Thank You, Scott Walker

The past few weeks debt-ceiling jabberwocky in Washington D.C. has produced only one clear winner – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Watching our nations’ leaders flop around like carp in a bucket trying to concoct some incomprehensible mix of bullsnot and pixie dust that will make doing nothing look like doing something has become even more boring than it is pathetic, and that is no mean feat.  Markets have not lost confidence in America; they have lost faith in America’s President and our Congressional leaders.  We all have.

Governor Walker is looking like Winston Churchill next to these cobs.  Residents of the Badger state are lucky to have a Governor and legislature who did their jobs and passed responsible budget reform as their first order of business. The results have been immediate, remarkable, and indisputable.  Washington could learn something from Wisconsin, and here it is: you balance a budget by balancing a budget.  Go do your job.

Walker inherited a $3.3 billion deficit mess from his predecessor, including a cynical $144 million turd dropped in the punchbowl on his way out the door.  Unlike some U.S. President who shall remain nameless, Governor Walker did not make blaming the last guy his re-election strategy on day one of his first term.  He went to work; he did his job; he fixed the budget.  It was not easy; doing the right thing rarely is.

The socialists unleashed a torrent of hate at the new Governor more furious than anyone ever feared might be directed at our first black President, but Walker did not sulk or pout or pitch a fit in prime time.  He did not berate his adversaries.  He did not say an unkind word about the public employees whose unions vilified him and his supporters.  While the opposition party abandoned their posts and fled to another state, the Governor quietly went to work each day and moved his plan through the legislature.

Walker’s budget fix liberated the state from the fiscal death grip of its public sector unions.  He saved taxpayers hundreds of millions, and he saved the jobs of tens of thousands of state workers, municipal employees, and teachers who would otherwise have been laid off, as was the case in Milwaukee and Madison where teachers’ unions shot themselves in the foot by extending contracts before the Walker budget reforms took effect.  Those workers whose jobs were saved won’t say it, but I will:

Thank you, Scott Walker.

All over the state, local government and school districts are saving money, instituting merit pay for teachers, reducing class sizes, improving services, and reducing tax burdens on the real working class. The rank-and-file teachers in Milwaukee have now mutinied, forcing their own union leaders to re-open contract negotiations to bring back teachers laid off by their union’s intransigence.  Whose plan do they demand their unions adopt?  Governor Scott Walker’s plan – imagine that.

Wisconsin has already paid back its long-overdue debt to the state of Minnesota, and it is paying back its debts to trust funds raided over the past decade.  Walker’s fiscal responsibility led to favorable borrowing terms, saving millions each month in lower interest and fees.  Paying down debt improves credit ratings – did you catch that, junk-bond U.S. President who shall remain nameless? 

Governor Walker began his term by announcing, “Wisconsin is Open For Business”.  With changes both overt and subtle, he has turned a hostile business climate into a far more favorable place for businesses to operate.  While a certain anti-business President’s state-suckling show ponies used their subsidies to move overseas – GM to Mexico and GE to China – Walker’s Wisconsin companies stayed here and led the nation in job creation in June, creating over half of all net jobs in the country.  40,000 jobs have been created since he took office in January – that is how you raise revenue without increasing tax rates on anybody.

Employers across Wisconsin have thousands more job openings we can’t fill for the lack of qualified, educated workers.  The Governor has announced an initiative to reform our education system to improve the relevance and effectiveness of our schools, once the best in the nation.  The state teachers’ union, still seething that Walker’s budget fix did not cause the sky to fall, refuses to participate.  Thank God for that, and now Governor Walker is going ahead without them.

It is ridiculous that Wisconsin taxpayers must indulge the vengeful unionists who are trying to recall Walkers’ legislative allies out of pure spite.  Those legislators did nothing wrong; they did their jobs - unlike a certain U.S. President who shall remain nameless, or a certain U.S. Senate who has not passed a budget in two years, or a certain Wisconsin former Governor and his legislatures who spent eight years digging the hole Scott Walker filled in only six months on the job. 

Recall?  Here’s what I recall:  I recall that the Democrats who preceded Walker raised billions in taxes and still left the state billions in the red.  I recall they looted state trust funds earmarked for transportation and malpractice insurance to feather their union nests and then pleaded for federal rail and health care.  I recall that the eighth graders who spent all eight grades under a liberal Democrat governor and legislature tested out at 39% proficient in math.   I recall an attorney general’s DUI, springing a legislator out of jail to vote a bill, a prosecutor hitting on rape victims, and bonuses paid to Capitol staffers while 300,000 Wisconsinites lost their jobs. And I recall a few million dollar pile of useless train cars the former Governor bought in secret on a junket to Spain.  Drum on that.  

