Voice For Liberty

Category: Politics

  • Articles of Interest

    Bailout costs rise, local election turnout, health care, light bulbs, newspapers, Kansas coal prospects

    Estimate of TARP’s Cost to Taxpayers Increases (Wall Street Journal) “The Congressional Budget Office has quietly altered its estimate of the ultimate cost to taxpayers of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, now figuring the initiative will be much more expensive in the long run than it previously figured. In January, the CBO pegged the ultimate cost to taxpayers of the $700 billion TARP at $189 billion. When the agency issued revised numbers in late March, it revised that to $356 billion, a change that drew little attention.” I don’t imagine this will be the last time we see the cost of bailouts rising.

    Expected Turnout For Tuesday’s Election: 12 Percent (Brent Wistrom in the Wichita Eagle) “The six candidates for Wichita City Council have clashed on many fronts. But they agree on one thing. The projected turnout for Tuesday’s election is dismal.”

    That’s ridiculous (Letter to the editor of the Wichita Eagle) A letter-writer makes the case for government provided health care by illustrating a scenario where if a citizen calls for police or fire assistance, they’ll have to make payment arrangements before receiving service. This, of course, is a ridiculous comparison and ignores the context in which these services are provided. Besides, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to look into private provision of police and fire protection.

    Climate Change’s Dim Bulbs (George F. Will in the Washington Post) Will comments on some of the problems with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), as recently noted in a New York Times article The Bulb That Saved the Planet May Be a Little Less Than Billed. He concludes: “Worrywarts wonder what will happen when a lazy or careless, say, 10 percent of 300 million Americans put their worn-out bulbs in the trash. Stop worrying. What do you think? That Congress, architect of the ethanol industry and designer of automobiles, does not think things through?”

    Life After Newspapers (Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post) Kinsley claims that people are getting more news and analysis than ever. It’s just online. If true — I was not aware of this — then there is hope for newspaper companies to survive: “Sorry, but people who have grown up around computers find reading the news on paper just as annoying as you find reading it on a screen. … If your concern is grander — that if we don’t save traditional newspapers we will lose information vital to democracy — you are saying that people should get this information whether or not they want it. That’s an unattractive argument: shoving information down people’s throats in the name of democracy. But this really isn’t a problem. As many have pointed out, more people are spending more time reading news and analysis than ever before. They’re just doing it online.”

    Sebelius holding coal cards (Tim Carpenter in the Topeka Capital-Journal) Analysis of the “coal bill,” which passed the Kansas house, but with fewer votes than it has in the past. House Speaker Mike O’Neal said earlier this year that there would be enough votes in the house to override the governor’s promised veto, but it looks like the vote count is moving in the wrong direction.

  • Hutchinson, Kansas tea party on tax day

    Update: for an event on tax day in 2010, see Tax day tea parties in Kansas announced.

    Hutchinson, Kansas Tea Party Flyer

    There’s going to be a tea party in Hutchinson, KS on tax day.

    Click on the flyer for a larger version.

  • Articles of Interest

    Wichita TIF development, Kansas coal, Carl Brewer on downtown, Dick Coe on crash and recovery, Fox’s Glenn Beck

    Parkstone hits milestone: Building almost complete on four townhouses (Wichita Eagle) Describes progress and plans for a Wichita real estate development project. Let’s hope this project sells well and quickly, as the taxpayers of Wichita are on the hook, due to this project’s use of tax increment financing.

    Parkinson firm against coal (Tim Carpenter in the Topeka Capital-Journal) Kansas Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson has promised to veto a bill that authorizes a coal-fired power plant if he is governor. The Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives says he has enough votes to override a veto by either Parkinson or present governor Kathleen Sebelius. Sources in the House and Senate tell me that few members — Democrats or Republicans — trust Parkinson.

    Mayor asks Wichitans to dream about downtown’s future (Bill Wilson in the Wichita Eagle) Says Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer: “I want to provide everything you want to possibly imagine.” More evidence of local government’s desire to plan everything for us. I’m really surprised that young people are in favor of this.

