Rookie

In a recent poll on President Obama’s rookie season, more Americans said it was a failure than said it was a success. Only 39% still believe we should have elected him.

Even Massachusetts can’t take any more of his socialism, electing an economic conservative to the Senate seat held as an entitlement by a liberal Kennedy for more than half a century.   

This was a colossal rebuff of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda, and the fourth pick-six interception the rookie Obama has thrown in the political red zone.  First it was the Olympics, then the G8, then Copenhagen, and now Massachusetts.  The media paints him out to be Manning or Brady, but he plays like Cutler.   

Obama apologists dismiss his plunging poll numbers and humiliating proxy defeats, calling them the consequence of the President inheriting an economic crisis and two wars. 

Wrong.  They are the consequence of the President perpetuating an economic crisis and two wars.  

Everyone that voted for President Obama (or didn’t) in 2008 was fully aware of the economic crisis and the two wars.  In fact, they were the only reason he won the election; his singular qualification for office was not being George W. Bush.  His 70% approval ratings a year ago reflected our collective expectation that he would do better.   

His current 42% approval rating reflects our collective conclusion that he has done worse.  His war policies mirror that of his predecessor, excepting that he has expanded the scope of conflict, increased troop commitments, and is even less able to formulate a coherent victory strategy, as hard as that is to imagine.   

The right never did trust him on matters of war and peace, and now the left doesn’t either; that is the singular bi-partisan achievement of Mr. Obama’s rookie season. 

But it is Obamanomics - not war policy - that is causing the President’s numbers to drop faster than the thermometer at Al Gore’s farm.  

Post-war recessions average 12-16 months duration, and we were already in month 15 when he took office.  A President in a coma would have presided over recovery; that is what he inherited, Mr. Axelrod’s protestations not withstanding.  But here we are, still mired down in month 27, and this is all on him. 

There is not one single element of the President’s economic agenda – bank bailouts, purchase of GM and Chrysler, health care, stimulus bill, deficit spending, cap and trade, minimum wage, card check, tax increases – that is supported by a majority of Americans, or more importantly, a majority of economists. 

And for good reason; they don’t work.  They didn’t work in the past, they are not working now, and they won’t work in the future.  

We know this because we are not rookies; we remember the 1970’s, and we studied the economic history of the 1930’s before it was re-written by delusional Keynesians whose loopy theories were discredited by four decades of failure in practice.      

The rookie Obama got schooled by the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, the Olympic committee, Pelosi, Chavez, Wall Street, Main Street, the Tea Party movement, and the voters of New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts. 

We all need the President to succeed, to learn the lessons from his rookie season; maybe he just needs better coaching, so here is my chalk talk for his second year:    

Ok, listen up! We don’t want government health care, energy rationing, forced unionization, and nationalized industries; and we don’t want to be taxed to death while lorded over by an army of government nannies telling us what we can eat, drink, smoke, wear, drive, buy, sell, earn, keep, own, carry, burn, throw away, say, pray, and think.  

Got that?  Now, quit trying to force your throws into triple coverage and take what the defense gives you - that is the lesson to be learned from your rookie season, Brett….I mean, Barack.  

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.

Abolish The What?

In my last post, I proposed abolishment of the Federal Reserve and the IRS; I hope I did not give anyone the impression that it was an all-inclusive list.

Democrats are a lost cause when it comes to fiscal sanity, and Republicans are math-averse – talking in platitudes about cutting taxes and reducing the deficit, but unable or unwilling to name the specific programs they would cut to get there.  Libertarians are both fiscally responsible and mathematically proficient.          

Let’s start with the Department of Education.  We send a dollar to D.C. and get 78 cents back (or less) with a boatload of stings attached.  Before we federalized education we were #1 in the world; today spend twice as much per pupil and we are 17^th in reading, 18^th in math.  Kill it before it drives us out of the top 50.

Next up, Departments of Labor and Commerce.  Both exist to neutralize the power of the other - it’s like suing yourself and then paying for both lawyers.  Quick quiz: who is the current secretary of either department?  I didn’t think so.  Chop, chop.