All those millions being spent this summer by the unions to recall a handful of State Senators could have been used to help their members meet those new contributions to their own health premiums and pensions that caused them to come unglued.  That is, if the unions gave a spit about their members.  But they don’t; this week’s union priority is harassing a charity for the developmentally disabled that the Governor supports.  You can’t wash off that kind of scum with a chemical peel.   

Libertarians like me can find plenty to criticize in Governor Walker’s first six months.  He killed Constitutional Carry, supports the smoking ban on private property, is dragging his feet on raw milk, sold out micro-breweries, extended unemployment benefits, is on the wrong side of medical marijuana, and should have passed school choice and Right To Work while the AWOL Democrats were channeling their inner Jay Cutler down in Illinois, moping on the sidelines with their hoodies pulled up tight.

But for the life of me, I cannot understand why Republicans in this state have not turned this recall nonsense into a victory dance.  Walker took on the unions and he won.  He had a plan and it worked. The left revealed its vile and corrupted true self for the whole nation to see.  Each day’s new clown act in D.C. reminds us of how much chaos the voters of Wisconsin avoided by having that little recall of our own last November that gave the GOP a shot at governing in Wisconsin.

If they don’t have the nards for it, let me say it for them and every other fiscally responsible citizen of this state: Thank you, Scott Walker.      


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     

Flavored History

California recently passed a law requiring public schools to teach gay history.  The law has produced the predictable disproportionate reactions from the gloating left and the outraged right.

I myself am simply bewildered - what the heck is gay history?  If a person’s contributions were historically significant, then they will already be recorded in the history books.  So does gay history mean simply going through the text and highlighting the people who were/are gay?    

No, the state decrees that new content must be added, which means the purpose of the mandate is not simply to recognize the legitimate achievements of gay people, which would be fine, but to elevate accomplishments and add significance to events that historians have not accorded to them on the merits.  Artificial flavor added.

Here is a touchy question for the gay historians of California: what will you say about Jeffrey Dahmer? And will children learn about Congressman Barney Frank’s culpability in the collapse of our financial system?   Will gay men be honestly cast as perpetrators in the AIDS epidemic?  Will the scandal of gay pedophile priests in the Catholic Church be included?   Are you telling the story or selling a movement?      

Flavored history is not history; it is advocacy.  The problem is not just that it promotes a slanted political agenda to vulnerable minds, but that it perpetuates the very segregation and discrimination it purports to overcome.   Gay history - like black history, women’s history, Hispanic history, union history, and any other of the flavored varieties – reinforces separateness, and separateness is what leads to hate.  

American history, properly told, is the triumph of individual liberty over separateness.  We are the melting pot.  We are the nation that ended slavery.  We are the nation that championed women’s suffrage.  We are the nation that institutionalized charity.  We are the nation founded upon religious tolerance.  We are the nation who faces and corrects our defects.  Our history does not need artificial flavoring – it is pretty darn good right out of the tap.

In 1969, my American History text acquainted us with the historic contributions of Susan B. Anthony, Carry Nation, Abigail Adams, Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, Grace Hopper and dozens of other women who changed the course of American history.  Their achievements inspired boys and girls alike.

By 1994, my son’s American History text had been “improved” by a mandate to include “women’s history”.  The first page of the now separate chapter on women was adorned with a picture of Marilyn Monroe.  A text insert on her life was larger than the space devoted to Thomas Jefferson.  Artificial flavor added.

The importance of historical figures is found between their ears, not between their legs.  It is the uncommonly great ideas that change the course of human history, not the biological configurations and physical urges of the bodies that house those magnificent minds.
 
Being a woman is no accomplishment – one out of two people are; one in five is black; one in fifty is gay. A mind like Thomas Jefferson is one in a billion. Or how about Ayn Rand – her book, “Atlas Shrugged” has been named as the second most transformational in history after the Bible.    

Did my son learn about Ayn Rand in “women’s history”?  No, he learned about Ayn Rand from me.  I hope he learned a lot of other things from me – including that we should treat each and every person with equal respect and kindness, regardless of their race, gender, age, orientation, disability, or parent’s wealth.

I hope he learned that collective victimhood is a choice, and that inequality of outcome is proof that equality of opportunity exists. I hope he learned that success is achieved through hard work, good character, a positive attitude, and a commitment to excellence.  I hope he learned to admire real achievement, and to celebrate, not covet, the success of others. 

