Money For Nothing

In 2009, Democrats raised the bar for fiscal incompetence - never before in the history of the world has so much money been spent with so little to show for it. 

It is shameful enough that they stole our grandchildren’s money to go on their fiscal binge; but it is downright embarrassing to see how ineptly they squandered over $2.6 trillion of future American prosperity.  Money for nothing, indeed.    

The list of blunders begins with the second installment of TARP, bringing to $850 billion the total appropriated for the expressed purpose of purchasing toxic assets from banks.  How many of these toxic assets got purchased?  Not a single one.

Next we spent over $40 billion for the expressed purpose of keeping GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt.  And then both GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.   

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill was passed with the expressed purpose of creating 3 million jobs and keep unemployment below 8%.  Except that we lost 3 million more jobs, and unemployment is now over 10% and climbing.   

Cash 4 Clunkers spent $4 billion for the expressed purpose of convincing people who were going to drive their old cars to buy fuel-efficient American cars instead. People who were going to buy a new car anyway bought Hondas. 

And then there was the Mortgage Bailout bill - $75 billion for the expressed purpose of keeping 5 million homeowners from losing their homes.  Oops – only 650,000 actually qualified, a small fraction of those were actually refinanced, and more than half of the loans refinanced went delinquent again within 3 months.   

The Senate is about to pass an $871 billion health care bill whose original expressed purpose was to provide universal coverage, spending reforms, and a public option.  After months of bribing votes out of individual senators, the final bill will do none of those things; instead it cuts care for seniors and raises our taxes by half a trillion dollars.   

Not to be outdone by Congress, the Federal Reserve doubled the money supply (yes, doubled it) in the last quarter of 2008 for the expressed purpose of forcing banks to expand credit in 2009.  Credit issuance contracted by 15%. 

On the international front, Copenhagen’s climate talks broke down (thankfully) with no agreement on global warming.  Somehow even that no-deal left us holding the bag to pay poor countries $30 billion for doing……..absolutely nothing.  At least the expectations for this deal are realistic.

It would be one thing if Americans were clamoring for all of these spending initiatives.  But opinion polls clearly showed each of these measures were overwhelmingly opposed, making them not merely expensive and ineffective, but also unwanted – the Trifecta of legislative absurdity. Tammy’s Democrats passed them all anyway.

That is why the approval rating of Congress is at its lowest point in modern history. As it should be; those guys are really bad at this stuff. We all knew they were reluctant capitalists; but who knew they would also turn out to be such incompetent socialists?    

Not that I would endorse government interference in markets, but let’s put their foolishness into perspective. $2.6 trillion could have purchased 2,600 new Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plants; enough capacity to generate all the energy we could ever conceivably use for all purposes - for several centuries.   

That’s what $2.6 trillion could have bought – perpetual energy independence and zero carbon emissions forever. Instead, we got nothing, unless you count a one-year raise for some union teachers.  That is truly pathetic.

We fired the big-government Republicans in 2006 because they didn’t get it – they spent too much money, ran up debt, ignored the Constitution, and were drifting aimlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We didn’t think anyone could possibly do worse in any of those four areas, let alone all four.  We were wrong.  

The Democrats have not just governed badly; they have trivialized the process of representative government.  They have spat upon the Constitution they swore an oath to uphold; they have mortgaged our future to indulge the fantasies of their radical base; they have traded our precious sovereignty for the worthless approval of the failing socialist states in Europe.  Thank God we have China to tell them to pound sand. 

Liberals will look at this list of 2009’s spectacular failures with pride; they consider passing any bill with a catchy title to be a great accomplishment.   They are itching to spend even more of our money and shove even more of their government down our throat; we can no longer say we didn’t see it coming.          

In 2009 they have made their ambitions clear; in 2010 it will be our turn to make ours equally clear.  Vote for Liberty.  Vote Libertarian.  Vote for Tim, Not Tammy.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Ba-Roke Obama

For a smart guy, President Obama sure seems to be having trouble understanding that we are broke. 

Granted, it is difficult to comprehend our fiscal situation with billions and trillions being thrown around – numbers no person can comprehend.  However, if we drop 8 zeros off all those big numbers, divide them all by 100 million, we can describe the federal budget in terms that every family can understand.

Drop the 8 zeros, and it goes like this: we make $27,000 a year, and we spend $42,000.  Let’s stop right there. 99.9% of us – those who don’t have a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard – can see exactly what the problem is: we are spending 55% more than we have.   

We have been living stupid for quite a few years now, so we already owe $120,000 on our Visa card.  Stop again for a second.  99.9% of us – those who don’t run the Federal Reserve – know that you can’t carry debt that is 4 times your annual income.

This year we will borrow another $18,000 to pay ongoing government expenses, including interest on the outstanding balance. 95% of us – those who didn’t take out a sub-prime loan at a place in a strip mall next to the Check ‘N’ Go – know that you have to pay back a loan.  

And we spent the money we borrowed on some pretty dumb things.  We borrowed $7,800 last winter for a stimulus bill that didn’t stimulate anything.  It was supposed to add 3 million new jobs; we lost 3 million.  Now we had to borrow another $300 to pay for the extra unemployment benefits.

We borrowed $8,500 to give to some big banks last fall; now they want to give us $2,000 back and call it square. 