While we are at it, adios Agriculture Department.  We have the internet now; we don’t need the county extension agent.  But wait, you say, who will divvy out the giant subsidies to the giant agri-businesses with no giant Ag Department?  Bonus.     

Department of Energy.  Before we had a department of it, energy was cheap and plentiful and most of it was produced here.  We are more dependent than ever on foreign oil while our energy costs have gone through the roof.  Good riddance.

Another quick quiz: name three actual accomplishments of the United Nations - me neither. Bye.  And why are we giving out foreign aid that we borrow from the Chinese? Let them go ask China for some cash and cut out the middle man.

How about the Bureau of Indian Affairs?  This is 2010, not 1910.  The dudes stuffing their money into the slot machines at Ho Chunk have a lot less of it than the dudes who are taking it out. 

Department of Housing and Urban Development.  50 years and trillions of dollars later, has one Urb has been developed?  And wasn’t it government-mandated sub-prime lending that broke the world in 2008?  I can’t believe HUD is even still here to cut.  

Department of Defense needs a 50% trimming: how can it take 600,000 civilian employees to buy bullets and beans for 1.1 million uniformed troops, and why are our troops defending Germany?  Did Lichtenstein invade and are we next on the list? Back when it was called the War department, we all knew what it was supposed to be used for.

In a previous post, I laid out my proposal for converting the government pension system (social security) to a system of personal retirement savings accounts over a generation, and in another 2-part piece, laid out a comprehensive plan for real health care reform that phased out Medicare.  Anyone who still talks about “saving”  either hem clearly doesn’t comprehend they are already broke.

TSA, NIH, FDA, EPA, SBA, INS, DEA – too many agencies, not enough space to list them all . If it has three initials or a czar running it, chances are it is 8 parts useless jobs program for unionized federal workers and 2 parts marginally useful function of government.  I would make “scrap” the default setting unless someone can justify their existence who doesn’t work there or get their grants from them.

Add them up, and we have just cut the size of the federal government in half, from 24% of GDP to 12%, and turned deficits into surpluses so the debt can be paid down and tax rates can be lowered.  These are real and permanent cuts, not smoke and mirrors or single-year accounting gimmicks.   

And government will not only be cheaper, it will be better.  We will have better schools, more energy, real retirement security, health care that is better and more affordable, strong economic growth, more jobs, and higher wages.  Think of it as a $1.7 trillion economic stimulus bill each and every year, only one that Jim Doyle can’t get his hands on.

Think my cut list is too drastic?  Look at it again, and tell me which one of these departments has fulfilled its promise.  Tell me which you would even notice if no one told you it was gone. Tell me which one you are willing to pay 71% higher taxes to keep around – that what it will take from all of us to keep all of the government we have now.

My campaign cards say “Tim, Not Tammy”.  You have seen my list; you should ask her to show you hers.  We both claim to be against deficit spending: one of us (Tim) has shown you how to stop it, and the other (Tammy) has voted for every penny of it.     

                   

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.

Sound Money and Fair Taxes

2009 was a pretty bad year for the Constitution, but 1913 was worse: it was the year that the Federal Reserve was created and taxing income was legalized.

I don’t expect “Repeal the 16^th Amendment” will replace “O Sucks!” as the student section chant of choice at next year’s Badger games, but  it is those students and everyone in their age group who would gain the most if we would return to the principled economics of sound money and proportional taxation.  They would not be facing a $225,000 per-job share of the national debt and they would earn orders of magnitude higher incomes when they graduate.  

You won’t find the Federal Reserve anywhere in the Constitution; it assigns Congress the sole responsibility for maintaining a sound and stable currency in Article I, section 8.  In section 9, it even prohibits states from accepting fiat money (what the Fed issues) as repayment for debts.  This was not a careless omission; the framers observed how the central banks of Europe oppressed the common folk and enriched the ruling elites.  