I hope he learned that liberty is a birthright from God and not a grant from government.  I hope he learned that charity is its own reward; that humility will be thrust upon those who do not impose it upon themselves; that each of us will be remembered for what we did and not for what we hoped someone else would do.

I hope he learned all that from me; because he did not learn it in public school.

Several years ago, I was invited to sit in on the annual faculty meeting of a large public university. The keynote speaker encouraged them to imbed overtly anti-capitalist teachings into each and every one of the courses they taught, and he received a standing ovation for this blatantly unethical idea.

Not just flavored history, but flavored mathematics, astronomy, psychology, accounting, nursing, physics, art, and even flavored business administration.  Everything flavored with Marxist propaganda – “look there kids, that is the big-oil-is-bad dipper”.

When I asked afterwards why Marxist philosophy should not be confined to political science, history, or economics curricula where it seemed more appropriate, the response was, “the objective is to imbed ideas, not to debate them”.

That was an honest answer.  Propagandists and ideologues are not interested in debate; nor are they interested in truth, tolerance, accommodation, balance, objectivity, proportion, or rationality.  They are only interested in forcing your acceptance of their belief system.  Key word: force.

Forced conformance is not education, and those who indoctrinate are not educators.  Opponents of indoctrination do not hate gays, women, or minorities; we have long ago cleansed our souls of discrimination and prejudice.  Try as some might to project their own vile thoughts into our heads, we won’t waste our time on their unresolved guilt.  That angers them.  

It is said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste – especially on self-indulgent ideologues and self-absorbed bureaucrats.  History is history.  The truly historic achievements of individuals of all flavors stand on their own merits; no embellishment is necessary.


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     
 

Forgive Us Our Debts

Congressman Ron Paul has identified the best solution to the debt ceiling crisis by calling out a central fallacy of our national debt - $1.6 trillion of it is owed to the Federal Reserve, an arm of the government for all intents and purposes.

Forgive the debt to the Fed, says Rep. Paul, and we get our borrowing line back without raising the debt ceiling or a tax hike. Simple.

Those who think Congressman Paul’s idea is whacky should say the alternative out loud: the government owes money to itself, so it pays interest to itself, which is returned to itself.  But rather than forgive itself its debt to itself, it will require itself to pay itself, plunging the world into chaos and destroying the dollar.

Now who sounds like a wing-nut?  But Congressman Paul’s simple solution does not have a snowball’s chance in hell. Why?  Because twads run our government.

“Twad” is a densely compacted contraction of the words “nitwit” and “dickwad”.  It is not an economic term; it is something I learned up North in the 5th grade.  We were not allowed to cuss, so our vocabulary of creative slurs is quite highly developed.   

Speaking of twads, when it was time to enrich his UAW buddies in 2009, President Obama didn’t hesitate for a second to repudiate the debts Chrysler owed to its bondholders.  Those were billions of real losses he inflicted on real citizens back then, but now when it’s the Fed he won’t even consider what amounts to an internal bookkeeping entry.             

The Federal Reserve is off limits because it is the vehicle that enables excessive government spending and debt; it is the President’s no-limit credit card and he has no intention of ever cutting it up.  Neither do the rest of the twads; they are all promising to go on a fiscal diet in ten years while ordering the cheesy fries now.

The Fed and Treasury are the right and left hands of monetary policy run amuck; they are like two children who lent billions in monopoly money to each other and are now demanding that Mom and Dad pay them real-money interest before we pay the light bill.  Or in the President’s case, before we send social security checks to seniors.

Who didn’t see that one coming?  Debt addiction withdrawal causes some mighty ugly and bizarre behavior.  The Democrats now claim to have discovered a right to borrow and spend without Congressional approval in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.  The bizarre part is that they found a copy of the Constitution.    

Launching a stealth operation that would make Seal Team Six proud, they helicoptered right over the hostile territory of the enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8; and dodged the suppressing fire of the first, second, fourth, fifth, ninth, and tenth amendments; and scaled the wall of the first three sections of the 14th itself to snatch up just six words from the whole of section four before returning to base to cobble up perhaps the stupidest argument in the history of argument.

They claim that that the disconnected phrases “public debt” and “shall not be questioned” give the President unlimited borrowing authority.  The chunk they cut out in their truthendectomy contains the qualifier, “authorized by law”, which is more than a little significant since they are debating the law that would…um…authorize debt.  Still think “twads” was a bit harsh?