    J. Richard Coe: U.S. Paying Price for Overindulging (Wichita Eagle) The head of a Wichita financial services firm provides analysis of how the United States got in its current mess, and what must happen to recover. What happened? “Largely as a result of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too low for too long, there was a huge increase in borrowing (credit). Individuals, businesses and governments responded to an incentive to borrow, but the incentive was a temporary illusion.” Coe sees problems with the measures the administration is taking: “Massive government spending and increased regulation will make it more difficult for the private sector to recover.” He gives free markets their due: “Markets are more reliable than governments, and markets are in the process of correcting for government-incentivized excessive borrowing.”

    Fox News’s Mad, Apocalyptic, Tearful Rising Star (New York Times) A profile of new Fox News television show host Glenn Beck. “Mr. Beck presents himself as a revivalist in a troubled land.” Some see “sinister meanings in his commentaries” and say he’s “stirring up a revolution.” “Let me be clear,” Mr. Beck said. “If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the ‘truth’ behind 9/11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those we don’t seem to recognize anymore, who kill in the name of Allah.”

  • Articles of Interest

    Obama’s volunteer corps, Kansas cigarette taxes, U.S. Auto industry, Austrian economics

    The Rise of ObamaCorps (Americans for Limited Government) “Unless the Blue Dogs can muster enough support to halt Speaker Pelosi’s march to madness, the American taxpayer will have to pony up another $5 billion for paid ‘volunteers’ (an oxymoron if there ever was one) to politically-oriented organizations, the aims of many of which they will invariably oppose.”

    Study documents historic trend of decreased state tax revenues following cigarette tax increases “This study clearly shows that raising cigarette taxes simply drives Kansas consumers to other states to purchase tobacco products,” said AFP-Kansas state director Derrick Sontag. “It clearly results in lower cigarette tax revenues, not because more people are quitting, but because people go elsewhere to avoid paying those higher per-pack taxes. … We hope this document will show to lawmakers that raising cigarette taxes is an ineffective deterrent to smoking and that it is simply unwise to fund government programs with revenue that is likely to dwindle once the new tax takes effect.”

    Detroit’s Fate Sealed in West Wing (Wall Street Journal) Describes President Obama and his team’s involvement in the remaking of General Motors. “Mr. Rattner broke the news to [General Motors CEO] Mr. Wagoner at his office at the Treasury, according to an administration official. Afterward, Mr. Rattner met with Mr. Henderson, and told him he would take over as GM’s CEO.” The president plans to put some of his own staff into the auto companies. We can be sure that as the president and his team assert more control over GM and Chrysler, Congress will want to get in on the act too.

    The Obama Autoworks: At GM and Chrysler, politics is now Job One (Wall Street Journal) More analysis of just how bad things are likely to get now that the American automobile industry — at least GM and Chrysler — is on the road to nationalization. “Bankruptcy or not, the larger problem here is Washington’s industrial policy. Even if Chrysler merges and GM restructures, Mr. Obama wants the companies to make the kind of cars the political class favors, whether or not consumers want to buy them. ‘The United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars,’ the President said yesterday. He didn’t mention a goal of profitability. … Mr. Obama’s industrial policy vision runs directly counter to a strategy that would get the companies back to profitability as soon as possible. … All of which is to say that the taxpayer commitment to the Obama autoworks is only getting started.”

    Austrians Can Explain the Boom and the Bust (Robert P. Murphy at the Ludwig von Mises Institute) An Austrian explanation of the recent boom and bust cycle, including the Austrian model of the structure of capital. Interest rates, as it turns out, are very important.

  • Articles of Interest

    Government intervention, Kansas budget, open records, Obamanomics, social security

    Did government or greed cause economic distress? (Thomas Sowell in the Detroit News) “An economist specializing in financial markets gave a glimpse of the history of housing markets when he said: ‘Lending money to American homebuyers had been one of the least risky and most profitable businesses a bank could engage in for nearly a century.’ That was what the market was like before the government intervened.”

    Budget based on hopeful numbers (Topeka Capital-Journal) “A $13 billion-plus state budget is likely to win approval from legislators this week, but it’s built on what seems a convenient fiction.” The problem is that revenues may again fall short of forecasts. The danger is that government spending lobbies will view this as an opportunity to press for tax increases.