We borrowed $500 to buy into GM and Chrysler then borrowed another $40 to give people to buy our cars. They took the money and bought Hondas instead; that really sucked.  $1,200 for Iraq and Afghanistan wasn’t enough, so we borrowed $300 to send more troops.

The Senate is busy trying to spend another $8,500 we don’t have on health care; the House already passed a version that would cost $12,000 that we don’t have. 

Not to mention that we will need to come up with $60,000 in a few years to pay for our parents’ retirements; we already raided the social security trust fund a long time ago.  How do you do all that on $27,000 a year?  Maybe rob a bank…..oh, wait, we own them now.  Never mind.

And then out of the blue Hillary grabs a microphone in Copenhagen and promises all the poor countries we will give them $1,000 because the temperature might go up…or go down…or stay the same.  

Ben Bernanke at the Fed had an idea: he took all the dollar bills out of our wallets, cut them in half and declared we had twice as much money now. So the banks could loan more to the government and charge more interest..to..themselves.  Time Magazine gave him man of the year for that one.  

Economist Stephen Moore gave me an even better idea this week, tongue in cheek; just take a sharpie and write a zero behind the number on each bill in your wallet.  That way, we would all be 10 times richer, right?  $1 turns into $10, $20 turns into $200; it’s no different than what the Fed is doing, just a bit more obvious.        

Let’s get serious.  The U.S. government is ba-roke, Barack – when are you going to get that?  And I mean everyday Lindsay Lohan broke, not just-on-taxday Donald Trump broke.  

I don’t care what Hillary said in Copenhagen, you don’t have any money to give; not $100 billion, not $100 million, not $100 thousand, not even $100.  And we aren’t giving you any more of ours; you are on your own.     

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Copenhagen's Climate Fascists

In the movies, international leaders respond to looming environmental apocalypse by sending Bruce Willis into space.  In Copenhagen, they send cash to Sudan.

Whatever you believe about the science of global warming, you can’t possibly still think 20,000 European socialists can save us from it.  Their solution is predictably lame: transfer wealth from rich countries to poor ones.  Yawn.

Paying a $10 billion per year guilt tax to third world dictators will not cool the planet, but this has never been about science; it is simply the latest front in a century-long attack on American ideals of liberty and capitalism.  We should quit pretending it is something else.

The Copenhagen Climatistas are not fighting to save the planet; they are fighting to hold on to an illusion of U.N. relevance in a world reconfigured without them by the ascendance of Asian capitalism. 

In the past quarter century, billions of people have turned to American-inspired capitalism to raise themselves out of the poverty that the previous half a century of European-inspired socialism brought them.  Rejected by thinking humans, the one-world statists have turned to rocks and shrubs to find a constituency for their discredited ideas.

President Obama should not go to Copenhagen.  What is at stake there is American sovereignty. We are the richest nation because we are the most productive; and we are the most productive because we use the most energy.  Energy equals prosperity, and should not give up 40% of ours just because a handful of collectivist dinosaurs find their impotence frustrating.

Energy is the currency of economic liberty.  The goal of climate fascists is to seize control of it and ration it according to their own ambitions; to regulate the economic activity of the whole world. Democrats seek their approval; Republicans fear their scorn; Libertarians refuse to indulge them their world government fantasy. 

Our energy is not theirs to ration.  Our prosperity is not theirs to negotiate.  Our Liberty is not theirs to trade.  Vote Libertarian.  Vote Tim, Not Tammy.

 

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Tooth Fairy Government

I call it Tooth Fairy Government: they steal your quarter, put it under their kid’s pillow, and then make believe the world is 25 cents richer. 

If you are the child on the receiving end, you like Tooth Fairy Government.  It promises to buy your car, pay your mortgage, send you to college, pay for your health care, create a green job for you, pay your pension, and bailout your business if you fail.

And Tooth Fairy Government promises to do all that without raising your taxes, increasing your debt, burning a single gram of carbon, costing a single job, creating a single percentage point of inflation, or leaving a single child behind.  

Your end of the bargain is to remain a child; an irresponsible, selfish, demanding, jealous child, focused solely on your own needs and desires, totally oblivious to the rights of others.   

You must believe you are entitled to that quarter, and you must accept that you are incapable of earning it for yourself.  You must learn to hate the child who was deprived when it was stolen from his parents, and you must agree to blame them for your troubles.  You must call the theft of their quarters “justice”, and describe your perpetual dependence as “the public good”. 

That is the only way you will accept the lie; to squeal with delight when the stolen quarter appears; to vote for Mommy and Daddy when they promise to steal another.  

Alas, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Tooth Fairy Government.  It you still believe in either one, you need to grow up. 

We have run out of other people’s quarters, and it is time that Mommy and Daddy quit playing make believe and tell you where quarters really come from: the capitalists make them.  Or we would if the government would get out of our way.

Wealth is produced; it is the product of someone’s labor.  To claim an entitlement to someone else’s labor is to enslave them, to make their person your property.  And slavery is immoral, whether it is done by an individual, a corporation, or a government.  

Enslaving our most productive capitalists – i.e. “taxing the rich” – is not only immoral, it is stupid.  It prevents those most able to create the most wealth from doing so.  It means less quarters when we need more quarters.

The Tooth Fairy socialists have never understood where quarters come from.  They give it no more thought than does the child peeking under his pillow hoping another one will somehow appear.  

We should love both our children and our socialists, but we shouldn’t let either of them run the country.  Vote Libertarian.  Vote for Tim, Not Tammy.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.