We better not let them get anywhere near the Lord’s Prayer, or it will come out “Father…lead us…into…evil…forever, Amen.”  And speaking of religion, Congressman Charles Rangel claimed that Jesus would weigh-in on the Democrat side of the debt ceiling debate had He returned to walk among us this summer.

Now, I hate to break it to you, Tax Cheat Charlie, but Jesus is more likely to descend in glory to spank your bony ass all the way back to Harlem for taking His name in vain than He is to fly wingman for President O-bysmal’s fiscal insanity. 

“Forgive us our debts” does not mean what you think it does, Congressman, and the IRS won’t forgive yours even after the Rapture comes.  If you were trying to scare them off by name-dropping the big J, you don’t know your tormentors very well.

Here is a simple-guy question: if that trillion dollar stimulus was a one-time investment to get the economy moving, then why can’t the President cut spending by a trillion dollars this year?  He said it worked, and doesn’t one-time still mean less than two times? 

President Obama told us that he had to reluctantly add a trillion dollars of one-time spending in 2009 to make up for the stupid mistakes of the guy who was President the year before.  Since he now says we have to spend more than that every single year through the end of his second term, I presume he has concluded he is even more stupid than his predecessor and plans to remain that way every year.

Who am I to argue with the judgment of the President of the United States?

And you can throw in that gang of six, the leadership of both parties in both chambers, and the front runners for the GOP Presidential nomination.  These guys are all unserious about cutting spending, shrinking government, and reducing the debt.  They want to finagle some pixie-dust “framework” that dupes the talking heads (not too difficult an assignment), and then get back to the important work of fund-raising and earmarks.   

The only budget that matters is the next one - Fiscal Year 2012, which begins October 1.  Cancel your August vacation and balance that one, twads.               
 

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     
   

None of My Business

Here is the difference: at a permit hearing for an open-carry pride parade, Democrats would be offended by the guns, Republicans would be offended by the gays, and Libertarians would be offended that you need a permit.

We libertarians get offended just like anyone else.  But we are content to let others make their own offensive choices based upon their own conscience and beliefs.  The default setting in the libertarian mind is “none of my business”; and besides, being offended reminds us we are still free.

The problem with socialists and statists is that they don’t share this “live and let live” philosophy.  They insist on making their choices my business.  They tax, regulate, mandate, ban, license, permit, inspect, certify, confiscate, indoctrinate, conscript, fine, incarcerate, subsidize, and punish the choices of others in order to achieve their ends.  Their idea of tolerance is for me to tolerate their tyranny because it is good for me; President Obama believes it is his job to make me eat my peas.  

Libertarians and true conservatives have no such impulse to impose our choices onto others, and we are especially averse to employing the power of the state to do the dirty work. We share our Founders’ view of government as a necessary evil, an unreliable and terrifying beast that must be bound, leashed, and caged. 

Progressives could live according to their beliefs on their own; it is making the rest of us live according to their beliefs that requires government force. They are free to eschew energy, to share their wealth, to teach their children flavored history, to deny God, to avoid guns, to hire according to quotas, to marry whoever they wish in the church of their choice.  No one is stopping them; certainly not me.

Join a union or don’t.  Buy a house or don’t. Shop at Walmart or don’t. Buy ethanol gas or don’t.  Be as gay as you want or as straight as you please.  Drink Scotch or drink Coke (but don’t you dare drink Scotch and Coke, even us libertarians have our limits).  Pray all day or join a coven.  Sleep around or sew your knees shut.  Smoke, snort, shoot, or drink only distilled water and colon cleanse.

Drive a Prius, drive a Porsche, drive a tank, drive a Segway, or walk – I don’t care; what you chose to do is none of my business.  Until you make it my business.  

You make it my business when you expect me to pay for your choices.  You make it my business when you seek government sanction of your beliefs.  You make it my business when you mandate what you can’t afford, ban what you don’t like, and tax what you don’t do.

Those who don’t drive want to tax gasoline, and those who don’t smoke want to tax each pack. Those who rent want to tax property owners, and those who don’t own guns want to tax gunners. Those who don’t sin much want higher sin taxes, and those who don’t work want to tax the work of those who do. Even liberal billionaires want their altruism merit badge on someone else’s dime.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet call for raising the top income tax rate to 39%.  That would be laudable, except Gates and Buffet don’t pay income tax; they derive their wealth from capital gains, which is taxed at 15%.  Last year, Buffet paid 17% of his income in tax - not that there was anything to stop him from writing a check to the IRS for the other 22%.  Check that - there was something that stopped him; his own hypocrisy.

