global trade and competition.

Yet the core impulse of Obamanomics is to make America less like Texas and more like California, with more government, more unions, more central planning, higher taxes. That the former added 37% of new U.S. jobs suggests what an historic mistake this has been.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Power to the People? How Déclassé

WSJ.com - Opinion: Power to the People? How Déclassé

 

In Colorado and elsewhere, the concept of citizen ballot initiatives is under attack.

Twenty-four states currently allow voters to write their own laws through the initiative process, sidestepping gridlocked legislatures to pass statutes or constitutional amendments. Conservative voters have used the tool to impose term limits and curb racial quotas. At the same time, liberals have used initiatives to pass minimum-wage laws and tobacco taxes that were often blocked by legislatures where lobbyists held sway.

It's just such citizen democracy that has irked the establishment in states such as Colorado, California and Oregon—so the political class is trying to rein it in.

It's fashionable these days for elites to disparage popular democracy. "The longer that people live in California, it seems, the more likely they are to be misinformed, and possibly brainwashed into ignorance," sniffed the Economist last April in a 16-page special report slamming that state's initiative process. But in reality, the initiative process serves as a popular check on out-of-touch legislators and reminds everyone that it's the voters who should be in charge of the politicians, not the other way around.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - Beware, a Big Headache Is Coming

I know several of my readers suffer from migraines.  Perhaps something here may be new info…

 

WSJ.com - Beware, a Big Headache Is Coming

 

A migraine is among the most debilitating conditions in medicine—a blinding, throbbing pain that typically lasts between four and 72 hours. There is no cure.

Yet, a few hours or days before the dreaded headache sets in, subtle symptoms emerge: Some people feel unusually fatigued, cranky or anxious. Some have yawning jags. Others have food cravings or excessive thirst.

If migraine sufferers can learn to identify their particular warning signs, they may be able to head off the headache pain with medication or lifestyle changes before it begins, experts say.

 

 

Text of Pawlenty's Speech on His Economic Plan

I’m still very undecided on the 2012 GOP presidential race, but yesterday’s speech by Tim Pawlenty gets a big thumbs up from me.  I’m the first to agree that a good speech does not a good president make (see POTUS, current), but if we can get the electorate talking about and debating these issues we’re moving in the right direction.  Below are a few of my favorite soundbites.

 

Text of Pawlenty’s Speech on His Economic Plan

 

·         I’m willing to tell Americans the hard truth. And I believe Americans are ready to hear it.  But the truth about our economy isn’t hard at all. Markets work. Barack Obama’s central planning doesn’t. 

·         We should start by overhauling the tax code. Its currently an anti-growth nine thousand page monstrosity that’s chock full of special deals for special interests. It’s main goal — seems to be to generate campaign contributions. Not jobs. 

·         Business success should depend on winning over customers. Not winning over Congressman.

·         A balanced federal budget shouldn’t be a political sound bite.  It should be the law of the land…  We have to face the truth  — Congress is addicted to spending.    And that’s true regardless of which party is in control.    

·         We can start by applying what I call “The Google Test.”  If you can find a good or service on the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it.  

·         Finally — even if we are successful in changing the way Washington taxes, spends, and regulates, many of the gains we’d realize could be lost by the continued debasement of the dollar — as a result of the loose-money policies of the Fed.  We need monetary policy that is focused like a laser on curbing inflation and maintaining price stability.  That should be the role of the Fed.  And nothing more.

WSJ.com - The Real Cost of the Auto Bailouts

WSJ.com - Opinion: The Real Cost of the Auto Bailouts

 

The government's unnecessary disruption of the bankruptcy laws will do long-term damage to the economy.

If the government hadn't stepped in and dictated the terms of the restructuring, the story goes, General Motors and Chrysler would have collapsed, and at least a million jobs would have been lost. The bailouts averted disaster, and they did so at remarkably little cost.

The problem with this happy story is that neither of its parts is accurate. Commandeering the bankruptcy process was not, as apologists for the bailouts claim, the only hope for GM and Chrysler. And the long-term costs of the bailouts will be enormous.

If the government wanted to "sell" the companies in bankruptcy, it should have held real auctions and invited anyone to bid. But the government decided that there was no need to let pesky rule-of-law considerations interfere with its plan to help out the unions and other favored creditors.

 

 

 

WSJ.com - More Calls for a Drug War Cease-Fire

Brings the mind the common statement that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. 

 

WSJ.com - Opinion: More Calls for a Drug War Cease-Fire

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An increasing number of world leaders are concluding that laws against drug consumption do more harm than good.

Tomorrow marks the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the U.S. prohibition on alcohol. On that day in 1932 John D. Rockefeller Jr., a vociferous advocate of temperance, called for the repeal of the 18th amendment.

Rockefeller had not changed his views on the destructiveness of drink, and he asked for ongoing "support of practical measures for the promotion of genuine temperance." But he insisted that lifting prohibition was essenti al if America was to "restore public respect for the law."

Rockefeller's reversal came to mind last week when the Global Commission on Drug Policy issued a joint report "describ[ing] the drug war as a failure and call[ing] for a paradigm shift in global drug policy."

Like Rockefeller, the commission members do not embrace a laissez-faire policy toward drug use. But they recognize, as he did, that the attempt to use force to halt consumption has been disastrous. They recommend alternative approaches to controlling substances and more emphasis on treatment for addicts.

The parallels between the situation Rockefeller faced and today's scandalous war on drugs are dramatic. The wealthy philanthropist had begun his campaign against alcohol with great expectations. "When the Eighteenth Amendment was passed I earnestly hoped—with a host of advocates of temperance—that it would be generally supported by public opinion" and, he wrote, that teetotaling would eventually take hold.

"That this has not been the result but rather that drinking generally has increased; that the speakeasy has replaced the saloon, not only unit for unit, but probably two-fold if not three-fold; that a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale; that many of our best citizens, piqued at what they regarded as an infringement of their private rights, have openly and unbashed[ly] disreg arded the Eighteenth Amendment; that as an inevitable result respect for all law has greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree—I have slowly reluctantly come to believe."

He noted that any "benefits" from the 18th amendment were "more than outweighed by the evils that ha[d] developed and flourished since its adoption, evils which, unless promptly checked," were "likely to lead to conditions unspeakably worse than those which prevailed before."

Sound familiar?