    Exemptions from Kansas Open Records (Kansas Meadowlark) “The Kansas legislature recently extended certain exceptions to the Kansas Open Records Act to hide certain records from the public view at least until 2014.”

    Obamanomics Isn’t About Big Government (Robert B. Reich in the Wall Street Journal) The former secretary of labor says public investment is the defining characteristic of President Obama’s economic policy.

    Recession Puts a Major Strain On Social Security Trust Fund (Washington Post) “With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund’s annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — nearly a decade ahead of schedule — and deprive the government of billions of dollars it had been counting on to help balance the nation’s books. … And at some point, perhaps as early as 2017, according to the CBO, the Treasury would have to start repaying the billions it has borrowed from the trust fund over the past 25 years, driving the nation further into debt or forcing Congress to raise taxes.”

  • Articles of Interest

    Capitalism, CFL bulbs, green indoctrination, bailout constitutionality, Facebook, Twitter

    ‘The Road to Serfdom’ revisited: Markets display uncertainty over future of capitalism itself (Scott S. Powell in the Washington Times) Discussion of how government interventionism in the economy is not helping. “President Eisenhower called it ‘creeping socialism.’ Nobel Prize winner Friedrich von Hayek called it ‘The Road to Serfdom.’”

    Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don’t Work? (New York Times) Many customers are not happy with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Short life for the expensive bulbs is a common irritation.

    ‘Green Hell’ Coming Soon to a Life Like Yours (Human Events) A review of a new book that merits reading. “Be prepared the next time your child comes home from school with some nice ‘green’ project or attempts to lecture you about how you ‘should’ be doing more ‘sustainable’ activities to ‘save’ the Earth. You will be ready to confront teachers, political leaders, neighbors, and annoying aunts with the astounding new book by Steve Milloy titled Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

    Bailing Out of the Constitution (George Will in the Washington Post) Is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 — that’s the $700 billion bailout of banks from last year — constitutional? Perhaps it isn’t, argues Will. It has to do with the Vesting Clause of Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in” Congress.

    Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? (New York Times) Facebook will soon have 200 million members. All are not happy, evidence being the recent controversy over a redesign of some of its most important aspects. There’s also the “coolness” factor: can kids like a social network that their parents are now using?

    When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking (New York Times) “In many cases, celebrities and their handlers have turned to outside writers — ghost Twitterers, if you will — who keep fans updated on the latest twists and turns, often in the star’s own voice. Because Twitter is seen as an intimate link between celebrities and their fans, many performers are not willing to divulge the help they use to put their thoughts into cyberspace. … It is not only celebrities who are forced to look to a team to produce real-time commentary on daily activities; politicians like Ron Paul have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts and Facebook personas. Candidate Barack Obama, as well as President Obama, has a social-networking team to keep his Twitter feed tweeting.”

  • Myths of Roosevelt and the New Deal presented in Wichita

    Yesterday Burton W. Folsom, professor of history at Hillsdale College spoke to a capacity crowd at a luncheon sponsored by Americans for Prosperity-Kansas and the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.

    His topic was three myths of the New Deal, based on his recent book
    New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.

    The first myth is that the New Deal got us out of the Great Depression, or at least made good headway. Massive spending and a doubling of the public debt, however, didn’t do much to cure unemployment, as admitted by Roosevelt’s treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

    Besides unemployment, other measures were bad. The arrest and murder rate was high throughout the 1930s. Life expectancy, which had increased rapidly in the decades before Roosevelt’s presidency, declined slightly during his first two terms.

    Why didn’t spending solve the problem and lift us out of the Great Depression? The money to support government spending has to come from somewhere. Even if the money is well spent — and there’s ample evidence it isn’t — it would have been spent in the private sector when it was in the hands of taxpayers. Government spending only shifts jobs from the private sector to the public sector.

    The second myth is that if the New Deal didn’t get us out of the Great Depression, it was at least a step in the right direction, a view commonly held today. A look at specific programs tells a different story.

