When political correctness runs wild:

Sorry I missed this one – originally hit the ‘net on December 2nd, and got quite a bit of commentary from December 7th on. My excuse: I have been busy! From e21 commenting on a San Francisco Federal Reserve study on the affects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

The study uses this resulting variation in state-level stimulus funding to determine what impact ARRA funding had on employment — including both the direct impact of workers hired to complete planned projects, as well as any broader spillover effects resulting from greater government spending. Administration economists have repeatedly emphasized the importance of this indirect employment growth in driving economic recovery.

The results suggest that though the program did result in 2 million jobs “created or saved” by March 2010, net job creation was statistically indistinguishable from zero by August of this year. Taken at face value, this would suggest that the stimulus program (with an overall cost of $814 billion) worked only to generate temporary jobs at a cost of over $400,000 per worker. Even if the stimulus had in fact generated this level of employment as a durable outcome, it would still have been an extremely expensive way to generate employment…(emphasis added)

It likely didn’t work, at all, and even if you still want to massage the numbers to make it “work”, you’re still going to come out with a program vastly more expensive than just leaving the money in the private sector.

Once again – the government can’t create jobs. If the government spends money to “create” a job, it means that it has to take the money from somewhere else in the economy (either in the form of taking money directly today, or taking it from tomorrow by borrowing). This means there is less money for private sector job creation. While government action can temporarily give you a bloom of health, the long term effects are bad.

People should note the fact that after each major war in American history – ie, after each time when there was a massive increase in government spending which “created” jobs to serve the war effort – there was a recession (recessions following wars – 1815-21; 1865-67; 1918-21; 1945/48-49; 1953-54; 1973-75). You spend a lot of money via government, you get a short-term boom but then, at the end of it, the piper has to be paid and the various economic activities which are merely government-based prove themselves incapable of self-sustaining growth.

There is only one way to economic growth – hard work, savings and careful investment. And there is also the necessity that the hard work involve genuine wealth creation – making, mining or growing things. If you’re not doing that, you’re just wasting time and resources, in an economic sense. Government can foster these activities, but it cannot force them through – even if you want to create a government farm to produce more food (in itself, a good thing), the fact that government is doing the spending means that some other private activity is now curtailed because of lack of funds. Government’s role in the economy must be limited to ensuring fair play for all people entering the market – fight against monopolies, fraud and other actions which tend to distort the natural allocation of labor, capital and resources.

The economic model we’ve lived under since the New Deal has failed – it is time to rip it out, root and branch, and start to build a new American economy.

HAT TIP: Gay Patriot

Third Sunday of Advent is already here. Ponder what you did this past week. Praise God for giving you the strength you showed in your good deeds, crave pardon from God for those moments when you failed to heed the call. The week was like that for me – I did some things well, but failed in many actions, too. Never lose heart at your errors; ask forgiveness, and move on and do it right, next time because while there is life, there is hope:

The desert and the parched land will exult;

the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

They will bloom with abundant flowers,

and rejoice with joyful song.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to them,

the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;

they will see the glory of the LORD,

the splendor of our God.

Strengthen the hands that are feeble,

make firm the knees that are weak,

say to those whose hearts are frightened:

Be strong, fear not!

Here is your God,

he comes with vindication;

with divine recompense

he comes to save you.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,

the ears of the deaf be cleared;

then will the lame leap like a stag,

then the tongue of the mute will sing.

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return

and enter Zion singing,

crowned with everlasting joy;

they will meet with joy and gladness,

sorrow and mourning will flee. – Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10

Revolution, indeed:

Two African-American Democrats on Thursday announced that they were joining the Republican Party.

Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell and former state executive committee member Andre Walker said the Democratic Party had grown too liberal and they are finding a new home with the Republicans…

It must be understood that on social issues, African-Americans are at least as conservative as most Republicans. On economic issues there might be more of an emphasis on what government can do to help – something not necessarily opposed by Republicans, depending on circumstances and the programs in question – but there is plenty of things to agree upon. This is also true with Americans of hispanic ancestry.

Does this mean the GOP will win a majority of black votes in 2012? Of course not – but if we can even win the support of 20% of African-Americans it will constitute a political revolution. So many Democrats at the State and federal level are dependent upon a huge black turnout going 90% or better Democrat that even a relatively small shift here would be devastating for the Democrat party. And, in the end, I do believe that we can compete for a majority of black votes. That will be the task for a generation of hard work, but it can be done.