It is taxes that turn our differences into divisions.  We must not only tolerate things that offend us, but pay for them, and that makes us angry with one another.  Imagine how much better we would all get along if government were confined to doing the things that are absolutely necessary to protect our rights and maintain physical infrastructure.  If government was, dare I say it, limited.

Do you really care if the person plowing the Interstate is male or female, gay or straight, black or white, liberal or conservative, Christian or Muslim or Atheist, hunter or vegan?  I don’t.  Would you care about indoctrination at one school if you had the choice to move your kids to another one?  Would it matter what symbols adorn the courthouse grounds if you never had to go there to get permission slips to live?  

Libertarians are often accused of being selfish. Au contraire – we care deeply about others.  Our dream is for every single person to define happiness for themselves and seek it.  To live as their own conscience dictates, not according the prejudices and preferences of someone else.  To succeed or fail on their own terms, not simply to endure a lifetime of collateral damage inflicted by self-empowered fools.  To bind government by its Constitution and take care of each other as we see fit.

When did those ideas become radical?  This nation was founded upon them; the GOP that nominated Barry Goldwater fully embraced them; the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King embodied them.  When Governor Chris Christie recently answered a constituent’s question about his private life with “none of your business”, even conservatives gasped.  That is how far off our moorings we have drifted.

We will know when we have put our country back on the right track.  It will be the day that we say “none of your business” and it is the question that is ridiculed, not the answer.  That day cannot come soon enough.

 
 “Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     

Eat My Peas

The next time somebody tells me we must all sacrifice to save our country, I am going to tell them, “eat my peas”.  Thank you, President Obama, for a great line.

First, let’s get something straight - soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen sacrifice to save our country; nobody else does.  This whole shared sacrifice thing is a crock - the cannibal demanding a shared sacrifice at dinnertime.  

Where was the shared sacrifice when the businessman quit his job 30 years ago and double-mortgaged his home to take a chance on a dream?  Did any teachers come and work in his firm during their summer off so that his wife and kids could have a week of proper vacation?  Did anyone donate their savings so she would not have to work two jobs to support the family during those start-up years?

And who was it that shared the sacrifice of the medical school or law school student – did the IT tech at the Department of Motor Vehicles babysit for free so that single mom could sleep for a few hours before the bar exam?  Who was their brothers’ keeper back then, comrade?

Why are we only all in this together when the it-takes-the-village-people want to tax the dentists, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, financiers, investors, entrepreneurs, inventors, visionaries, workaholics and all who have risen to the top of their professions into oblivion?  Why do they wait 30 years and then come after our stuff?

And sacrifice for what?  To cop an overused phrase, let me be clear: it is not the country they want to save, it’s the government.  More specifically, it is their cushy government jobs and their generous government pensions and perks.  When any partisan says we all need to sacrifice, he or she is saying that you need to sacrifice so they don’t.  There’s your moment of clarity.

Not them, not their team, oh no.  They are victims, martyrs, lambs who have already been slaughtered.  $100k per year to watch porn on the job and you want me to eat peas?  GE doesn’t pay a dime in taxes but you expect me to pitch in the other arm and the other leg?  Eat my peas, buddy.

Shared sacrifice means we give and they take; that is the sharing formula.  Last night I saw another ugly advertisement where the Cannibal Party candidate in the Milwaukee area recall election told me we all have to share in the sacrifice.  Eat my peas, lady.

I don’t even know who you are, and I don’t know the lady you are running against, but I know she was elected fair and square.  This recall nonsense in Wisconsin is a farce – a union election, run by out of state union pimps.  Anyone who has been through one knows the familiar feel.

They get enough signatures to call an election, use the NLRB (oops, GAB) to rig the rules in their favor, schedule it faster than the management side can react, bring in the goons and the cash from outside and then lie, threaten, bully, bribe and cheat to win at all cost.  Been there, done that - won all four times.

How low will they go?  How about paying kids to lie in advertisements?  The very first one they ran in Milwaukee shows “local” kids blaming the pain that the Milwaukee teachers’ union inflicted on its own members – layoffs, larger class sizes – on their Republican opponent.  The kids weren’t even local, and the script was so bogus my dogs walked out of the room.