The founding fathers knew that a central bank was incompatible with the ideal of limited and subservient government.  For the first American century there was no central bank and we prospered as no other nation has before or since.  Then, in 1913, the so-called progressives abandoned the Constitution and created the Federal Reserve, giving it complete autonomy over the money supply.  Bad move.

In 1913, the first Federal Reserve Notes (the dollar) were coupons redeemable for one ounce of gold.  Either one ounce of gold or one U.S. dollar could purchase a decent rifle, as was the case in 1813, a century earlier.  Today, a decent rifle can still be purchased with ounce of gold, but it would take over 1,000 of those Federal Reserve notes to buy either one. 

Gold and rifles cost the same, but the dollar has lost 99.9% of its value, thanks to the Federal Reserve and its inflationary issuance of fiat money – money not backed by tangible assets.  We should abolish the Federal Reserve and return to the Constitutional mandate of sound money.  

I personally prefer a currency tied to a BTU – unit of energy – while others prefer a return to the gold standard, and others a basket of commodities.  It is not so important how our money is anchored, but that it is.  We can not have a strong economy without a strong dollar, and we will never have a strong dollar while we have the Federal Reserve.   

And while we are at it, we should also repeal the 16^th amendment and abolish all taxes on income.  Income is the product of a person’s labor and no one else has a rightful claim to it.  A slave is a person who has lost his right to 100% of the product of his labor; a tax-slave is a person who is 2/3 of the way there.    

Before the 16^th amendment changed it, the Constitution required the government to tax people, not the product of their work.  And it required any form of tax to be proportional to the census, just like representation in Congress.  The principle is simple: one person, one vote, one unit of tax.  That is equality.

That principle held government in check for a century, with government spending below 5% of GDP. And government only spent money on things that benefited everyone, since everyone was taxed equally.  During the 1800’s we became the most prosperous people in the history of the world, and not by accident.

In the first American century, Americans flourished because American government was constrained.  In the second, it was American government that flourished while Americans were constrained.  Our government now spends nearly 50% of GDP, and with unfunded mandates on the private sector added, the total is over 60%.  

And our tax system no longer taxes citizens equally; it punishes some to benefit others.  Our current tax code punishes work, savings, investment, thrift, and exports.  It rewards spending, debt, taxation, and imports. It is not difficult to understand why we have too little of the former and too much of the latter. 

Worse yet, our tax system insures corruption of the political process – it is the mechanism by which politicians reward contributors and punish opponents.  It is how votes are bought in Congress.  It distorts the markets and produces economic inefficiency.  It screws the little guy.  The current tax system is indefensible.    

We can not immediately return to a proportional tax with the size of government that we have today; the cost of citizenship would be approximately $20,000 per person, $80,000 for a family of four.  Now, you might be thinking this can’t possibly be right; you may not even make $80,000. 

And that is precisely the point; the reason you don’t make more than $80,000 is because the government has taxed it out of the economy where you could have earned it.  Granted, some people would earn more of it than other people would, but that still beats Nancy Pelosi taking all of it. 

This could never have happened under the original Constitutional requirement for proportional taxation, and it is why the 16^th amendment needs to be repealed.  It’s why the 16^th amendment matters to you, why the students at Camp Randall should be chanting for it to be repealed – but not at the expense of Jump Around, the greatest stadium tradition in the history of spectator sports.

But we can take an intermediate step that can put us on the path to ending confiscatory taxation, and give everyone a vested interest in reducing the size of government.  We should scrap the whole system of federal taxes and replace them with one universal tax on retail consumption – the FairTax.  In the process, we can dispense with the IRS, freeing up over $400 billion that is currently being spent each year on compliance with its ridiculously complex codes.  

You can read all about FairTax at www.fairtax.org and you can learn about the movement to End The Fed at http://endthefedusa.ning.com/.  

President Obama insists we need another economic stimulus because his first one didn’t work.  I agree with him 100%.  End the Fed and abolish the IRS – that is my economic stimulus plan.

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.