Watch out, Democrats – your efforts to divide and conquer the American people; your efforts to split us along racial lines, are starting to fail. Your hour has struck – and unless you change your ways, you are doomed.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? These Democrats – a total of 21 up, 10 of them almost certain to face a tough, tough battle to be re-elected – would naturally back the President an agree to extend the tax cuts. But, will they? Rich Baehr over at Pajamas Media points out their quandary:

…If the Democratic incumbents were assured they would be re-nominated, they could begin to position themselves early on for their re-election fight and move a bit towards the center to improve their chances with independents. Independent voters broke sharply for the Republicans in the 2010 midterms, with one of every three independents who voted with the Democrats in 2008 moving to the GOP in 2010. But there are now looming threats from the progressive wing of the party if some of these incumbents are seen as straying from the ideological path favored by the left on the tax bill…

My thinking has been that the 2012ers, especially the most vulnerable, would see this thing trough – and I’m still holding to that. Talk of primary challengers from the left is, for me, just so much talk – most of the time we can count on left wing servility to ensure against such a thing. I realize that they did go after Lieberman in 2006 and thus such things are possible, but the fact that such corrupt Democrats as Barney Frank and Harry Reid were unchallenged in the 2010 primaries indicates to me a continuing, slavish devotion to the leadership on the part of the left wing base.

But…

It could happen – and that means that these 2012ers do need to look over their shoulder to the left as well as to the right. At least until such time as it becomes harder and harder for a credible primary challenger to arise (anyone seriously considering it would have to start getting busy by, say, August of this year; earlier in the early primary States). Not a comfortable position to be in – and, actually, going against this tax deal might be a cheap way for them to lock down some support (or, at least, ensure neutrality) on the part of the left.

This next week could be mighty interesting…

A lot of comment has been made over the past couple days over a report that marriage is declining among the American middle class. While among the very rich and very poor there has long been a slackness in matters of pre-marital sexuality and, when marriage occurs, an easy willingness to have a divorce, the middle class was thought to be rather safe from it. Turns out, of course, that the middle class has not been immune to our societal shifts. While still far more traditionalist in such matters than the poor, there has been a rapid shift away from traditional morality. Some are wondering if we’re in some way doomed – that the die is cast, and the old ways are gone forever.

Such talk is nonsense. Here is what happened:

1. Government social programs have tended to subsidize irresponsible behavior.

2. Tax and regulatory policy have tended to destroy the jobs of the middle class (ie, jobs which are well paid and open to people who either cannot obtain or do not want a lot of formal education).

3. Relentless propaganda in favor of moral depravity has slowly eroded public morality.

As far as subsidizing irresponsible behavior, we have a situation now where some of the unemployed have received years of benefits and, often, those benefits exceed minimum wage employment (or, at least, don’t go enough over it to convince someone to get up every morning and go to work). If we were to simply make it so that after, say, 90 days of unemployment benefits you had to present yourself to your local government for use as day labor, such absurdities would end – rather than work as graffiti removers or trash collectors, people would go find some other work…and if there truly wasn’t any work, at all, to be had, then at least the unemployed would feel they were contributing…the whole psychology of it would change. And this is just one of a hundred examples of the way we subsidize irresponsible behavior.

Regarding tax and regulatory policy, it is just flat out nonsense to say that the United States cannot make something like a hammer cheaper than it is made in China and then shipped to the United States. But our policies, on the one hand, overburden anyone who wishes to make things (or mine or grow things) in the United States while, on the other hand, the provide a positive incentive for boneheaded corporate bosses to see shipping jobs to China or India as a good idea (talk about killing your own golden goose!). Reform tax and regulatory policy to free up making, mining and growing things and we’ll swiftly start to rebuild such enterprises, thus providing middle class jobs for the American people.

And, finally, we’ve got the moral depravity. For half a century now we’ve endlessly instructed everyone that marriage is a drag, sex is the most important thing, the personal happiness of the individual trumps all. It is no surprise, at all, that after such a campaign we’re finding more and more people falling for such idiocy. In this, we just need a bit of courage – those of us who haven’t entirely fallen for it need to stand up and demand that it stop. First amendment? Certainly – but no one charged a line of bayonets so that pornography could be readily available. Be sensible – don’t fall for an argument which says that free speech is doomed unless we allow a pornographer or Hollywood huckster to make a buck off of filth.

We’ve got all sorts of problems to deal with in America. We have made one huge mess of our nation. But we can put it back together, again. It won’t happen overnight as what took decades to develope won’t be undone in a day. But it can be managed – if we just use our common sense and stop falling for what amounts to a con stating we must forever support layabouts, must forever have Big Government and Big Corporation ruining the economy and must forever allow garbage to be spewed all over our nation.

Some times the guys over at the Department of Defense get something very right – this is one of those times:

A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it’s quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA.

Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the technology uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7.