Using kids to spread lies – JFK would be so proud.  What’s next, some pre-teen crying in a wheelchair? “Alberta Darling eats children and she closed all of the schools so that my mommy would die.”  And when the director yells “cut”, the little princess jumps out of the wheelchair, puts on a flannel shirt, grabs a fishing rod, tucks the pony tail under the cap and pretends to be a boy from Rhinelander: “Kim Simac sold all the hospitals and schools to the Taliban so they can ban country music and dump nuclear waste into the Wisconsin River.”

“Paid for by friends of Agenda 21”.  Eat my peas, Soros.

A liberal apologist for those over-the-top ads said they are thought-provoking.  Here’s a thought - who in their right mind would spend millions to win a job that pays $49,000 per year?  Or this - which did you lose first, your scruples or your marbles?  And what on earth do they want to do to us that they want to win bad enough to force kids to lie?  That’s what those skanky ads made me think about. 

As a Libertarian, I had fully intended to stay out of the Wisconsin recall fray.  It is a purely partisan peeing contest that will have no impact; and as one of my Facebook friends keenly observed, Republicans’ and Democrats’ top priority is to punish each other.  It’s a stupid game, and I didn’t feel like playing. Using kids to lie changed my mind.

So please, vote Republican, no matter who it is.  Not because I love Republicans; I don’t.  But while Republicans are un-libertarian, Democrats are anti-libertarian.  The modern-day Democrat Party stands for nothing; it is the party that pays kids to lie.  It’s the Government Party, seeking more government for the sake of more government.  Watch their ads in the recall, if you can stomach the bullsnot, and tell me what they stand for, besides not being Scott Walker.  And paying kids to lie.    

We already did not-Scott-Walker.  A decade of not-Scott-Walker left us $3 billion in the tank with the 4th worst business climate in the nation, 39% proficient schools, a smoking ban on private property, tax hikes every year, unilateral personal disarmament, some useless train cars, and a ban on organic milk sales in the Dairy State.   

You want me to sacrifice some more for that?  Eat my peas.


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     

Gone

Once again, the June employment data confirms the obvious: the Obama economy still sucks.  And once again, his administration economists are mystified, confounded by the contradiction they describe as a jobless recovery.

Let me help you with that, Timmy.  There is no recovery.  And there is no contradiction; what you have there in D.C. is a bunch of fools doing bad arithmetic while out here in the real world people make, move, and sell things.   Big difference.

Government economists’ forecasts don’t drive the economy any more than the weatherman makes the corn grow.  That takes sun and rain and a farmer who works his butt off instead of waiting for some theoretical Keynesian multiplier to kick in.  

President Obama is getting testy about the private sector not hiring enough people to get him re-elected, as if that is what should motivate us. He would dearly love for the 15 million Americans who don’t have a job to be working come November of 2012.     

But they won’t be. Because this one-term President and his economic team still don’t get it: the jobs those people had once are not coming back.  They are not coming back because the businesses that employed them are gone.  Gone – just like this President will be in January of 2013.  There are 1.2 million fewer small businesses than when President Obama took office.  1.2 million businesses – gone.

The workers waiting to be called back to work at those firms will wait until the rapture, because there is no one to call them back.  This is not a jobless recovery; it is a business-less recovery, which is to say no recovery at all.

Existing U.S. businesses already employ everybody they need to do the work that they need done. UPS is not going to run out and buy 15 million trucks and hire 15 million people to get some bogus tax credit, or add to Joe Biden’s fantasy stimulus job count, or to get some politician re-elected.

They are only going to buy more trucks and hire more drivers when there are new businesses to deliver to and pick up from.  And those new businesses are where the jobs are going to come from, not from the econometric forecasting models at the Department of Labor.

Before we can have new jobs, we need new businesses to create them.  Is the Obama administration focused on that?  Hint: his SBA does not even count small businesses in real time; their most recent data is from 2009.

To hire 15 million Americans we need to create about 1 million new businesses.  And to do that, we will need a million American entrepreneurs who are willing to risk their life savings and safe jobs for the opportunity to become rich.  That’s right, lefties – rich.  Not green, not fair, not diverse, not progressive – rich.  Entrepreneurs don’t risk everything they own for the chance to be modestly comfortable. 

And tell us again why anyone should risk it all, Mr. President.  You are the one who told those college graduates not to waste their lives in the private sector, remember?  You are the one who reminds us constantly that rich people are greedy, unpatriotic, and immoral.  You have made it more difficult than ever to succeed.  You punish people for even trying. 

You force unions down their throats.  You ration the energy they need and raise its cost.  You force them to provide health insurance to your specs or pay a fine. You tell them what wages to pay.  You dictate the performance of their products.