    The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) paid farmers to leave some of their land vacant, thereby reducing their production. Prices for crops, then, should go up. Some farmers, however, took the money, and then planted on the land that was to remain vacant. So Roosevelt sent inspectors. Farmers bribed the inspectors, so Roosevelt had inspectors inspect the inspectors. Then aerial surveillance started.

    Then, in 1935 there were shortages of farm products. We imported 11 million bushels of wheat, 34 million bushels of corn, and 36 million pounds of cotton — at the same time we were paying farmers to not produce these products.

    The National Recovery Act (NRA), another of Roosevelt’s programs, lasted for 2.5 years before it was unanimously ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

    Folsom told how Massachusetts — back then a conservative state with a free-market orientation — took care of their own hungry people. But after seeing what other states (Illinois in particular) did to get federal funds, Massachusetts decided to take federal money.

    The third myth is that Roosevelt had good intentions. His actual goal was to put together a political coalition so he could remain in office. The WPA, in particular, served to reward loyal Democrats with jobs, and to do actual campaigning for Roosevelt. He was also the first to use the IRS as a weapon against his political opponents.

    Concluding, Folsom gave his recommendation for today: “We need to remember that massive spending did not work well back then. It carries with it a host of unintended consequences. Cutting taxes can often liberate people, produce more freedom, and turning the American economy loose with lower tax rates and more individual liberty would provide more of an opportunity to get us out of the current recession.”

  • Articles of Interest

    Wichita real estate development, redistricting, newspapers, free markets

    Wichita developer plans to turn old school into apartments (Bill Wilson in the Wichita Eagle) All that’s missing from this story is the developer’s propensity to seek subsidy, that is, a handout from government. We’ll have to wait to see how that develops.

    Longtime Wichita developer George Ablah may be forced to shut down (Wichita Business Journal, a subscription service) “George Ablah says the economic downturn could force him to soon shut down his commercial real estate business. Ablah, who celebrated his 80th birthday Tuesday, estimates he has purchased and developed $2 billion of property … Now he wonders how much longer Ablah Enterprises can continue, given the current market conditions and a presidential administration that he says is crippling his business.”

    Rethink redistricting in Kansas (Rhonda Holman in the Wichita Eagle) A cure for the problem Holman discusses in this editorial is term limits. But in the past she’s written: “Term limits are a dumb, artificial device that ends up throwing out the good leaders along with the bad and tends to fill governing bodies with novices who are easy prey for lobbyists.”

    Editor’s message about changes at the Monitor (Christian Science Monitor) Today is the last daily printed edition of the Christian Science Monitor, although there will be a weekly print edition. I wonder if this newspaper’s reporters could get press credentials at the Kansas Capitol? I was told that because the Voice For Liberty in Wichita doesn’t print on paper, my application for credentials would not be considered.

    The Miraculous Market (A speech by Leonard E. Read from 1965) “Awakening during the night, I flicked a bedside switch and soon the room was flooded with a piano concerto composed by Johannes Brahms. Perhaps the music itself induced a reflective mood: how explain this wonder of wonders for my enjoyment and with a near imperceptible effort on my part?” (Back in 1965 there were no IPods, CDs, and stereo was a recent invention.) As our country appears to be moving away from free markets to more government control — be it at the federal level, at the Kansas statehouse, or in Wichita city hall — we need be aware of the tremendous innovation that markets inspire in man.

  • Southeast Kansas tea party planned

    Heres’ a message from Patricia Houser about tax day tea parties planned for southeast Kansas.

    Citizens of Southeast Kansas, join me in sending Washington a message against this outrageous, irresponsible and out of control Government Spending. Meet with your family, friends, and other fiscal conservatives from 4 to 6 pm on April 15th, at the Post Office in the largest city in your county, i.e.:

    Crawford — Pittsburg
    Cherokee — Columbus
    Labette — Parsons
    Wilson — Fredonia
    Montgomery — Coffeeville / Independence
    Allen — Iola
    Neosho — Chanute
    Coffey — Burlington
    Bourbon — Ft. Scott
    Woodson — Yates Center

    For More Information: sekteaparty@ymail.com.