The result: a weapon that can hit a target 100 miles or more away within minutes…

And married to other technology we have, it can hit that target with pin-point accuracy. And the Navy hopes to eventually extend the range to 200 miles.

This gun, perfected and deployed, will ensure US naval dominance in the 21st century. Everyone will have to play catch up with us and we’ll already be several steps ahead on the latest refinements of the technology. With this weapon, we not only dominate the seas, but all land masses within about 150 miles from the sea…which is where, as it turns out, most people in the world live.

The Navy hopes to have a deployed weapon by 2025 – as we’ve only spent $211 million and we’re a good ways along, I’d like to see if we can get it by 2020, or even a bit earlier. This is a game-changing weapon: we can use it to entirely dominate an enemy’s coasts; destroy their naval forces from hundreds of miles away; shoot down ballistic missiles. We will, once again, become the un-attackable (by conventional means) Great Power, and thus regain complete diplomatic and military freedom of action.

Let’s hurry this one up…

A comment on today’s very strange press conference from Bryan Preston over at Pajamas Media:

…Here’s what I saw. I saw a current president who has never looked less interested in doing his job. I also saw a former president who never lost interest in doing that job. Obama’s demeanor and body language suggested that he’d rather be anywhere but where he was, and then he followed through and actually bolted for the door. Clinton’s demeanor was that of a passionate wonk trying to sell a policy he actually cared about, that he thought would be good for the country. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t even his own policy that he was selling.

I saw a president who, for a few minutes a least, ceded his job to his predecessor. He’d failed to sell his own policy, so he needed and got some rescue from Clinton…

Any of you out there see it? I was out and about all day today and so missed the entire news cycle until just now. This is just bizarre – do we have a man in the White House who is in any way up to the job?

From ABC News:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the man behind the publication of more than a 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, could soon be facing spying charges in the U.S. related to the Espionage Act, Assange’s lawyer said today…

It is strange that someone would be indicted for failure to use a condom…but, then again, in the world of liberalism, they might have made that a crime. For me, though, what is central here is that Assange illegally obtained secret US documents and then used them to jeopardize US national security – he’s a spy; he should feel lucky, if we get our hands on him, that he only gets sentenced to life in prison (and Manning should thank his lucky stars if we decide not to shoot him as a traitor).

Failure to indict Assange as a spy would be a gross failure on the part of the Obama Administration – so, the ball is in their court. It is sad, though, that it took the release of information damaging to Obama before the Administration started to take this seriously. But all can be repaired – if the spy and the traitor are brought to justice.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…Put simply: Our country is on the path toward bankruptcy. We must turn around before it’s too late, and the Roadmap offers a clear plan for doing so. But it does more than just fend off disaster. CBO calculations show that the Roadmap would also help create a “much more favorable macroeconomic outlook” for the next half-century. The CBO estimates that under the Roadmap, by 2058 per-person GDP would be around 70% higher than the current trend.

Is Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap perfect? Of course not—no government plan ever is. But it’s the best plan on the table at a time when doing nothing is no longer an option.

Let’s not settle for the big-government status quo, which is what the president’s commission offers. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to make these tough decisions so that they might inherit a prosperous and strong America like the one we were given.

Ryan’s plan offers us a way out of the impasse – the system where we’re committed to national bankruptcy by adherence to the failed, Keynesian economic policies of the New Deal and Great Society. Palin points out earlier in her piece that the deficit commission does nothing to really tackle entitlements and, indeed, offers a back door to a single-payer health plan as ObamaCare costs skyrocket. The only reasonable plan we have right now for long term fiscal stability is Ryan’s – and Palin is right to back it.

We should make the Ryan plan a centerpiece of our 2011 legislative effort and, as Obama and Reid will block implementation, our major issue heading in to 2012. Palin’s actions here allow us the opportunity to start pressing our weak-kneed Congressional GOP on the matter. Most of them are simply afraid to tackle entitlement reform as that will open the GOP to a Democrat smear campaign in 2012. Trouble is that we’re going to get that smear campaign whether we act on entitlements or no – and, additionally, I think the American people are ready for a serious debate on the matter; now is the time to act.

By default, Sarah Palin is becoming the GOP leader. While there is much to be said in favor of Speaker-elect Boehner as well as some others in the Congressional GOP, none of them – other than Ryan – have really stepped up to offer the radical yet simple solutions necessary to solve our problems. Sarah Palin is showing she has the raw guts necessary to do the right thing – it probably helps that she’s been slandered continually for more than two years by the left and has thus developed the thickest of political skins. But however that came about, she’s the person standing forth and leading the way. A bit more of this and she’ll have the 2012 GOP nomination wrapped up easily, if she decides to run.