You tax their profits, their gains, the income they draw, the income they pay their employees, the dividends they pay, the earnings they retain, and the estate they leave to their children.  You license and permit their ideas back to them.  

If they price too high, you call it a windfall and tax it; if they price too low you call it predatory and fine it.  You will sue them if they don’t hire to your quotas, you will cite them if they don’t please your inspectors, and you will shut down their processes if they don’t fit your preferences.

And you wonder why the economy is just not that into you?

Maybe a million new entrepreneurs will want to get rich bad enough to overcome all the obstacles our government has put in front of them.  But why should they have to?  Why not just remove all those obstacles and let the free enterprisers restore our prosperity? 

I’ll tell you why.  Because liberals would rather see 15 million unemployed people suffer than watch a few hundred thousand get rich.  There’s your moment of clarity.

They care more about gay marriage than gay prosperity; they care more about teachers’ unions than the future of the children they teach; they care more about a puff of carbon dioxide in the air than freedom for people who exhale the stuff.  They are too busy coveting to create; they chose envy over enterprise every time.

You can’t be for jobs and against the businesses that create them.  You can’t erect obstacles to business formation and expect new businesses to form.  You can’t subsidize your donor buddies at GE without making it harder for the next GE to get off the ground.

And it is that next GE, and the millions of other firms not yet formed, that will create the new jobs that will lift us out of recession and put people back to work.  All government can do to help them is to get out of their way; the genius of free enterprise is the “free” part.

Our economy can’t be stimulated by government, but it can be liberated; hopefully the next President will make that his/her first priority.  



“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.     

Friend of the Bride

With one bold stroke, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker turned a decade of budget deficits into a projected surplus without raising taxes; all it took was to bust the public unions. 

Most people run away from the term “union-busting” but the Wisconsin experience should make it clearer than ever that union-busting is a good thing. Union-busting is good thing because compulsory unionization is vile.  Take a pill, my dear union friends; I said compulsory unionism is vile.

It is vile because it denies a fundamental right – the right to work.  We own ourselves and our labor; and we are free to set the terms of its exchange or we are not free.  Forcing someone to join a union as a condition of employment is a denial of his/her self-ownership; it is as simple as that. 

Key word: force.  Unionists can talk in grand platitudes about worker rights, but when force is your first principle, the words used to justify it merely calibrate the depth of the lie.  The rapist can quote the poet, but that does not make it an act of love.    
    
As it turns out, public unions were THE fiscal problem in Wisconsin.  The proof is in the thousands of municipalities and school districts throughout the state which have turned staggering deficits into surpluses within days, once the Governor’s Budget Repair Bill was liberated from the clutches of liberal courts which held it hostage for months.  Now we know what they were so afraid of – it was this easy all along.

In city after city, and school district after school district, layoffs of public employees are being avoided, classroom sizes are being reduced, merit pay for good teachers is being funded, benefit plans are being improved at lower costs, and taxpayers are saving money.  The winner in the “war on the middle class” is the middle class.

Teachers’ jobs have been saved, despite their own unions best efforts to eliminate them.  Except in the city of Milwaukee, where the unions and their rubber-stamp school board rushed to extend union contracts ahead of Walker’s collective bargaining reforms.  Hundreds of teachers lost their jobs, vital services have been cut, and class sizes will increase.  Nice going, WEAC.
   
Milwaukee has been punched in the gut with the solidarity fist; or perhaps kicked slightly lower would be a more apt description.  Milwaukee parents and teachers can thank the public unions, the Democrats, Dane County judge Sumi, and Secretary of State La Follette for making the sorry state of their schools even sorrier.

Even with the political cover of “Walker made me”, the unionist bullies could not bring themselves to do the right thing. When push came to shove, they couldn’t stop pushing and shoving inner-city kids.  That’s what they do; it’s who they are.  MPS was the libertarians’ best argument for school choice, and the argument got stronger.

Surprise, surprise - the world did not end with passage of budget reforms in Wisconsin; things got instantly better.  This has come as a shock to liberals and unionists who have spent their lifetimes insulated from economic reality and marinating in their own propaganda.  It should not have surprised anyone; instantly better is what happens when blight is removed.

If Governor Walker and the Republicans are serious about creating jobs in this state, they need to take the next step and pass Right to Work legislation now.  Put the “free” back in free enterprise and then step out of the way; that’s how you stimulate the economy.

Compulsory unionization destroys initiative, stifles innovation, increases costs, protects inefficiency and sloth, and its parasitic nature ultimately kills its host.  The same union toxicity that cripples the effectiveness of government and education is even more deadly in the private sector, where firms compete to survive. 

Wisconsin is littered with the carcasses of once-thriving businesses whose unions killed them. But it is also filled with private, non-union firms who compete around the world and against the world every day.  We do not thrive in spite of our non-union status; we thrive because of it.

President Obama is doing everything in his power to stack the regulatory and legal deck in favor of the unions which fund his Democrat Party.  Through executive order and NLRB actions, he seeks to impose by force what 93% of private sector workers have voluntarily rejected – union representation. 

Given his administration’s track record on economic matters, the President’s unionist agenda should be opposed simply because he has proposed it.  You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to know the path to American prosperity; you only need to learn the elements of President Obama’s plan and choose their opposites.  Wisconsin cannot wait for a national Right To Work law; we must act now. 

Right To Work laws do not prohibit or even inhibit union representation; in fact, RTW preserves the right of every worker to join a union and collectively bargain.  But Right To Work also preserves the equal right of every worker to represent themselves; it preserves the basic right of self-ownership.  And there are no “kinda” rights; rights are digital, not analog.

Unions which add value in the workplace will have no problem in an environment of choice.  Workers will gladly choose to join a union that benefits them, and employers will eagerly accept a union that improves the quality, safety, and morale of its workforce.  Like everything else, choice and competition in labor representation improves quality and reduces cost.

Compulsory unionism is like forced marriage; the groom has a million reasons why it is good for the bride.  Right To Work gives her choices and respect.  Be a friend of the bride.  


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

Are You Independent?

Our Independence Day celebration is a uniquely American holiday.  And America is a unique nation, the only nation on earth whose First Principle is individual liberty.  We are self-sovereigns; 310 million kings and queens whose authority over our own lives is established by Declaration. 

So what about you – are you independent?

It is a legitimate question; one that you should ponder while the fireworks light up the night in praise of the America where freedom reigns and government serves.  That America is under attack from within; it is our duty to restore it to its full glory.  If you are not independent, then what will you celebrate this Fourth of July?  Why will you celebrate this Fourth of July?  

Are you one of the kings and queens, or have you chosen to be a minion?  Please take a moment to think about your own independence on this Independence Day and make the Declaration of Independence personal.    

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident,”  Do you?  Do you believe in immutable truth – truth proved conclusively by its declaration and not subject to faddish interpretation?  

“That all Men are created equal…”  Do you believe that?  Do you believe that laws should apply to every single person equally?  That a majority opinion does not trump an individual right?  That preference and prejudice have no place in law?

“Endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights…”  Do you understand where your rights come from?  Do you acknowledge that your rights pre-exist the formation of government?  That rights neither increase nor decrease by government decree, or by majority vote?

“That among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  Who owns you?  Do you own the fruits of your labors, the ideas of your mind, the charity of your soul?  Who is responsible for your well-being, and who is accountable for the consequences of your decisions?  Is my happiness your obligation?  Is yours mine?

“That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Men…”  Is this your first and only demand of government?  Do you expect more?  Do you oppose government actions that deny rights to one in order to grant favors to another?  Do you believe in a government strictly limited by the authorities granted to it by our Constitution?

Thomas Jefferson defined a new Nation in just 41 words; it is the greatest literary achievement in history.  Say them out loud; these are the beliefs that make us Americans.  We are not geography; we are that noble idea.

Our American notion of self-sovereignty is based on mutual respect, and you can not give what you do not have.  Sovereigns must first respect our own liberty before we can respect each others’.

I ask again: are you independent?

You were not put on this earth to pull another man’s plow.  You are a child of God, just like me; a brother and sister of equal standing, equally endowed with the gift of Free Will.  It is yours to accept, and it is no one’s to give or withhold.

You are free to speak, to worship, to associate, to defend, to testify, to publish, to own, and to trade as you see fit.  You do not have to justify your choices to me or to a government formed to protect your right to make them.  That’s what independence is.  It is glorious.

Conversely, you have no right to be insulated from the consequences of your choices; to force me to pay for your mistakes; or to indulge your unaffordable excess at my expense.  That is also what independence is.  It, too, is glorious.  The most unhappy people I know are those who expect someone else to make them happy.  

We can each measure our freedom by the extent to which we respect the freedom of others; and we can each measure our tyranny by the extent to which we would take another's freedoms away.  And we can each measure our independence by the extent that we stand up to tyranny when it presents itself. 

So what about you - are you independent? 

Have a happy Independence Day - and remember what we are celebrating.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.